The answers to today’s ‘trick’ questionsEarlier today I set you six ‘bat and ball’ puzzles, meaning puzzles that require you to overrule a wrong ‘gut’ answer. (Click here to read the original bat and ball puzzle.)For each of the puzzles, I have included the gut answer, the correct answer and also the percentage of readers who got it right. (Readers were given four possible answers...

The news: Facebook is open-sourcing a new AI language model called M2M-100 that can translate between any pair among 100 languages. Of the 4,450 possible language combinations, it translates 1,100 of them directly. This is in contrast to previous multilingual models, which heavily rely on English as an intermediate. A Chinese to French translation, for example, typically passes from Chinese to...

The Milky Way galaxy is in the recycling business.

Recycling paper may only be helpful to the climate if it is powered by renewable energy, according to a new modelling study by researchers at UCL and Yale.

Researchers in Australia have resolved a fundamental challenge preventing the wide uptake of next-generation perovskite solar cells.

New research shows that high levels of microplastics (MPs) are released from infant-feeding bottles (IFBs) during formula preparation. The research also indicates a strong relationship between heat and MP release, such that warmer liquids (formula or water used to sterilise bottles) result in far greater release of MPs.

Leiden chemists Marc Koper and Ian McCrum have discovered that the degree to which a metal binds to the oxygen atom of water is decisive for how well the chemical conversion of water to molecular hydrogen takes place. This insight helps to develop better catalysts for the production of sustainable hydrogen, an important raw material for the chemical industry and the fuel needed for environmentally...

The chips of the future will include photonics and electronics; they will have bandwidth, speed and processing and computing abilities that are currently unthinkable; they will make it possible to integrate many other components, and their capabilities will increase exponentially compared to electronic chips. In all, they will be essential in many fields; they will bring us a little closer, for...

According to data published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), female participation in the labor market has risen over the past 35 years, with women now accounting for 52.5% of the total workforce. Despite this increase, gender equality in the workplace is still far from a reality. In traditionally male-dominated fields, such as those known by the STEM acronym...

A team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), the Australian Museum and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) report a new method for identifying any genome sequence located next to a known sequence. It is often difficult to precisely determine unknown sequences close to small known fragments. Whole genome sequencing can be a solution,...

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed another trove of ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo, authorities said Monday.

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed another trove of ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo, authorities said Monday. The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement that archaeologists found the collection of colorful, sealed sarcophagi buried more than 2,500 years ago at the Saqqara necropolis. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities,...

ONS data suggests people with life-threatening conditions still shying away from hospitalsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageAbout a third more deaths in England are occurring at home than before the Covid-19 pandemic, data has revealed, with the majority down to causes other than the coronavirus.In April, the UK government launched a campaign to encourage people who...

A trio of researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool, respectively, has found an association between mammals with more highly complex baculum and monogamous sexual relationships. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Charlotte Brassey, Julia Behnsen and James Gardiner describe performing 3-D X-ray...

In a mentoring relationship, a more experienced person (or mentor) provides a less experienced person (or protégé) with information, support and friendship.

In situ sequencing enables gene activity inside body tissues to be depicted in microscope images. To facilitate interpretation of the vast quantities of information generated, Uppsala University researchers have now developed an entirely new method of image analysis. Based on algorithms used in artificial intelligence, the method was originally devised to enhance understanding of social networks....

The recently released report of the NAPLAN review—commissioned by the New South Wales, Queensland, Victorian and Australian Capital Territory education ministers—found many young people are reaching Year 9 without being able to write properly.

Women politicians are more responsive than men when people come to them seeking health care and economic support, our newly published study on gender and government responsiveness reveals. Our research, conducted in 2017, was published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science in August.

Optical fiber data transmission can be significantly improved by producing the fibers, made of silica glass, under high pressure, researchers from Japan and the US report in the journal npj Computational Materials.

With the coronavirus crisis dealing the travel industry one of the biggest blows in its history, a new study from researchers at Florida Atlantic and Florida Gulf Coast universities suggests that airlines and airports should be doing more to help passengers cope with stress.

A unique DNA packaging mechanism may enhance night vision in owls, helping them succeed as the only avian nocturnal predators.

It's widely known that submerging a pared apple in saltwater prevents oxidation and browning, but did you know that saltwater can also protect fragile quantum dot (QD) materials? A research team led by Prof. Chen Hsueh-Shih of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan has recently developed the world's first inkjet technique for using saltwater to...

Farmers can use a variety of practices to keep their soils healthy. Some of these practices include not tilling the land, planting cover crops between growing seasons and rotating the type of crop grown on each field.

Colorado has lost several of its important historic landmarks to disasters. The 2013 floods, for instance, destroyed a WPA-era shelter in Lyons and severely damaged the town's historic library. In the aftermath of these events, many Colorado communities asked whether they were adequately prepared to protect their history in the face of increasingly severe floods and wildfires.

An international study published in Environmental Research Letters has found further evidence that conservation and restoration of boreal peatlands could be an important tool to mitigate climate change impacts in the north. The Dal Science team, led by Manuel Helbig has found that conservation and restoration of peatlands can fight climate warming both globally and regionally.

A study published in the journal Quaternary International, led by Dr. Mathieu Duval, Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), dates two Lower Paleolithic sites in France based on the use of an unprecedented combination of three dating techniques: electron spin resonance (ESR), luminescence and palaeomagnetism.

Changing the surface chemistry of electrodes leads to the preferential growth of a novel electroactive bacterium that could support improved energy-neutral wastewater treatment.

A fresh new look at an old technique in protein biochemistry has shown that it should be reintroduced to the spectroscopy toolkit.

Intensive care units (ICUs) at hospitals treating COVID-19 patients should do away with air-conditioning to limit the risk of infecting doctors, a study from a top Indian research institute has said. "The recirculation of the air by the centralized air-conditioning systems is what has led to the significant infection of our committed medical fraternity and has also led to deaths of doctors and...

In probably the first observation of its kind, a tricky triggerfish is seen beaching itself before attacking a crab walking along the shoreline.

Recently, news reports revealed plans by a Canadian oil and gas company, ReconAfrica, to explore for oil and gas in some of Africa's most sensitive protected areas. These areas include the Namibian headwaters of the Okavango delta and a world heritage site, Tsodilo Hills, in Botswana. Plans are afoot to explore inside the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area.

In August, the Fraser Valley Institution for Women federal prison in Abbotsford, B.C., closed the Annex, its minimum security unit. This closure forced the transfer of all prisoners into higher security units, showing just how much the carceral system fails to create choices for women experiencing criminalization.

Fusion power is the technology that is 30 years away, and always will be, according to skeptics, at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields. The most obvious is in weapons; hydrogen bombs are to this day the most powerful weapons we have ever produced. But there's another use case...

The 2020 general election is right around the corner and the political climate is heating up. Although Americans have relied on social media as a source of personal connectivity, many are choosing to tune out due to fatigue caused by unwanted and unsolicited political coverage and commentary that is now dominating their feeds.