Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.
The Vesuvius Prize reward has encouraged work on deciphering scans of ancient charred scrolls from Herculaneum. "First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Marchant, Jo. Nature 2024. ... Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts,...
Source: nature.com
Yaws could soon be eradicated — 70 years behind schedule Jones, Sam. Nature 2024.
Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the neglected tropical disease could be gone by 2030, but new barriers — including antibiotic resistance and primate reservoirs — might stand in the way. Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the neglected tropical disease could be gone by 2030, but...
Source: nature.com
Elevated genetic risk for multiple sclerosis emerged in steppe pastoralist populations
"The last 10,000 years have seen some of the most extreme global changes in lifestyle, with the emergence of farming in some regions and pastoralism in others. While 5,000 years ago farmer ancestry predominated across Europe, a relatively diverged genetic ancestry arrived with the steppe migrations around...
Source: nature.com
Nikon, Sony and Canon fight AI fakes with new camera tech
Digital signatures to provide way to tell real photos from deepfakes
Source: nikkei.com
Discovery of a structural class of antibiotics with explainable deep learning.
One of the challenges with deep learning (neural networks) is that although they find patterns the reasoning disappears into an endless detail of numbers. In this paper the researchers built an 'explainable' AI to discover antibiotics instead of such a 'black box'. "The discovery of novel structural...
Source: nature.com
Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising
Homophily is the tendency for people to stick with similar people. Could this partly explain some of the gender bias in citations? "Women still tend to build more on women’s work, and men still tend to build on men’s work more." "Gender bias in paper citations is less common among younger scientists,...
Source: nature.com
AI can tell which chateau Bordeaux wines come from with 100% accuracy
A machine-learning algorithm was able to tell which estate 80 Bordeaux red wines came from with 100 per cent accuracy by assessing their chemical signatures
Source: newscientist.com
Recent waning snowpack in the Alps is unprecedented in the last six centuries - Nature Climate Change Carrer, Marco. Dibona,
Snow cover in high-latitude and high-altitude regions has strong effects on the Earth’s climate, environmental processes and socio-economic activities. Over the last 50 years, the Alps experienced a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration, which already affects a region where economy and...
Source: nature.com
Gender differences in individual variation in academic grades fail to fit expected patterns for STEM - Nature Communications
Fewer women than men pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), despite girls outperforming boys at school in the relevant subjects. According to the ‘variability hypothesis’, this over-representation of males is driven by gender differences in variance; greater male...
Source: nature.com
Mind-controlled wheelchairs let people dodge obstacles with ease Nature 2022.
A brain—machine interface allows people with paralysis in all four limbs to navigate a real-world environment. A brain—machine interface allows people with paralysis in all four limbs to navigate a real-world environment.
Source: nature.com
The Lyonesse Project: a study of the coastal and marine environment of the Isles of Scilly (OASIS ID cornwall2-58903)
This project was commissioned by English Heritage and carried out between 2009 and 2013 by Historic Environment Projects, Cornwall Council with a team of specialists from Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Exeter and Plymouth Universities, English Heritage's Scientific Dating Team, volunteers and local experts and...
Source: archaeologydataservice.ac.uk
Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million
We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12–16%...
Source: nature.com
Beyond Omicron: what’s next for COVID’s viral evolution Callaway, Ewen. Nature 2021 600:7888.
The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months. The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months.
Source: nature.com
Omicron-variant border bans ignore the evidence, say scientists Mallapaty, Smriti. Nature 2021.
Researchers say travel restrictions in response to the newly detected coronavirus variant come too late and could even slow studies of Omicron. Researchers say travel restrictions in response to the newly detected coronavirus variant come too late and could even slow studies of Omicron.
Source: nature.com
'Laws of Nature Turned up to 11': Astronomers Spot Two Neutron Stars Being Swallowed by Black Holes
In two separate observations, just ten days apart, astronomers discover a neutron star circling a black hole before being gobbled up.
Source: singularityhub.com
Tailored messaging increases understanding of climate change in Republicans
A team of researchers at Yale University's Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has found that the use of tailored advertising can increase awareness among Republicans of the dangers posed by climate change. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group describes field...
Source: phys.org
Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?
"The importance of airborne transmission in the pandemic was clear long before the World Health Organization finally began to acknowledge it." "If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small...
Source: nytimes.com
World's wealthiest (and 'business as usual') 'at heart of climate problem'
"These [polluter elite] are people who fly most, drive the biggest cars most and live in the biggest homes which they can easily afford to heat, so they tend not to worry if they’re well insulated or not. … They’re also the sort of people who could really afford good insulation and solar panels...
Source: bbc.com
Detection of a particle shower at the Glashow resonance with IceCube Nature.
The Glashow resonance describes the resonant formation of a W− boson during the interaction of a high-energy electron antineutrino with an electron1, peaking at an antineutrino energy of 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) in the rest frame of the electron. Whereas this energy scale is out of reach for currently...
Source: nature.com
Heisenberg on Helgoland - the value of spending time in natural surroundings
"It was finally time to use his strange calculus to calculate the energy of a real physical system. As his excitement mounted he kept on making mistakes and correcting them, but finally he had it. When he looked at it he was struck with joy and astonishment. Out of the dance of calculations emerged an...
Source: fieldofscience.com
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