Pure Science

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Photons traveling straight through a cloud of gas appear to exit, on average, before they enter. As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt...

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The wireless rings read 100 common signs from two sign languages and “autocomplete” sentences. At the turn of the 20th century, William Hoy transformed Major League Baseball. The most prominent deaf player in history, he taught his team...

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Far from shore, the server farms would be powered by waves, cooled by seawater, and networked by satellite. As AI demand for computing power surges, companies are searching for new ways to fuel data centers. One startup is now proposing...

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Artificial Intelligence AI Is Starting to Build Better AIMatthew Hutson | IEEE Spectrum “In 1966, the English mathematician IJ Good wrote that ‘an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably...

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For years, tech companies have profiled users for targeted ads. AI is about to take it to the next level. Hundreds of millions of people consult artificial intelligence chatbots on a daily basis for everything from product recommendations...

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The heart’s constant motion makes it largely immune to cancer. The discovery could help protect other organs. The heart is a biological wonder. It beats roughly 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime. Unlike skin cells, which regularly...

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The synthetic bacteria push the limits of life and could open the door to designer proteins and new medicines. The bacteria grew, thrived, and divided for hundreds of generations. But they were unlike any other living creatures on Earth....

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AI has aced medical exams, but there’s a wide gap between tests and the real world. A new study suggests the divide is closing. Emergency doctors make high-stakes decisions in fast-paced, often chaotic situations. They have to figure out...

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Robotics I’ve Covered Robots for Years. This One Is DifferentWill Knight | Wired ($) “Eka’s robot demos suggest that the company’s approach should enable real robot dexterity with further training. If that’s true, it could revolutionize...

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Abilities taught to one robot don’t usually work on another. With a new approach, it’s one and done. As robots move into the real world, they’ll need to become more adaptable. But right now, it’s hard to transfer skills from one machine...

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Imagination may have more to do with the brain activity it silences than the activity it creates. Your brain is currently expending about a fifth of your body’s energy, and almost none of that is being used for what you’re doing right...

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AI long ago surpassed humans at games like chess and Go. Now it’s powering robots that can challenge top athletes. Peter Dürr could barely follow the table-tennis ball as it zoomed across the net, each strike’s trajectory designed to...

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Algorithmic advances are steadily lowering the bar for quantum attacks—even before large-scale hardware exists. Online data is generally pretty secure. Assuming everyone is careful with passwords and other protections, you can think of it...

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Future The People Do Not Yearn for AutomationNilay Patel | The Verge “Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be. And so the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at...

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A year after most robots failed to finish the Beijing race, nearly half the field autonomously ran a course of slopes, narrow passages, and 20 turns. Humanoid robots are Silicon Valley’s latest obsession, but real-world performance has...

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That’s a few minutes longer than it takes to fill up the average gas-powered car—but still fast enough it might not matter. For all their promise, electric cars have always had a big drawback: Charging takes much longer than filling up a...

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A new tool that tethers healthy mitochondria to ailing cells has shown promise in mice with inherited blindness. Our cells produce energy in biological power plants called mitochondria. These energy-makers have minds of their own. They...

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New artificial neurons fire so realistically they can activate living brain cells in mouse tissue. As AI demands ever more power, researchers are looking to the brain for more efficient ways to process information. A new approach uses...

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Robotics Physical Intelligence, a Hot Robotics Startup, Says Its New Robot Brain Can Figure Out Tasks It Was Never TaughtConnie Loizos | TechCrunch “Physical Intelligence, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based robotics startup that has...

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Fewer than 10 people worldwide have eradicated the virus with stem cells. But this case was special—no one knew his brother’s cells carried a protective mutation until transplant day. When the 63-year-old man received a bone marrow...

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New technologies rarely leave work untouched. They also rarely eliminate the need for human contribution altogether. Forecasts of the impact of artificial intelligence range from the apocalyptic to the utopian. An October 2025 report from...

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A woman battling the conditions went from “two handfuls of pills” and blood transfusions daily to medication-free. The 47-year-old woman was at the end of her rope. In 2014, she was diagnosed with a rare form of anemia. Her body’s B...

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The technology harnesses the brain’s own blood chemistry to assemble soft, light-controlled electrodes around neurons. A single shot transforms the mice’s brains into a biomanufacturing machine. Blood proteins churn the injected chemicals...

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Brain twins where regions are allowed to compete for resources behave more like the real thing. The potential to create personalized digital twins of your brain and body is a hot topic in neuroscience and medicine today. These computer...

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It’s a step change in cybersecurity. Exploits that would take experts weeks to develop can now be generated in hours. Concerns about AI’s ability to turbocharge cybersecurity threats have been building for years. Anthropic’s latest model...

