81 articles from FRIDAY 27.1.2023

Gas stoves: Why did they become the pariah du jour?

One-third of U.S. households—more than 40 million homes—cook with gas. There has been much consternation about the danger of gas stoves in the news lately and talk of banning them since a Consumer Product Safety commissioner recently suggested the move.

When alpha mice are trounced by weaklings, they spiral into depression

When two male mice meet in a confined space, the rules of engagement are clear: The lower ranking mouse must yield. But when these norms go out the window—say, when researchers rig such an encounter to favor the weakling—it sends the higher ranking male into a depressionlike spiral. That’s the conclusion of a new neuroimaging study that reveals how the mouse brain responds to an...

Be kind to bees, build with bee bricks

We know that bees are important to natural ecosystems and also to human agriculture and horticulture. They are great pollinators of so plant flowering plant species and are also a source of food and materials we have used for thousands of years, namely honey, honeycomb, and beeswax.

Hubble Views a Stellar Duo in Orion Nebula

Portal origin URL: Hubble Views a Stellar Duo in Orion NebulaPortal origin nid: 485242Published: Friday, January 27, 2023 - 08:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.Portal image: Two bright stars with diffraction spikes. Larger star:...

A watermark for chatbots can expose text written by an AI

Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a human or not. These “watermarks” are invisible to the human eye but let computers detect that the text probably comes from an AI system. If embedded in large language models, they could help prevent some of the problems that these...

How do I know if egg freezing is for me?

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Egg freezing is on my mind. At 36, I’m at an age when many of my friends have had babies, and the few who haven’t are weighing up their options. If they plan on having children at some point in the future, should they be freezing their eggs...