A few snakes disappearing into a backyard mulch pile had seemed like a worrying but manageable problem for a family in Sydney’s west. Then snake catchers started digging through it. At a property in Horsley Park, the reptiles had been slipping into the mulch for about two weeks, prompting the homeowners to call professionals after…
It seems technology is already outrunning humans not only in algorithms but also on the field. At a 100-meter sprint at the Beijing Robot Games, a humanoid robot is said to have beaten the human record of Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt. The robot named Lightning Bolt, achieved a result of 9.39 seconds, beating Bolt’s record…
After being absent from the grounds for approximately 160 years, the American bison has made a grand comeback to the landscapes of Coahuila, Mexico. According to a report by AS, the reintroduction of dozens of bison in part of the Chihuahuan Desert is positively impacting the surrounding ecosystem in numerous ways, said the body that…
For months, the forest around Changi was being watched after dark. More than 50 volunteers, working with conservation groups and Singapore’s National Parks Board, set up cameras, collected evidence and searched for signs of one of the country’s most elusive wild cats. What they found was more significant than a handful of fleeting sightings. By…
Scotland is taking a new approach to laboratory plastic waste. A new recycling system has already processed around 72,000 contaminated plastic sample bottles. The technology is now being expanded to Petri dishes and pipette tips. Scottish Water has become the first utility in the world to adopt Envetec Sustainable Technologies’ GENERATIONS technology. The system disinfects…
Spanish investigators are examining whether visa appointment and document-processing companies helped a network prioritise applicants who paid bribes. Indian company BLS International has been drawn into a Spanish National Court investigation with links to alleged visa fraud network at Spain’s consulate in Algiers.The probe, led by Judge María Tardón, was expanded to examine the role…
She struck gold literally. An hour and a half into her first excavation, an American archaeology student found an artefact extremely valuable for Britain’s history. Dating back to the ninth century, the small, ornate artefact is believed to have had a ceremonial purpose.Yara Souza, a Florida-native and an undergraduate at Newcastle University in northern England,…
Cortical Labs founder and CEO Hon Weng Chong at the Cortical Cloud biological data centre at NUS (Image: The Straits Times).. Singapore has unveiled a world-first biological data centre prototype that brings living human neurons into a server-rack environment, marking an unusual new step in the race to build more efficient and adaptive computing systems….
Romanian firefighters work to prevent a wildfire from reigniting as they tackle smoldering ground following a fire in the Deliblato Sands nature reserve in Serbia. (Photo: Reuters) Wildfires are stretching firefighting capacity across Europe, forcing countries to move aircraft, helicopters and crews across borders as several blazes burn at the same time. Serbia is using…
On small islands scattered across the Pacific, changes in wildlife can be surprisingly easy to notice. A few more birds along the shoreline, coconut crabs appearing where they had become scarce, or native animals moving through places they once avoided can all point to a shift in the balance of an ecosystem. In Tuvalu, that…