Experimental

An experimental new weight loss pill from Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk could be twice as effective as its blockbuster Ozempic and Wegovy jabs, early results from a small trial have suggested, sending the firm's shares soaring.The drug amycretin caused people to lose 13 percent of their body weight over three months, according to the results of a phase one trial announced by the company.Previous trials have found that Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy drugs lead to around six percent body weight loss over the…

Artist’s concept of the X-66 aircraft that Boeing will produce through NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project. Credit: NASA As NASA and Boeing enter the early stages of producing the X-66, the first X-plane specifically focused on helping the United States achieve net-zero aviation emissions by 2050, the team is already picturing what the aircraft will look like soaring above the clouds.…

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is dramatically lit for a “glamour shot,” captured before its January 12, 2024, rollout at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale where the airplane was constructed. Credit: Lockheed Martin / Michael JacksonGround tests for NASA’s X-59 aircraft show promising advancements in recording quiet sonic booms, setting the stage for quieter supersonic travel.NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft is unique – it’s designed to fly faster than the speed of sound, but without…

Iceland-based Australian composer Ben Frost has the portfolio career of most avant garde musicians, dividing his time between scores for film, TV and video games while also making opera and art installations. An album project seems almost quaint, but his first in seven years houses some of his very best work.Cover art for Scope Neglect. Photograph: Publicity imageFrost has long tended towards symphonic grandeur, disrupting it with punkish guitar, glitching electronics and spooky sound design – with occasional spells of…

On Wednesday, February 21st, at 01:40 p.m. PST (04:40 p.m. EST), an interesting package returned to Earth from space.This was the capsule from the W-1 mission, an orbital platform manufactured by California-based Varda Space Industries, which landed at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). Even more interesting was the payload, which consisted of antiviral drugs grown in the microgravity environment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).The mission is part of the company's goal to develop the infrastructure to make LEO more…

Meta is currently testing a couple of capabilities for Threads, which Instagram head Adam Mosseri describes as some of the "most requested" features for the social network. One of these experimental features is the ability to save drafts. Users will be easily able to save a post they've typed as a draft that they can edit and publish later by swiping down on their mobile device's display. When there's a draft saved, the app's menu at the bottom of the screen highlights the post icon. At the moment, though, they can only…

Google has added an experimental generative AI feature to its browser with the launch of Chrome M122. The new AI tool is called "Help me write," because it can literally help you write more descriptive sentences or even full paragraphs from a short prompt. Google says the tool uses its Gemini models to understand the context of the web page you're on so that it could generate appropriate suggestions. If you're on a review page, for instance, it can give you a suggestion that reads like a review instead of a sales copy.…

Credit: Skinamarink/Shudder Director Kyle Edward Ball's feature film debut, Skinamarink, achieved unexpected commercial success last year after going viral on TikTok. Hailed by some critics as the best horror film of 2023, or even the scariest of all time, Skinamarink is a work of experimental slow cinema. The film's ambiguous and grainy imagery…

You could describe Kali Malone’s sixth album as her most approachable to date, but it’s perhaps wise to give a bit of context if you do.It is, after all, the follow-up to 2023’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy, which contained a grand total of three tracks – all versions of the same piece – and lasted over three hours. Featuring Malone playing a sine wave oscillator accompanied by cello and guitar, Does Spring Hide Its Joy was in itself substantially more approachable than, say, 2018’s Arched In Hysteria, a composition…

Denmark-born, London-based Astrid Sonne is part of that growing band of classically trained musicians who have moved into the realm of the pop singer-songwriter. Like Julia Holter, Mica Levi or Owen Pallett, she seems to draw from her conservatoire training as obliquely as a previous generation of rock stars might have drawn from their art school training. Instead of showing off her virtuosity as a viola player or her skills at writing four-part harmony, Sonne manipulates stray elements of 20th-century modernism and…