Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and FarWestGirl.
Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, JeremyBloom, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP), jlms qkw, and doomandgloom.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Space
SpaceX Dragon astronauts make Valentine's Day docking at space station to boost skeleton crew (video).
Space.com
The residents of the International Space Station received a special Valentine's Day treat.
SpaceX's Crew-12 astronaut mission docked with the short-staffed International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday (Feb. 14) at 3:15 p.m. EST (2015 GMT), ending a 34-hour orbital chase.
"With that gentle contact, we have bridged the legacy of humankind's continuous presence in space. It has been more than 25 years at this very site," radioed Jessica Meir, Crew-12 commander. "The International Space Station is more than a structure, it is a promise kept. Decades in the making, built by nations, sustained by trust and partnerships, and powered by science, innovation and curiosity."
Artemis 2 rocket photobombs SpaceX Crew-12 | Space photo of the day for Feb. 13, 2026.
Space.com
Two crew-worth(y) spacecraft appear to sit side by side on their rockets in this NASA picture captured at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, one bound for low-Earth orbit and the other for the far side of the moon.
Why is it amazing?
The photo was captured on Feb. 11, as SpaceX's Crew-12 Dragon spacecraft "Freedom" and its Falcon 9 rocket (closest to the camera) sat on the pad at Space Launch Complex 40, ready to transport a quartet of astronauts to the International Space Station.
NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched to the ISS on Feb. 13 to begin an eight-month stay aboard the orbital outpost. Upon docking, they'll join the skeleton crew of three who have been maintaining the station following the medical evacuation of Crew-11 on Jan. 15 in the wake of an undisclosed health issue.
Did the Viking missions discover life on Mars 50 years ago? These scientists think so.
Space.com
The key to solving the mystery of the Viking results is the discovery of perchlorate on the Martian surface in 2008.
NASA's Viking missions to Mars may have discovered evidence for life on the Red Planet after all, according to scientists who are seeking to correct what they believe to be a 50-year-old mistake that has led everybody to think that Mars is lifeless.
Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed on Mars in 1976. On board they carried three life-detection experiments, which produced positive results. But the apparent failure of another instrument, the Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), to detect organic molecules necessary for life led Viking Project Scientist Gerald Soffen to conclude, "No bodies, no life."
However, scientists led by Steve Benner, a professor of chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida, now argue that the Viking data shows something quite different to what the textbooks say.
Living in space can change where your brain sits in your skull: New research.
Phys.org
Going to space is harsh on the human body, and as a new study from our research team finds, the brain shifts upward and backward and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight.
The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more relevant.
Why it matters
On Earth, gravity constantly pulls fluids in your body and your brain toward the center of Earth. In space, that force disappears. Body fluids shift toward the head, which gives astronauts a puffy face. Under normal gravity, the brain, cerebrospinal fluid and surrounding tissues reach a stable balance. In microgravity, that balance changes.
Without gravity pulling downward, the brain floats in the skull and experiences various forces from the surrounding soft tissues and the skull itself. Earlier studies showed that the brain appears higher in the skull after spaceflight. But most of those studies focused on average or whole brain measures, which can hide important effects within different areas of the brain.
Decoding China's new space philosophy.
Phys.org
A major theme in communist governments is the idea of central planning. Every five years, the central authorities in communist countries lay out their goals for the country over the course of the next five years, which can range from limiting infant mortality to increasing agricultural yield. China, the largest current polity ruled by communists, recently released its fifteenth five-year plan, which lays out its priorities for 2026–2030. This one, accompanied by a press release of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country's state-owned giant aerospace corporation, has plenty of ambitious goals for its space sector.
Perhaps the most culturally significant part of the announcement is the country's plans for Tiangong Kaiwu, its space mining project. Named after a foundational 17th century Ming Dynasty Encyclopedia, and roughly translated as "The Exploitation of the Works for Nature," this project is focused on mining water ice from resources in space.
Most Western space mining firms are concentrating on bringing back rare materials, such as platinum and palladium, to Earth as part of their space mining efforts. China, on the other hand, sees the potential for harvesting water, both as a source of biological necessity, but also as a way to split it into rocket fuel. The current plan is focused on feasibility studies, with the next five years focused on tech demos of things like robot drills and in-orbit processing, with the intention to scale up to full industrial mining at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Love
What we can learn from lovebirds, the rare birds that mate for life.
Phys.org
Minutes after getting to a park in the middle of Phoenix, you can see flashes of green in the sky and hear chatter because love is in the air—or at least, the lovebirds are.
The small parrots are transplants from the other side of the world that are thought to be descendants of pet birds. Arizona is believed to be home to the largest colony of rosy-faced lovebirds outside southwestern Africa. They've been able to survive in a place known for sweltering weather by sticking close to humans and their air conditioning.
The lovebirds may have something to teach humans this Valentine's Day about keeping strong romantic bonds.
How did African lovebirds end up in Phoenix?
Rosy-faced lovebirds are originally from another arid region, the Namib Desert, which stretches from Angola, across Namibia and into South Africa. They are one of nine species of lovebirds.
More than a feeling: Thinking about love as a virtue can change how we respond to hate.
Phys.org
Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.
However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role love plays in our moral lives: how and why it can help us live well together. How does our understanding of the love-hate relationship change if we imagine love not as an emotion but as a virtue?
The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas is a foundational thinker in the history of Christian ethics. For Aquinas, hate is not the antithesis of love, or even opposed to it. In his most important work, the "Summa Theologiae," he writes that hate responds to love. In other words, hate is a reaction to threats against what we love, or what we deeply value. We can better understand the experience of hate by getting clear on what it means to love.
Syntax discovered in the warbling duets of wild parrots.
Phys.org
With a few minutes of searching, anyone can find videos online of chatty birds: macaws talk to their keepers, cockatoos sing to the camera, corvids mimic the jarring sounds of construction sites. Research has shown that some birds can understand and use words in context—so, when Polly speaks up from inside her cage, she may really want a cracker—but scientists know far less about how birds use their vocal abilities in the wild. Christine Dahlin, professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, is working to change that.
"Ultimately, I really want to understand how these birds are communicating in the wild," she said. "I want to know what they are saying, and how they are saying it."
In one of the first steps to figuring this out, Dahlin and colleagues combined fieldwork, manual sorting, and machine learning to begin to decode the warble duets of mated Yellow-naped Amazon parrots, a critically endangered species with a habitat that stretches from southern Mexico to southern Costa Rica. The researchers found these duets have language-like properties, including syntax, collocates, and an impressive lexicon.
How often do people feel passionate love? Study finds about two lifetime loves.
Phys.org
Falling passionately in love is one of the most talked about human experiences, celebrated in songs, movies, literature, and art across cultures. Passionate love is widely considered a hallmark of romantic relationships and has well-documented psychological and behavioral effects. Yet until now, research has overlooked a surprisingly basic question: How many times do people actually experience passionate love over a lifetime?
A new study by researchers at the Kinsey Institute offers the first population-level answer. Published in Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, the research is the first large-scale study to quantify how often passionate love occurs, providing new information for this central feature of romantic life.
Surveying 10,036 single adults aged 18 to 99 from across the United States, researchers asked participants, "In your lifetime, how many times have you been passionately in love?" On average, adults reported experiencing passionate love about twice in their lifetime (2.05 experiences). Notably, 14% had never experienced passionate love, while 28% experienced it once, 30% twice, 17% three times, and 11% four or more times.
Forget flowers: Lovers in 18th- and 19th-century Ireland exchanged hair.
Phys.org
In 18th- and 19th-century Ireland, it was common for courting couples to exchange gifts to mark their developing relationships. Many of these items are familiar gifts today: books, cards, items of clothing, jewelry and sweet treats. Others, however, are less familiar. In fact, some of the gifts exchanged by couples in the past might give many today the dreaded ick—especially those items of the hairier variety.
While you might be familiar with the tradition of mourning hairwork jewelry that was made and worn to remember deceased loved ones in the Victorian era, hairy tokens were traditionally a gift exchanged between couples in love. In my new book, Pious and Promiscuous: Life, Love and Family in Presbyterian Ulster, I explore the tradition of gift-giving among courting couples in Ulster—from hairy tokens to food and clothing. The book reveals for the first time the personal stories that shaped the rituals of Presbyterian family life in 18th- and 19th-century Ulster.
Gift-givers thought deeply about what to gift that special someone. Items exchanged in courtship were carefully chosen because different gifts had different meanings. Whereas shirts were understood to symbolize friendship, items like gloves—which covered the hands and fingers—were associated with marriage.
Silly question to those of us who’ve shared our lives with critters, but still...
Can our pets really say 'I love you'? Science is finding out.
Phys.org
Purrs of contentment. Soulful eyes locked on yours over dinner. Valentine's Day? Not for pet owners. For those of us who share our lives with animals, this is a daily—if not exactly romantic—experience. So are the various barks, meows, whines, and other, sometimes adorable, often insistent, methods of communication our four-legged friends use to express what they want. Or how they feel when we don't get it.
What if it were possible to better understand our pets? Some pet owners have begun using simple devices—often referred to as soundboards—that purport to help dogs and cats communicate with us by pressing electronic buttons.
Social media is filled with videos showing dogs, cats and parrots learning the meaning of dozens of buttons and pressing them to "talk" with their people—and a few of these chatty animals have become minor celebrities as they seemingly converse, not just about food and walks, but about more complex concepts like love, strangers and time, opening a window, potentially, into what our pets are thinking.
