Science

Researchers have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, according to media reports. Remarkably, these embryos have reportedly been created from embryonic stem cells, meaning they do not require sperm and ova.

This development, widely described as a breakthrough that could help scientists learn more about human development and genetic disorders, was revealed this week in Boston at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

The launch of ever-capable large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5 has sparked much interest over the past six months. However, trust in these models has waned as users have discovered they can make mistakes – and that, just like us, they aren’t perfect.

An LLM that outputs incorrect information is said to be “hallucinating”, and there is now a growing research effort towards minimizing this effect. But as we grapple with this task, it’s worth reflecting on our own capacity for bias and hallucination – and how this impacts the accuracy of the LLMs we create.

That matters to humans because the species act as managers of their marine ecosystems, maintaining delicately balanced food webs on which hundreds of millions of people rely.

The research, published in the journal Science, is the result of the Global FinPrint project, which collected more than 22,000 hours of video footage from reefs across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia and the Americas.

Financial services workers, medical students and others working in highly competitive environments are using so-called “smart drugs” to enhance cognitive performance.

Do they actually work? Some of these drugs, such as methylphenidate (aka Ritalin) and dextroamphetamine, have been used successfully as part of treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but less is known about their effect on people who do not have ADHD.

The earliest people who lived in North America shared the landscape with huge animals. On any day these hunter-gatherers might encounter a giant, snarling saber-toothed cat ready to pounce, or a group of elephantlike mammoths stripping tree branches. Maybe a herd of giant bison would stampede past.

Obviously, you can’t see any of these ice age megafauna now. They’ve all been extinct for about 12,800 years. Mammoths, mastodons, huge bison, horses, camels, very large ground sloths and giant short-faced bears all died out as the huge continental ice sheets disappeared at the end of the ice age. What happened to them?

As global temperatures rise, trees in colder areas are benefiting from an extended growing season. A longer growing season results in thicker growth rings and, as a result, higher overall wood production.

The long hunt for extraterrestrials just got a big boost.

Scientists have discovered that phosphorus, a key building block of life, lies in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Global warming is here. As anticipated for more than 50 years now, the temperature and levels of atmospheric CO2 have increased.

Various models were able to predict these increases with precision, and we are seeing the impact now. One of the main effects of the changes in the atmosphere are frequent forest fires, which are more common globally and have affected Canada in the last month.

Glass is a material of many faces: It is both ancient and modern, strong yet delicate, and able to adopt almost any shape or color. These properties of glass are why people use it to make everything from smartphone screens and fiber-optic cables to vials that hold vaccines.

Humankind has been using glass in some fashion for millennia, and researchers are still finding new uses for it today. It’s not uncommon to hear the oft-repeated factoid that glass is actually a liquid, not a solid. But the reality is much more interesting – glass does not fit neatly into either of those categories and is in many ways a state of matter all its own. As two materials scientists who study glass, we are constantly trying to improve our understanding of this unique material and discover new ways to use glass in the future.

Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking long reign was exceptional in many ways - not least because England has been ruled by men for most of the last thousand years. Until recently, the crown was passed to the monarch’s eldest son and daughters were married off to royals in other countries.

But in most other social mammals, females commonly remain and breed in their birth groups, inheriting the status and territory of their mothers while sons leave to find unrelated partners elsewhere.
Social relationships between resident females vary but are often supportive. For example in African elephants, females assemble in family groups and older females are usually dominant over younger ones.