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janrinok writes:

Wild honeybees now officially listed as endangered in the EU

You might think honeybees are thriving—after all, the honey industry is growing and its bees are well looked after by beekeepers. But not all honeybees live in hives. Across Europe, colonies still live in the wild, nesting in tree cavities and other natural spaces, just as their ancestors did for millions of years.

Now, for the first time, these wild honeybee populations have been officially categorized as endangered within the European Union. That's according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List, the world's official database of species conservation statuses.

The western honeybee has a long history with humans. People have kept honeybee colonies for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who kept them in rudimentary hives to harvest honey. But it's modern beekeeping, with its mobile hives and commercial pollination, that has had the widest impact on the species.

Because of that, today the western honeybee exists in two forms: the managed colonies kept in hives, and the wild ones that live independently of people. Both belong to the same species, Apis mellifera, but their lives and their prospects are radically different.

Managed honeybees have faced widely reported crises since the 2000s, when beekeepers around the world started noticing alarming losses in their hives. Since then, scientists have been working with beekeepers to investigate the causes and reduce colony mortality.

Because of this, the species as a whole is generally perceived as being under threat. But the reality is more complex than that. While it is true that managed colonies continue to suffer high losses, they are actively cared for by beekeepers and studied by researchers. The same cannot be said for their wild counterparts, which, until recently were relatively unstudied, especially in Europe.

The gap in knowledge led several European researchers to start investigating honeybees living freely in the wild. Such colonies have now been documented throughout Ireland and the UK, in national parks in France, the forests of Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, up and down Italy, and even in cities such as Belgrade in Serbia. These are now under study to understand if they can form self-sustaining populations capable of living without human help.

To connect these independent research projects, a global initiative called Honey Bee Watch was formed in 2020. Its goal: to better understand how honeybees live in the wild. Under this coalition, I have been part of a team of 14 scientists and experts, who have worked with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to reassess the conservation status of wild A. mellifera populations.

This formed part of a monumental effort to update the European Red List of Bees, led by researchers at the University of Mons in Belgium, which examined the conservation status of almost 2,000 species—many for the first time.

Back in 2014, wild A. mellifera populations had been listed as "data deficient" in Europe because there wasn't enough information to answer a question that seemed simple enough: if a colony is found living in a tree, how can we tell whether it's truly wild or has escaped from a managed hive?

Our new assessment took a different approach. Honeybees are not truly domesticated, since beekeepers have never been able to completely prevent them from breeding with other colonies, whether wild or managed. This means genetic differences between managed and wild colonies are often blurred.

Instead of trying to draw a genetic line separating the two, we adapted the IUCN's definition of "wild" as it relates to honeybees. This meant we defined wild honeybee populations based on two criteria:

First, they live freely without management. And second, they can sustain their numbers independently without relying on the introduction of new colonies, such as those that escaped from managed hives.

Using ecology rather than genetics to define wild honeybees meant we could better evaluate their conservation status.

Europe has the lowest density of free-living colonies in the world, as managed hives far outnumber wild ones. And, thanks to a recent analysis provided by our fellow assessors, we know that their numbers are declining.

Combined with evidence of habitat loss, invasive parasites, diseases, and human-mediated hybridization, the picture that emerged was clear: wild honeybees are indeed in trouble.

That's why their Red List status has now been updated to "endangered within the European Union." However, for the wider pan-European region, they remain "data deficient" due to scarce data for areas such as the Balkans, the Baltics, Scandinavia and eastern Europe.

Protecting wild honeybees isn't just about saving an iconic species—it's about safeguarding our food security, biodiversity and ecosystems for the future. Populations surviving in the wild are those that naturally evolved the ability to cope with parasites, diseases and other harsh conditions that can devastate managed hives. They represent a vital genetic reservoir that could help make both wild and managed bees more resilient to future threats.

The new endangered assessment is a formal recognition that wild honeybees are native wildlife in need of conservation. We can no longer afford to leave them understudied and unprotected.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

97% of companies struggle to prove AI's ROI - but these 5 expert tips can help:

Evidence suggests that many business leaders struggle to prove that an investment in generative AI delivers measurable returns.

