This Tiny Marsupial Gives Up Sleep for Sex, Then Drops Dead

January 25, 2024 3 min read The mouselike male antechinus goes all out for its first and final mating season By Jack Tamisiea Dusky antechinus marsupial on moss at Mount Wellington in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. During the breeding season, time is not on a male antechinus’s side. These carnivorous marsupials, which resemble a mousy shrew,… Continue reading This Tiny Marsupial Gives Up Sleep for Sex, Then Drops Dead

Maze Proof Establishes a ‘Backbone’ for Statistical Mechanics

Imagine that a grid of hexagons, honeycomb-like, stretches before you. Some hexagons are empty; others are filled by a 6-foot tall column of solid concrete. The result is a maze of sorts. For over half a century, mathematicians have posed questions about such randomly generated mazes. How big is the largest web of cleared paths?… Continue reading Maze Proof Establishes a ‘Backbone’ for Statistical Mechanics

Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by 2025

CLIMATEWIRE | Global electricity demand will step up its rate of growth over the next three years — but the additional power use will be covered by low-emissions sources, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency. The IEA’s Electricity 2024 report forecasts that renewable energy is set to overtake the world’s use of coal… Continue reading Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by 2025

Lions Are Changing Their Hunting Strategy because of Ant Invasion

January 25, 2024 4 min read Big-headed ants are invading new territories in Kenya—and the consequences are rippling through the whole ecosystem, scientists have found By Meghan Bartels Young female (left) and male lions stalk prey within a “pristine” (uninvaded) savanna. The whistling-thorn trees in the foreground provide cover used by lions to stalk and… Continue reading Lions Are Changing Their Hunting Strategy because of Ant Invasion

64,000 Pregnancies Caused by Rape Have Occurred in States with a Total Abortion Ban, New Study Estimates

January 25, 2024 4 min read Researchers calculated the number of pregnancies resulting from rape in states where abortion was banned throughout pregnancy after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision By Tanya Lewis Abortion rights protesters rally outside of the Texas State Capital in 2022. A new study estimates the number of rape-related pregnancies in states with abortion… Continue reading 64,000 Pregnancies Caused by Rape Have Occurred in States with a Total Abortion Ban, New Study Estimates

Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time

The team built their hash table in two parts. They had a primary data structure, in which the items are stored without any wasted bits at all, and a secondary data structure, which helps a query request find the item it’s looking for. While the group did not invent the notion of a secondary data… Continue reading Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time

NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Ends Mission on the Red Planet after 3 Years

January 25, 2024 4 min read NASA’s enterprising Mars helicopter and its remarkable 72 flights offered a new vision of planetary exploration By Meghan Bartels NASA’s Perseverance rover checks out Ingenuity on August 2, 2023. After nearly three years soaring through the red skies of Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is permanently grounded. The agency launched… Continue reading NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Ends Mission on the Red Planet after 3 Years

To See Black Holes in Detail, She Uses ‘Echoes’ Like a Bat

And on the flip side, which black holes stand out to you as particularly extreme or particularly weird? I like to study the normal guys, and then I like to crank things up and see where things break. What’s also really fun are the oddball systems that just keep you up at night wondering: How… Continue reading To See Black Holes in Detail, She Uses ‘Echoes’ Like a Bat

How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills?

Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark, or BIG-bench, 450 researchers compiled a list of 204 tasks designed to test the capabilities of large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT. On most tasks, performance improved predictably and smoothly as the models scaled up — the larger the model,… Continue reading How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills?