An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Greenhouse gas reduction is no longer a priority for the US government, but if you're looking for a new vehicle and want to buy something with the lowest life cycle carbon emissions, you're best off looking for a compact with a small battery. That's one of the findings from a group at the University of Michigan of a comprehensive study that calculates the overall cradle-to-grave carbon impact for different types of vehicles, including factors like powertrain options, location (within the country), and use patterns. Even better, they built a tool you can use yourself. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, compares internal combustion engine powertrains with hybrid, 35- and 50-mile range plug-in hybrids, and 200-mile, 300-mile, and 400-mile battery electric powertrains across compact and midsize sedans, small and midsize SUVs, and pickup trucks, using a life cycle assessment model developed by Argonne National Laboratory and data of model year 2025 vehicles from the Environmental Protection Agency. If you expected that a gas-powered pickup truck would have the biggest carbon footprint, you'd be right. With a driving profile of 43 percent city driving and the rest highways (no cargo), a pickup will emit about 486 g CO2e per mile. Compared to that, a compact electric sedan with a 200-mile battery has just 17 percent of the life cycle emissions and is responsible for just 81 g CO2e per mile. A short-range electric pickup -- maybe that Slate that so many are salivating over -- is nearly as good, with a footprint that's only 25 percent the size of the gas pickup truck. On the other hand, hybrid powertrains (the kind that don't plug in) only reduce life cycle carbon compared to internal combustion alone by a modest amount -- between 11 and 13 percent, depending on the vehicle class. Plug-in hybrids with 35 miles of range can reduce emissions compared to plain combustion by 53-56 percent; with 50-mile batteries the reduction is 56-60 percent, assuming the PHEVs were driven in electric mode for 58 percent and 69 percent of the time, respectively. When it comes to BEVs, the smallest battery pack always has the least environmental impact. BEV powertrains with 400 miles of range have lifecycle emissions that are 67-69 percent lower than an ICE powertrain in the same vehicle. For 300-mile BEVs, this is an 81-83 percent reduction. A 200-mile BEV can be expected to contribute just 25-26 percent as much CO2e as an equivalent gas-burning vehicle would. That's not because EVs with big batteries are inefficient -- far from it -- but because making a battery for an EV is a very energy-intensive process. Most emissions from internal combustion engine (92 percent) and hybrid (89 percent) vehicles come from their use on the roads. But this changes once you start adding significant kWh-worth of battery. For PHEVs, the use phase is more like 73-80 percent, and for BEVs, it's just 48-60 percent, depending on the size of the batteries. The researchers also modeled different driving behaviors, including the use cases of someone who uses their vehicle just to commute and run errands; the "occasional road-tripper," most of whose needs are met by a small battery; and a contractor or someone else who has to drive a lot for work, with varying amounts of cargo onboard. As we've known for some time, where you get your energy from affects how clean your EV will be, and switching from gasoline to an EV has more of an impact in Seattle (which relies on hydropower) versus Cincinnati (where the electricity comes from burning coal), for both PHEVs and BEVs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Farmers Insurance disclosed a breach affecting 1.1 million customers after attackers exploited Salesforce in a widespread campaign involving ShinyHunters and allied groups. According to BleepingComputer, the hackers stole personal data such as names, birth dates, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. From the report: The company disclosed the data breach in an advisory on its website, saying that its database at a third-party vendor was breached on May 29, 2025. "On May 30, 2025, one of Farmers' third-party vendors alerted Farmers to suspicious activity involving an unauthorized actor accessing one of the vendor's databases containing Farmers customer information (the "Incident")," reads the data breach notification (PDF) on its website. "The third-party vendor had monitoring tools in place, which allowed the vendor to quickly detect the activity and take appropriate containment measures, including blocking the unauthorized actor. After learning of the activity, Farmers immediately launched a comprehensive investigation to determine the nature and scope of the Incident and notified appropriate law enforcement authorities." The company says that its investigation determined that customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and/or last four digits of Social Security numbers were stolen during the breach. Farmers began sending data breach notifications to impacted individuals on August 22, with a sample notification [1, 2] shared with the Maine Attorney General's Office, stating that a combined total of 1,111,386 customers were impacted. While Farmers did not disclose the name of the third-party vendor, BleepingComputer has learned that the data was stolen in the widespread Salesforce data theft attacks that have impacted numerous organizations this year. Further reading: Google Suffers Data Breach in Ongoing Salesforce Data Theft Attacks

