Addition and subtraction must be hard for fish, especially because they don’t have fingers to count on. But they can do it — albeit with small numbers — a new study reveals. By training the animals to use blue and yellow colors as codes for the commands “add one” and Read more…
On a winter night in early 2016, Jeremy Kitson gathered in his buddy’s large shed with some neighbors to plan their fight against a proposed wind farm in rural Van Wert County, Ohio. The project would be about a mile from his home. From the beginning, Kitson — who teaches Read more…
In the past five years, reports of staggering insect declines have stoked anxiety and debate concerning the fate of the “little things that run the world,” as the late biologist E. O. Wilson once called them. As for the how and why of these declines, the prime culprits are habitat Read more…
A recent paper proposes a new way to put together a message for alien intelligent beings. It comes up with an elaborate mechanism to convey information in notably constrained bitmaps, but one can’t help but wonder whether it is too elaborate. For example, for 1+1 = 2, the article proposes Read more…
Canada is joining the ranks of countries and states planning to ban sales of combustion engine cars. Canada has outlined an Emissions Reduction Plan that will require all new passenger car sales to be zero-emissions models by 2035. The government will gradually ramp up pressure on automakers, requiring “at least” Read more…
The Airbus A380 has completed a trial flight powered on cooking oil. CNN reports: The test airplane completed a three-hour flight from Blagnac Airport in Toulouse — Airbus’ French headquarters — on 25 March. It was powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF — predominantly made of used cooking oil Read more…
The Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed the most distant single star it’s ever observed, glimmering 28 billion light-years away. And the star could be between 50 to 500 times more massive than our sun, and millions of times brighter. It’s the farthest detection of a star yet, from 900 million Read more…