A group of scientific integrity experts is calling for urgent action to combat “paper mills” — companies that sell fraudulent research papers and fake peer reviews. In a Nature comment piece published January 27, the experts warn that at least 400,000 papers published between 2000 and 2022 show signs of Read more…
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight on Tuesday, the closest to catastrophe in the timepiece’s 78-year history. The Chicago-based group cited Russia’s nuclear threats during its Ukraine invasion, growing tensions in the Middle East, China’s military pressure near Taiwan, and the rapid Read more…
Garmin smartwatches are freezing in boot loops, users are reporting globally, with devices displaying a “blue triangle of death” when attempting GPS activities, affecting models across the Epix, Venu, Forerunner, Descent, and Fenix lines.
In the first 11 months of 2024, solar energy generation in the US grew by 30%, enabling wind and solar combined to surpass coal for the first time. However, as Ars Technica’s John Timmer reports, “U.S. energy demand saw an increase of nearly 3 percent, which is roughly double the Read more…
After observing 20 chimpanzees for over 600 hours, researchers in Japan found that chimps are more likely to urinate after witnessing others do so. “[T]he team meticulously recorded the number and timing of ‘urination events’ along with the relative distances between ‘the urinator and potential followers, the results revealed that Read more…
In late 2022 large-language-model AI arrived in public, and within months they began misbehaving. Most famously, Microsoft’s “Sydney” chatbot threatened to kill an Australian philosophy professor, unleash a deadly virus and steal nuclear codes. AI developers, including Microsoft and OpenAI, responded by saying that large language models, or LLMs, need Read more…