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View allResearchers at Kyushu University's OPERA lab have developed an organic glow-in-the-dark material that emits light for over an hour, far surpassing previous organic attempts limited to minutes. Published in Nature, the work could cut costs for large-area applications like glowing roadways, though oxygen and water sensitivity must be addressed before commercial use.
James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at JAXA, released an animation illustrating how light's speed appears fast on Earth but slows dramatically across cosmic distances. The visualization follows a light pulse from Earth to the Moon and then to Mars, where the wait stretches to about three minutes.
CBC News obtained hundreds of pages of Canadian military documents showing confusion after Pokémon Go players wandered onto bases following the game's July 2016 launch. Emails reveal officers unfamiliar with the game, with one suggesting hiring a 12-year-old for help, while another noted a possible museum visitor boost.
A new ODNI Global Risk Assessment warns that China is expanding military and commercial activity in space, including capabilities to disable or destroy satellites. Director Avril Haines told lawmakers China is focused on achieving space leadership, while China also prepares to build a new orbital station.
Foundation Robotics Lab's Phantom, a humanoid robot designed for military use, made its public debut as a DJ at San Francisco's Temple Nightclub during the GigaParty event. The robot, which uses he/him pronouns, spun tech house beats for a crowd at an event with tickets priced from $35 to $3,000.
An active-duty US Army soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, has been indicted on charges of using classified information to place over $33,000 in Polymarket bets tied to the US military operation in Venezuela. The case, unsealed in Manhattan federal court, highlights concerns about insider trading on prediction markets.
Researchers at UC San Diego have developed tiny 3D-printed 'micro-fish' robots that can swim through fluids, remove toxins, and potentially deliver drugs to hard-to-reach areas of the body. The technology, still in development, is backed by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
HP has launched the Jet Fusion 3200 and 4200, its first new 3D printers since entering the market in 2014. The company claims the machines print at half the cost and ten times the speed of rivals, with the 3200 priced at $130,000 and aimed at manufacturers.
A Nature commentary by Guillaume Chapron outlines four ways blockchain could improve environmental governance: securing land ownership, tracing supply chains, enabling reliable conservation payments, and reducing corruption. Examples from Ghana, Georgia, Honduras, and corporate adopters like Walmart and Toyota illustrate the technology's broader momentum.
Massachusetts Democratic lawmakers have introduced SD.1932, the 100 Percent Renewable Energy Act, which would raise the state's renewable portfolio standard to 100% by 2035 and phase out fossil fuels by 2050. The bill also aims to eliminate fossil fuel use in heating and transportation and includes a provision for clean energy workforce development.
The Florida Aquarium is importing a UK-developed technique to induce corals to spawn monthly instead of once a year, aiming to scale up restoration. At current rates, removing Staghorn coral from the endangered species list would take 550 years, and asexual cloning limits genetic diversity needed to survive bleaching and disease.
UK officials are expected to ask people to send fewer unnecessary emails at next year's COP26 climate summit, citing carbon savings. But the BBC notes that one fewer email per person daily would cut only about 0.0037 percent of the UK's annual greenhouse gas emissions, and an expert says the actual savings are likely far smaller.
A Harvard study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that Earth's crust rebounds and warps as ice melts, with deformations larger than previously thought. The effects can influence ecosystems for thousands of years and may create a feedback loop that displaces more ice, according to planetary scientist Sophie Coulson.
The EPA has updated its cost-benefit analysis to assign a zero value to human life, eliminating the 'value of a statistical life' metric previously set at $11.7 million. This change is expected to weaken regulations on ozone and fine particulate matter, potentially reversing gains made since the Clean Air Act, according to Fortune and economist Michael Greenstone.
NOAA data show the contiguous US averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit in July, hotter than July 1936 during the Dust Bowl, according to the source. Meteorologist Jeff Masters attributes the record to a strong El Niño layered on human-caused climate change, with drought and wildfires compounding the impact.
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing about 80,000 people instantly, with total deaths from the Japan blasts estimated at over 200,000. The United Nations calls nuclear weapons the most dangerous on Earth, and the source asks how far disarmament has come.
A small fire at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on May 9 shut down one of its three towers, leaving the Mojave Desert plant operating on a single unit because a second tower was already offline for maintenance. Fire officials attributed the blaze to misaligned mirrors, and the plant faces a July deadline to meet its power purchase agreement output.
The U.S. Marine Corps tested Boston Dynamics' Spot quadruped robot in infantry drills at Quantico, Virginia, over the weekend. The robot, brought by DARPA, drew positive feedback from handlers including Capt. James Pineiro, who said Marines are receptive and already suggesting uses for it.
