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Stunning stem cells and Starlink trails — November’s best science images
Tasty experiment. Taste tests are conducted under orange lighting at the Wine Science Institute in Villenave-d’Ornon near Bordeaux in southwestern France. The lighting disguises each wine’s colour, so that tasters can be more objective. Here, an employee samples wine from the Bordeaux-producing Château La Tour Carnet estate, which has launched a study into the effects…
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A look at the new discoveries that make Neanderthals more knowable now than ever
Neanderthals are Homo sapiens’s closest-known relative, and today we know we rubbed shoulders with them for thousands of years, up until the very end of their long reign some 40,000 years ago. Most researchers see no reason to believe our two species didn’t get along with each other back then, yet we haven’t been very…
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Scams for everyone
Now that you have read in the Chieftain about the new weight reducing drugs and their high price, you might have guessed that someone, somewhere would come up with a way to provide you with a cheaper way to bring you this desirable medication. I have already seen one ad for “GLP-1 Weight management. Only…
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Vague peace agreements and climate scientists’ calls to action: The 6 biggest stories from 3 December at COP28
Most world leaders have now left COP28, meaning attention is turning to the processes happening within the negotiation rooms for the final texts. Only a select handful of people are permitted to observe these official proceedings, so most of the tens of thousands of people at the Expo Centre today are here to explore the…
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The Most Successful Branding Campaign Of All Time? AI
The most successful branding campaign of all time is “artificial intelligence” or AI. Invented in 1955, the brand has experienced ups and downs, over-the-top hype and near-extinction. Recently, it has re-emerged as the widely popular brand name for a successful approach to endowing computers with seemingly human-like intelligence, an approach that has nothing to do…
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COP28 Report: 10 Key Climate Insights for Policymakers
Combining pivotal climate research over the last 18 months, the scientists are using the report to help inform policy implementation at COP28 and beyond. The 10 New Insights in Climate Science series have been launched at COPs since 2017, in partnership with the UNFCCC. To mark COP28, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, has worked with…
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Physicists May Have Found a Hard Limit on The Performance of Large Quantum Computers
For circuit-based quantum computations, the achievable circuit complexity is limited by the quality of timekeeping. That’s according to a new analysis published in the journal Physical Review Letters exploring “the effect of imperfect timekeeping on controlled quantum dynamics.” An announcement from the Vienna University of Technology explains its significance. “The research team was able to…
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Geopolitical narcissism has no place in HE partnerships
GLOBAL We live at a time when people, nation states and educators face many problems. Consider the climate-nature emergency. Lost habitat and species extinction. Desertification, crises of food and water, ever larger populations on the move. Rising sea levels. The latest reports say that the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is now locked…
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Geopolitical narcissism has no place in HE partnerships
GLOBAL We live at a time when people, nation states and educators face many problems. Consider the climate-nature emergency. Lost habitat and species extinction. Desertification, crises of food and water, ever larger populations on the move. Rising sea levels. The latest reports say that the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is now locked…
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The downside to women academics’ ethical publishing choices
GLOBAL When Claudia Goldin received her Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, she was only the third woman to receive the award, after Esther Duflo (2019) and Elinor Ostrom (2009). It was the first time in the history of the 54-year-old prize that women held more Nobels in economics than the uncles of Larry Summers (Paul…