More than 97% of organizations find it tough to demonstrate the business value of gen AI, according to a survey of 600 data leaders by Wakefield Research on behalf of technology specialist Informatica.

However, measuring AI ROI doesn't have to be an intractable challenge. ZDNET attended a panel session and spoke with digital leaders at the recent Informatica World Tour event in London to discover five ways to measure the value of AI projects.

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-green-solvents-protein-rapeseed.html

Heriot-Watt University researchers have developed a new method to extract high-quality protein from rapeseed waste using environmentally friendly solvents, potentially offering a sustainable solution to the world's growing protein demands. The research is reported in the journal Food Hydrocolloids.

Global protein demand is expected to double by 2050; the plant protein market alone is projected to grow from £13.7 billion to £21.3 billion between 2027 and 2030.

Professor Stephen Euston, from Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said, "Livestock farming produces high levels of greenhouse gases, creating a serious environmental challenge as demand for animal protein grows.

"We need alternative sources of protein that don't cost the Earth."

Euston and his colleagues have focused on rapeseed press cake, the protein-rich waste left after oil extraction.
"Rapeseed press cake has been an underused resource, and upgrading it for human consumption would make a lot of sense—there's a lot available in Scotland, as farmers use rapeseed as a break crop, and the market for the oil has been growing.

"It contains 28%–45% protein, depending on the processing method, and most of this nutritious material goes unused for human consumption."
Natural solution

Euston worked with student Grace Chidimma James to investigate whether natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) could effectively extract protein from rapeseed press cake.

James said, "NADES are eco-friendly alternatives to the harsh chemical solvents traditionally used in protein extraction.

"They have low toxicity and are biodegradable. They are also low-cost."

The solvents are created by combining natural compounds such as betaine, a naturally occurring compound found in beetroot and other sources, with citric acid, or choline chloride, a type of salt, with glycerol, forming liquids that can extract proteins without environmental damage.
Double the protein extracted

The study found that certain NADES formulations could extract significantly more protein than conventional water-based methods.

Using advanced computer simulations, the researchers discovered how these green solvents work at the molecular level. The NADES components form hydrogen bonds with proteins, potentially weakening their attachment to other materials in the rapeseed cake and making extraction easier.

The most effective combination—betaine and citric acid in a 2:1 ratio—achieved protein yields of 53%, compared to just 15% with water extraction alone.

Euston said, "While extraction with water alone gave the highest protein purity, NADES formulations were able to increase the protein yield significantly.

"However, the higher yields came at the cost of purity. The extracted protein contained other plant compounds alongside the proteins we hoped for—so there's some work to be done on refining the process."
Toward commercialization

While promising, the technology still faces hurdles before it can be commercialized.

Euston said, "More research is required on optimizing both the choice of components and concentration of species to maximize yield and purity of protein extracts.

"But this is a step towards a more sustainable food system, where agricultural waste could be upgraded for human consumption."

More information: Grace Chidimma James et al, Molecular dynamics simulation allows mechanistic understanding of natural deep eutectic solvents action on rapeseed proteins, Food Hydrocolloids (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111328
       

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

A new analysis of our solar system's interstellar interloper, 3I/ATLAS, reveals that it's spewing huge amounts of water — and astronomers can't immediately explain why:

The object, which is widely believed to be comet, showed strong ultraviolet emissions that are unmistakable telltales of hydroxyl gas (OH), a byproduct of water, when astronomers imaged it with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope before it disappeared behind the Sun. The emissions could only be spotted from space because the ultraviolet light would get absorbed in the atmosphere.

Their findings, detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argue that the presence of all this OH indicates the comet is ejecting water vapor at a torrential rate of about 88 pounds per second — around the same rate as a fire hose running at full blast, according to a press release about the findings.

[...] Astronomers believe that 3I/ATLAS came from the center of the Milky Way, where it was likely booted out of its original star system by a gravitational disturbance like the close flyby of another star, braving interstellar space before eventually cruising through our solar neighborhood. Based on these inferences, astronomers estimated that the comet must be billions of years old, perhaps three billion years older than the Sun itself. It's not only a snapshot of a different part of the galaxy, but a different era of the cosmos altogether.

