Whether traffic flows or not depends on more than just the roads

If a city’s suburban railway network is expanded, additional flats are likely to be built in an agglomeration that is better connected as a result. The opposite also holds true: If new buildings spring up like mushrooms in a suburb, this will call for an expansion of the transport infrastructure.

End of black box AI? Scientists develop blueprint for transparent system that reveals how it learns and makes decisions

The team have developed a prototype system with both a “brain” and a memory. Unlike conventional AI, it can learn continuously without losing past knowledge, avoids forming false or misleading memories, and mimic aspects of human thinking.

== have seen something similar before
Where was your backyard millions of years ago?

An international team of Earth scientists led by Utrecht professor Douwe van Hinsbergen has developed an online tool that allows you to see, for any given location on Earth, what latitude it occupied in the distant past, right back to the heyday of the supercontinent Pangea 320 million years ago.

The keyboard trap: Why your best arguments are failing online

In an era of digital flame wars and rising political partisanship, emails and texts are likely to seem so much calmer, controlled, and safe. When a disagreement arises, our instinct is often to type it out, carefully crafting our words behind a screen.

== yjc, like this kind of detective work
For centuries these dazzling Roman bowls were misread—until chemical traces exposed an unexpected maker

For centuries, archaeologists debated the origins of Rome’s exquisite mosaic-glass bowls. Now, chemical fingerprints in 101 ancient shards point to a surprising center of production.

Scorpions’ weapons are fortified with metal to suit their needs

Scorpions use their pincers and stingers to defend themselves from predators and to subdue their prey. Across species, the reliance on each weapon varies widely. Some scorpions sting only when prey is difficult to subdue, while others use their stinger more aggressively.

== older article that I somehow missed
Food becoming more calorific but less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide

Researchers noticed ‘dramatic’ changes in nutrients in crops, including drop in zinc and rise in lead

Joby Demos Its Air Taxi In NYC

Air taxi developer Joby Aviation has conducted demonstration flights of a passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) over New York City for the first time.

== yjc
What is black garlic? How heat and humidity turn a pungent ingredient mild and slightly sweet

You may have seen black garlic appear more frequently in grocery stores, restaurants, and online recipes over the past few years. Many chefs and food writers describe it as a unique and deeply flavored ingredient. So what is black garlic, and how is it made?

Urban birds fear women more than men, and scientists don’t know why

An international team of researchers have made the surprising discovery that urban birds—such as great tits, house sparrows and blackbirds—flee sooner when approached by women compared to men. But they don’t understand why.

Europe’s seafloor fishing looks profitable until societal costs turn the math upside down

The first study to measure the full economic value of bottom trawling in Europe’s waters calculates that the destructive fishing practice imposes up to €16 billion annually in net costs to society.

Airborne desert dust may warm climate far more than expected, new analysis shows

Atmospheric dust plays a dual role in Earth’s climate: it reflects some sunlight back into space while also absorbing and retaining the planet’s heat like an insulating blanket. But while dust likely cools the planet overall, that’s not the whole story.

Invisible fertility crisis: Chemicals and climate change threaten reproduction across species

The rise in infertility is not limited to humans, as environmental stressors are quietly undermining the reproductive potential of different forms of life.

Snowball Earth may hide a far stranger climate cycle than anyone expected

During the Sturtian glacial period during the Neoproterozoic Era, Earth underwent periods of global glaciation, which have been described as either “Snowball” and “Slushball” Earth scenarios. In Snowball Earth models, the planet was completely covered in ice for around 56 million years. In the Slushball models, portions of thin or patchy ice or even open water still existed in the tropics.

Forget the caveman myth: Neanderthal brains challenge what we thought we knew

The popular narrative suggests that Neanderthals were not as smart as the early humans who colonized their territory in Eurasia and ultimately replaced them.

= seen something on this a while back The Eight-Hour Sleep Is a Modern Invention

There’s a reason you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night. (Washroom break?)

The platypus is even weirder than thought, scientists discover

They already have the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lay eggs like reptiles and have venom like snakes. Yet the humble platypus, a small creature which quietly swims in the rivers of eastern Australia, has found yet another way to amaze scientists.

The most energetic neutrino ever detected could be primordial

In the exotic world of particle physics, neutrinos may be the most mysterious members. They rarely interact with other matter, have almost no mass, and have no electrical charge. These characteristics make them extremely difficult to study.

Alien comet carries record-heavy water, and its birthplace looks nothing like our cosmic neighborhood

Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, hence its H2O formula. In typical water molecules, though, those hydrogen atoms have just one proton at their core. In the comet’s water, a high ratio of its water molecules contain deuterium, a form of hydrogen with the standard issue proton plus a neutron. These heavier forms of water also exist on Earth, but in much lower quantities than were observed in 3I/ATLAS.

Venice is sinking. We analyzed every plan to save it, and none would preserve the city as we know it

Venice has coexisted with the sea throughout its 1,500-year history, perhaps better than any other city on Earth. Yet over the past century it has flooded increasingly often, as the sea rises and the city itself sinks under its own weight.

An interplanetary shortcut can speed up trips to Mars

Whether it’s robotic rovers heading to Mars or, one day, a crew of astronauts, a round-trip journey is an incredibly long one.

Battery-free textile turns clothing into a real-time blood pressure monitor

Over the past decades, technological advances have opened remarkable possibilities for the detection and monitoring of various physiological signals associated with heart health (e.g., heart rate and ECG), sleep stages and physical activity. Most existing health and fitness trackers, however, are powered by a battery that needs to be recharged daily, every few days, or weekly.

Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper finally breaks through in 13 strange bursts

In 1962, Soviet physicist Gurgen Askaryan predicted that high-energy particles passing through a dense material should produce a distinctive burst of radio waves. When such a particle strikes an atom, it triggers a cascade of secondary particles that sweeps up electrons from the surrounding material, creating a negatively charged shower front that radiates at radio frequencies.

Universal patterns emerge across 22 languages, mapping how vocabularies evolve

Human languages are known to have grown and changed considerably over the course of history, often reflecting technological, cultural, and societal shifts. Studying the evolution of languages can thus offer valuable insight into how human societies and cultures have transformed over time.

Can warning videos blunt misinformation? What a 12-country test found

The internet and social media platforms have given rise to a rising wave of misinformation, with many users now posting fake news, AI-generated photos or videos and other types of misleading content online. Over the past few years, this rise in misinformation has become a heated topic of debate.

How The Heck Does GPS Work?

How geometry, stopwatches, and Einstein’s theories work together to make GPS possible.

Japan Airlines trials humanoid robots as ground handlers

Japan’s aviation industry is wrestling with a labour crunch brought on by an increase in inbound tourism and a declining working-age population, said JAL, which employs some 4,000 ground handling staff.

== yjc
The Silent Frequency That Makes Old Buildings Feel Haunted

The basement feels wrong before you can say why. Something in the air, maybe, or the quality of the silence. Your mood dips, irritation creeping in from nowhere, and the music playing through the speakers sounds, suddenly, sadder than it did a moment ago. You haven’t heard anything unusual. You haven’t seen anything unusual. But something has changed, and your body knows it even if your brain can’t quite catch up.

How the brain replays past emotional experiences during sleep

For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to uncover the neural processes that allow humans and various other animals to recall emotional experiences of past events. Past studies have identified a network of brain regions that support the encoding and consolidation of these memories.

== yjc
How the Onion’s new Infowars creative director plans to get laughs out of conspiracies

Satirical newspaper the Onion submitted a new proposal last week to take over Infowars, the conspiracy-laden fake news website Jones founded in 1999. If a judge approves the deal, the Onion would be able to start publishing its own content on the Infowars site as soon as April 30.

= yjc DeepSeek V4 Arrives With Near State-of-the-Art Intelligence At 1/6th the Cost

The whale has resurfaced. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup offshoot of High-Flyer Capital Management quantitative analysis firm, became a near-overnight sensation globally in January 2025 with the release of its open source R1 model that matched proprietary U.S. giants.

Is AI Cannibalizing Human Intelligence?

The traditional narrative warns that reliance on AI tools will erode critical thinking skills, memory, and problem-solving abilities. This perspective assumes that using AI for tasks once performed by humans leads to intellectual atrophy.

A 17th Century ‘supercomputer’ once owned by Indian royalty heads for auction

Astrolabes are metallic disks with multi-layered, interlocking components that were historically used to tell the time, map the stars, the direction of Mecca and the motion of the sky.

This featherweight elastic suit could transform everyday movement in ways most people would never expect

The tensegrity structure applied to the elastic suit by the researchers helps the suit maintain a stable shape through a balance of tension and structural integrity, which is similar to how umbrellas or tents secure a stable structure through light strings and frames.

== I know we seen a lot of articles on this subject, but this is perhaps a slightly different view
What is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, and why are scientists worried about it slowing down?

In the movie The Day After Tomorrow, the world’s weather systems are thrown into chaos when an important Atlantic Ocean current abruptly shuts down. While the movie is probably the best-known example of cli-fi — climate fiction — its premise is loosely based on real science. And it is something scientists are taking very seriously.

== yjc, just couldn’t not include this one
Yes, a Steak Canadian is a real thing. No, it wasn’t invented ‘in a place called Ontario’

U.K. sandwich shop hears from from thousands of ‘bewildered Canadians’ after viral video.

Milky Way’s ’little cousins’ may hold clues about infant universe

Dwarf galaxies are often described as small cousins of the Milky Way. They form in small dark matter halos which are predicted by the standard model of cosmology. The faintest examples of such systems are extreme in both size and fragility, and lie on the boundary of our knowledge about galaxy formation and dark matter.

This 2,200-year-old Roman wreck hid a repair story that rewrites how ancient ships survived long voyages

Ever since humans have embarked on sea voyages, they needed to ensure vessels were waterproof, resistant to salty seawater, and could withstand microorganisms or sea-dwellers like worms. Until the mid-20th century, however, the study of non-wood materials used to build ships was overlooked.

Mechanical forces from the beating heart may help prevent cancer cell growth

Most organs are vulnerable to cancer, but the heart is something of an anomaly. While cancer can spread from other parts of the body to the heart, tumors rarely start there. It’s a medical mystery that has puzzled scientists for years.

This artificial retina doesn’t just aim to restore sight—it opens a hidden channel of vision

The retina, the thin layer of tissue at the back of the eye, is made up of photoreceptor cells that convert visible light into electrical signals, which is essential for human vision. Some diseases, such as retinal degeneration, cause these photoreceptor cells to stop working, which results in blindness.

== yjc, probably similar for every country in the world, though governments likely responsible in numerous cases
How deceptive content reached millions of voters during the 2020 US elections

Over the past decades, the diffusion of fake news and other deceptive content on social media platforms has become a heated topic of debate.