Tackling

Discarded plastic is everywhere, mucking up natural and developed environments alike. Australian scientists say they’ve discovered two varieties of fungi that will eat away at the problem. In a study published this week, researchers from the University of Sydney report that fungi commonly found in dirt have broken down plastic in their lab.If An AI Reworks Copyrighted Images, Is It Art? | Future TechThe researchers tested the ability of Aspergillus terreus and Engyodontium album to break down polypropylene, a type of…

Credit: Shutterstock South Africa has a food crisis. The food system—made up of all of the activities and actors involved in the production, processing, transportation, selling, consumption and disposal of food—produces starkly unequal access to nutritious foods. As a result, many households in the country cannot afford a healthy…

The US government is pushing for many more electric vehicles to hit the roads in the next few years. The problem is, the country doesn’t have nearly enough chargers to power them all. There are only about 130,000 public chargers currently installed across the US, and just a small fraction of them are fast chargers. That’s a 40% increase since 2020, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, but it’s still not enough. The US will need to build millions of new chargers within a decade.  What we don’t know is how…

Artistic rendering illustrating how the mechanical nanosurgery, a new approach developed by SickKids and University of Toronto researchers, targets cancer cells from inside the tumor, sparing healthy tissue in the process. Credit: Created by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) research team using MidjourneyMechanical nanosurgery, a new approach developed by scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, uses magnetic carbon nanotubes to target and destroy chemoresistant glioblastoma…

Credit: mooremedia/Shutterstock Research from the Children's Commissioner for England has found that 79% of children have encountered violent pornography before they are 18. One-third of young people have reported receiving nude videos or photographs, with more than half sent from strangers. There has also been a dramatic rise of…

In early 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, TikTok started labeling accounts operated by Russian state propaganda agencies as a way to tell users they were being exposed to Kremlin disinformation. However, it seems that TikTok was not doing the 'right job' here. According to an analysis from researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the policy has been applied inconsistently. It reportedly ignores dozens of accounts with millions of followers. Researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a…

If you feel like the past few years have been particularly hectic and stressful, you’re not alone. We doubt any period in human history could be described as uneventful, but the confluence of global crises, technological progress, and the proliferation of media has given our current moment a very specific—and occasionally overwhelming—texture. Everything! Everywhere! All at once!We wanted to offer a constructive outlet for the many data practitioners who’d like to think about solutions and pragmatic approaches to the…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeHow did we get here?” Emily Watson asks, frustratedly. “Where the victims of a horrific crime aren’t believed and the perpetrators are protected?” In her new film God’s Creatures, the Oscar-nominated star of Breaking the Waves and Punch-Drunk Love plays Aileen, a seafood processor in rural Ireland whose son Brian (Normal People’s Paul Mescal) is accused by a local girl of rape. The…

via Viva Films It goes without saying that anything vaguely erotic is going to find itself becoming suspiciously popular on streaming, and while it does deal with taboos and stigma in an industry predicated on titillation, viewers who’ve opted to take the plunge on Expensive Candy might just find themselves being blindsided by a genuinely moving romance. Written and directed by Jason Paul Laxamana, the story revolves around a forbidden love that becomes so strong at least one side of the potential partnership…

During its State of Unreal address at GDC 2023, Epic announced a wide-ranging suite of features for Unreal Engine 5.2. But perhaps the most important feature coming in the updated engine doesn’t relate to lighting, geometry detail, or ray tracing. It’s all about performance. Unreal Engine games, rightly or wrongly, have been associated with stuttering and hitches over the past few years. With the new release, Epic is finally tackling the problem head-on, so I thought it was high time to break down why Unreal games so…