‘Artificial leaf’ generates clean hydrogen from contaminated seawater

Scientists have designed a device that harvests sunlight to generate clean hydrogen from seawater and simultaneously degrades hydrazine, a highly toxic contaminant from industrial wastewater.

Is dark matter ’natural?’ Physicist puts the question to the test

Dark matter is one of the oldest open problems in physics. It makes up most of the matter in the universe and shapes how galaxies form and move, yet no one has ever directly detected it. Physicists have proposed dozens of candidates to explain it: exotic new particles, black holes formed moments after the Big Bang and more. With no direct detection to settle the question, researchers often fall back on a different test: not “is this candidate detected,” but “is this candidate natural?”

What kills Schrödinger’s cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger’s famous dead-and-alive cat.

Deep-sea crustaceans caught hitching rides on giant sea spiders

Some types of marine life appear to have it easy. While exploring thousands of meters below the waves in the Chilean Margin in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, scientists observed tiny shrimp-like crustaceans known as amphipods (Mesopleustes abyssorum) clinging tightly to much larger giant sea spiders (Colossendeis colossea) that were scuttling on the ocean floor.

Cuttlefish suckers reveal how they grip rough prey—and could inspire better technology

Cephalopods are a group of soft-bodied marine mollusks that include cuttlefish, octopuses, squid and nautiluses. Many of these mollusks have muscular suckers on their arms that allow them to seize prey or grip other surfaces in their surroundings.

NASA’s moon orbiter has spotted an impact crater that only happens once a century

It’s the largest modern-day crater in our solar system, NASA says.

== yjc
New cat species identified for the 1st time in a century

A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia’s cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living cat species has been formally named and described in more than a century. The cat, called Tilcayo by local communities, is ?part of a group called tiger cats found across much of South America.

Chimpanzees give youngsters the tools to learn tricky techniques

Darwin noted in 1871 that chimpanzees use stones to crack nuts, striking a blow to human hubris. Over the 20th century, a select few animals as diverse as octopuses and parrots have been observed making and using tools.

Iron Age seeds reveal the origins of Iberian wine

Spain and Portugal are two of the world’s most popular wine-growing countries, with regions such as Rioja and the Douro Valley producing millions of bottles every year. This winemaking tradition dates back thousands of years, but its exact origins remain a mystery.

Mathematician challenges a 2,000-year-old legend about the Parthenon’s optical illusions

One of Athens’ crowning jewels is the Parthenon, a classical temple on the Acropolis that overlooks the Greek capital. According to legend, many historians, textbooks and tour guides say the ancient Greek architects who designed it added subtle curves and other variations to correct optical illusions that would have disturbed the building’s clean lines.

== yjc
10 Statistical Traps We Often Overlook

Knowing how to calculate a statistic is not the same as understanding what the statistic means. And in a world where we are constantly surrounded by numbers, graphs, percentages, polls, studies, and “data-driven” claims, knowing how to interpret data can help you avoid misinformation.

Strength training 101: A guide to building muscle safely at any age

Muscle mass naturally decreases as we age, a process known as sarcopenia. This loss can lead to weakness, instability and a higher risk of falls and fractures. Strength training reverses this trend by stimulating muscle growth, improving bone density and enhancing joint health. Additional benefits include better blood sugar control, improved mood and increased energy levels.

How to build a nutritious emergency food stockpile

How long you’ll be “surviving” on these foods is key when building your stockpile. If it’s just a few days, it’s not really a big deal if the foods you’re eating aren’t all that nutritionally balanced. But nutrition becomes key the longer you need to rely on your pantry.

Where you live may influence your brain health

For the retrospective study, researchers investigated whether living in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods was associated with two key brain health metrics: higher brain age gap and decreased total brain volume. Brain age gap is the difference between a person’s actual age and how much younger or older the brain appears based on estimates from MRI exams.

== with a caveat or two
Unhealthy Western diet linked to faster cognitive decline in people with genetic risk of Alzheimer’s

As the world grapples with the growing public health challenge of dementia, there has been increasing academic interest in identifying lifestyle factors that may help maintain people’s brain health as they age. Diet is particularly interesting because it is often easily modifiable, but people may not respond to dietary patterns in the same way.

Bubbles the food-stealing dolphin finds shortcut to easy meal

A dolphin that harasses fish until they regurgitate their food—then swoops in to steal it—has astonished University of the Sunshine Coast researchers who have documented this novel feeding strategy.

Could the clues to ancient alien civilizations be hiding in moon dust?

Most of our experience with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has focused on capturing radio signals that alien species have sent out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. That creates a huge “synchronicity” problem—what if there aren’t any alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals now, but there were a billion years ago? The Milky Way is around 13 billion years old—hoping that we exist at the same time as an alien civilization that happens to be actively messaging is a huge leap of faith.

Dense galaxies are carving out a bubble in the early universe

Researchers found a “galaxy overdensity candidate” that could help explain the universe’s reionization. Reionization is when the first stars and galaxies formed and illuminated their surroundings, reionizing hydrogen atoms in the primordial universe. Prior to this, the universe was opaque and dark. After this, photons were free to travel and the cosmos lit up.

Reading for pleasure: Lifelong health and cognitive benefits

Reading for pleasure—from tucking into a Jane Austen classic to devouring a Heartstopper graphic novel—is linked to better mental health, greater empathy and a lower risk of dementia, say researchers.

