Antarctica’s Terror Bird Was an Apex Predator of the Eocene EpochThe terror bird — an extinct group of carnivorous birds that once dominated the current territory of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay after the extinction of dinosaurs — persisted between 23 million years ago and up to about 17 thousand years ago.
Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk. People are moving to the area and building there anywayRising seas threaten to swallow much of the Miami metro area in the coming decades as the world continues to warm and faraway ice sheets melt.
The Mystery of Uruguay's Ferocious, All-Female Cannibal InsectsA tribe of ferocious, cannibalistic Amazons lurks in the grasslands of southern Uruguay. Ok, they’re not the notorious warrior women of myth: They’re only a few inches long and they can’t fire an arrow.
Plant apocalypse: how new diseases are destroying EU trees and cropsThe plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome.
Bird flu traces have been found in cows' milk. Should we be worried?The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Thursday that genetic fragments of the H5N1 bird flu virus have been detected in one in five retail samples of milk it tested. This comes just days after the agency first said it found inactive traces of the virus in the commercial milk supply.
The Taylor Swift Album Leak’s Big AI ProblemOn Thursday, Taylor Swift did a very Taylor Swift thing: She posted an Instagram story with a link to buy “Fortnight,” the first single off of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department. It was cute, maybe even unnecessary. Taylor Swift is one of the biggest recording artists in the world.
Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide.The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.
The untold history of Japanese American bird pinsAs a child, I’d creep down the basement stairs and watch him: hunched over a table, a single lamp lighting his work. First he’d carve a walnut-sized body out of wood.
The Shark WhispererIn the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach.
These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Would you live here?California’s soaring home values and its affordability crisis show no signs of easing. But if you look hard enough, there are still a handful of cities where the median price of a home is less than $150,000.
Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four DimensionsTopologists prove two new results that bring some order to the confoundingly difficult study of four-dimensional shapes. Introduction The central objects of study in topology are spaces called manifolds, which look flat when you zoom in on them.
Pay No Attention to the Person behind the Algorithm: A Brief History of Automatons That Were Actually PeopleIf you’ve ever asked a chatbot a question and received nonsensical gibberish in reply, you already know that “artificial intelligence” isn’t always very intelligent. And sometimes it isn’t all that artificial either.
Dark Energy Could Be Evolving Over Time, Raising Questions About the Nature of the CosmosA new map of the universe hints at the shocking possibility that dark energy is evolving—a suggestion that, if confirmed, would have huge implications for the nature of the cosmos.
Rocket Report: SLS workforce cuts; New Glenn launch to launch in the early fallWelcome to Edition 6.41 of the Rocket Report! As I finish up this edition I'm listening to the post-Flight Readiness Review news conference for Boeing's Crew Flight Test. It sounds like everything remains on track for a launch attempt on May 6, at 10:34 pm ET.
Merging Fields, Mathematicians Go the Distance on Old ProblemMathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers. Introduction The change of plans came on a road trip.