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Infanticide and adoption common in parrotlets A team of biologists has discovered that both infanticide and adoption are surprisingly common behaviours among green-rumped parrotlets (Forpus passerines), a small South American bird. “In parrotlets, infanticide and adoption revolve around real estate and love,” says Steven Beissinger of the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored a new paper in […]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected the best evidence to date for the existence of an atmosphere around a rocky exoplanet. The discovery could aid the continued search for habitable planets outside our solar system. “55 Cancri e” is a hot rocky planet orbiting a star 41 light-years from Earth. Its orbit is […]

From Murdoch University News Prominent AI applications are showing racial biases and a lack of diversity and cultural sensitivity.  AI expert Professor Kevin Wong from Perth’s Murdoch University’s School of Information Technology says in order to deal with the problem, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of different AI techniques.   Machine Learning techniques, including Generative AI, require a huge […]

By Jennifer Chu  MIT News When scientists look for an earthquake’s cause, their search often starts underground. As centuries of seismic studies have made clear, it’s the collision of tectonic plates and the movement of subsurface faults and fissures that primarily trigger a temblor. But MIT scientists have now found that certain weather events may […]

Combining the ancient art of paper folding with modern materials, researchers have created a new caterpillar-like soft robot which bends and twists through mazes. The robot is made up of many modular segments which can operate independently, or as a longer unit in which they communicate with each other. “The concept of modular soft robots […]

A new report has found that worker rights – including the right to form a trade union and the right to bargain collectively – are among the least protected human rights globally.  The findings are published by the CIRIGHTS Data Project, largest human rights dataset in the world, which scores and ranks countries on 25 […]

A big Korean analysis of people with heart failure has revealed substantial positive impacts of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. The study was drawn from the Korean National Health Insurance Service database, which covers nearly all residents of the country. It contained 651,127 patients aged 18 years or older with heart failure. The study found heart […]

A pair of archaeologists have uncovered a strange series of rock art carvings that show boats and cattle – both vitally in need of water to work properly – in the middle of one of the driest parts of the African desert. It’s a finding that sheds light on the changing face of North Africa’s […]

AstraZeneca developed the first vaccine for COVID-19, beating the competition, but this week they’ve announced they’re withdrawing the jab worldwide following a drop in demand. More than 3 billion doses of the vaccine, called Vaxzevria, have been administered globally, and AstraZeneca said it is “incredibly proud” of it. Vaxzevria was developed in conjunction with scientists […]

Yen Ying Lim, Monash University and Diny Thomson, Monash University Dementia is often described as “the long goodbye”. Although the person is still alive, dementia slowly and irreversibly chips away at their memories and the qualities that make someone “them”. Dementia eventually takes away the person’s ability to communicate, eat and drink on their own, […]

Combining one of the world’s rarest metals with a comparatively abundant element could help accelerate green hydrogen production, with a Japanese research team developing an enhanced catalyst for industrial electrolysis. Iridium is a vital, but rare catalyst involved in the electrolysis process that produces green hydrogen, effectively by using electricity from a renewable energy source […]

Combing one of the world’s rare metals with a comparatively abundant element could help accelerate green hydrogen production, with a Japanese research team developing an enhanced catalyst for industrial electrolysis.  Iridium is a vital, but rare catalyst involved in the electrolysis process that produces green hydrogen, effectively by using electricity from a renewable energy source […]

US researchers have discovered a new strategy to clean up “forever chemicals” from contaminated water and importantly, it can do so at room temperatures. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are entirely man-made chemicals widely used for their heat-resistant, and water, oil, and dirt-repellent properties. However, PFAS’ stubbornly strong carbon-fluorine bonds are resistant to chemical and […]

Once upon a time, no one thought anyone could run a mile (1.6km) in four minutes or less, and if they could, it was believed the health consequences of the super-human feat would be dire. Not so, it would seem, with a Canadian and Australian study finding that, on the contrary, the first 200 people […]

New Australian-led research has unravelled the evolutionary history of the African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus). Today there are 2 genetically distinct populations of leopards present in Africa – one found across most of the African continent and the other confined mostly to the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga regions of South Africa. The […]

Researchers from Harvard University and Google published the largest synaptic-resolution and 3D reconstruction of a piece of human brain to date. The cubic millimetre of brain tissue is about half the size of a grain of rice but contains 57,000 cells, 230mm of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses. The resulting digital reconstruction amounts to […]

A lamprey fish has been found living in the coastal rivers of Queensland, Australia, about 1,400 km north of the species’ usual range. Lampreys are fish which recall a time hundreds of millions of years ago. Unlike most fish today, lampreys are jawless. Jaws evolved in fish more than 400 million years ago. Research suggests […]

Shifting ocean circulation patterns driven by climate change are potentially pushing the world’s coral reefs to the brink, a new study warns. Amid the current global coral bleaching event – the fourth on record – a pair of marine scientists have used a ‘hotspot analysis’ to assess places in the world’s reef oceans where surface […]

The reason Venus missed the chance to be a water-filled planet might boil down to chemical reactions in the planet’s atmosphere allowing hydrogen to flee. Venus and Earth have much in common – roughly the same size, density and rocky composition.  But Venus boasts an environment completely inhospitable to life as we know it: in […]

The world is in the grip of a multi-year panzootic – the animal equivalent of a pandemic. It’s caused by a lineage of the highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, or bird flu, clade 2.3.4.4b. It first emerged in Europe in late 2020 and now effects wild birds and poultry in every continent – […]

A 7,000-year-old Neolithic settlement has been found in Serbia. It is among largest Late Stone Age settlements found in the country. The settlement was found near the Tamiš River in northeast Serbia’s Banat region which it shares with Hungary and Romania. The Serbian part of the Banat is flat and marshy. It includes the largest […]

Boeing’s crew test for its Starliner space capsule has been pushed back after a faulty oxygen relief valve led to the scrubbing of its anticipated launch earlier this week. Originally scheduled to launch May 6 local time and with a possible re-attempt slated for this weekend, the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which supplies the Atlas […]

NASA has produced a mind-bending video simulating what it would like if you were to plunge into a black hole. It’s based on understanding of gravitational effects around these mysterious powerful objects. Watch the video below: “People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual […]

Aspiring actors in need of inspiration for their next dramatic death scene needn’t look any further than dice snakes (Natrix tessellate). The serpents fake their own deaths to avoid predators. In a bizarre new finding, researchers have discovered dice snakes include dramatic practical effects in their charade such as smearing themselves with faeces and oozing […]