Science

It carries more than 100 times as much water as all the world’s rivers combined. It reaches from the ocean’s surface to its bottom, and measures as much as 2,000 kilometers across. It connects the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and plays a key role in regulating global climate. Continuously swirling around the southernmost continent, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is by far the world’s most powerful and consequential mover of water. In recent decades it has been speeding up, but scientists have been unsure whether that is connected to human-induced global warming, and whether the current might offset or amplify some of warming’s effects. In a new study, an international research team used sediment cores from the planet’s roughest and most remote waters to chart the ACC’s relat...

Noland Arbaugh can play chess using his Neuralink implantNeuralink Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company founded by Elon Musk, has revealed the identity of its first patient, who says the firm’s implant has “changed his life”. However, it isn’t yet clear that Neuralink has done anything beyond replicating existing research efforts, experts say. Who is Neuralink’s first patient? Musk announced in January that the first human patient had received a Neuralink implant, but little detail was released at the time. We now know – from a livestream video by the company – who that individual is and how the tests are going. Noland Arbaugh explains in the video that an accident eight years ago dislocated his fourth and fifth vertebrae, leaving him with quadriplegia. He p...

ARE there vastly many near-duplicates of you reading vastly many near-duplicates of this article in vastly many parallel universes? Is consciousness a fundamental property of all matter? Could reality be a computer simulation? Reader, I can hear your groans from here in California. We are inclined to reject ideas like these on the grounds that they sound preposterous. And yet some of the world’s leading scientists and philosophers advocate for them. Why? And how should you, assuming you aren’t an expert, react to these sorts of hypotheses? When we confront fundamental questions about the nature of reality, things quickly get weird. As a philosopher specialising in metaphysics, I submit that weirdness is inevitable, and that something radically bizarre will turn out to...

The Masters in Public Administration (MPA) program in Environmental Science and Policy at Columbia University is looking to hire teaching assistants (TAs) for its summer 2024 courses. The following positions are available: Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology/Risk Assessment (3 TA positions) Climatology and Hydrology (3 TA positions) Principles of Ecology and Urban Ecology (3 TA positions) Time Commitment and Responsibilities:The total semester-long time commitment expected for these positions will be equivalent to approximately 240 hours (avg of 20 hrs/week) and the pay level is $13,368 for the summer. The time commitment generally consists: of a three-hour morning lecture which TAs will attend, followed by two afternoon lab sections (each 2.5 hours in length) that the TA...

A miniature chair and table 3D printed from waste woodThakur et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadk3250 (2024) Recycled wood can be turned into an ink for 3D printing, which could offer a more sustainable way to manufacture furniture or even build houses. “Wood has been used for building and structural purposes for centuries,” says Muhammad Rahman at Rice University in Texas. But working with the material isn’t especially efficient, as chiselling it down to size can result in lots of waste. To make use of this leftover material, Rahman and his colleagues split it into lignin and cellulose – molecules that are key to the stiff structure of wood – and these were broken down to form nanofibres and nanocrystals. They then recombined the cellulose and lignin with water to make a ...