Amur tigers are evolved for winter weather Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock The temperature has dropped, the nights have drawn in. The winter holidays have started, families are gathered – so where can you go to fuel the imagination and get some fresh air? A zoo might not be your first thought –Continue Reading
Rattana/Shutterstock All human beings age. It is part of our biology and limits our lifespan to slightly over 120 years. Not all animals experience ageing during their lives. Some animals’ bodies do not gradually degenerate as they get older the way our bodies do. But for humans once they reachContinue Reading
Wandering albatrosses can cover huge distances in a single trip. MZPhoto.cz/Shutterstock Animals cover astonishing distances when they are looking for food. While caribou, reindeer and wolves clock up impressive mileage on land, seabirds are unrivalled in their travelling distances. Arctic terns travel from the Arctic to Antarctica and back asContinue Reading
The asteroid 4 vesta, left, and Tatooine, as seen in Star Wars, on the right. Nasa and wikipedia Locals watched in awe as a fireball exploded and hundreds of meteorite fragments rained down on the city of Tatahouine, Tunisia, on June 27, 1931. Fittingly, the city later became a majorContinue Reading
Surprised that cats like to play fetch too? Tzido Sun/Shuttestock Cats have a reputation for being aloof (some may even say lazy) – but our new research has found they interact with their owners in surprising ways. What we discovered also shows how important this kind of interaction can beContinue Reading
one photo/Shutterstock It’s another tragic record. A new report has confirmed yet another rise in drug related deaths in England and Wales. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that 4,907 “drug poisoning” deaths were recorded in 2022 (84.4 deaths per 1,000,000 of the population), the highest on record. WhileContinue Reading
Sdecoret / Shutterstock A supercomputer scheduled to go online in April 2024 will rival the estimated rate of operations in the human brain, according to researchers in Australia. The machine, called DeepSouth, is capable of performing 228 trillion operations per second. It’s the world’s first supercomputer capable of simulating networksContinue Reading
wikipedia/Foley, CC BY-SA It’s one of the great paradoxes of evolution. Humans have demonstrated that having large brains are key to our evolutionary success, and yet such brains are extremely rare in other animals. Most get by on tiny brains, and don’t seem to miss the extra brain cells (neurons).Continue Reading
MeSSrro/Shutterstock Google Deepmind has recently announced Gemini, its new AI model to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While both models are examples of “generative AI”, which learn to find patterns of input training information to generate new data (pictures, words or other media), ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) whichContinue Reading
Metamorworks / Shutterstock Tesla has recalled 2 million US vehicles over concerns about its autopilot function. Autopilot is meant to help with manoeuvres such as steering and acceleration, but still needs input from the driver. It comes just a few days after a whistle-blowing former Tesla employee cast doubt onContinue Reading
