
Quirks and Quarks
CBC
Categorias: Ciencia y medicina
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The beginnings of our end — where the anus came from
Our distant evolutionary ancestors had no anuses. Their waste was excreted from the same orifice they used to ingest food, much like jellyfish do today. Now a new study on bioRxiv that has yet to be peer-reviewed, scientists think they’ve found the evolutionary link in a worm with only a single digestive hole. Andreas Hejnol, from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, said he found genes we now associate with the anus being expressed in the worms in the opening where its sperm comes out, suggesting that in our evolutionary history a similar orifice was co-opted as a butt hole.
Deepfake videos are becoming so real, spotting them is becoming increasingly dicey
Detecting deepfake videos generated by artificial intelligence is a problem that’s getting progressively worse as the technology continues to improve. One way we used to be able to tell the difference between a fake and real video is that subtle signals revealing a person’s heart rate don’t exist in artificially generated videos. But that is no longer the case, according to a new study in the journal Frontiers in Imaging. Peter Eisert, from Humboldt University and the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute HHI in Germany, said detecting manipulated content visually is only going to become a lot more difficult going forward.
Crows can use tools, do math — and now apparently understand geometry
Crows are known to be among the most intelligent of animals, and a new study has explored their geometrical sophistication. Researchers including Andreas Nieder from the University of Tübingen found that crows can recognize and distinguish different kinds of quadrilateral shapes, an ability we had thought was unique to humans. The research was published in the journal Science Advances.
There’s gold in them thar magnetically charged neutron stars!
Astronomers have discovered a new source of the universe’s heavy elements — things like gold, platinum and uranium. A study led by astrophysicist Anirudh Patel found that magnetars — exotic neutron stars with ultra-powerful magnetic fields — may produce these elements in a process analogous to the way solar flares are produced by our Sun. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, found that a single flare from a magnetar could produce the mass equivalent of 27 moons’ worth of these heavy elements in one burst.
It may not be big, but it’s small — and stroppy
You might not expect an insect so tiny you need a magnifying glass to see it properly to be an aggressive defender of its territory, but that’s because you haven’t met the warty birch caterpillar. Its territory is just the tip of a birch leaf, but it defends it by threatening intruders with vigorous, if not precisely powerful, vibrations. Jayne Yack at Carleton University has been studying this caterpillar since 2008. This research was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Criminals beware — the microbiome leaves fingerprints
Scientists have developed a new tool that can track location based on traces of the bacteria characteristic to different places. Eran Elhaik, from Lund University in Sweden, trained the AI tool using nearly 4,500 microbiome samples collected around the world from subway systems, soil and the oceans. He said they could identify the city source in 92 per cent of their urban samples, and in Hong Kong, where a lot of their data came from, they could identify the specific subway station samples were taken from with 82 per cent accuracy. The study was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
Episodios anteriores
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659 - Using microbes to solve crimes, and more… Fri, 09 May 2025
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658 - Wild fish can tell us apart, and more... Fri, 02 May 2025
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657 - Understanding heat extremes and more... Fri, 25 Apr 2025
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656 - What the dinosaurs did and more... Fri, 18 Apr 2025
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655 - How human noises impact animals, and more… Fri, 11 Apr 2025
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654 - Our bodies and brains fight weight loss, and more… Fri, 04 Apr 2025
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653 - Moving forests to save the butterflies, and more... Fri, 28 Mar 2025
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652 - What fossil plants say about the evolution of life, and more… Fri, 21 Mar 2025
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651 - The silent, long-term effects of COVID, and more... Fri, 14 Mar 2025
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650 - The recipe for finding life on other planets, and more... Fri, 28 Feb 2025
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649 - Is it Dark Energy, or is time just different in space? And more… Fri, 21 Feb 2025
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648 - How AI is transforming science, and more... Fri, 14 Feb 2025
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647 - The rapidly changing Arctic, and more Fri, 07 Feb 2025
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646 - Technology to preserve biodiversity and more… Fri, 31 Jan 2025
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645 - Solving mysteries in our solar system, and more Fri, 24 Jan 2025
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644 - Climate scientists as physicians of the planet, and more Fri, 17 Jan 2025
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643 - How crocheted hats help scientists learn about cats, and more Fri, 10 Jan 2025
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642 - Our Listener Question Show Fri, 03 Jan 2025
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641 - Silly seals sabotage serious science and more… Fri, 27 Dec 2024
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640 - Our holiday science book show Fri, 20 Dec 2024
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639 - The Human Cell Atlas: ‘Google Maps’ for our bodies, and more… Fri, 13 Dec 2024
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638 - Hacking photosynthesis — how we'll improve on Mother Nature Fri, 06 Dec 2024
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637 - Exploring the limits of human longevity, and more Fri, 29 Nov 2024
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636 - A brain ‘car wash’ could prevent neurological diseases and more… Fri, 22 Nov 2024
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635 - An environmental historian looks at our symbiosis with trees and more… Fri, 15 Nov 2024