Previously: Does 3I/ATLAS Generate its Own Light?

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining innovation-driven economic growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones, a key economic concept known as "creative destruction."

The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.

Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.

Mokyr was still trying to get his morning coffee when he was reached on the phone by an AP reporter, and said he was shocked to win the prize.

"People always say this, but in this case I am being truthful—I had no clue that anything like this was going to happen," he said.

His students had asked him about the possibility he would win the Nobel, he said. "I told them that I was more likely to be elected Pope than to win the Nobel Prize in economics—and I am Jewish, by the way."

Mokyr will turn 80 next summer but said he has no plans to retire. "This is the type of job that I dreamed about my entire life," he said.

Like fellow laureate Mokyr, Aghion also expressed surprise at the honor. "I can't find the words to express what I feel," he said by phone to the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory.

Asked about current trade wars and protectionism in the world, Aghion said that: "I am not welcoming the protectionist way in the US. That is not good for ... world growth and innovation."

The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifying "creative destruction," a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace—and thus destroy—older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy."

upstart writes:

Warp Speed! How Some Galaxies Can Move Away from Us Faster Than Light:

If there is an absolute law in the universe, it's that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

For science-fiction enthusiasts, that's a bit depressing. Space is big, and while the speed of light is incredibly fast to us humans, on interstellar scales it's glacially slow. Even at a photon's speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second, it's a journey of more than four years to reach just the closest star to the sun.

But we have to be careful how we state this universal law. To be more specific, nothing can move faster than the speed of light through space. That may seem like a nitpick, but it turns out to have literally cosmic importance.

To see why, we have to look at the behavior of the universe itself. One of the most important things the universe does is expand. It's getting bigger every day. The foundational observations for this, which were made more than a century ago, showed that distant galaxies appeared to be receding from us—not only that, but ones farther away were moving faster.

That's what an explosion does: at some time after the bang, the fastest-moving material will be farthest away. This is where the idea of the big bang model for the origin of the universe comes from.

The cosmic expansion can be measured as a rate, meaning at a given distance from us, a galaxy will be moving away from us at given speed. At a different distance, a galaxy will be moving at a different speed. We measure this as a rate of expansion called the Hubble constant. Our best measurements of this give a value of about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec. In other words, a galaxy one megaparsec from us (about 3.26 million light-years) will be receding at 70 km/sec. A galaxy two megaparsecs away will be moving twice as fast, or at 140 km/sec, and so on.

Extrapolating this, though, runs us into trouble: it's not hard to see that at some distance from us, the recession speed will equal the speed of light. If you run the numbers, just using the speed of light divided by the Hubble constant, you find that distance is about 14 billion light-years. That distance is called the Hubble sphere, and anything farther away than that would be—from our perspective—moving faster than light.

Here's where things get weird. ("Oh yes, here is where that happens," I expect you're thinking.) The universe is actually quite a bit bigger than that. We know the cosmos was born about 13.8 billion years ago. By some few hundreds of millions of years later, galaxies had formed. When we see the light from a distant galaxy, it's taken, say, 12 billion years to reach us, but over that time, the universe has expanded. So the light has actually had to travel much farther than 12 billion light-years to get to us. By the time the light reaches us, that galaxy is more like 23 billion light-years away.

That means there are galaxies outside our Hubble sphere, and they are moving away from us faster than the speed of light! How is that possible?

jelizondo writes:

PsyPost has a very interesting report about the consequences of using Ayahuasca on our feelings about death.

I've been interested in the stuff but a couple of friends that tried it reported there is a large possibility of vomiting after drinking the stuff and I just don't like that. Point of fact, they ask you to fast before the ceremony to minimize vomiting but to me dry heaves are worst.

Anyway, a very interesting read.

People who regularly use ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian psychedelic drink, may have a fundamentally different way of relating to death. A new study published in the journal Psychopharmacology indicates that long-term ayahuasca users tend to show less fear, anxiety, and avoidance around death—and instead exhibit more acceptance. These effects appear to be driven not by spiritual beliefs or personality traits, but by a psychological attitude known as "impermanence acceptance."

