New Scientist - News

1. Fat Bear Week: How Alaska's brown bears nearly double in size
   Brown bears in Katmai National Park can eat up to 160,000 calories a day to prepare for winter, but how do they know it's feasting time?
2. Why we know so little about cannabis – and why scientists are worried
   While research on marijuana has surged in the last 20 years, our understanding of the drug is decades behind that of other substances, like tobacco and alcohol
3. Quantum AI image generator is no match for ones on ordinary computers
   Artificial intelligence has generated recognisable images of things like shoes and T-shirts on a small quantum computer. They aren’t great, but the method could scale up to more powerful machines
4. Scientists have only just figured out how cats purr
   The low-pitched sound of purring is unusual for an animal with short vocal folds, but cats have other structures in their larynx that enable their contented rumbling
5. Robotic hand has the dexterity to handle tricky objects with care
   A sophisticated algorithm enables a robotic hand to rotate Rubik’s cubes and other objects in three axes, with potential applications on automated manufacturing lines
6. Cheaper malaria vaccine recommended by the WHO
   A second vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease should be available from next year, adding to the first that was launched in 2019
7. Nobel prize for physics goes to trio who sliced up time with light
   Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier figured out how to generate attosecond pulses of light, which last a billionth of a billionth of a second and can be used to make movies of electrons - a find that has won them the 2023 Nobel prize in physics
8. Large Hadron Collider turned into world's biggest quantum experiment
   Physicists have used the famous particle smasher to investigate the strange phenomena of quantum entanglement at far higher energies than ever before
9. Water may be forming on the moon thanks to Earth’s magnetic field
   For a few days each month, as the full moon sweeps through the stretched-out tail of Earth’s magnetic field, high-energy electrons seem to be helping form water molecules on the lunar surface
10. Force that holds atoms together measured more precisely than ever
    We know less about the strength of the strong force than of any of the other fundamental forces of nature, but researchers at CERN have now made the most precise measurement of it ever