Sixty-six million years ago, all dinosaurs (except for birds) were wiped from the face of the Earth. What’s indisputable about this pivotal moment in Earth’s history is that a 6.2 to 9.3-mile-wide (10 to 15-kilometer) asteroid struck what is now modern-day Mexico. Around the same time, however, volcanoes in what Read more…
Record wind-generated electricity across Northern Ireland and Scotland Tuesday night pushed Britain’s power prices below zero. Wind output peaked at a record high 22.4 gigawatts (GW), breaking the previous high set [last] Sunday evening, the national system operator said, as Bloomberg reported. The record output provided more than 68 percent Read more…
“Most people think of aging as occurring gradually, constantly, and linearly,” senior study author Michael Snyder, PhD, a professor of genetics and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, told Health. But “we’re not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes,” Read more…
A study by reinsurer Swiss Re found that Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have demonstrated significantly fewer property damage and bodily injury claims compared to human-driven cars, with reductions of up to 92% in some metrics. Swiss Re analyzed liability claims from collisions covering 25.3 million miles driven by Waymo’s autonomous cars. Read more…
An anonymous reader quotes an opinion piece from The Guardian, written by Prof Mark Pallen and Dr Aimee Parker (Quadram Institute, Norwich), Prof Nick Loman (University of Birmingham), Prof Alan Walker (University of Aberdeen): Contrary to what is implied in [this article], the weight of expert opinion in medical microbiology Read more…
Academic writing has become significantly less readable over the past 80 years, particularly in humanities and social sciences, according to an analysis of 347,000 PhD abstracts by The Economist. Using the Flesch reading-ease test, researchers found that readability scores in humanities and social sciences plunged from 37 in the 1940s Read more…