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UK online legislation threat to operations, Wikipedia to argue in court

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia will argue this week that the UK’s Online Services Act could impact the safety and privacy of its volunteers.

The foundation behind the crowdsourced information site Wikipedia will argue in British court this week that new legislation threatens its operations.

The Wikimedia Foundation will tell London’s Royal Courts of Justice on July 22nd that the regulations under the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) put it at “unacceptable risk” of being subject to Category 1 duties as a “high-risk site”

Modern tattooers meet their ancient match with the ice mummies of Siberia

An international team of archaeologists has used high-resolution digital imaging techniques to examine tattoos on a more than 2,000-year-old ice mummy from the Pazyryk culture of Siberia, shedding light on individual craftsmanship in prehistoric Siberian tattooing for the first time.

Tattooing was likely widespread during prehistory, but the lack of surviving means it is difficult to investigate. The so-called “ice mummies” of the Altai mountains are an exception, since their deep burial chambers encased in permafrost sometimes preserve the skin (and therefore tattoos) of those buried within.

“The tattoos of the Pazyryk culture-Iron Age pastoralists of the Altai Mountains-have long intrigued archaeologists due to their elaborate figural designs,” states senior author of the research, Dr. Gino Caspari from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Bern.

Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema

Paris theater — cyberpunk: envisioning possible futures through cinema.


This series was programmed to accompany the museum’s exhibition Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema.

Tickets are available below for purchase by the public, while Academy members can request tickets at membership.oscars.org.

How lithium walls trap tritium in fusion reactors revealed

Lithium is considered a key ingredient in the future commercial fusion power plants known as tokamaks, and there are several ways to use this metal to enhance the process. But a key question remained: How much does it impact the amount of fuel trapped in the walls of tokamaks?

According to new research from a global collaboration spanning nine institutions, the dominant driver of fuel retention is co-deposition: a process where fuel is trapped alongside lithium. Co-deposition can happen with lithium that is directly added during plasma operations, or lithium that has been previously deposited on the walls, only to wear away and be redeposited.

The research also showed that adding lithium during operation is more effective than pre-coating the walls with lithium in terms of creating an even temperature from the core of the plasma to its edge, which can help create the stable plasma conditions needed for commercial fusion.

Stunning Dinosaur Tracks Appear to Show Something Never Seen Before

Roughly 76 million years ago, a herd of herbivorous dinosaurs left a trail of footprints that reveals different species may have walked together – and been stalked together, too.

An international team of paleontologists discovered the trackways preserved in ironstone at Canada’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. This area is known for its remarkable fossil specimens, but these are the first good set of tracks found in the area.

They reveal something fascinating: tracks from at least five ceratopsian dinosaurs appear alongside those of an ankylosaurid, meaning this could be the first evidence of multi-species herding among dinosaurs.

Microresonator-referenced soliton microcombs with zeptosecond-level timing noise

A compact optical frequency division system with magnesium-fluoride-microresonator-based frequency references and silicon-nitride-microresonator-based comb generators is reported, offering a soliton pulse train at 25-GHz microwaves with an absolute phase noise of −141 dBc Hz–1 and timing noise below 546 zs Hz–1/2 at a 10-kHz offset frequency.

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