A supercomputer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston uses machine learning on data from over 250,000 patients to predict medical problems including death. Project lead Dr. Steve Horng says the system can forecast a patient's probability of dying within 30 days with 96 percent confidence, while emphasizing it is meant to augment, not replace, clinicians.
Tesla's Autopilot 8.0 update will let radar initiate braking without camera confirmation and process six times as many radar objects, a change CEO Elon Musk says could have prevented the fatal 2016 Model S crash that killed Joshua Brown.
Google has acquired Eyefluence, an eye-tracking interface startup, according to an announcement on Eyefluence's website. The deal comes as Google prepares to launch its Daydream VR platform and Daydream View headset in November, potentially enabling VR control through eye movements.
Deep learning pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber predicted at WIRED2016 that by 2050 self-replicating robot factories will operate in the asteroid belt, with AI eventually colonizing the galaxy. He cited current deep learning capabilities in speech, image recognition, and medical diagnosis as evidence.
Murray Campbell, an IBM researcher who helped build Deep Blue, discussed the legacy of the 1997 chess match in which the machine defeated world No. 1 Garry Kasparov. Campbell traces the project back to Deep Thought, the first program to beat a grandmaster in a professional tournament, and explains why chess carried more weight than earlier computer wins in backgammon and checkers.
Robot ethics professors Alan Winfield and Marina Jirotka propose fitting robots with an 'ethical black box' to record decisions and sensory data, modeled on aviation flight recorders. The call comes amid broader concerns about AI oversight and industry efforts to establish ethical standards.
Emily Kennedy, a Carnegie Mellon graduate, developed Traffic Jam, an AI-powered tool that scans online sex advertisements to identify human trafficking victims. Since founding Marinus Analytics in 2014, her software has led to the rescue of hundreds of victims in the U.S. and Canada and is expanding internationally.
Daisuke Tahara, who owns eight dry cleaners in Tagawa, Japan, taught himself machine learning and built a computer vision system that lets customers create a service ticket by laying dirty clothes on a table to be scanned. His story is one of four profiles WIRED published Tuesday about self-taught AI tinkerers.
An Axios survey found that none of the 2020 presidential campaigns contacted had a plan to counter deepfakes, computer-generated media depicting real people saying or doing things that never occurred. The findings came after an altered video of Nancy Pelosi spread on Facebook and as governments treated the technology as a national security threat.
UK artificial intelligence expert Catriona Campbell argues in her new book that virtual children in the metaverse could offer a cheaper, environmentally friendly answer to overpopulation. She predicts such AI offspring will be indistinguishable from real children within 50 years and available for a small monthly fee.
Despite OpenAI's usage policies prohibiting sexually explicit content, users are crafting detailed prompts to bypass ChatGPT's guardrails. The loophole highlights broader challenges in moderating AI-generated content, as rival platforms like DeepAI and Poe also face similar issues.
Stability AI released Stable Video Diffusion, an image-to-video generator that has produced bizarre animated versions of memes like 'distracted boyfriend.' The launch follows executive departures and a former VP's public resignation over fair-use disagreements.
Property managers are deploying AI chatbots like EliseAI to handle tenant inquiries and complaints, according to The New York Times. The trend raises questions about accountability when chatbots give wrong information, as illustrated by a case where Air Canada was ordered to pay damages after its AI misstated a bereavement policy.
OpenAI has acquired Chat.com, a domain previously used for adult video chat, and now redirects visitors to ChatGPT. Former owner Dharmesh Shah, who bought it for $15.5 million in 2023, said he sold it for more, though the exact price is undisclosed.
Meta aims to populate Facebook with AI-generated characters that have profiles and post content, according to the Financial Times. A product executive said the company sees these AIs existing like accounts, while a former Meta creator-team lead warned of safety and trust risks.
Google has removed commitments not to use its AI for weapons or surveillance from its AI principles page, drawing criticism from former ethical AI lead Margaret Mitchell. The change follows a similar retraction by OpenAI and reflects growing industry pressure to pursue military and security applications.
President Donald Trump said Monday that DeepSeek's release should be a 'wake-up call' for US industries, calling its low cost a positive development. The Chinese startup's open-source R1 model, built for under $6 million, has rattled US tech stocks and raised questions about spending on AI infrastructure.
Security researchers at Wiz discovered that DeepSeek left a database completely unencrypted and publicly accessible, exposing chat histories, API secrets, and operational details. DeepSeek locked the database within an hour of being alerted, but Wiz said contacting the company was difficult and that the exposure could have allowed attackers to access internal data with minimal effort.
Nikkei Asia found 17 English-language papers on arXiv from 14 institutions in eight countries containing hidden prompts designed to trick AI review tools into giving positive assessments. Authors' responses ranged from remorse to defense, highlighting unresolved questions about AI's role in peer review.
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