05 Sci-Tech

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Excerpt from techxplore.com

Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have combined ancient paper-folding and modern materials science to create a soft robot that bends and twists through mazes with ease.

Soft robots can be challenging to guide because steering equipment often increases the robot’s rigidity and cuts its flexibility. The new design overcomes those problems by building the steering system directly into the robot’s body, said Tuo Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton.

In an article, titled “Modular Multi-degree-of-freedom Soft Origami Robots with Reprogrammable Electrothermal Actuation” published May 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe how they created the robot out of modular, cylindrical segments. The segments, which can operate independently or join to form a longer unit, all contribute to the robot’s ability to move and steer. The new system allows the flexible robot to crawl forward and reverse, pick up cargo and assemble into longer formations.

“The concept of modular soft robots can provide insight into future soft robots that can grow, repair, and develop new functions,” the authors write in their article.

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Excerpt from www.indiatvnews.com

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Excerpt from www.popsci.com

Hamish Spencer, zoologist and distinguished professor at the University of Otago, was vacationing in Colombia when ornithologist John Murillo pointed out an interesting bird perched on a feeding station. The bird in question was a green honeycreeper, but it didn’t look quite like any honeycreeper they’d seen before. The right half of the bird was blue, resembling males of the species, and the left half was green—the hue typically seen in females.

This special honeycreeper is one of many animals that display bilateral gynandromorphism, a trait where animals present both male and female characteristics even though their species usually have distinct sexes.

Other birds have displayed bilateral gynandromorphism. In 2019, a cardinal with male and female plumage was spotted in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 2020, researchers in Pennsylvania found a gynandromorphic rose-breasted grosbeak that displayed male plumage on the right and female plumage on the left.

These birds, and other binary-breaking animals like clownfish and leaping lesbian lizards, are proof that nature is less into simple labels than you think. For more on the way the natural world consistently shatters our idea of how things like sex should work, check out these gene-stealing salamanders, this super-sexy slime mold, and Rachel’s book about the weird and wonderful evolution of sex.

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Excerpt from www.army-technology.com

China stands accused of hacking the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a major cyberattack on armed forces’ SSCL payroll data system.

The data breach compromised the names and bank details of current military personnel and veterans, Sky News reported.

When addressing the House of Commons today (7 May), UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said a “malign actor” was responsible for the attack, but that the government “cannot rule out state involvement”. He added that there was “no evidence that any data has been removed”.

Shapps has announced a “multi-point plan to support and protect personnel”, an MoD spokesperson told Army Technology.

The MoD has been working urgently to grasp the scale of the cyberattack over the last three days since discovering the data breach.

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Excerpt from www.independent.co.uk

A new vaccine could be effective against coronaviruses which have yet to emerge, with hopes it could be used to battle future pandemics, research suggests.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and Caltech in the US are developing a novel approach called “proactive vaccinology”, which aims to train the body’s immune system to recognise several different coronaviruses.

The vaccine used antigens – a substance that triggers an immune response in the body – found in eight different coronaviruses, including those circulating in bats. This trains the immune system to go after the parts of the antigens that are shared across the viruses and other similar ones, including those not included in the vaccine.

The vaccine, for instance, does not include the Sars-CoV-1 virus, which led to the 2003 SARs outbreak, but can produce an immune response to it.

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Excerpt from www.technologyreview.com

But bovines may not be far behind. There’s a large assisted-reproduction industry in cattle, with more than a million IVF attempts a year, half of them in North America. Many other beef and dairy cattle are artificially inseminated with semen from top-rated bulls. “Cattle is harder,” says Jiang. “But we have all the technology.”

ANTONIO REGALADO

The thing that came out of cow #307 turned out to be damaged, just a fragment. But later that day, in Jiang’s main laboratory, students were speed-walking across the linoleum holding something in a petri dish. They’d retrieved intact embryonic structures from some of the other cows. These looked long and stringy, like worms, or the skin shed by a miniature snake.

That’s precisely what a two-week-old cattle embryo should look like. But the outer appearance is deceiving, Jiang says. After staining chemicals are added, the specimens are put under a microscope. Then the disorder inside them is apparent. These “elongated structures,” as Jiang calls them, have the right parts—cells of the embryonic disc and placenta—but nothing is in quite the right place.

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Excerpt from www.mining.com

Additionally, the researchers emphasized the safety advantages of their aqueous battery over non-aqueous lithium batteries, notorious for their high flammability.

As reported by the South China Morning Post, the water-based battery “shows promising potential for the development of next-generation high-energy-density and safe rechargeable aqueous batteries,” as quoted by the researchers.

One of the authors, Li Xianfeng, a professor at the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, stated that their findings “may expand aqueous battery applications in the power battery field.”

Currently, most electric vehicles rely on lithium-ion batteries to operate.

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Excerpt from www.forbes.com

The United States military has invested tens of billions of dollars over a half-century in the research and development of directed energy weapons. Now, it’s actually using them in battle.

The Army has used lasers to take down hostile drones in the Middle East, Doug Bush, the Army’s head of acquisitions, recently told Forbes. It’s the first time the Defense Department has acknowledged that such weapons have been used in combat.