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Tyson writes via Tom's Hardware: On this day 34 years ago, an unknown computer science student from Finland announced that a new free operating system project was "starting to get ready." Linus Benedict Torvalds elaborated by explaining that the OS was "just a hobby, [it] won't be big and professional like GNU." Of course, this was the first public outing for the colossal collaborative project that is now known as Linux. Above, you can see Torvalds' first posting regarding Linux to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. The now famously caustic, cantankerous, curmudgeon seemed relatively mild, meek, and malleable in this historic Linux milestone posting. Torvalds asked the Minix community about their thoughts on a free new OS being prepared for Intel 386 and 486 clones. He explained that he'd been brewing the project since April (a few months prior), and asked for direction. Specifically, he sought input about other Minix users' likes and dislikes of that OS, in order to differentiate Linux. The now renowned developer then provided a rough summary of the development so far. Some features of Linux that Torvalds thought were important, or that he was particularly proud of, were then highlighted in the newsgroup posting. For example, the Linux chief mentioned his OS's multithreaded file system, and its absence of any Minix code. However, he humbly admitted the code as it stood was Intel x86 specific, and thus "is not portable." Last but not least, Torvalds let it be known that version 0.01 of this free OS would be out in the coming month (September 1991). It was indeed released on September 17, 1991, but someone else decided on the OS name at the last minute. Apparently, Torvalds didn't want to release his new OS under the name of Linux, as it would be too egotistical, too self-aggrandizing. He preferred Freax, a portmanteau word formed from Free-and-X. However, one of Torvald's colleagues, who was the administrator for the project's FTP server, did not think that 'Freax' was an appealing name for the OS. So this co-worker went ahead and uploaded the OS as 'Linux' on that date in September, without asking Torvalds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Struggling small biotech firms are pivoting into cryptocurrencies, rebranding as "crypto treasuries" or stockpiling digital assets like Ether and Litecoin as a last-ditch effort to boost share prices amid stalled funding and weak drug pipelines. Bloomberg reports: Shares of 180 Life Sciences Corp., now doing business as ETHZilla, tripled after the Peter Thiel-backed company said it had accumulated Ether tokens worth over $350 million. Less than two weeks later, the stock's gains have been erased. In July, Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings soared 243% in one volatile session on plans to transform into a public crypto treasury while MEI Pharma Inc. initially doubled on plans to sell shares to fund a Litecoin treasury. Such about-faces are a tried-and-true formula for small firms when funds are low and shares are under pressure. For drugmakers it can be a sudden shift to chase after trendy new treatment targets, still other companies rebrand with buzzwords like artificial intelligence to juice returns. Now some biotech executives are using digital coins to pump new life into flagging shares. So far in 2025, at least 10 biotechs have announced a pivot into digital assets. The announcements frequently spark frenzied, but short-lived, spikes in shares. "If they're low on ideas, if they can't find relevance in drug development, they're going to try to justify their existence as management in another way," according to Mike Taylor, lead portfolio manager of the Simplify Health Care ETF. "You have a handful of companies trying to reinvent themselves into some other tangent. And, most, if not all won't work out."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD's X3D-series Ryzen chips have become popular with PC gamers because games in particular happen to benefit disproportionately from the chips' extra 64MB of L3 cache memory. But that extra memory occasionally comes with extra headaches. Not long after they were released earlier this year, some early adopters started having problems with their CPUs, ranging from failure to boot to actual physical scorching and burnout -- the problems were particularly common for users of the 9800X3D processor in ASRock motherboards, and one Reddit thread currently records 157 incidents of failure for that CPU model across various ASRock boards. In an interview with the Korean language website Quasar Zone (via Tom's Hardware), AMD executives David McAfee and Travis Kirsch acknowledged the problems and pointed to the most likely culprit: motherboard makers who don't follow AMD's recommended specifications. Some manufacturers have historically shipped their AMD and Intel motherboards with elevated default power settings in the interest of squeezing a bit more performance out of the chips -- but those adjustments can also cause problems in some cases, especially for higher-end CPUs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has filed a lawsuit against former Apple Watch staffer Dr. Chen Shi, alleging that he "conspired to steal Apple's trade secrets relating to Apple Watch and to disclose them to his new employers (Oppo)." The company alleges he downloaded 63 sensitive documents, attended technical meetings, and coordinated with Oppo to transfer proprietary information, though Oppo denies wrongdoing. The Verge reports: Ahead of starting his new job at Oppo, the employee, Dr. Chen Shi, attended "dozens" of meetings with technical members on the Apple Watch team to learn about their work and downloaded 63 documents "from a protected Box folder" that