Tag: technews

Artifacts New AI Tool Adds Snazzy Visuals to Your Posts Artifact, the news app from Instagram’s founders, just launched an AI feature to let users generate images for posts. After typing prompts, the tool creates eye-catching visuals to help tell stories. It’s Artifact’s latest move in becoming a rival to Instagram and Twitter by adding…

Wi-Fi-Based Surveillance This chapter opens with a look at some of the cool new developments in the world of surveillance technology. We’re talking about wireless spying, of course. Some companies are trying to use the signals from your Wi-Fi router to spy on you and your neighbors. For example, a team of computer scientists at…

Mimetic Desire: The Theory of Desire René Girard uses the term mimetic desire to describe a psychological phenomenon that involves our desire to imitate the desires of others. In romantic relationships, this mimetic desire can be applied to romantic relationships as well as friendships. It can also be used to develop self-improvement and personal growth.…

Feathered Dinosaurs and Modern Birds The humble feather is at the heart of a new study, in which palaeontologists discover that feathered dinosaurs are even more similar to birds than previously thought. Previous studies had suggested that they had a different protein composition than birds. A team of scientists from University College Cork, Linyi University,…

Namib Desert: The Origin of the Namib New research shows that even people who don’t speak a native language can maintain a genetic identity even without it. It turns out that the Kalahari and Namib Desert peoples have maintained their distinctiveness even without their native tongue. This finding may be due to, among other things,…

The Evolution of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens A new study shows that early Homo sapiens in Europe co-exist with Neanderthals in some regions where there are sufficient herbivores to support both populations. Herbivore carrying capacity In ecology, there’s an idea called the competitive exclusion principle, which states that competitive species cannot coexist over a long…

UFO E.T. This chapter opens with a little story about two mummies. A few weeks ago, a journalist named Jaime Maussan presented mummified aliens to the Mexican congress. These aren’t just any mummies: they’re more than a thousand years old. And they have a skeleton. Okay, definitely not like E.T. From the looks of it,…

The Pernambuco Holly Tree Rediscovered A holly tree that had been lost to botanists for almost two centuries has been found after a six-day search operation in Brazil. It is Ilex sapiiformis, commonly known as Pernambuco holly. The four trees that were rediscovered are thought to be the only ones left of this species, so…

Antarctica’s heatwave of 2022 Antarctica is seeing an explosion in the growth of plant life as a result of climate change, and some scientists worry that the ice-covered continent may soon reach its tipping point.” Due to its harsh conditions, Antarctica has only two native vascular plants: Antarctic hair grass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort…

Aurora borealis and Aurora australis This week has been particularly strong in terms of geomagnetic activity, and we’re getting some stunning red auroras. Why? Well, a coronal mass ejection from the sun that struck the Earth on September 24 caused a hole in the Earth’s magnetic field. Usually, when these holes are punched in, charged…