Lifeboat Foundation

There are very few animals as important to our world as honeybees. There is, of course, the delicious honey they produce, but they are also essential in maintaining food security and the biodiversity that is threatened by climate change and becoming our strongest natural defense against it.

But with the planet facing a climate change-induced loss of biodiversity, what happens when honeybees die?

New Northeastern University research, published in Communications Biology, aims to help address the impending biodiversity crisis. The researchers say they have found a new strategy for restoring lost biodiversity by, essentially, identifying the equivalent of a honeybee in different ecosystems and reintroducing it into a particular collapsing ecosystem.

Soon, our devices will get power from the light around us and send information at incredible speeds while being safer and more efficient. Here’s a look at what’s new in photonics at CES 2024.

The Space Force announced Friday that it has given Microsoft a contract to continue work on a simulated environment where guardians can train, test new capabilities and interact with digital copies of objects in orbit.

Under the $19.8 million, one-year contract from Space Systems Command (SSC), Microsoft will develop the Integrated, Immersive, Intelligent Environment (I3E) — an augmented reality space simulation powered by the company’s HoloLens headsets. The training tool is a successor to the service’s Immersive Digital Facility (IDF) prototype developed in 2023, according to a press release.

The contract period began Dec. 1, and the deal includes a reserved scope for an additional three years of work, per the release.

A new mysterious nonprofit group backed by the crypto industry has set up a mailing address about 100 miles away from Washington, D.C., and is making moves to exert power in the nation’s capital.

The Cedar Innovation Foundation, a 501©(4) that was incorporated in Delaware in April, has launched advertisements against at least one powerful lawmaker who’s up for reelection, and quietly hired a group of strategists to fight on its behalf, according to records uncovered by CNBC.

It’s part of a broader effort by the crypto industry to influence Congress ahead of the 2024 elections and as a variety of crypto-related bills begin to weave their way through Washington.

For decades, science fiction authors have imagined scenarios in which life thrives on the harsh surfaces of Mars or our moon, or in the oceans below the icy surfaces of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa. But the study of habitability—the conditions required to support and sustain life—is not just confined to the pages of fiction. As more planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond are investigated for their potential to host conditions favorable to life, researchers are debating how to characterize habitability.

While many studies have focused on the information obtained by orbiting spacecraft or telescopes that provide snapshot views of ocean worlds and exoplanets, a new paper emphasizes the importance of investigating complex geophysical factors that can be used to predict the long-term maintenance of life. These factors include how energy and nutrients flow throughout the planet.

“Time is a crucial factor in characterizing habitability,” says Mark Simons, John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics at Caltech. “You need time for evolution to happen. To be habitable for a millisecond or a year is not enough. But if habitable conditions are sustained for a million years, or a billion…? Understanding a planet’s habitability takes a nuanced perspective that requires astrobiologists and geophysicists to talk to each other.”

Join the discussion on this paper page.

Nabla Copilot sits as a web app or Chrome extension on a doctor’s computer and listens to their consultation with patients.

Nabla Copilot generates clinical notes almost instantly, saving doctors the trouble of documenting the information manually.

A team of Chinese researchers used a novel theory to invent a new type of ultrathin optical crystal with high energy efficiency, laying the foundation for next-generation laser technology.

Prof. Wang Enge from the School of Physics, Peking University, recently told Xinhua that the Twist Boron Nitride (TBN) made by the team, with a micron-level thickness, is the thinnest optical crystal currently known in the world. Compared with traditional crystals of the same thickness, its energy efficiency is raised by 100 to 10,000 times.

Wang, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said this achievement is an original innovation by China in the theory of optical crystals and has created a new field of making optical crystals with two-dimensional thin-film materials of light elements.

Siemens partnered with Sony to devise mixed-reality headsets, a new spatial content creation system, and developed the NX Immersive Designer.