All posts tagged: Scientific

7 Scientific Reasons Couples Who Vacation Together Have Better Relationships

7 Scientific Reasons Couples Who Vacation Together Have Better Relationships

Published by Jenni Sidey

Thinking of nixing your summer vacation because of a heavy workload or a demanding boss? Don’t. Your relationship will thank you. Most Americans lose an average of four vacation days per year, according to a survey conducted by the travel website Expedia. That means if all employed Americans forfeit four days, we’re wasting 500 million unused vacation days annually! Turns out, that’s not good for your health or your love life. If you think that by staying home this summer you’re helping your relationship, think again. Before you decide to sacrifice your annual getaway, consider the benefits of going on a couples’ vacation. Here are 7 scientifically proven ways couples who vacation together have better relationships: 1. They’re happier TravnikovStudio | Shutterstock A summer getaway puts you in a better mood. It’s a fact. Social psychologist Theresa DiDonato, Ph.D., explained, “Partners who once sparkled in each other’s presence can find it difficult to maintain passion when routines define their every interaction. Habituation makes for dullness, and dullness tends to make unhappy relationships.” She added, “One …

Is this the most niche scientific tourist attraction in the world?

Is this the most niche scientific tourist attraction in the world?

Published by skeptic

Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Going places Earth is a big planet with a lot of people on it, which means that even the most niche of interests can find their expression somewhere. Feedback has a sneaking fondness for those peculiar tourist attractions to be found along the many winding highways of the US, like Nebraska’s gloriously literal-minded World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things. But we weren’t prepared for science historian Richard Fallon to draw our attention to the world’s one and only (as far as we know) sculpture park dedicated to foraminifera. If you don’t know what foraminifera are, they are single-celled organisms, mostly found in the sea, which often have a hard external shell, or test. These tests have been fossilised in huge numbers, so the foraminifera fossil record is extraordinarily detailed. The tests also come in a huge variety of shapes, hence …

Scientists find a new way to detect scientific breakthroughs

Scientists find a new way to detect scientific breakthroughs

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some scientific breakthroughs arrive with a bang. Others arrive twice. That odd pattern sits at the center of a new study from researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Virginia, who built a way to track when research truly changes the direction of science. Their method does more than flag famous papers. It also picks up something that often confuses older citation-based measures: major discoveries made at nearly the same time by different people. The study, published in Science Advances, comes from Sadamori Kojaku of Binghamton University, Munjung Kim, and Yong-Yeol Ahn. Together, they set out to measure what scholars often call “disruptiveness,” the degree to which a paper pulls a field away from its earlier path and pushes it somewhere new. “Science doesn’t evolve incrementally, but sometimes we see abrupt changes. Scholars are interested in when and why exactly the disruption happens,” Kojaku said. “And to do that, we need to create a metric to kind of tell scholars, ‘OK, this is the disruption happening in a given year.’” Their answer was a …

China Is Rapidly Overtaking the United States as the World’s Scientific Superpower

China Is Rapidly Overtaking the United States as the World’s Scientific Superpower

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The Trump administration has taken a bulldozer to science funding over the last year and change, wiping out more than 7,800 research grants, cutting 25,000 scientists from government agencies, and proposing tens of billions of dollars in further scientific funding cuts — scientific bloodshed that’s disproportionally targeting research into misinformation, vaccines, infectious diseases, and other crucial topics. It could easily backfire. The administration’s war on science could greatly undermine the country’s decades-long stance as the global leader in research and development investment since the end of the Second World War, a recent forecast by science policy researchers found. That could allow China, which has dramatically increased public spending on R&D while the US has been pulling back, to surge ahead as the US continues to suffer a stomach-churning brain drain. As The Atlantic points out, China’s population is four times as large and “unabashedly pro-science,” handing out twice as many STEM degrees compared to the US and almost …

Major scientific breakthrough reveals even cavemen had pet dogs | World | News

Major scientific breakthrough reveals even cavemen had pet dogs | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

14,300-year-old dog jawbone from Gough’s Cave, UK (Image: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum) Dogs were living alongside humans in Europe and Turkey around 16,000 years ago, a new study published reveals. Researchers analysed ancient DNA from archaeological sites, including Gough’s Cave in the UK and Pınarbaşı in Turkey, dating back to approximately 16,000-14,000 years ago, a time when all humans were hunter-gatherers and agriculture had not yet emerged. The findings have confirmed that these were some of the earliest known domestic dogs. While it has long been known that dogs descended from grey wolves, determining when their domestication occurred has been difficult. Early dog skeletons often resembled wolves, and previous studies relied on short DNA sequences or skeletal measurements, making early identification uncertain. However, in this study, scientists from 17 institutions recovered whole genomes from specimens older than 10,000 years. Comparing them with over 1,000 ancient and modern dogs and wolves confirmed the bones were dogs, pushing back the earliest direct evidence by more than 5,000 years. READ MORE: Scientific breakthrough as major …

