Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology’s most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion years ago. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, the “workhorses” of life essential to nearly every living process. But proteins cannot replicate or…
Highlights: Check Point Research (CPR) uncovered an ongoing in-the-wild campaign attributed to the Silver Fox APT which involves the abuse of a previously unknown vulnerable driver, amsdk.sys (WatchDog Antimalware, version 1.0.600). This driver, built on the Zemana Anti-Malware SDK, was Microsoft-signed, not listed in the Microsoft Vulnerable Driver Blocklist, and not detected by community projects like LOLDrivers. The attackers leveraged this unknown…
Esme StallardClimate and science reporter, BBC News Getty Images Beddington incinerator has breached its environmental permits on 916 occasions Beddington incinerator, which serves four south London councils, faces enforcement from the Environment Agency after exceeding air pollution limits on 916 occasions. The offences, which occurred between 2022 and 2024 at the energy-from-waste plant, were revealed…
Researchers found dietary changes may help improve cognitive health and stave off dementia. A new study led by investigators from Mass General Brigham, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard suggests that a Mediterranean-style diet may help reduce dementia risk. The study, published in Nature Medicine, found…
VOLUME 29 August 28, 2025 Summary This volume highlights new research showing that certain prompting techniques can help reduce the risk of AI chatbots amplifying false medical information when users include fabricated terms in their queries. It also examines false claims linking vaccines to sudden infant death syndrome and the promotion of the industrial solvent…
Elizabeth DawsonBBC News and Erwan RivaultData Designer, BBC Verify Copernicus Unprecedented wildfires have scarred northern Spain in recent weeks A record one million hectares – equivalent to about half the land area of Wales – have burned across the European Union so far this year, making it the worst wildfire season since records began in…
Meghan OwenWork and money correspondent, BBC London and Lauren StanleyBBC London BBC Keisha and her daughter live in a flat that they say can reach 43C in summer As the UK experiences hotter temperatures families across the country are increasingly feeling the impact, with their homes no longer a sanctuary but an unbearable space that…
Overcoming LLM limitations LLMs excel at understanding nuanced context, performing instinctive reasoning, and generating human-like interactions, making them ideal for agentic tools to then interpret intricate data and communicate effectively. Yet in a domain like health care where compliance, accuracy, and adherence to regulatory standards are non-negotiable—and where a wealth of structured resources like taxonomies,…
Ecologists have observed a species of nocturnal spider attracting prey to its web using the bioluminescent beacons of already trapped fireflies. This rare example of a predator exploiting its prey’s mating signal for its own gain is documented in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology. Researchers at Tunghai University, Taiwan have observed sheet…
Whale sharks, the largest living fish species, are classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Over the past 75 years, populations have declined by more than 50% worldwide, and by up to 63% in the Indo-Pacific region. Because whale sharks take up to 30 years to become sexually mature, populations can…
