Get ready for fracking, Reform UK tells energy firms

Joshua Nevett Political reporter PA Media Trapped in underground rocks, a potential energy resource has eluded generations of British politicians. It’s called shale gas and the method of getting it out of the ground, known as fracking, has proved politically difficult. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, has been banned many times by different prime ministers…

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Scientists unlock nature’s secret to superfast mini robots

A collaborative team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Ajou University in South Koreahas revealed that the unique fan-like propellers of Rhagovelia water striders — which allow them to glide across fast-moving streams — open and close passively, like a paintbrush, ten times faster than the blink…

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The Hidden Ingredients Behind AI’s Creativity

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. We were once promised self-driving cars and robot maids. Instead, we’ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence systems that can beat us in chess, analyze huge reams of text, and compose sonnets. This has been one of the great surprises of the modern era: physical…

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Why tiny bee brains could hold the key to smarter AI

A new discovery of how bees use their flight movements to facilitate remarkably accurate learning and recognition of complex visual patterns could mark a major change in how next-generation AI is developed, according to a University of Sheffield study. iversity of Sheffield built a digital model of a bee’s brain that explains how these movements…

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Jupiter’s core isn’t what we thought

The mystery at Jupiter’s heart has taken a fresh twist – as new research suggests a giant impact may not have been responsible for the formation of its core. It had been thought that a colossal collision with an early planet containing half of Jupiter’s core material could have mixed up the central region of…

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Stopping time in cells exposes life’s fastest secrets

Optical microscopy is a key technique for understanding dynamic biological processes in cells, but observing these high-speed cellular dynamics accurately, at high spatial resolution, has long been a formidable task. Now, in an article published in Light: Science & Applications, researchers from The University of Osaka, together with collaborating institutions, have unveiled a cryo-optical microscopy…

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