Wild dogs make the longest recorded journey of any terrestrial mammal in Africa

African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) travel incredibly long distances to search for a mate and new places to breed. They typically embark on these mammoth treks as young adults and often face numerous hazards along the way.

AI imagines a harsher social world, expecting punishment where people expect inaction

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, particularly the large language models (LLMs) that underpin ChatGPT and similar platforms, are remarkably skilled at answering queries about a wide range of topics. However, the extent to which they can interpret social situations and predict how humans might respond in specific scenarios remains poorly understood.

== long term planning
Novel particle beam could challenge Einstein’s theory of gravity

All matter surrounding us—including ourselves—consists of protons, neutrons and electrons. Physicists refer to this as the first generation of particles. There are also two further generations comprising heavier particles. The muon, for example, is the heavier sibling of the electron and belongs to the second generation.

How do you take T. rex’s temperature?

Scientists have long discussed whether and which dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Now, researchers say they have used chemistry to take the temperature of two T. rexes.

This was the last lake of its kind in Canada

The mouth of Milne Fiord had been dammed for thousands of years by the Milne Ice Shelf — a huge, flat piece of ice sitting on the ocean and attached to the north shore of Ellsemere Island. The dam stopped freshwater from flowing into the ocean, allowing it to accumulate on top of the saltwater of the Arctic Ocean. It formed a floating layer because freshwater is less dense than saltwater.

US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

Speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Monday, Meink said the US was ready for “evolving threats”, but did not elaborate on the weapon’s capabilities or when it was put into orbit.

== sorry, yjc, U.S. study, but I expect there is a similar effect in Canada between conservative and liberal electoral districts (provincial or national)
Local industrial emissions linked to congressional election outcomes

The Clean Air Act of 1970 helped standardize pollution limits at the national level, but individual politicians can wield significant influence over industrial emission rates in their districts, according to a new analysis conducted by a multi-institutional team that includes researchers at Penn State.

Pollinators keep a later calendar in human-modified landscapes, study finds

Human development may be changing more than where pollinators live—it may also be changing when they are active. Researchers have found that pollinator seasons shifted later in the year across some of the most human-modified landscapes in the eastern United States.

How the 2024 solar superstorm drained Earth’s radiation belt

In May 2024, Earth experienced its most intense geomagnetic storm since the Halloween storms of 2003. This “superstorm” filled night skies in many parts of the world with colorful aurorae, and it disrupted some infrastructure, such as GPS signals used by agricultural equipment.

No cities on the moon, scientists say

The discovery of water in dark craters at the moon’s poles has sparked a “moon rush” to establish bases there, followed by villages, cities and heavy industry. How sustainable is this rush?

Chocolate faces more climate shocks as study highlights risk of extreme rainfall

“People have tended to focus on heat and drought as the main climate risks, and those do matter. But what we found is that the strongest weather risk to cocoa is actually heavy rainfall.”

Canada hit with at least 110 tornadoes so far this year

Tornadoes tore up the landscape from the oil sands of Alberta to the rocky coasts of Prince Edward Island as North America endured a relentlessly busy storm season this year.

== yjc
The surprising reason California survived record summer heat without blackouts

During the August heat wave of 2020, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity for most of the state, declared a Stage 3 Emergency and hundreds of thousands of households lost power in rolling outages.

== yjc
The Himalayas are melting faster - and India’s economy is ‘at risk’

The Himalayas are approaching a dangerous threshold as glaciers melt faster, glacial lakes grow more unstable and the mountains face a widening gap in monitoring, according to new research.

A single IV treatment retrains immune cells to fight autoimmune diseases in early trial

CAR T-cell therapy is an immune-reprogramming procedure that turns a patient’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting specialists. But delivering it to patients is far from simple. Their immune cells must be extracted, shipped to a highly specialized laboratory for genetic modification and then returned to the patient, a process that can be both expensive and time-consuming.

Could AI really ‘kill all humans’? Breaking down the dire warnings about the technology’s existential risk

Experts say the concern stems from how rapidly AI is advancing and increasing evidence, through incidents like the Hugging Face cyberattack in July, that AI systems can escape human control and act in ways we don’t want them to — and ways we don’t understand.

Cool, power, move: A printable textile that does it all

By bringing cooling, energy harvesting, sensing and adaptive heating together in a printable material, the work offers a pathway toward smart textiles that can respond to changing thermal needs while reducing reliance on external energy.

Underwater solar cells can operate 10 meters below the ocean’s surface

While solar cells have long provided energy to power technologies on land, researchers have struggled to harvest solar energy underwater for monitoring aquaculture and other uses because sunlight quickly drops in intensity over short distances.

Scientists discover a strange new form of ice that could help explain the interiors of Neptune and Uranus

Scientists have discovered that there is ice deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus and want to find out what form it takes and how it behaves. They cannot dig for it and transport it all the way back to Earth, so they do the next best thing: recreate those extreme conditions in the lab.

New analysis reconstructs the dawn of dinosaurs and other reptiles

About 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period, a large proportion of species on Earth rapidly became extinct. After this mass extinction, many groups of organisms began to recover, while reptiles known as archosauromorphs—the group that includes dinosaurs and crocodiles—proliferated.