Toggle light / dark theme

A team of researchers from Australia, Canada and the U.S. has found that female octopuses sometimes throw silt at males who are attempting to mate with them. The group has written a paper describing their observations and has posted it on the bioRxiv preprint server.

Back in 2,015 members of the research team recorded instances of octopuses throwing things at other octopuses. At the time, it was not clear if the other octopuses were being intentionally targeted or if it was accidental. To find out, they went back to the same site in Jervis Bay, off the coast of Australia, a site where large numbers of Sydney octopuses live.

In making more and studying them carefully, the researchers were able to see that the female octopuses engaged in multiple types of object-throwing. In most instances, throwing material such as silt or even shells was simply a means of moving material that was in the way or when building a nest. Less often, they saw what were clearly attempts by to hurl material at a nearby male—usually, one trying to mate with her.

(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc.’s push to bring satellite capabilities to the iPhone will be focused on emergency situations, allowing users to send texts to first responders and report crashes in areas without cellular coverage.

The company is developing at least two related emergency features that will rely on satellite networks, aiming to release them in future iPhones, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Apple has been working on satellite technology for years, with a team exploring the concept since at least 2,017 Bloomberg has reported. Speculation that the next iPhone will have satellite capabilities ramped up this week after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the phone will probably work with spectrum owned by Globalstar Inc.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the space company will attempt something very different to recover its massive Super Heavy booster after it launches.

“SpaceX will try to catch largest ever flying object with robot chopsticks,” Musk tweeted early Monday morning.

He was referring, of course, to the giant robotic tower SpaceX is building to catch the primary rocket stage after it gives the company’s Starship spacecraft a boost into orbit.

Newly released data confirms that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are both associated with rare heart problems, and that this side effect is most common after the second shot in adolescent boys and young men. Still, the benefits of vaccination continued to outweigh the risks, scientists said.

The side effects tend to be mild, temporary and uncommon. For every million doses of the second shot given to 12-to 39-year-olds, there were 14 to 20 extra cases of the heart problems, according to the new data, which was presented Monday at a meeting of an independent advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The data suggest an association of myocarditis with mRNA vaccination in adolescents and young adults,” Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatrician at Stanford and chair of the committee, said at the meeting. “Further data are being compiled to understand potential risk factors, optimal management strategies and long-term outcomes.”

Based on a multi-SIMD quantum processor architecture.


A team of researchers with AMD have filed a patent application that looks toward a more efficient and reliable quantum computing architecture, thanks to a conventional multi-SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) approach.

According to the application, AMD is researching a system that aims to use quantum teleportation to increase a quantum system’s reliability, while simultaneously reducing the number of qubits necessary for a given calculation. The aim is to both alleviate scaling problems and calculation errors stemming from system instability.