“They’ve worked in some cases,” Bush said. “In the right conditions they’re highly effective against certain threats.”

He declined to detail the weapons used, but one appears to be a system called P-HEL. It’s based on the defense contractor BlueHalo’s Locust laser, a boxy pallet-mounted device for fixed-site defense that’s commanded with an Xbox gaming controller. The weapon is designed to discharge a relatively low-powered 20-kilowatt laser beam that melts a critical point on a drone in seconds, knocking it from the sky.

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Excerpt from www.thecollegefix.com

Modern equivalent of ‘scrawling cruel rumors on the bathroom wall,’ president says

The University of North Carolina System plans to ban anonymous social media apps across its 16 campuses, arguing the technology companies have a “reckless disregard” for students’ wellbeing.

Other universities are considering similar bans, prompting concerns from free speech advocates.

UNC System President Peter Hans announced the plan in a two page statement to the UNC Board of Governors earlier this semester. Hans said social media apps are the modern equivalent of “scrawling cruel rumors on the bathroom wall,” and the most destructive ones will be blocked by the UNC System infrastructure.

His statement did not include a timeline for the social media block. The College Fix reached out to UNC three times via email and phone call for comment in the past two weeks, but the university did not respond.

“We’re targeting a handful of smaller, hyper-local platforms that have shown reckless disregard for the wellbeing of young people and an outright indifference to bullying and bad behavior,” Hans said in his statement.

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Excerpt from www.sci.news

A team of physicists and chemists has discovered a previously unknown way in which light interacts with matter, a finding that could lead to improved solar power systems, light-emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers and other technological advancements.

Kharintsev et al. found that photons can obtain substantial momentum, similar to that of electrons in solid materials, when confined to nanometer-scale spaces in silicon. Image credit: Kharintsev et al.

“Silicon is Earth’s second-most abundant element, and it forms the backbone of modern electronics,” said Dr. Dmitry Fishman, a chemist at the University of California, Irvine.

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Excerpt from www.benzinga.com

Steve Cotton, President & CEO of Aqua Metals AQMS, was recently a guest on Benzinga’s All-Access.

Aqua Metals is reinventing metals recycling with its patented hydrometallurgical AquaRefining™ technology. Unlike smelting, AquaRefining is a room-temperature, water-based process that emits less pollution. The modular Aqualyzers™ cleanly generate ultra-pure metal one atom at a time – closing the sustainability loop for the growing energy storage economy.

Learn more here:

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Excerpt from www.techspot.com

WTF?! As awful as ransomware attacks are, perpetrators have found a way of making them even worse: psychologically attacking victims to make them hand over their money. One of these methods involves calling company executives from phone numbers belonging to their children.

Speaking at a Google Security Threat Intelligence Panel at this year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco (via The Reg), Charles Carmakal, CTO of Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said, “We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM swap the phones of children of executives, and start making phone calls to executives, from the phone numbers of their children.”

Carmakal noted the psychological dilemma of seeing an incoming phone call from your child only to answer and hear a stranger’s voice. “Sometimes, it’s caller ID spoofing. Other times, we see demonstrated SIM swapping family members,” he said.

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Excerpt from scitechdaily.com

 

Recent archaeological research in Arabia has unveiled significant insights into the historical and cultural evolution of the region through the study of caves and lava tubes, highlighting ancient lifestyles and the global significance of Arabia’s archaeological heritage. Credit: Green Arabia Project

Recent advancements in interdisciplinary archaeological research in Arabia have revealed new insights on the development and historical progression of regional human populations. This research has also shed light on the shifting patterns of cultural change, migration, and adaptation to environmental variations.

Despite the challenges posed by the limited preservation of archaeological assemblages and organic remains in arid environments, these discoveries are reshaping our understanding of the region’s rich cultural heritage.

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Excerpt from www.france24.com

TikTok challenges potential US ban in court  FRANCE 24 English

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Excerpt from amp.scmp.com

Microsoft is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI, the Information reported on Monday.

The new model, internally referred to as MAI-1, is being overseen by recently hired Mustafa Suleyman, the Google DeepMind co-founder and former CEO of AI start-up Inflection, the report said, citing two Microsoft employees with knowledge of the effort.

The exact purpose of the model has not been determined yet and will depend on how well it performs. Microsoft could preview the new model as soon as its Build developer conference later this month, the report said.

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Excerpt from www.sciencedaily.com

Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder and Princeton University have, for the first time, employed a tool often used in geology to detect the atomic fingerprints of cancer.

In a case of medicine meets earth science, the researchers discovered that cancer cells may be made from a different assortment of hydrogen atoms than healthy tissue. The findings could give doctors new strategies for studying how cancer grows and spreads — and may even, one day, lead to new ways to spot cancer early on in the body.

The team, led by CU Boulder geochemist Ashley Maloney, will publish its findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This study adds a whole new layer to medicine, giving us the chance to look at cancer at the atomic level,” said Maloney, a research associate in the Department of Geological Sciences.

