Tag Archives: science

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. 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, …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s almost that magical time of year that the Humane Society of America likens to a “natural disaster.” Kitten season. “The level of emotions for months on end is so draining,” said Ann Dunn, director of …

Just seven years ago, Americans emptied their homes for a chance to witness a total solar eclipse, an astronomical event hailed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Back then, you might have heard this was the first to cut across the United States from coast to coast in a century — and …

Every night, I—like millions of others—put on a noise machine to help me sleep. Mine offers several types of noise: white, pink, green, and brown. I’ve noticed something strange, though. After about 30 minutes of the noise pumping into my head, I start to hear things. Sometimes it’s music, like …

Gouging a mine into the Earth is so 1924. In 2024, scientists are figuring out how to mine with plants, known as phytomining. Of the 350,000 known plant species, just 750 are “hyperaccumulators” that readily absorb sky-high amounts of metals and incorporate them into their tissues. Grow a bunch of …

It was around 5 pm on March 15, and the light was fading fast, when Constantin and Tatiana were attacked by the bear. The young couple, aged 29 and 31 and identified in local media reports only by their first names, were Belarusians living in Poland. But Constantin had been …

In a world first, surgeons in Boston have transplanted a genetically altered pig kidney into a 62-year-old man. The procedure is a step toward providing more readily available organs to patients who are in desperate need of a transplant. The four-hour surgery was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts …

On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man introduced himself as Noland Arbaugh and …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association sent out separate but similar pleas on Monday for unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated against the extremely contagious measles virus as vaccination rates have slipped, cases are rising globally and nationally, and the spring-break travel period is beginning. …

The phone or computer you’re reading this on may not be long for this world. Maybe you’ll drop it in water, or your dog will make a chew toy of it, or it’ll reach obsolescence. If you can’t repair it and have to discard it, the device will become e-waste, …