Science

Stormy weather has threatened to delay the launch of Europe's Hera spacecraft, which is scheduled to blast off on Monday, SpaceX has said.

The probe will head off on a mission to inspect the damage a NASA spacecraft did to an asteroid when it smashed into it in 2022 during the first test of Earth's planetary defences.

The sheep huddle together, bleeding from the nose, aborting lambs or suffocating on saliva as they succumb to bluetongue, a virus sweeping through flocks on the Italian island of Sardinia.

Some 20,000 sheep have died so far this year on the island, which is home to nearly half Italy's flock and plays an important role in the production of famed Italian cheeses such as Pecorino.

Local officials, academic researchers, and volunteer responders have raised concerns about chemical and biological contamination brought by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. last week, which potentially threaten the safety not only of drinking water but also the quality of soil—leading experts to call for tighter regulations on stored pollutants.

Helene struck Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 and swept through a number of states in the days that followed. Most of the damage came from extreme rainfall that triggered flooding. The storm killed at least 232 people.

Meta on Friday provided a look at a generative artificial intelligence model it is working on that lets people create short videos, complete with audio, from text prompts and photos.

The tech titan touted "Meta Movie Gen" as a "breakthrough" when it comes to using an AI engine to crank out video and audio.

The days are getting longer and in Australia, the switch to daylight saving time is almost upon us (for about 70% of the population, anyway).

But why do we have longer days in summer and shorter days in winter?

You know we’ve reached peak interest in artificial intelligence (AI) when Oprah Winfrey hosts a television special about it. AI is truly everywhere. And we will all have a relationship with it – whether using it, building it, governing it or even befriending it.

But what exactly is AI? While most people won’t need to know exactly how it works under the hood, we will all need to understand what it can do. In our conversations with global leaders across business, government and the arts, one thing stood out – you can’t fake it anymore. AI fluency that is.

From Hurricane Helene to Typhoon Yagi, powerful storms are battering the globe, and scientists warn that a warming planet is amplifying their destructive force to unprecedented levels.

Here's what the latest research reveals about how climate change is supercharging tropical cyclones -- the generic term for both weather phenomenon.

Artificial intelligence is already disrupting industries from banking and finance to film and journalism, and scientists are investigating how AI might revolutionise their field -- or even win a Nobel Prize.

In 2021, Japanese scientist Hiroaki Kitano proposed what he dubbed the "Nobel Turing Challenge", inviting researchers to create an "AI scientist" capable of autonomously carrying out research worthy of a Nobel Prize by 2050.

Out of 225 people awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, only five have been women. This is a very small number, and certainly smaller than 50% – the percent of women in the human population.

Despite several studies exposing the barriers for women in science and the many efforts to increase their representation, physics continues to be a male-dominated field. Only 1 in 5 physicists are women, a number that has not moved since 2010.

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play in solving complex problems such as curing a disease?

In my job as an applied mathematician, I use mathematical tools to study and solve complex problems in biology. I have worked on problems involving gene and neural networks such as interactions between cells and decision-making. To do this, I create descriptions of a real-world situation in mathematical language. The act of turning a situation into a mathematical representation is called modeling.

Argentine biochemist Alejandro Nadra worries that President Javier Milei's budget cuts will undo his scientific quest to unravel the cause of genetic diseases that disable and kill millions.

Since taking office last December, budget-slashing Milei has frozen public university and research budgets even as annual inflation stands at 236 percent.

Japan had its second-hottest September since records began with some regions the warmest yet, the weather agency said, in a year likely to become the warmest in human history.

Across the archipelago the month's average temperature was 2.52 degrees Celsius higher than usual, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Tuesday.