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Excerpt from scitechdaily.com

 

Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich have found that a high single dose of creatine can temporarily enhance cognitive functions impaired by sleep deprivation, specifically improving processing capacity and short-term memory. The study cautions against excessive creatine intake due to potential health risks, although it suggests future potential for cognitive enhancement with lower doses.

Creatine, a widely used supplement among athletes to enhance physical performance, has been found to also temporarily boost cognitive abilities affected by sleep deprivation. This discovery was made in a scientific study conducted by researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich, with the results published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Excerpt from www.foxnews.com

EXCLUSIVE: Rumble, a popular video-sharing and cloud service platform, has revealed a number of censorship demands it’s received from the governments of countries that may surprise many.

The major tech company shared the details of those demands with Fox News Digital, as well as CEO Chris Pavlovski’s prepared remarks for his testimony on Capitol Hill this week, which will take place at a House hearing centered on rising censorship and free speech concerns in Brazil.

“Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are the cornerstones of a democratic society,” Pavlovski is expected to tell members of the House Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations on Tuesday.

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Excerpt from www.independent.co.ug

SPECIAL REPORT | BIRD AGENCY | As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become increasingly critical for modern armed forces, African countries are investing in the local production of military drones.

The latest African drone procurement data shows the continent is recording ‘significant progress’ in developing indigenous drones – potentially sparking an arms race – as countries vie to gain a technological edge over their neighbours.

The data by Military Africa, an online defence industry resource, tracks up to 35 different made-in-Africa drone models – either in operation or beyond the prototype stage.

“The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed across seven African countries by thirteen different companies, showcasing the continent’s growing expertise and innovation in this field,” said Military Africa in the 2024 procurement data report.

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Excerpt from www.livescience.com

 

The future of cellular data transfer could lie in “curving” light beams midair to deliver 6G wireless networks with blazing-fast speeds — bypassing the need for line of sight between transmitter and receivers.

In a new study published March 30 in the journal Nature’s Communications Engineering, researchers explained how they developed a transmitter that can dynamically adjust the waves needed to support future 6G signals.

The most advanced cellular communications standard is 5G. Expected to be thousands of times faster, 6G will begin rolling out in 2030, according to the trade body GSMA. Unlike 5G, which mostly operates in bands under 6 gigahertz (GHz) in the electromagnetic spectrum, 6G is expected to operate in sub-terahertz (THz) between 100 GHz and 300 GHz, and THz bands — just below infrared. The closer this radiation is to visible light, the more prone the signals are to be blocked by physical objects. A major challenge with high-frequency 5G and future 6G is that signals need a direct line of sight between a transmitter and receiver.

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Excerpt from www.washingtonpost.com

Many political ads running on Facebook in India during its current election season are backed by organizations that hide their identity, according to civil society groups and recent studies, threatening the integrity of a process intended to enforce transparency in a system full of emotional appeals.

The world’s largest election and one of its most expensive, India’s voting season began last month and runs through June 1. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users in the country, which is the social network’s largest market, and is reaping a significant portion of an estimated $16 billion in campaign spending.

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Excerpt from apnews.com

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump’s former campaign manager looked squarely into the camera and promised his viewers they were about to witness a bold new era in politics.

“You’re going to see some of the most amazing new technology in artificial intelligence that’s going to replace polling in the future across the country,” said Brad Parscale in a dimly lit promotional video accentuated by hypnotic beats.

Parscale, the digital campaign operative who helped engineer Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, vows that his new, AI-powered platform will dramatically overhaul not just polling, but campaigning. His AI-powered tools, he has boasted, will outperform big tech companies and usher in a wave of conservative victories worldwide.

It’s not the first time Parscale has proclaimed that new technologies will boost right-wing campaigns. He was the digital guru who teamed up with scandal-plagued Cambridge Analytica and helped propel Trump to the White House eight years ago. In 2020, he had a public blowup then a private falling out with his old boss after the Capitol riot. Now he’s back, playing an under-the-radar role to help Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, in his race against Democratic President Joe Biden.

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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

NEW DELHI: After numerous setbacks and delays, Boeing is finally ready to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of Nasa. This marks the inaugural crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, with two Nasa pilots on board to evaluate the spacecraft during the test mission and a week-long stay at the space station.
Following the retirement of the space shuttles, Nasa turned to American companies to provide transportation for astronauts.While SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has completed nine successful crew missions for Nasa since 2020, Boeing has only managed two uncrewed test flights.
“There’s no doubt about that, but we’re here now,” acknowledged Mark Nappi, Boeing’s program manager, expressing his wish that Starliner was further along in its development.
The long-awaited crewed demonstration mission is scheduled for launch on Monday night. If the test flight goes smoothly, Nasa plans to alternate between Boeing and SpaceX for future astronaut transportation to and from the space station.

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Excerpt from www.irishnews.com

Sperm whales can modulate their clicks in a way that is similar to how humans speak, according to scientists.

These mammals are known to be sociable and are often spotted in groups – known as pods – of 15 to 20.

They communicate with each other by producing a series of rhythmic clicks, known as codas.

The researchers said that while communication plays a vital role in complex social behaviours in humans, not much is known about the vocalisations of sperm whales.