he loaded onto a USB drive, according to the lawsuit. Shi allegedly sent a message to Oppo saying that he was working to "collect as much information as possible" before starting his job. And he searched the internet for terms like "how to wipe out macbook" and "Can somebody see if I've opened a file on a shared drive?" from his Apple-issued MacBook before leaving the company. Shi was formerly a sensor system architect at Apple, and the company says he had "a front row seat to Apple's development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology." He now heads up a team working on sensing technology at Oppo -- which Apple says it learned because of "messages he left on his Apple-issued work iPhone." In his resignation letter to Apple, Shi said he was leaving "due to personal and family reasons." Via that iPhone, Apple also says it found messages from Oppo demonstrating that it "encouraged, approved, and agreed to Dr. Shi's plan to collect Apple's proprietary information before leaving Apple."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia has launched its Jetson AGX Thor robotics chip module, a $3,499 "robot brain" developer kit that starts shipping next month. CNBC reports: After a company uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia will sell Thor T5000 modules that can be installed in production-ready robots. If a company needs more than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia will charge $2,999 per module. CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company's largest growth opportunity outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to Nvidia's overall sales more than tripling in the past two years. "We do not build robots, we do not build cars, but we enable the whole industry with our infrastructure computers and the associated software," said Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and edge AI, on a call with reporters Friday. The Jetson Thor chips are based on a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia's current generation of technology used in its AI chips, as well as its chips for computer games. Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its previous generation. That allows them to run generative AI models, including large language models and visual models that can interpret the world around them, which is essential for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is essential for big AI models. [...] The company said its Jetson Thor chips can be used for self-driving cars as well, especially from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and while they are similar to its robotics chips, they run an operating system called Drive OS that's been tuned for automotive purposes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PYMNTS: Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has announced a new subscription program called Comet Plus that it said gives users access to premium content from trusted publishers and journalists, while providing publishers with a better compensation model. "Comet Plus transforms how publishers are compensated in the AI age," the company said in a Monday blog post. "As users demand a better internet in the age of AI, it's time for a business model to ensure that publishers and journalists benefit from their contributions to a better internet." Comet Plus is included in Perplexity's Pro and Max memberships and is available as a standalone subscription for $5 per month. Perplexity introduced its Comet AI-powered browser in July, saying the tool lets users answer questions and carry out tasks and research from a single interface. Bloomberg reported Monday that Perplexity has allocated $42.5 million for a revenue sharing program that compensates publishers when their content is used by its Comet browser or AI assistant. The program will use funds that come from Comet Plus and will deliver 80% of the revenue to publishers, with Perplexity getting the other 20%, the report said, citing an interview with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. "AI is helping to create a better internet, but publishers still need to get paid," Srinivas said in the report. "Sowe think this is actually the right solution, and we're happy to make adjustments along the way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission is warning major U.S. tech companies against yielding to foreign government demands that weaken data security, compromise encryption, or impose censorship on their platforms. From a report: FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson signed the letter sent to large American companies like Akamai, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack, and X (Twitter). Ferguson stresses that weakening data security at the request of foreign governments, especially if they don't alert users about it, would constitute a violation of the FTC Act and expose companies to legal consequences. Ferguson's letter specifically cites foreign laws such as the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety and Investigatory Powers Acts. Earlier this year, Apple was forced to remove support for iCloud end-to-end encryption in the United Kingdom rather than give in to demands to add a backdoor for the government to access encrypted accounts. The UK's demand would have weakened Apple's encryption globally, but it was retracted last week following U.S. diplomatic pressure.