Upend

UCLA astrophysicists have used new simulations to uncover that the earliest galaxies may have been smaller and brighter than previously believed, challenging current dark matter theories. By incorporating interactions between gas and dark matter, their research suggests that these bright dwarf galaxies, if found by the James Webb Space Telescope, could validate existing models. However, their absence would prompt a reevaluation of our understanding of dark matter and the universe’s formation.Should theories of cold dark…

The Reserve Bank of India’s latest diktat to banks and card schemes like Visa and Mastercard to refrain from entering into exclusive arrangements could disrupt long-term symbiotic relationships between these two sectors.The directive is also set to disrupt the way banks undertake their credit card businesses and the commercials of those deals, according to senior bankers in the know.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in…

Jeffery DelViscio: Quantum and cryptography: those are two words that might strike fear in the minds of the uninitiated. But in February’s issue of Scientific American, we have a story about how they’re colliding—double whammy.Here to walk us through it is Kelsey Houston-Edwards. Kelsey is a mathematician and journalist. She formerly wrote and hosted the online show PBS Infinite Series. And she wrote this story, called “Tomorrow’s Quantum Computers Threaten Today’s Secrets. Here’s How to Protect Them.”Welcome to Science,…

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesEli Lilly is shaking up the pharmaceutical industry with a new website offering telehealth prescriptions and direct home delivery of certain drugs, including its red-hot weight loss treatment Zepbound, to expand patient access. The company's direct-to-consumer push announced Thursday, the first of its kind for a big drugmaker, won't necessarily upend the pharmaceutical industry and the prescription drug supply chain alone, according to some analysts.But other drugmakers could follow…

By Miles Kruppa | Photographs by Carolyn Fong for The Wall Street Journal Perplexity, a startup going after Google’s dominant position in web search, has won backing from Jeff Bezos and venture capitalists betting that artificial intelligence will upend the way people find information online.Started less than two years ago, Perplexity has fewer than 40 employees and is based out of a San Francisco co-working space. The company’s product, which it calls an answer engine, is used by about 10 million people…

“We know from direct imaging searches of young stars that very few stars have giant planets in orbits,” Bate said. “It is difficult to accept that there were many large planetary systems in Orion to disrupt.”Rogue Objects AboundAt this point, many researchers suspect there’s more than one way to make these strange in-between objects. For instance, with some fiddling, theorists might find that supernova shock waves can compress smaller gas clouds and help them to collapse into pairs of tiny stars more readily than…

Jami Ganz | (TNS) New York Daily News NEW YORK — Lights, camera, pause. Hollywood is officially on hiatus as the union representing on-screen talent has joined screenwriters in striking against the studios, amid stalled contract negotiations. SAG-AFTRA officially announced its strike would commence at midnight PST Friday, after the union’s contract expired late Wednesday and negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) fell apart. Union leadership noted that while the strike was “an…

PALO ALTO, Calif. — A dozen students huddled at communal classroom tables one morning this spring, their gazes fixed on math lessons on their laptops. The sixth graders at Khan Lab School, an independent school with an elementary campus in Palo Alto, California, were working on quadratic equations, graphing functions, Venn diagrams. But when they ran into questions, many did not immediately summon their teacher for help. They used a text box alongside their lessons to request help from Khanmigo, an experimental chatbot…

An example of a summer population of Limacina rangii from the Scotia Sea. Larger juveniles living alongside a smaller, larval stage cohort. Credit: Dr. Vicky PeckResearchers investigating the life cycles of pteropods in the Southern Ocean have discovered varying degrees of susceptibility to oceanic changes among different species.Approximately one-fourth of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are absorbed by the world’s oceans. When this absorption occurs, CO2 interacts with seawater, leading to a drop in the ocean’s pH…

Fossilized plants can provide much information about plant diversification and the planet’s geography and evolution. Researchers have discovered an ancient chili pepper from Colorado that may upend our understanding of when and where the plant originated.The nightshade family of plants, Solanaceae, is large, with more than 2,000 species that include tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers (capsicum), and chili peppers. It’s always been thought that the chili pepper tribe, Capsiceae, evolved in South America about 10 to 15…