Stephen Knox Jones moved to Vilnius with his wife, Eva Sadler, and his dog, Audrey Sparkles. Credit: Eva Sadler Voices from Lithuania In May, Lithuania marks 20 years of European Union membership. The Baltic country is keen to develop its global presence in the life sciences and biotechnology sectors by retaining home-grown talent, persuading scientists … Read more
Described by Nature as the “gilded cousin of Graphene”, Goldene is a one-atom-thick sheet of gold created by scientists from Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden. It has unique properties that the researchers believe could pave the way for applications such as carbon dioxide conversion, hydrogen production, water purification, and communication. Shun Kashiwaya, a researcher at … Read more
LLMs such as ChatGPT might just be the next cybersecurity worry, according to the latest findings by researchers. Previously believed to only be able to exploit simpler cybersecurity vulnerabilities, LLMs have shown a surprisingly high proficiency in exploiting complex ones as well. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) found that GPT-4 demonstrates a … Read more
The majority of personal gadgets feature LCD and OLED screens, but most just show information. To make these screens do more – like detecting touch or changing light levels – they need additional sensors. Researchers at Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden have invented a new kind of screen where all these sensor functions are built … Read more
Inspired by the nutrition-facts labels that have been displayed on US food packaging since the 1990s, John Willinsky wants to see academic publishing take a similar approach to help to inform readers on how strictly a paper meets scholarly standards. A team at the Public Knowledge Project, a non-profit organization run by Willinsky and his … Read more
Every year, 6 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the rivers and on coastlines.Credit: Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty The fourth round of negotiations on a global treaty to end plastic pollution starts next week. The good news is that nations meeting in Ottawa have given themselves until the end of this year … Read more
Climate litigation is in the spotlight again after a landmark decision last week. The top European human-rights court deemed that the Swiss government was violating its citizens’ human rights through its lack of climate action. The case, brought by more than 2,000 older women, is one of more than 2,300 climate lawsuits that have been … Read more
Apple researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system named ReALM (Reference Resolution as Language Modeling) that aims to radically enhance how voice assistants understand and respond to commands. In a research paper (via VentureBeat), Apple outlines a new system for how large language models tackle reference resolution, which involves deciphering ambiguous references to on-screen entities, … Read more
Sam Bankman-Fried, former chief executive of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of fraud and money laundering last year. Meanwhile, the broader fallout from the collapse of FTX continues — and has ramifications on research that his organizations funded. Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX in 2019. Before … Read more
Deciding which projects to pursue can be daunting, but a simple framework can help you to decide which ones are the best fit.Credit: Biwa Studio/Getty All three of us have, at some point in our academic careers, taken on one too many projects. For example, M. P. is finishing his PhD programme in management at … Read more