Humans love to take liberties when we talk about our heights. But Afruca tangeri fiddler crabs don’t have that luxury. Looking and listening in on the members of this species as they tried to attract mates, a team of researchers found that the males’ mating songs are shaped by their size, and are thus accurate signals of their fitness as mates, according to a press release, at least from the perspective of female fiddler crabs.Publishing their findings in a study in the Journal of Experiment ...read more
One of the most important parts of living a healthy lifestyle is getting a good night’s sleep. Quality sleep can prevent illness, reduce stress, and enhance cognitive function, just to name a few. A research team working with the Baycrest Corporate Centre for Geriatric Care has now added a new benefit to the list: unlocking the brain’s ability to sort memories. According to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour, sustained deep sleep not only safeguards against memory decline but also ...read more
Black holes — the supermassive gravitation forces at the center of most galaxies — actually spend much of their time dormant, or essentially asleep. Astronomers have now spotted one not only waking up but appearing to hit the celestial equivalent of a snooze button every few days. The black hole at the center of a galaxy named SDSS1335+0728, about 300 million light-years away, first showed signs of stirring when, in 2019, the galaxy started shining brightly. But since 2024, that black hole t ...read more
Every April, as winter’s grip finally loosens and the nights grow a little warmer, Earth drifts through a centuries-old cloud of cosmic dust. That’s when the Lyrid meteor shower — one of the oldest known and most reliable meteor showers of the year — lights up the night.The Lyrids will peak overnight from April 21, 2025 into April 22, 2025 this year. On the days near that peak, patient skywatchers may be treated to a modest but mesmerizing display of shooting stars streaking across the s ...read more
Back in 1950, Alan Turing proposed an elegantly simple yet profoundly challenging way to determine whether machines could be said to "think." Known as the Turing Test, this measure of machine intelligence sets humans and machines in conversational competition, challenging human judges to distinguish between artificial and genuine intelligence through text-based interactions. Despite numerous attempts, no artificial system had ever convincingly passed this test. Until now.Cameron Jones and Benjam ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine