Nature

Researchers at Tokyo Tech identify the quantum critical point in superconductors, solving a three-decade-old mystery and enhancing the understanding of superconductivity fluctuations. Credit: SciTechDaily.comThermoelectric effect reveals full picture of fluctuations in superconductivity.Weak fluctuations in superconductivity, a precursor phenomenon to superconductivity, have been successfully detected by a research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). This breakthrough was achieved by measuring the…

As far as English counties go, Sussex is not usually viewed as a cultural heavy-hitter. It boasts no equivalent of the Brontës or Thomas Hardy. Wordsworth never took time off from striding the northern Lakelands to stroll across the South Downs. True, Shelley was born on his family’s estate in Horsham, but he got out as soon as he was able, and never looked back. Painters similarly voted with their feet. William Gilpin, pioneer of the picturesque, toured the southern coastal counties in 1774 and, inevitably, given his…

Jane Weaver turns up to our interview in a Stockport restaurant carrying a plastic bag stuffed with albums. They are all old, the worse for wear – she’s taking them to be professionally cleaned later – and obscure: the closest the bag’s contents comes to mainstream is a compilation of soundtrack music from the 80s films of nouvelle vague director Eric Rohmer. “The music from the scenes set in discos or parties,” she nods. “Really good. Eighties, French, synthesisers. Some of it sounds a bit like Air.”This all seems very…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeA new horror film is making waves for completely flipping the slasher genre on its head.The first trailer for the film – titled In a Violent Nature – has been released online, proving why exactly the film received a rapturous response at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024.In a Violent Nature screened in the US festival’s “Midnight” strand, which is where films including The…

The large marsh grasshopper was once ever-present across Eastern England’s wetlands. But after decades of habitat destruction, these handsome insects are now fragmented and locally extinct, holding out in the wettest fens, valleys, and peat bogs of the New Forest and Dorset.Now, London-based Citizen Zoo is trying to bring them back—and it’s planning to do it by turning regular people into zookeepers. Reintroducing the grasshoppers to restored wetland sites across their historic range can bring huge benefits to ecosystems…

You might not think a cozy game like Stardew Valley would even need cheats. After all, the entire point of the game is to relax, build up your farm, and make friends with the other townsfolk, right? Sure, but there are also a lot of challenging and time-consuming objectives that have been added over the many years of support. Plus, sometimes people just want to play a game on their own terms. In either case, cheats can help you farm up some fun times, so let’s harvest every one there is to enjoy. All Stardew Valley…

Computing power to develop artificial intelligence does not come cheap. While you can build a simple AI chatbot for next to nothing, training a fine-tuned model on large data sets can cost millions of dollars.In order to lower the costs associated with training AI the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, has launched a programme called Scaling Compute. The initiative is committing £42mn to find new, more economic alternatives to the energy-intensive hardware currently utilised…

Nine kilometres beneath the sea off the coast of Japan, there are fields of yellow flowers that stretch for hundreds of miles. They are not real flowers – not even plants at all but animals called crinoids, related to sea urchins and starfish, which anchor themselves to the deep seabed and feed off plankton filtered by their delicate frond-like arms.The cliche that we know more about the surface of the moon than about our own oceans is given vivid new currency in this blend of natural history, popular science, travelogue…

Illustrative representation of how exposure to nature environments may positively influence human time perception when compared to urban environments by (i) expanding temporal duration perception and (ii) shifting temporal perspective. The icons used in the figure were obtained from flaticon.com. Credit: People and Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10601 According to a new study published in People and Nature, there is mounting…

The singer joined Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus to show their appreciation for the planet Brandi Carlile will be stopping by Sesame Street on Thursday to help Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, also known as Snuffy, celebrate all things nature. In an exclusive clip from the episode, which teaches kids about the environment, Carlile explains that “Nature is all around us, it’s everything around us not made by people.” To help her two friends learn more about what Earth is all about, the singer…