The findings come from researchers at the University of Haifa, who sought to better understand how psychedelics influence people's thinking and behavior around mortality. According to their data, it is not belief in an afterlife or a shift in metaphysical views that predicts reduced death anxiety. Instead, the results suggest that learning to accept change and the transient nature of life may be central to how ayahuasca helps people relate more calmly to death.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew traditionally used by Indigenous Amazonian groups in healing and spiritual rituals. The drink contains the powerful hallucinogen DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) along with harmala alkaloids that make it orally active. Many users describe deeply emotional, and often death-themed, visions during their experiences. These may include the sensation of personal death, symbolic rebirth, contact with deceased individuals, or feelings of ego dissolution—the temporary loss of a sense of self.

The research team, led by Jonathan David and Yair Dor-Ziderman, were interested in this recurring death-related content. Historical records, cultural traditions, and previous studies all suggest that ayahuasca frequently evokes visions or thoughts related to death. In one survey, over half of ayahuasca users said they had experienced what felt like a "personal death" during a session. Others described visions involving graves, spirits, or life-after-death themes.

Despite these consistent reports, empirical studies that systematically assess how ayahuasca affects death-related cognition and emotion remain rare. Past work has often relied on limited self-reports, lacked control groups, and overlooked possible mediating psychological factors. The current study aimed to address those gaps with a more rigorous design.

"We were motivated by the lack of research exploring how ayahuasca use might relate to the way people think about and come to terms with the most certain aspect of life: death. Most studies in this area have focused on other psychedelics and on short-term or clinical effects, while we wanted to explore longer-lasting, personality-level changes. We also wanted to understand why such changes might occur, which has been largely missing from the existing literature," David told PsyPost.

"There is a hype in popular and scientific venues regarding the efficacy of psychedelics to affect a fundamental shift in our response to the theme of death. In particular, ayahuasca has long been described as the 'vine of the dead' (translation from Quechua) and death-related themes are pervasive in ayahuasca visions," added Dor-Ziderman, a research director at the University of Haifa and visiting scholar at Padova University.

"However, there has been surprisingly little empirical work on how such encounters shape one's relationship with mortality. Furthermore, most existing studies rely on single self-report scales and overlook the unconscious, behavioral, and cognitive layers of how humans process death. We wanted to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional assessment of "death processing," and to identify the causal mechanisms which mediate, or account for, long-term differences in death processing between ayahuasca users and non-users."

To examine how these individuals relate to death, the researchers administered a detailed set of questionnaires and behavioral tasks. These included measures of death anxiety, fear of personal death, death-avoidant behaviors, and death acceptance. They also used implicit tasks, such as response times to death-related words, to capture unconscious reactions. The idea was to get a broad, multi-dimensional picture of how people think and feel about mortality.

The researchers found statistically significant differences between the two groups. Compared to non-users, ayahuasca users scored lower on death anxiety, were less likely to avoid thinking about death, showed fewer fear responses, and expressed greater acceptance of mortality. These patterns held true across both self-report and behavioral measures. Notably, even the subtle response time tasks pointed in the same direction.

The effect sizes were moderate to large, suggesting these differences are not just statistical artifacts. The changes showed up in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains alike, which the authors interpret as evidence of a generalized shift in how ayahuasca users process the idea of death.

"Although these findings should be interpreted with caution, since this was a cross-sectional and mostly self-report study, our results suggest that ayahuasca use may help people feel less anxious about death and more accepting of it, especially among long-term users," David said.

upstart writes:

A unique case of a woman with male chromosomes in her blood:

This is believed to be the first recorded case of its kind, and doctors believe her blood came from her twin brother while they were in the womb.

In every other cell in her body, Ana Paula Martins has XX chromosomes associated with female sex characteristics.

But in her blood cells she carries XY chromosomes that typically determine biological male sex.

This is believed to be the first recorded case of its kind, and doctors believe her blood came from her twin brother while they were in the womb.

This phenomenon was discovered in 2022, after a miscarriage experienced by Ana Paula.

During a medical examination, the gynecologist ordered a karyotype analysis, which allows for a detailed examination of an individual's chromosomes, usually from a blood sample.

