Ever since the first Neanderthal bones were discovered in 1856, people have wondered about these ancient hominins. How are they different from us? How much are they like us? Did our ancestors get along with them? Fight them? Love them? The recent discovery of a group called Denisovans, a Neanderthal-like group who populated Asia and...
The debate has raged for decades: Was it humans or climate change that led to the extinction of many species of large mammals, birds, and reptiles that have disappeared from Earth over the past 50,000 years? By “large,” we mean animals that weighed at least 45 kilograms – known as megafauna. At least 161 species...
Archaeologists at the University of New Hampshire along with a historian at Northeastern University believe they have unearthed the long-lost homestead of King Pompey, an enslaved African who won his freedom and later became one of the first Black property owners in colonial New England. “We are thrilled,” said Meghan Howey, professor of anthropology and...
Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, Harvard biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown corner of avian genetic history. Published in Science Advances, the work is the first complete genetic map of the turkey-sized bird whose distant living cousins...
– Ian Scheffler By now, the challenges posed by generative AI are no secret. Models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Meta’s Llama have been known to “hallucinate,” inventing potentially misleading responses, as well as divulge sensitive information, like copyrighted materials. One potential solution to some of these issues is “model disgorgement,” a set of techniques that force models to...
Most people have heard the famous phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now, Northwestern University researchers have used statistical physics to confirm the theory that underlies this famous axiom. The study published on May 3 in the journal Science Advances. In the 1940s, Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider introduced social balance theory, which explains...
A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples...
Over the next 25 years, as the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the oil and gas wells that have sustained the fossil fuel age will have to be plugged. No big deal, you might think, drilling those wells was the hard part. Plugging them should be no problem. But think again. The Norwegian Continental...
Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the...
Solar cars exist. The best place to see them is the World Solar Challenge, a race that’s held every two years in Australia. Competitors have to drive about 1,870 miles (3,000 kilometers), from Darwin on the country’s north coast to Adelaide on its south coast, using only energy from the Sun. Many cars that compete...
