In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-old method of turning the globe into a flat surface by first converting it to a cylinder. Winner of Japan’s Good Design Grand Award, it serves as both a brilliant design solution and an update to our outmoded conceptions of world geography.

But as some readers have pointed out, the AuthaGraph also seems to draw quite heavily on an earlier map made by one of the most visionary of theorists and designers, Buckminster Fuller, who in 1943 applied his Dymaxion trademark to the map you see above, which will likely remind you of his most recognizable invention, the Geodesic Dome, “house of the future.”

Whether Narukawa has acknowledged Fuller as an inspiration I cannot say. In any case, 73 years before the AuthaGraph, the Dymaxion Map achieved a similar feat, with similar motivations. As the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) points out, “The Fuller Projection Map is [or was] the only flat map of the entire surface of the Earth which reveals our planet as one island in the ocean, without any visually obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents.”

We’re closer to a cure for HIV than ever before. This half hour, Scripps News examines the fight against a virus that has killed millions of people around the world in the last generation.

In 2023 there were nearly 40 million people living with HIV. Some 30.7 million of them receive antiretroviral treatment. Despite recent advances in preventing infections, more than a million people are expected to become newly infected in 2024. More than 600,000 will die of HIV/AIDS.

But a handful of people have now been cured, thanks to recent breakthroughs in treatment.

The body is pretty good at repairing itself, but some parts of our anatomy struggle to bounce back after an injury.

One such material is cartilage – the spongy yet firm connective tissue that keeps our bones from rubbing and jarring against each other. Over time, the translucent or ‘hyaline’ components of cartilage can become heavily degraded, resulting in painful conditions like osteoarthritis and chondromalacia.

Scientists have been working on a way to regenerate hyaline cartilage for years, and now a team led by Northwestern University in the US has achieved a breakthrough. They have developed a biomaterial that, injected into damaged cartilage in living sheep, acted as a scaffold that promoted cartilage regrowth in active joints.

Helical foldamers are a class of artificial molecules that fold into well-defined helical structures like helices found in proteins and nucleic acids. They have garnered considerable attention as stimuli-responsive switchable molecules, tuneable chiral materials, and cooperative supramolecular systems due to their chiral and conformational switching properties.

Double-helical foldamers exhibit not only even stronger chiral properties but also unique properties, such as the transcription of chiral information from one chiral strand to another without chiral properties, enabling potential applications in higher-order structural control related to replication, like nucleic acids.

However, the artificial control of the chiral switching properties of such artificial molecules remains challenging due to the difficulty in balancing the dynamic properties required for switching and stability. Although various helical molecules have been developed in the past, reversal of twist direction in double-helix molecules and supramolecules has rarely been reported.

The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people.

The Air Force Research Lab is working with the Space Warfighting Analysis Center and the Defense Innovation Unit to test space data transport concepts.

A groundbreaking study using sub-daily GPS has improved our understanding of early afterslip following earthquakes, offering a more accurate assessment of seismic hazards and enhancing emergency response and preparedness strategies.

A groundbreaking study has revealed new insights into the Earth’s crust’s immediate behavior following earthquakes. Researchers have utilized sub-daily Global Positioning System (GPS) solutions to accurately measure the spatial and temporal evolution of early afterslip following the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake. This innovative approach marks a significant advancement in seismic analysis, offering a more precise and rapid depiction of ground deformations, which is essential for assessing seismic hazards and understanding fault line activities.

The aftermath of an earthquake is marked by intricate postseismic adjustments, particularly the elusive early afterslip. Daily seismic monitoring has struggled to capture the rapid and complex ground movements occurring in the critical hours post-quake. The intricacies of these initial activities and their profound implications for seismic hazard assessment highlight an urgent need for more refined and immediate monitoring techniques.

https://huggingface.co/papers/2408.

How can AI truly converse like a human if it cannot listen and respond simultaneously, or handle interruptions when things go awry?

Enter the world of full duplex modeling (FDM) and the innovative listening-while…

Join the discussion on this paper page.

A breakthrough that builds on the effects observed in the famous “double slit” experiment could allow physicists a greater ability to observe quantum effects within gravitational fields, according to new research published online.

A team of Italian scientists says they have successfully conducted neutron interferometry using more than one silicon crystal in a physics first that once seemed impossible, based on past attempts.

Explore the future of artificial intelligence in ‘AI on the Horizon,’ examining trends, innovations, and the impact on society and technology.