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel said Monday that converting $8.87 billion in federal chip subsidies into a 10% equity stake creates unprecedented complications and potential "adverse reactions" for a company deriving 76% of revenue internationally. The arrangement transforms Biden-era CHIPS Act grants into share purchases at $20.74 -- a discount to Friday's $24.80 close -- with the Department of Commerce receiving up to 433 million shares by Tuesday's expected closing. Foreign governments may impose additional regulations on Intel due to US government ownership, the company warned in securities filings, while the precedent could discourage other nations from offering grants if they expect similar equity conversions. China alone represents 29% of Intel's revenue. The deal also restricts Intel's strategic flexibility, requiring government votes align with board recommendations except on matters affecting federal interests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Living through extreme heat waves can accelerate your rate of aging, according to research published Monday. From a report: Scientists analyzed 15 years' worth of health data from nearly 25,000 adults in Taiwan and found that two years of exposure to heat waves could speed up a person's so-called biological aging by eight to 12 extra days. It may not sound like a lot, but this number builds over time, said Cui Guo, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who led the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. "This small number actually matters," she said. "This was a study of a two-year exposure, but we know heat waves have actually been occurring for decades." The research comes as human-induced climate change is making heat waves more intense and long-lasting. The West Coast of the United States is suffering from sweltering temperatures while Iran is experiencing searing heat. Record-breaking temperatures punished Europe, Japan and Korea earlier this month. France recently experienced its second heat wave of the summer, sparking a national debate over air-conditioning.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google will require identity verification for all Android app developers, including those distributing apps outside the Play Store, starting September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand before expanding globally through 2027. Developers must register through a new Android Developer Console beginning March 2026. The requirement applies to certified Android devices running Google Mobile Services. Google cited malware prevention as the primary motivation, noting sideloaded apps contain 50 times more malware than Play Store apps. Hobbyist and student developers will receive separate account types. Developer information submitted to Google will not be displayed to users.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researchers have uncovered critical vulnerabilities in Perplexity's Comet browser that enable attackers to hijack user accounts and execute malicious code through the browser's AI summarization features. The flaws, discovered independently by Brave and Guardio Labs, exploit indirect prompt injection attacks that bypass traditional web security mechanisms when users request webpage summaries. Brave demonstrated account takeover through a malicious Reddit post that compromised Perplexity accounts when summarized. The vulnerability allows attackers to embed commands in webpage content that the browser's large language model executes with full user privileges across authenticated sessions. Guardio's testing found the browser would complete phishing transactions and prompt users for banking credentials without warning indicators. The paid browser, available to Perplexity Pro and Enterprise Pro subscribers since July, processes untrusted webpage content without distinguishing between legitimate instructions and attacker payloads.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group representing the world's biggest stock exchanges has called on securities regulators to clamp down on so-called tokenised stocks, arguing that the blockchain-based tokens create new risks for investors and could harm market integrity. From a report: Crypto exchange Coinbase and broker Robinhood are among those making a push into the nascent sector that could shake up the securities investing landscape. Proponents say tokenised equities can cut trading costs, speed up settlement and facilitate around-the-clock trading. The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), in a letter sent to three regulatory bodies last Friday, said it was concerned the tokens "mimic" equities without providing the same rights or trading safeguards.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk's AI startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence. Musk earlier this month had threatened to sue Cupertino, California-based Apple, saying in a post on his social media platform X that "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"For a few dozen people in the world, the downside of living with a rare immune condition comes with a surprising superpower — the ability to fight off all viruses..." notes an announcement from Columbia University. "At first, the condition only seemed to increase vulnerability to some bacterial infections. But as more patients were identified, its unexpected antiviral benefits became apparent." Columbia immunologist Dusan Bogunovic discovered the individuals' antiviral powers about 15 years ago, soon after he identified the genetic mutation that causes the condition... Bogunovic, a professor of pediatric immunology at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, soon learned that everyone with the mutation, which causes a deficiency in an immune regulator called ISG15, has mild, but persistent systemic inflammation... "In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that if we could produce this