The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark, or BIG-bench, 450 researchers compiled a list of 204 tasks designed to test the capabilities of large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT. On most tasks, performance improved predictably and smoothly … Read more
The Amgen logo is displayed outside Amgen headquarters on May 17, 2023 in Thousand Oaks, California. Mario Tama | Getty Images Amgen is taking a new approach as it tries to stand out in a crowded field of drugmakers racing to develop the next blockbuster weight loss drug. The biotech company is testing an injectable … Read more
Credit: CC0 Public Domain For ecologists, one of the most pressing questions is to understand how ecosystems will change or adapt as the climate changes rapidly. We are already seeing many species of plant and animal moving uphill and towards the poles in response to higher temperatures. It’s very likely most species will move to … Read more
(a, b) BSE images of polished surface with cracks of Al2O3-B4C@TiB2 composite ceramics. (c) Schematic diagram for crack propagation. Credit: Journal of Advanced Ceramics, Tsinghua University Press Toughening has always been an important research direction of structure ceramics. The addition of secondary phases to the ceramic matrix to prepare composite ceramics is an effective toughening … Read more
Timeline of policy developments for public sector artifi cial intelligence (AI) adoption, April 2018 to March 2024. Credit: Use of artificial intelligence in government (2024) A new report on the UK government’s use of AI offers insight into accelerating its adoption and overcoming the barriers to transforming public services, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds. … Read more
An artist’s rendition of Saturn’s moon Enceladus depicts hydrothermal activity on the seafloor and cracks in the moon’s icy crust that allow material from the watery interior to be ejected into space. New research shows that instruments destined for the next missions could find traces of a single cell in a single ice grain contained … Read more
Longitudinal monitoring of mouse placental hemodynamics throughout a healthy pregnancy. Credit: Xiaoyi Zhu et al, Longitudinal intravital imaging of mouse placenta, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk1278 If you missed some of our top stories this week, we have you covered. From an underachieving black hole to a new species of fluffy beetle, you can see … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain For the first time in history, a single language dominates global scientific communication. But the actual production of knowledge continues to be a multilingual enterprise. The use of English as the norm poses challenges for scholars from regions where English is not widely spoken. They must decide whether to publish in … Read more
Dark matter is a ghostly substance that astronomers have failed to detect for decades, yet which we know has an enormous influence on normal matter in the universe, such as stars and galaxies. Through the massive gravitational pull it exerts on galaxies, it spins them up, gives them an extra push along their orbits, or … Read more
A killer whale leaps out of the water when swimming—a behaviour known as porpoising. Credit: Minette Layne/Wikipedia/CC A group of killer whales spotted hunting off the coast of California and Oregon over two decades may actually be their own unique population of animals, a new study says. When the notorious black fin of an orca … Read more