The AI Scientist takes a big step toward end-to-end automation of scientific research

The AI Scientist takes a big step toward end-to-end automation of scientific research

Published by Jenni Sidey

A paper built entirely by artificial intelligence did not arrive with a flashy headline. At its core, the study delivers a surprisingly flat result: a promising technique that does nothing to improve how artificial neural networks learn. That outcome isn’t what’s important. What matters is the method itself—the way the research was carried out, which is where the paper’s real contribution lies. The real story is that an AI system, called The AI Scientist, helped carry out nearly the whole research pipeline that produced it, from generating ideas and searching prior work to running experiments, writing the manuscript and reviewing the result. The research findings, published in Nature, describe this as a step toward end-to-end automation of scientific research, at least in machine learning, where experiments can be run entirely on computers. That claim lands at an uneasy moment for science. Large language models are already being used to help with coding, literature reviews and data analysis. The AI Scientist pushes further, aiming to automate not just the routine labor around research, but the parts …

The Shocking Speed of China’s Scientific Rise

The Shocking Speed of China’s Scientific Rise

Published by José Betancourt

If China finally eclipses the United States as the world’s preeminent scientific superpower, there won’t be an official announcement. Neither will there necessarily be a dramatic Promethean demonstration, a bomb flash in the desert, a satellite beeping overhead, a moon landing. It will be a quiet moment, observed by a small, specialized subset of scientists who have forsaken the study of the stars, animals, and plants in favor of a more navel-gazing subject: the practice of science itself. This moment may now be at hand. American science has been the envy of the planet since the Second World War at least, but it has recently gone into decline. After President Trump took office last year, his administration started vandalizing the country’s scientific institutions, suspending research grants in bulk and putting entire lines of cutting-edge research on ice. In August, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services canceled $500 million in mRNA-vaccine research, less than two years after Americans won a Nobel Prize for pioneering that technology. More than 10,000 science Ph.D.s have left the federal …

Simply looking up inspires scientific exploration

Simply looking up inspires scientific exploration

Published by Jenni Sidey

The night sky, accessible to each of us, holds a sense of wonder unlike anything else. Although extended objects, like the plane of the Milky Way and a few distant galaxies beyond our own, are identifiable with the naked eye, there are only a few thousand stars that can be seen and resolved with the naked eye. Depending on your eyesight and the darkness conditions, most humans can see between 6000 and 9000 stars if you could see the entire sky at once. Credit: ESO/Håkon Dahle For countless generations, humanity’s skyward gaze has revealed a heavenly abyss. The effects of light pollution on what a naked-eye observer can see in the night sky. The artificial light produced by objects on the ground can wash out the naturally occurring objects in the night sky, rendering many objects unable to be seen. Light pollution can wash out all but the brightest meteors during a meteor shower. Credit: Stellarium Labs Today, light pollution and satellite contamination steal those pristine views from many of us. This image of Venus …

New neuroimaging study maps the brain networks behind scientific creative thinking

New neuroimaging study maps the brain networks behind scientific creative thinking

Published by José Betancourt

Scientists have identified the brain networks that work together when people generate creative scientific ideas, according to a new study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Creativity is often associated with the arts, but scientists rely on it just as much, especially when forming new hypotheses or explanations for puzzling phenomena. Despite this, scientific creativity has received far less attention than artistic creativity, or general creative thinking that does not require expert knowledge in a particular field. Previous studies have demonstrated that creative thinking in general tends to involve three major brain networks. The first is the default mode network, which helps people draw on memory and imagination. The second is the executive control network, which helps evaluate ideas, inhibit obvious responses, and maintain goals. The third is the salience network, which helps the brain switch between different modes of thinking (i.e., the default mode network and executive control network). These networks are known to interact during tasks like brainstorming unusual uses for everyday objects, but researchers were unclear if scientific creativity …

Artificial intelligence struggles to consistently evaluate scientific facts

Artificial intelligence struggles to consistently evaluate scientific facts

Published by José Betancourt

Generative artificial intelligence programs can write fluently, but they still struggle to accurately and consistently evaluate basic scientific statements. A recent study shows that when an artificial intelligence is asked the exact same question multiple times, it often gives completely different answers. These results, published in the Rutgers Business Review, highlight the limits of current automated reasoning and the ongoing need for human oversight. Generative artificial intelligence is a type of technology trained on massive databases of text to produce human-like writing. Millions of people now use these applications daily for tasks ranging from marketing to software development. The software writes with an authoritative tone that often sounds correct even when it is entirely wrong. Some high-profile consulting firms have even faced public embarrassment after relying on automated reports that included fabricated data. Despite these known flaws, many businesses have partnered with technology vendors to incorporate these tools into their daily operations. Professionals frequently rely on automated software to analyze data, answer customer queries, and summarize research. The researchers wanted to know if the logical …