"They called me from the lab and said the analysis needed to be repeated," Ana Paula recalls.

The results showed the presence of XY chromosomes in her blood, which confused both Ana and the doctors.

"I went to examine the patient and she had, so to speak, absolutely all the normal female characteristics," explains Gustavo Maciel, a gynecologist at a Brazilian health organization. Fleury Medicine and Health.

"She had a uterus, ovaries... the ovaries were functioning normally," adds this professor at the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo.

upstart writes:

Tom's Hardware published a report about the new deal between AMD and OpenAI:

OpenAI and AMD have announced a multibillion-dollar partnership that will see the companies collaborate on AI data centers powered by AMD processors. OpenAI has committed to purchasing 6 gigawatts of AMD chips, starting with the MI450 next year. That will be done either by purchasing the chips directly from AMD or through cloud computing partners. AMD CEO Lisa Su told the WSJ that the deal would generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD over the next five years.

The two companies are not disclosing the exact financial details of the deals. However, AMD emphasized that each "per gigawatt" of capacity is worth tens of billions of dollars, so it's possible the deal is worth upwards of $60 billion.

In return, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, approximately 10% of AMD, at a price of $0.01 per share, to be awarded in phases, provided that OpenAI meets deployment milestones. The warrants will only be exercised if AMD's share price increases, although again, the specifics are unclear.

The deal is an enormous win for AMD and stands juxtaposed with Nvidia's groundbreaking Intel partnership announced last month. Under the terms of that deal, Nvidia and Intel are jointly developing Intel x86 RTX SOCs for PCs featuring Nvidia graphics, as well as custom Nvidia data center x86 processors. Nvidia also received $5 billion in Intel stock as part of the deal.

OpenAI will use AMD's chip for inference in order to cope with skyrocketing demand. "It's hard to overstate how difficult it's become... We want it super fast, but it takes some time." OpenAI's Sam Altman said to WSJ.

"We are thrilled to partner with OpenAI to deliver AI compute at massive scale," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "This partnership brings the best of AMD and OpenAI together to create a true win-win enabling the world's most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem."

The first deployment will be 1 gigawatt worth of MI450 chips, scheduled for the second half of 2026. Altman said the AI buildout has reached a phase "where the entire industry's got to come together and everybody's going to do super well," not only on chips and data centers, but also further down the supply chain too.

OpenAI has also inked a $100 billion deal with Nvidia, and will use Nvidia's investment to secure and deploy 10 gigawatts worth of AI data centers. While that deal isn't finalized, AMD and OpenAI reportedly say this deal is "definitive" and plan to immediately file the requisite details with regulators, a step that has yet to happen in the Nvidia deal.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Tom's Hardware is reporting on a project by Cambridge University to rescue data trapped on old floppy disks. Magnetic media only lasts a decade or so under optimal, climate controlled storage conditions. So this task is much more fundamental than just pushing the old disks into off-the-shelf drives.

Led by the library's digital preservation team, the project aims to document and formalize best practices for floppy disk recovery, encompassing cleaning and handling methods, as well as imaging workloads. It's also pulling in expertise from the retro-computing community, whose trial-and-error techniques are often the only reason legacy formats still survive.

You can forget those cheap USB floppy drives you can buy online. Cambridge's preservationists don't just mount disks and hope for the best; they sample the raw magnetic signal itself. Specialized hardware, such as the KryoFlux and open-hardware Greaseweazle interfaces, captures the flux transitions — the tiny changes in polarity that encode data — and reconstructs the file structure later in software. This flux-level imaging process enables archivists to recover non-PC formats and identify weak or damaged sectors that would otherwise remain unread.

This project only addresses the matter of hardware, so far. Although that is important on its own when working for preservation, much of the data will turn out to be trapped in proprietary or DRM'd formats. Thus draconian copyright laws can impose an unnecessary non-technical barrier to the final steps of legally retrieving the data and bringing it to a usable form.

