RESEARCH BRIEFINGS 18 December 2024 A rare isotope, thorium-229, exhibits a unique low-energy nuclear transition that could form the basis of a precise nuclear clock. Observation of this transition in vapour-deposited thin films, which require only minuscule amounts of 229Th,...
Most neutrinos that stream through Earth are produced by fusion reactions in the Sun.Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDOPhysicists in Italy and China have for the first time observed glimmers of the ‘neutrino fog’, signals from neutrinos that mimic those expected to be produced...
A 2022 regional study found that creatinine is an inadequate biomarker for kidney function in people in South Africa, Malawi and Uganda.Credit: Sandra Maytham-Bailey, ARK StudyIn 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement forced the United States to reckon with systemic...
After weeks of deadly demonstrations that toppled Bangladesh’s autocratic government in August, the students who led the revolution had one demand: invite Nobel Peace prizewinning economist Muhammad Yunus to lead the nation.The task is the greatest challenge of Yunus’s life....
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli has presented evidence that her lab has not worked with close relatives of SARS-CoV-2.Credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP via GettyAfter years of rumours that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, the virologist at...
OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) system dropped in September with a bold promise. The company behind the chatbot ChatGPT showcased o1 — its latest suite of large language models (LLMs) — as having a “new level of AI capability”. OpenAI,...
By the time you receive this I will be dead. Hopefully not dead dead, but close enough. And for a long time. Most of the stasis tubes were damaged in the explosion, along with nearly everything else, but SpaceCorp assures...
Attending a psychology conference this month, I was struck by an unsettling trend in social-science research. The abstract book revealed that nearly all of the 1,500 posters and talks related to some kind of confirmatory work — using statistical analyses...
David Posner (at lectern) introduces his plan to bring students from Mexico’s Vasco de Quiroga University to Cambridge, UK, for a research stay.Credit: Pedro Andres Garcia EscamillaBorn in the United States to a Mexican mum and a UK–US dad, I...
Artificial-intelligence models are able to translate an experimental method into code that runs a liquid-handling robot.Credit: GettySince July, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have been assessing how the artificial intelligence (AI) model GPT-4o can assist humans...
