North American beavers transform ecosystems with their engineering prowess. By ponding water, excavating channels, and foraging nearby vegetation, they drastically alter landscapes across a variety of environments, from tundra ...
Ecology
Jun 16, 2023
0
19
In the 18th century, the philosopher David Hume observed that induction—inferring the future based on what's happened in the past—can never be reliable. In 1997, SFI Professor David Wolpert with his colleague Bill Macready ...
Mathematics
Jun 5, 2023
0
45
Neither artificial intelligence nor the metaverse will define the cities of the future. Instead, everything points to it being something as matter of fact as proximity to services. This is what's known as the 15-minute city, ...
Environment
May 10, 2023
0
71
Since the beginning of journalism in America, newspapers have been funded by advertising. In the 18th century, alongside advertisements for shoe repair, corduroys, and cutlery, colonial newspapers sold and ran ads for enslaved ...
Social Sciences
Apr 28, 2023
0
254
In its first two weeks after being released, the video game Hogwarts Legacy, described by the developer as "set in the world of the Harry Potter books," sold 12 million copies and made about US$850 million in revenue.
Social Sciences
Apr 5, 2023
0
6
Over millennia, humans have observed and been inspired by beautiful displays of light bands dancing across dark night skies. Today, we call these lights the aurora: the aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere, and the ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 29, 2023
0
11
A study covering 2,000 years of male and female adult statures in Milan, Italy, has been published in the journal Scientific Reports, illustrating a stable environmental influence on height.
Nothing commands attention like rarity. In the natural world, rarity is most starkly represented by the last members of a declining species. These scarce plants and animals are infinitively valuable; they represent the final ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 9, 2023
0
4
When construction work began on a new arts center in Newport, south Wales, in 2002, the builders on site could scarcely have imagined what they would dig up. While excavating the foundations on the banks of the River Usk, ...
Archaeology
Feb 7, 2023
0
24
How should we live when we know we must die? This question is posed by the first work of world literature, the Gilgamesh epic. More than 4,000 years ago, Gilgamesh set out on a quest for immortality. Like all Babylonian literature, ...
Archaeology
Feb 2, 2023
0
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