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An AI system unearthed a trove of CRISPR-like proteins in minutes instead of weeks or months. CRISPR is a breakthrough technology with humble origins. Scientists first discovered the powerful gene editor in bacteria that were using it as...

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Today’s error-prone quantum computers are still far from practical. But a bold deadline could galvanize the field. As the race to harness quantum computing accelerates, governments are throwing their hats in the ring. The US Department of...

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Artificial Intelligence How AI Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8 Billion CompanyErin Griffith | The New York Times ($) “From his house in Los Angeles, Mr. Gallagher, 41, used AI to write the code for the software that powers...

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With billions invested and prototypes being tested outside the lab, the quantum era is starting to take shape. The unveiling by IBM of two new quantum supercomputers and Denmark’s plans to develop “the world’s most powerful commercial...

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With data center power demand expected to nearly triple by 2030, tech companies are bankrolling new plants and even their own “shadow grid.” Unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’re likely aware that AI has a major energy problem....

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AI companies may be reluctant to risk lower engagement with models that push back. We all need advice. Did I cross the line arguing with a loved one? Did I mess up my friendships by ghosting them? Did I not tip the delivery driver enough?...

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The genetically engineered cells can be rewired to tackle a range of bacteria in the battle against antibiotic resistance. A mixture of bacteria lounge in a dish. Like the bugs populating our guts, most are benign or beneficial. But a...

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Artificial Intelligence This New Benchmark Could Expose AI’s Biggest WeaknessMark Sullivan | Fast Company “The influential AI researcher François Chollet has long argued that the field measures intelligence incorrectly, that...

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The three-phase plan calls for up to 30 robotic missions, including a fleet of rocket-powered moon hoppers. The prospect of a sustained human presence beyond Earth orbit is rapidly shifting from science fiction to a near-term reality....

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Visual experiments suggest just a small fraction of the information our brains process enters awareness. What can you see right now? This might seem like a silly question, but what enters your consciousness is not the whole story when it...

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In a step toward biological computing, brain organoids rewired their networks as they learned to balance a digital pole on a cart. Try balancing a ruler vertically on the palm of your hand while walking. It’s not easy. Your eyes...

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Rebooting frozen brains is still science fiction, but advanced freezing techniques could preserve wiring and function. Floating in a warm, nutritious bath, the slices of mouse brain buzzed with electrical activity. Researchers gave them a...

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Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Is Throwing Everything Into Building a Fully Automated ResearcherWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($) “The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully...

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There’s plenty of hand-waving around AGI. DeepMind hopes to change that with a new, more rigorous approach. Few terms are as closely associated with AI hype as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. But Google DeepMind researchers have...

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The prevailing narrative suggests AI is ready to replace humans, but the evidence is more nuanced. In the past few months, a wave of tech corporations have announced significant staff cuts and attributed them to efficiency gains driven by...

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As they imagine typing, implants translate brain signals into keystrokes on a standard digital keyboard. It’s hard to picture a keyboard layout other than the one we know best. From laptops to smartphones, it’s an integral part of our...

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The simulation encompasses nearly all of a cell’s molecules over roughly two hours. Five years ago, scientists watched in wonder as synthetic bacteria grew and split into daughter cells. The bacteria’s extremely stripped-down genome still...

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Robotics How Pokémon Go Is Giving Delivery Robots an Inch-Perfect View of the WorldWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($) “Niantic Spatial is using that vast and unparalleled trove of crowdsourced data—images of urban landmarks...

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A single shot protected mice from the protein gunk implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease and cancer have something in common: They’re hard to treat. Despite decades of research, both still plague humanity, robbing people...

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Finding water, generating power, and sheltering astronauts from radiation are just a few of the challenges NASA must solve. A US Senate committee has directed NASA to begin work on a moon base “as soon as is practicable.” Under...

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The study focused on safety, but the results offer hope the approach could give kids a chance to walk. Michelle Johnson was 20 weeks into her pregnancy when she learned her unborn son had spina bifida. Because his spine hadn’t fully...

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Which side has the advantage will depend less on raw model capabilities and more on who adapts fastest. Cybersecurity is an endless game of cat and mouse as attackers and defenders refine their tools. Generative AI systems are now joining...

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Artificial Intelligence Watershed Moment for AI–Human Collaboration in MathBenjamin Skuse | IEEE Spectrum “The 8-dimensional sphere-packing proof formalization alone, announced on February 23, represents a watershed moment for...

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AI-powered digital assistants can do many complex tasks on their own. But who takes responsibility when they cause harm? Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer for a programming code library called Matplotlib, recently described a...

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Spexi’s crowdsourced drone fleet has mapped over 5 million acres in 200 cities around Canada and the US. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, popularly known as “Nadar,” took the first known aerial photographs using a camera attached to a hot-air...