type of light immune activation in other people, we could protect them from just about any virus," Bogunovic says. Today, Bogunovic is closing in on a therapeutic strategy that could provide that broad-spectrum protection against viruses and become an important weapon in next pandemic. In his latest study, published August 13 in Science Translational Medicine, Bogunovic and his team report that an experimental therapy they've developed temporarily gives recipients (hamsters and mice, so far) the same antiviral superpower as people with ISG15 deficiency. When administered prophylactically into the animals' lungs via a nasal drip, the therapy prevented viral replication of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and lessened disease severity. In cell culture, "we have yet to find a virus that can break through the therapy's defenses," Bogunovic says... Bogunovic's therapeutic turns on production of 10 proteins that are primarily responsible for the broad antiviral protection. The current design resembles COVID mRNA vaccines but with a twist: Ten mRNAs encoding the 10 proteins are packaged inside a lipid nanoparticle. Once the nanoparticles are absorbed by the recipient's cells, the cells generate the ten host proteins to produce the antiviral protection. "We only generate a small amount of these ten proteins, for a very short time, and that leads to much less inflammation than what we see in ISG15-deficient individuals," Bogunovic says. "But that inflammation is enough to prevent antiviral diseases...." "We believe the technology will work even if we don't know the identity of the virus," Bogunovic says. Importantly, the antiviral protection provided by the technology will not prevent people from developing their own immunological memory to the virus for longer-term protection. "Our findings reinforce the power of research driven by curiosity without preconceived notions," Bogunovic says in the announcement. "We were not looking for an antiviral when we began studying our rare patients, but the studies have inspired the potential development of a universal antiviral for everyone." More coverage from ScienceAlert.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A fierce dust storm hit the Black Rock Desert on the eve of its annual Burning Man festival," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "causing at least four minor injuries and damaging campsites that had been set up early." [Alternate URL] "Winds of up to 50 mph stirred up the lake bed's alkaline dust so ferociously that participants in the annual art and culture festival reported not being able to see beyond a foot... " The dust storm arrived Saturday evening after strong thunderstorms in the Sierra Nevada drifted off the mountains and whipped up strong winds in the Nevada desert... At 5:14 p.m. Saturday, the weather service issued a dust storm advisory for Black Rock City and warned of "a wall of blowing dust coming off the Smoke Creek and Black Rock Desert playa areas is tracking northward at around 30 mph." The agency warned of visibility less than 1 mile and wind gusts exceeding 45 mph. A weather station at Black Rock City Airport measured gusts up to 52 mph at 5:50 p.m... ["We saw structures being ripped and torn down by the wind speeds even though we buttoned everything down as best as we could..." one Burner told the Chronicle.] Camp residents posted a slew of videos to social media featuring dust tornadoes, destroyed campsites, and fellow campers struggling to hold onto bucking canvases as the wind threatened to rip them away. "Every popup canopy I've seen has been destroyed," one Burner wrote on Reddit... ["Make sure you carry your particle/dust mask and goggles with you when you venture out on playa!" warns Burning Man's official weather page.] Even after Saturday's storm, Burners won't be out of the woods from hazardous weather. The weather service warned of possible monsoon thunderstorms and heavy rain Sunday through Wednesday, raising concerns that this year's festival could echo disastrous 2023 conditions, when heavy storms stranded tens of thousands of attendees amid thick mud. "It's becoming increasingly likely that we could see an even greater flash flood threat," the weather service wrote in an online forecast. "If you're on the playa at the Black Rock Desert, you may very well be in for a muddy mess Monday through Wednesday." Slow-moving storms could drop an inch of rain or more in a short period. "Still, gates to the festival had opened by Sunday morning," the article adds, "with organizers cautioning new arrivals to 'drive safely!'" Burning Man's official weather page currently links to a National Weather Service page with a "Flood Watch" warning through 9 p.m. Sunday, and also predicting a chance of thunderstorms on Sunday and Monday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After the Tea dating-advice app leaked information on its users, the BBC found two online maps "purporting to represent the locations of women who had signed up for Tea... showing 33,000 pins spread across the United States." The maps were hosted on Google Maps. (Notified by the BBC, Google deleted the maps, saying they violated their harassment policies.) "Since the breach, more than 10 women have filed class actions against the company which owns Tea," the article points out, noting that leaked content is also spreading around social media: Since the breach, the BBC has found websites, apps and even a "game" featuring the leaked data... The "game" puts the selfies submitted by women head-to-head, instructing users to click on the one they prefer, with leaderboards of the "top 50" and "bottom 50"... [And one researcher calculates