Tiny caps can measure activity in lab-grown minibrains

Until now, scientists haven’t been able to study brain organoids beyond just a few cells. While the organoids are spherical, the conventional tools to study them—microelectrode array plates, which contain electrodes to measure electrical activity—are flat. This new microcap, created by a team from Johns Hopkins University, can wrap around a brain organoid, allowing researchers […]

iOS VPNs have leaked traffic for more than 2 years, researcher claims

Getty Images reader comments 41 with 29 posters participating, including story author Share this story A security researcher says that Apple’s iOS devices don’t fully route all network traffic through VPNs as a user might expect, a potential security issue the device maker has known about for years. Michael Horowitz, a longtime computer security blogger […]

The Download: electric planes, and trans men’s fertility

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked to cancer and cardiovascular disease, while wildlife suffers from interruption to their reproductive patterns, increased danger and loss of stealth. Astronomers, policymakers, and […]

Growing the industry: Belonging

Victoria MacLennan. 17 August 2022, 10:51 pm As you have read elsewhere the Prime Minister recently said that our industry (by 2040) will create 137,000 new additional jobs for women, 93,000 new additional jobs for Māori and 48,000 new additional jobs for Pacific Peoples. Awesome news! But…. for women, Māori, Pacific People, anyone from a […]

This is what’s keeping electric planes from taking off

The company plans to start in niche markets—like hopping across fjords in Scandinavia. These routes are difficult to replace with ground transport, and in some countries, like Norway, they could be subsidized by the government. Forslund says that these trips are just the beginning, though, and the goal is to expand regional flying globally. Even […]

Why we can no longer afford to ignore the case for climate adaptation

As a professional field, climate change adaptation remained neglected, misunderstood, and small through the early 2000s, when Lara Hansen, an ecotoxicologist by training, began working on the subject for the World Wildlife Fund. Hansen and her colleagues would joke that all the world’s adaptation experts and researchers “could fit in an elevator.” But soon, the […]

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

A global view of Earth assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite.NASA Specifications in the current proposal provide a starting point for planning, including a color temperature cutoff of 3,000 K in line with Pittsburgh’s dark-sky ordinance, which passed last fall. However, Martinez says that is the maximum, and as […]

Chrome “Feed” is tantalizing, but it’s not the return of Google Reader

Enlarge / Digging into bleeding-edge Chrome code has made some bloggers hopeful, but Google has been focused on its own feeds for a while now. Getty Images reader comments 7 with 7 posters participating Share this story Does Google enjoy teasing and sometimes outright torturing some of its products’ most devoted fans? It can seem […]

A three-parent technique could help trans men have babies

That could be avoided if, instead of using hormones to stimulate the person’s ovaries to release mature eggs, doctors could remove pieces of the ovaries themselves, and somehow obtain mature eggs in the lab. This would involve taking immature eggs and coaxing them along in their development, to the stage at which they can be […]

The Download: China-linked hackers, and chromosome variations

The news: A hacking group linked to China has spent the last three years targeting human rights organizations, think tanks, news media, and agencies of multiple foreign governments, according to a new report shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review. Who are they? The hackers, known as RedAlpha, have taken aim at organizations including Amnesty International, the […]