reshapes

“I write about families,” Natalia Ginzburg said, “because that is where everything starts, where the germs grow.” The French-born writer and musician Alba Arikha clearly agrees, and has set her brilliant third novel firmly within the crucible of two families: the one her narrator is born into and the one she makes herself as an adult. The narrator is Clara, who, at the start, is a 16-year-old living in Paris and shares some biographical details with her author. (But not the fact her godfather was Samuel Beckett and she…

The team has developed a world-leading MWP chip capable of performing ultrafast analog electronic signal processing and computation using optics. Credit: City University of Hong KongA research team has unveiled a microwave photonic chip that significantly enhances analog electronic signal processing, offering 1,000 times the speed and greater energy efficiency than existing processors. This innovation promises to revolutionize various sectors, including wireless communications and artificial intelligence.A research team…

Over 370 million years ago, the Devonian era saw significant biological evolution but ended in a mass extinction event. Recent research indicates that this extinction resulted from both volcanic activity and plant-driven deoxygenation. This study, combining various scientific disciplines, underscores the relevance of Earth’s history in addressing current environmental issues.A new study indicates that a combination of volcanic activity and oceanic purification processes drove Earth’s ecosystems to a tipping point.Diverse…

New research redefines the Habitable Zone of exoplanets by considering subglacial liquid water, extending potentially habitable conditions beyond traditional boundaries. Supported by recent JWST observations, this study broadens the scope for finding life on exoplanets, especially those orbiting M-dwarf stars.Professor Amri Wandel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has introduced groundbreaking research with the potential to transform our understanding of habitable exoplanets. His latest study, published in the…

Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Sunday, urging "caution and humility" as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work.Roberts struck an ambivalent tone in his 13-page report. He said AI had the potential to increase access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionise legal research and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply while also pointing…

Before Friday, OpenAI seemed unstoppable. Founded in 2015, OpenAI only became a household name in the past year or so following the release of its AI chatbot ChatGPT. If there was one company that explained the massive hype around AI it was OpenAI. Until Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—who has been on countless magazine covers and had testified at length before global regulators—was the public face of the AI boom.On Friday, all of that ended. OpenAI’s board of directors fired Altman in one of the most unexpected Friday news…

This image shows the huge galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+223, whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us. The huge mass of the cluster is bending the light from more distant objects. The light from these objects has been magnified and distorted due to gravitational lensing. The same effect is creating multiple images of the same distant objects. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Rodney (John Hopkins University, USA) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (University of California Los Angeles, USA), P. Kelly (University of California…

‘Reskill or perish’ seems to be top of mind for Indian techies, as they rush to upskill themselves in a fast-changing tech landscape where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a risk to jobs even as macroeconomic factors threaten to hamper IT sector growth in the short term.IBM earlier this week said it may pause hiring and replace an estimated 7,800 jobs with AI.Learning platforms including Simplilearn, Great Learning, Emeritus, Scaler, upGrad, and Coursera said they have seen a 20%-60% jump in IT professionals…

Time-restricted eating reshapes gene expression throughout the body. In this illustration, the Ferris wheel displays the interconnected organ systems working smoothly during time-restricted eating, which is represented by the clock in the middle. Credit: Salk InstituteSalk researchers find that timing calorie intake synchronizes circadian rhythms across multiple systems in mice.Numerous studies have shown health benefits of time-restricted eating including increase in life span in laboratory studies. This has made…

A surge in the cost of shipping oil between the world’s ports is buoying energy prices, even as a gloomy economic outlook has dragged down crude near its lowest levels of the year.  Economic fallout from the war in Ukraine has severed many of the short oil- and petroleum-product trading routes across the Baltic and North seas. Now, as Europe scrambles to find new suppliers and Russia looks to send exports elsewhere, tankers are spending more time on water before reaching their destinations.  Many shipments now spend five…