more than 12,000 posts on 4Chan referenced the Tea app over the three weeks after the leak.] It is unsurprising that the leak was exploited. The app had drawn criticism ever since it had grown in popularity. Defamation, with the spread of unproven allegations, and doxxing, when someone's identifying information is published without their consent, were real possibilities. Men's groups had wanted to take the app down — and when they found the data breach, they saw it as a chance for retribution. They weren't the only ones with a gripe against Tea. Back in 2023 the fiance of Tea's CEO founder approached the administrator of a collection of Facebook groups called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" to see if she'd be the "face" of the Tea app, reports 404 Media. But they add that after Tea failed to recruit her, Tea "shifted tactics" to raid her Facebook groups instead: Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app. Reviews for the Tea app show several women later thought the app was affiliated with their trusted Facebook groups, the reporter said this week on a 404 Media podcast. And they add that founder Sean Cook took over the "Tara" personna that his fiance has used for technical support. "So he's on the app pretend to be a woman, talking to other women who are on the app in order to weed out men who are being deceptive..." Thanks to Slashdot reader samleecole for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The truly universal properties of languages are not independent of our physiology and cognition," argues the co-author of a new study. Instead he says their research "strengthens the idea that intonation units are a universal feature of language." Phys.org explains: Have you ever noticed that a natural conversation flows like a dance — pauses, emphases, and turns arriving just in time? A new study has discovered that this isn't just intuition; there is a biological rhythm embedded in our speech... According to the study, led by Dr. Maya Inbar, alongside Professors Eitan Grossman and Ayelet N. Landau, human speech across the world pulses to the beat of what are called intonation units, short prosodic phrases that occur at a consistent rate of one every 1.6 seconds. The research analyzed over 650 recordings in 48 languages spanning every continent and 27 language families. Using a novel algorithm, the team was able to automatically identify intonation units in spontaneous speech, revealing that regardless of the language spoken, from English and Russian to endangered languages in remote regions, people naturally break their speech into these rhythmic chunks. "These findings suggest that the way we pace our speech isn't just a cultural artifact, it's deeply rooted in human cognition and biology," says Dr. Inbar. "We also show that the rhythm of intonation units is unrelated to faster rhythms in speech, such as the rhythm of syllables, and thus likely serves a different cognitive role...." Most intriguingly, the low-frequency rhythm they follow mirrors patterns in brain activity linked to memory, attention, and volitional action, illuminating the profound connection between how we speak and how we think. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The ultimate test of climate projections is to compare them with what has played out..." says earth sciences professor Torbjörn Törnqvist, lead author on a new study published in the open-access journal Earth's Future (published by the American Geophysical Union). But after "decades of observations," he says his researchers "were quite amazed how good those early projections were, especially when you think about how crude the models were back then, compared to what is available now." "For anyone who questions the role of humans in changing our climate, here is some of the best proof that we have understood for decades what is really happening, and that we can make credible projections...." A new era of monitoring global sea-level change took off when satellites were launched in the early 1990s to measure the height of the ocean surface. This showed that the rate of global sea-level rise since that time has averaged about one eighth of an inch per year. Only more recently, it became possible to detect that the rate of global sea-level rise is accelerating. When NASA researchers demonstrated in October 2024 that the rate has doubled during this 30-year period, the time was right to compare this finding with projections that were made during the mid-1990s, independent of the satellite measurements. In 1996, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published an assessment report soon after the satellite-based sea-level measurements had started. It projected that the most likely amount of global sea-level rise over the next 30 years would be almost 8 centimeters (3 inches), remarkably close to the 9 centimeters that has occurred. But it also underestimated the role of melting ice sheets by more than 2 centimeters (about 1 inch). At the time, little was known about the role of warming ocean waters and how that could destabilize marine sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from below. Ice flow from the Greenland Ice Sheet into the ocean has also been faster than foreseen. "The findings provide confidence in model-based climate projections," according to the paper. Again, its two key points: The largest disparities between projections and observations were due to underestimated dynamic mass loss of ice sheets Comparison of past projections with subsequent observations gives confidence in future climate projections Thanks to Slashdot reader Mr. Dollar Ton for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.