SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
A leading expert in data ethics at Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, believes the establishment of principles for the governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not guarantee its trustworthy or ethical use by companies and organisations. Dr Brent Mittelstadt’s paper ‘Principles alone cannot guarantee ethical AI’, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, argues that a … Read more
Discovering ways to control the topological aspects of quantum materials is an important research frontier because it can lead to desirable electrical and spin transport properties for future device technologies. Now MPSD scientists have discovered a pioneering laser-driven approach to generate a topological state in graphene. Their work has just been published in Nature Physics. In topological … Read more
Published today in Scientific Reports they hope their method will provide a blueprint to create credible fakes that could eventually flood a market which has decimated the wild rhino population. In Chinese medicine rhino horn is believed to have many benefits, including working as an aphrodisiac. In reality the sellers are often cutting the horn with ground … Read more
Reducing humanity’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is arguably the greatest challenge facing 21st century civilisation – especially given the ever-increasing global population and the heightened energy demands that come with it. One beacon of hope is the idea that we could use renewable electricity to split water (H2O) to produce energy-rich hydrogen (H2), which could … Read more
University of Exeter scientists estimate that 267,000 tonnes of fish was discarded in the North Sea in 2010 – enough to feed 3.45 million birds. This discard figure is down from almost 510,000 tonnes – enough for an estimated 5.66 million birds – in 1990. Discarding in the North Sea – one of the places … Read more
Emperor penguins are some of the most striking and charismatic animals on Earth, but a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that a warming climate may render them extinct by the end of this century. The study, which was part of an international collaboration between scientists, published Nov. 7, 2019, … Read more
The discovery of the UM171 molecule, by Dr. Guy Sauvageau and Anne Marinier, made headlines in 2014 following an article in Science. Hailed by some as a revolution, even a miracle, in the field of blood stem cell transplantation, the UM171 molecule is delivering on its promise. After the two-year clinical trial, which used the … Read more
Scholars have been studying Rome for hundreds of years, but it still holds some secrets – for instance, relatively little is known about the ancestral origins of the city’s denizens. Now, an international team led by researchers from Stanford University, the University of Vienna and Sapienza University of Rome is filling in the gaps with … Read more
Scientists have linked the decline in Arctic sea ice to the emergence of a deadly virus that could threaten marine mammals in the North Pacific, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. Phocine distemper virus (PDV), a pathogen responsible for killing thousands of European harbor seals in the North Atlantic in 2002, … Read more
Why is it that people find songs such as James Taylor’s “Country Roads,” UB40’s “Red, Red Wine,” or The Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” so irresistibly enjoyable? In a study reported in the journal Current Biology on November 7, researchers analyze 80,000 chords in 745 classic U.S. Billboard pop songs – including those three – and find that musical … Read more