130 articles from WEDNESDAY 25.1.2023

China's Lunar New Year exodus cools major cities, study shows

During the week-long Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year, work is suspended, businesses close and nearly three billion people leave cities to join their families in rural areas for traditional gatherings. The holiday is the largest short-term suspension in human activity on Earth and, according to a new study, is associated with lower temperatures in 31 major Chinese cities during...

Large mammals shaped the evolution of humans in Africa, says ecologist

That humans originated in Africa is widely accepted. But it's not generally recognized how unique features of Africa's ecology were responsible for the crucial evolutionary transitions from forest-inhabiting fruit-eater to savanna-dwelling hunter. These were founded on Earth movements and aided physically by Africa's seasonal aridity, bedrock-derived soils and absence of barriers to movements...

Tracking online hate speech that follows real-world events

A machine-learning analysis has revealed patterns in online hate speech that suggest complex—and sometimes counterintuitive—links between real-world events and different types of hate speech. Yonatan Lupu of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 25.

Rethinking meat substitutes

Is excitement over meat alternatives overheated? Investors have poured billions of dollars into the sector to kickstart technologies that produce protein with ingredients such as peas, soybeans, mushrooms, and lab-grown animal cells, but they are unlikely to offset livestock agriculture's climate and land use impacts anytime soon, according to Stanford environmental scientist David Lobell. In the...

Transistors repurposed as microchip 'clock' address supply chain weakness

Microchip fab plants in the United States can cram billions of data processing transistors onto a tiny silicon chip, but a critical device, in essence a "clock," to time the operation of those transistors must be made separately—creating a weak point in chip security and the supply line. A new approach uses commercial chip fab materials and techniques to fabricate specialized transistors that...

Ignore the ‘superpower’ boasts – UK pharma looks superchallenged

NHS crisis, withdrawal of tax credits and exit from EU blamed for fall in UK share of R&D marketBig pharma is unhappy about the prices it is being paid in the UK – a state of affairs the rest of us might instinctively regard as welcome, as it suggests the NHS is still world class when it comes to negotiating terms for branded medicines. The UK spends about 9% of its healthcare budget on such...

Transistors repurposed as microchip 'clock' address supply chain weakness

A new technique uses standard chip fab methods to fabricate the building block of a timing device, critical to all microprocessors. Currently, this timing device, known as an acoustic resonator, must be produced separately, often overseas, creating a supply chain and security weakness. The technique would allow for this timing device to be integrated with the microprocessor using standard CMOS...