Science

A disembodied woman's head mugged and grimaced, aping the facial expressions of a user on a nearby laptop as visitors to the China Humanoid Robot Developer Conference watched in fascinated unease.

The wide, slightly frantic eyes left no doubt the technology was firmly in "uncanny valley" territory but the field is nonetheless attracting increasing attention in China, both from investors and the government.

A Boeing Starliner capsule carrying its first ever astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Thursday after overcoming unexpected challenges arising from thruster malfunctions and helium leaks.

The spaceship dubbed "Calypso" rendezvoused with the orbital lab at 1:34 pm ET (1734 GMT) over the southern Indian Ocean, allowing crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to enter a while later.

Every day, women are working on frontier science in Earth’s unforgiving polar environments. Our study, published today in PLOS Climate, investigated what their experiences are actually like.

Fieldwork in the Arctic and Antarctica is a critical part of the scientific research that’s addressing the unprecedented challenges of global climate change. It ranges from day trips to living onboard research ships in the Arctic and Southern Oceans, to spending months at research bases in the polar regions.

When astronomers turn our radio telescopes out towards space, we sometimes detect sporadic bursts of radio waves originating from across the vast expanse of the universe. We call them “radio transients”: some erupt only once, never to be seen again, and others flicker on and off in predictable patterns.

We think most radio transients come from rotating neutron stars known as pulsars, which emit regular flashes of radio waves, like cosmic lighthouses. Typically, these neutron stars spin at incredible speeds, taking mere seconds or even a fraction of a second to complete each rotation.

Two people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s claim to have conquered the disease through simple lifestyle changes.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s have been the leading killers in the UK for the last ten years, accounting for 11.4% of deaths in 2022. Although new drugs can reduce the disease’s progression, more evidence is emerging that something as simple as integrating a healthy lifestyle can “reverse” symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Boeing's Starliner crew capsule, which is making its way to the International Space Station on its first mission carrying astronauts, has developed two helium leaks since entering orbit but remains stable and on course for docking, NASA said.

The spaceship finally blasted off from Florida on Wednesday following years of delays and safety scares -- as well as two recently aborted launch attempts, before it finally got off the ground.

Tests on a leading AI tool allowed the creation of deceptive and incriminating images of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a watchdog said Wednesday, despite pledges to block fake photos of the presidential contenders ahead of elections in November.

Disinformation researchers fear rampant misuse of AI-powered applications in a year of major elections around the world, thanks to proliferating online tools that are cheap and easy to use and lack sufficient guardrails.

Apple is expected to make the case next week that it is not being left behind as tech world rivals blaze ahead with artificial intelligence.

AI and perhaps even a partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI will likely be a driving theme at the Monday kickoff of Apple's annual WWDC developers' conference in Silicon Valley, according to analysts.

More money is pouring into solar power than all other electricity sources combined, with investments set to reach half a trillion dollars this year, the world's top energy research body said Thursday.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast in a report that global investment in clean energy this year will hit $2 trillion, twice the amount going to fossil fuels.

The venerable Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized astronomical discovery since its launch in 1990, will ease into retirement with a scaled-back observing schedule, NASA officials said Tuesday.

One of the three gyroscopes that control the direction in which the telescope points has become unstable in recent months, leading to intermittent "safe mode" episodes -- most recently on May 24.

With legs like a velociraptor and a striking neon blue neck, the southern cassowary cuts a fearsome figure in the rainforests of northeast Australia.

It is best to admire these human-sized birdies -- and their rapier-sharp 10 centimeter (four inch) talons -- from afar.

Global warming has accelerated at an "unprecedented" pace as the window to limit rising temperatures within internationally-set targets closes, over 50 leading scientists warned in a study published on Wednesday.

Looking at decade averages, temperatures climbed 0.26 degrees Celsius from 2014 to 2023, said the study published in the journal Earth System Science Data.