Previously:
(2025) A Story About USB Floppy Drives
(2024) PC Floppy Copy Protection: Softguard Superlok
(2024) PC Floppy Copy Protection: Formaster Copy-Lock
(2024) Japan's Digital Minister Claims Victory Against Floppy Disks
(2024) Where Are Floppy Disks Today? Planes, Trains, And All These Other Places
(2022) The Last Man Selling Floppy Disks Says He Still Receives Orders From Airlines

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

CRM giant Salesforce has been hacked affecting Qantas and other large corporations. While Salesforce claims to be number 1 in the world, a big claim in the presence of SAP and Microsoft, this recent hack shows that no system is completely secure. More than a billion records have been stolen from the 39 companies, including the Qantas Frequent Flyers program, Toyota, Disney, McDonalds, and HBO Max. Hackers have threatened to release this personal data unless Salesforce pay a ransom.

Problem is that when you start paying ransoms you don't stop paying.

Updates:
    • Salesforce refuses to submit to extortion demands linked to hacking campaigns
    • Hackers leak Qantas data containing 5 million customer records after ransom deadline passes

Original Submission

It's so common to hear that the gov't can't possibly do anything right, or for a good price, that many people believe it was always true. Here is a counter example to discuss:

https://theconversation.com/believe-it-or-not-there-was-a-time-when-the-us-government-built-beautiful-homes-for-working-class-americans-to-deal-with-a-housing-shortage-253512

In 1918, as World War I intensified overseas, the U.S. government embarked on a radical experiment: It quietly became the nation's largest housing developer, designing and constructing more than 80 new communities across 26 states in just two years.

These weren't hastily erected barracks or rows of identical homes. They were thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, complete with parks, schools, shops and sewer systems. In just two years, this federal initiative provided housing for almost 100,000 people.

Few Americans are aware that such an ambitious and comprehensive public housing effort ever took place. Many of the homes are still standing today.
[...]
Alongside housing construction, the Housing Corporation invested in critical infrastructure. Engineers installed over 649,000 feet of modern sewer and water systems, ensuring that these new communities set a high standard for sanitation and public health.

Attention to detail extended inside the homes. Architects experimented with efficient interior layouts and space-saving furnishings, including foldaway beds and built-in kitchenettes. Some of these innovations came from private companies that saw the program as a platform to demonstrate new housing technologies.

One company, for example, designed fully furnished studio apartments with furniture that could be rotated or hidden, transforming a space from living room to bedroom to dining room throughout the day.

To manage the large scale of this effort, the agency developed and published a set of planning and design standards − the first of their kind in the United States. These manuals covered everything from block configurations and road widths to lighting fixtures and tree-planting guidelines. The standards emphasized functionality, aesthetics and long-term livability.

Architects and planners who worked for the Housing Corporation carried these ideas into private practice, academia and housing initiatives. Many of the planning norms still used today, such as street hierarchies, lot setbacks and mixed-use zoning, were first tested in these wartime communities.

And many of the planners involved in experimental New Deal community projects, such as Greenbelt, Maryland, had worked for or alongside Housing Corporation designers and planners. Their influence is apparent in the layout and design of these communities.

The USA has another housing crunch now, partly (I've read) due to private capital bidding up the prices of many houses/apartments and turning them into rental units--makes a nice rate of return for the investors, but sucks for everyone else. While I have no expectations that the current administration (and their history with high end developments) would consider anything like this, it might be something to work toward in a few years, after the next election?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Teachers need to be scientists themselves, experimenting and measuring the impact of powerful AI products on education:

American technologists have been telling educators to rapidly adopt their new inventions for over a century. In 1922, Thomas Edison declared that in the near future, all school textbooks would be replaced by film strips, because text was 2% efficient, but film was 100% efficient. Those bogus statistics are a good reminder that people can be brilliant technologists, while also being inept education reformers.

I think of Edison whenever I hear technologists insisting that educators have to adopt artificial intelligence as rapidly as possible to get ahead of the transformation that's about to wash over schools and society.

At MIT, I studythe history and future of education technology, and I have never encountered an example of a school system – a country, state or municipality – that rapidly adopted a new digital technology and saw durable benefits for their students. The first districts to encourage students to bring mobile phones to class did not better prepare youth for the future than schools that took a more cautious approach. There is no evidence that the first countries to connect their classrooms to the internet stand apart in economic growth, educational attainment or citizen well-being.

