The chirp of the cicada, the sound of many summers, has received an electronic upgrade that turns the insects into cyborg loudspeakers playing anything from Pachelbel’s Canon to the theme from Top Gun. The researchers behind the work say it could be used to spread warning messages during an emergency. Naoto Nishida and his colleagues…
AI models go head-to-head in Chatbot Arena Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images An industry-standard league table for ranking artificial intelligence models is being deliberately distorted by technology giants, researchers have claimed, leading to a misleading picture of which AIs are the best. Sara Hooker at Cohere Labs, a US non-profit, and her colleagues claim to have found…
Greenland sharks’ eyes don’t seem to deteriorate with age WaterFrame/Alamy Greenland sharks, the longest-lived vertebrates in the world, show no signs of physical deterioration in their retinas even after living for hundreds of years. The finding is especially surprising as some scientists suspected the animals were functionally blind since they live in such deep, dark…
Dark chocolate is a particularly rich source of the chemical theobromine Studio-N/Shutterstock Chocolate may contain a chemical with anti-ageing properties – but don’t start stuffing your face just yet. The chemical is found mainly in dark chocolate and it remains to be seen whether eating chocolate is good for you overall. “There’s lots of things…
Bora Chung’s Red Sword is set on a disputed planet Liu zishan/Shutterstock While there are no big names publishing new science fiction novels this May, there are some real gems nonetheless – including a big tip from me, Grace Chan’s near-future Every Version of You. I want to press it into the hands of everyone…
Josie Ford Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Blossom? Really? The past few years have seen the emergence of a great many AI companies. This is extremely exciting/alarming (delete according to whether you…
Simone Rotella Can fossil fuel companies finally be held responsible for the damage their business models cause? In Germany, a landmark climate case is set to be decided later this month. It started 10 years ago, when Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya began suing German energy giant RWE, saying that the firm’s contribution to global…
Ecuador’s Rio Los Cedros is a source of insight for Robert Macfarlane Murray Cooper/Minden Pictures/Alamy Is a River Alive?Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books (UK) W. W. Norton (US, 20 May)) Early on in this often beautiful, wild and wildly provocative book, Robert Macfarlane recounts telling his son the title of his project. The boy exclaims that…
Making sure this bird is a swallow and not a swift is tough because they look so similar Klein & Hubert/naturepl.com The Tree of LifeMax Telford (John Murray (UK) W. W. Norton (US, 11 November)) Most of us can imagine a tree of life; some can even sketch one out. Branches coming off branches coming…
Adobe Stock For over a decade, floating cranes have been lowering a strange cargo some 3000 metres under the Mediterranean Sea. The objects look otherworldly: large, shiny spheres crammed with electronics. They are, in fact, detectors for a machine called KM3NeT, designed to search for one of the most mysterious fundamental particles. The machine is…