The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.We named him Squirt – not because he was the smallest of the 16 cuttlefish in the pool, but because anyone with the audacity...
Life is uncertain. None of us know what is going to happen. We know little of what has happened in the past, or is happening now outside our immediate experience. Uncertainty has been called the ‘conscious awareness of ignorance’ —...
Is your chatbot in distress? Many people, myself included, would scoff at this question. It is just computer code, optimised to predict the next word in a sequence. But some philosophers and psychologists say that we shouldn’t be so quick...
The brain shrinkage observed in Alzheimer’s may be prevented by semaglutide, the drug in OzempicZEPHYR/Science Photo Library/Alamy Ozempic and Wegovy are already transforming how we treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, and from next year another condition affecting millions of...
Voyages, both interstellar and Earth-bound, frame many new sci-fi novelsShutterstock/PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek I am writing this without (so far) having read any of the books I mention, but I believe that 2025 is shaping up to be a good year...
Google’s Willow quantum chipGoogle Many researchers believe that the only way to build unambiguously useful quantum computers is to enable them to correct their own errors. A breakthrough in December from researchers at Google Quantum AI charted one path towards...
Imagine taking a hammer to your laptop. You smash it apart and shards of plastic, batteries and circuit board go flying. It would be an act of vandalism, a shocking waste of money and resources, so much so that it...
Genus’s gene-edited pigs with resistance to the virus that causes PRRSGenus PIC Thirty years after the first genetically modified tomato went on sale, the promise to revolutionise farming with genetic technologies remains largely unfulfilled. But 2025 could be a turning...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to make heavier elements by firing titanium particles at a metal targetMarilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab The race to discover new chemical elements will heat up in 2025, resulting in the heaviest one so far and a...
Bottlenose dolphins have teeth unlike those of many other mammalsJeff Mondragon/Alamy Stock Photo A study of dolphin jaw anatomy suggests their teeth might act as antennae for sound waves, potentially helping to explain how they hear and use echolocation underwater....