New education technologies are only as powerful as the communities that guide their use. Opening a new browser tab is easy; creating the conditions for good learning is hard.

It takes years for educators to develop new practices and norms, for students to adopt new routines, and for families to identify new support mechanisms in order for a novel invention to reliably improve learning. But as AI spreads through schools, both historical analysis and new research conducted with K-12 teachers and students offer some guidance on navigating uncertainties and minimizing harm.

[...] Today, there is a cottage industry of consultants, keynoters and "thought leaders" traveling the country purporting to train educators on how to use AI in schools. National and international organizations publish AI literacy frameworks claiming to know what skills students need for their future. Technologists invent apps that encourage teachers and students to use generative AI as tutors, as lesson planners, as writing editors, or as conversation partners. These approaches have about as much evidential support today as the CRAAP test did when it was invented.

upstart writes:

While drones flying over different parts of Europe have raised concerns in many countries, some are worried about a more dystopian future with the technology:

While drones flying over different parts of Europe have raised concerns in many countries, some are worried about a more dystopian future with the technology.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine could lead to a new arms race — one not defined by big submarines or loud missiles, but by small, silent drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the prospect during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he warned that it is cheaper to stop Russia now "than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead"."

We must use everything we have, together, to force the aggressor to stop. And only then do we have a real chance that this arms race won't end in catastrophe for all of us," he said."Otherwise, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will keep driving the war forward — wider and deeper."

Experts warn drones carrying nuclear weapons might already exist.

TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, reported in 2023 on the manufacture of a nuclear-armed underwater drone called Poseidon.

Previously, in 2018, the United States defence ministry also publicly acknowledged Russia was developing a "new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo" or underwater drone.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general and senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute, said drones with nuclear warheads "may already be a reality".

"It's something that we should be concerned about," Ryan, who is also a strategic adviser at a US drone company, Skydio, told SBS News.

"Particularly since detecting a drone underwater that's capable of very long ranges would be a significant threat to Western countries, including Australia," Ryan said.

[...] Nuclear warheads are not the only possible future predicted for drones, as politicians are warning about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to control drones.

During his speech at the UN, Zelenskyy said "it's only a matter of time" before drones operate "all by themselves, fully autonomous, and no human involved, except the few who control AI systems".

Earlier in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that AI-powered drones were introduced on the battlefield, with Ukraine utilising technology that allows groups of drones to make decisions independently.

Ryan said the use of AI might actually help reduce civilian casualties in future warfare.

"AI might actually make them more deadly for the military and less deadly for civilians. Now, that's a perfect scenario, of course, and it's theoretical," he said.

upstart writes:

Comets Lemmon and SWAN may be visible around the same time as they race across the solar system:

Skywatchers, rejoice. This month, not one but two comets are set to soar into our night skies for your viewing pleasure.

The two comets, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), were both discovered in 2025. The celestial visitors are gearing up for a close flyby of Earth in October, becoming more visible as they approach our planet. SWAN will be closest to Earth on October 19, while Lemmon is set for its own close approach on October 21. Both icy comets may even be visible to the naked eye around that time.

Astronomers spotted Lemmon in January using the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter observatory in Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains. The comet was speeding toward the inner solar system at speeds up to 130,000 miles per hour (209,000 kilometers per hour).

Later in September, amateur astronomer Vladimir Bezugly discovered comet SWAN in images from the SWAN instrument on NASA's SOHO satellite. The comet became significantly brighter as it emerged from the Sun's direction.

At its closest approach, SWAN will be at a distance of approximately 24 million miles (39 million kilometers) from our planet, or about a quarter of the distance between the Sun and Earth. SWAN is now at a brightness magnitude of around 5.9, according to EarthSky. The unexpectedly bright comet is currently in the southern skies, but it is slowly moving north, according to NASA.

Following SWAN's closest approach, comet Lemmon will be right behind. The comet will be about half the distance between the Sun and Earth before rounding the Sun on November 8. From there, it will begin its next journey around the star. Lemmon will continue to brighten as it approaches the Sun, but it will likely stay visible, and possibly become even brighter, around October 31 to November 1, according to EarthSky.