Earth/Evolution
Inside Asia's Amazon—camera traps reveal the secrets of the Annamite Mountains.
Phys.org
A camera-trap survey conducted throughout 2025 has revealed the bewildering breadth of biodiversity hidden within the Annamite Mountains, a largely unexplored forest haven stretching for 1,100 kilometers through Laos and Vietnam to northeast Cambodia. The Annamites are the sole stronghold for some of Southeast Asia's most spectacular and super-rare species, from the aptly named Annamite striped rabbit to the mystical saola.
The Annamites are so rich in wildlife that they have been called the "Amazon of Asia," but deforestation and habitat fragmentation pose serious threats to the natural treasures they harbor. But it's not just the future of wildlife that's at stake. People in this area—many of whom live in extreme poverty—rely on the forest for food, health and cultural well-being. What's more, the Annamites soak up and store vast quantities of carbon, making a vital contribution to climate stability.
The survey, led by Fauna & Flora and our local and global partners, uncovered many enchanting and elusive animals, while providing insights into their unique behavior and preferred habitats.
Here's a small selection of the species we managed to capture on camera.
Cape Town's wildflowers are a world treasure: Six insights from a new checklist.
Phys.org
Cape Town, in South Africa, is famous for its dramatic mountains and coastline, but its greatest treasure lies in the plants that carpet its slopes and valleys. Table Mountain National Park and its surrounds are home to 2,785 species, including subspecies and varieties.
This is more plant species than in some European countries and national parks in the United States.
We are a group of botanists and conservation scientists who set out to update the plant species checklist for the Cape Peninsula. This checklist was first published 76 years ago in 1950 and our checklist is the fourth major update.
For the latest update, we collated data from diverse sources, including herbaria, conservation agency databases and iNaturalist, an online social network where people can upload photos of the natural world. These new technologies allow us to rapidly gather new data for checklists that assist conservation managers to prioritize and respond to threats.
Our new, updated checklist provides insights into the city's flora, from showcasing the global significance of its endemic plants to the unique ecology that has shaped this diversity.
Here are six important insights highlighted by the list:
Deep-sea fish larvae rewrite the rules of how eyes can be built.
Phys.org
The deep sea is cold, dark and under immense pressure. Yet life has found a way to prevail there, in the form of some of Earth's strangest creatures.
Since deep-sea critters have adapted to near darkness, their eyes are particularly unique—pitch-black and fearsome in dragonfish, enormous in giant squid, barrel-shaped in telescope fish. This helps them catch the remaining rays of sunlight penetrating to depth and see the faint glow of bioluminescence.
Deep-sea fishes, however, typically start life in shallower waters in the twilight zone of the ocean (roughly 50–200 meters deep). This is a safe refuge to feed on plankton and grow while avoiding becoming a snack for larger predators.
Our new study, published in Science Advances, shows deep-sea fish larvae have evolved a unique way to maximize their vision in this dusky environment—a finding that challenges scientific understanding of vertebrate vision.
Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes can lower dengue risk by 70%, citywide experiment finds.
Phys.org
Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus affecting millions of people each year, with symptoms ranging from flu-like illness to severe bleeding and organ failure. Scientists are now using Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacteria found in many insects, to turn disease-carrying mosquitoes into unlikely allies through Project Wolbachia–Singapore.
In a two-year-long citywide experiment in Singapore, researchers divided urban neighborhoods into clusters, releasing sterile, Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes in some areas while leaving others untreated to test whether this biological approach could reduce disease transmission in a densely populated city.
The mosquito releases proved to be quite effective. In areas where the intervention was used, mosquito numbers fell sharply, and the people living in treated neighborhoods were about 70% less likely to develop symptomatic dengue after a few months of exposure. The findings are published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Life on Earth is lucky: A rare chemical fluke may have made our planet habitable.
Space.com
Life on Earth may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their formation but ours managed to hit.
A new study shows that Earth formed under an unusually precise set of chemical conditions that allowed it to retain two elements essential for life as we know it: phosphorus and nitrogen. Without a perfect balance of these elements, a rocky planet could appear habitable on the surface yet be fundamentally incapable of supporting biology, according to the study.
"During the formation of a planet's core, there needs to be exactly the right amount of oxygen present so that phosphorus and nitrogen can remain on the surface of the planet," study lead author Craig Walton, of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, said in a statement.
Humans
How Indigenous ideas about nonlinear time can help us navigate ecological crises.
Phys.org
It is common to think of time as moving in only one direction—from point A, through point B, to point C.
However, many Indigenous peoples—including Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand—experience time nonlinearly.
Rather than picturing time as a straight line, we imagine it as recurring, spiraling, and recalling itself.
How we conceptualize time could impact how we respond to ecological crises.
Indigenous time/s
As Māori, we understand time—wā—nonlinearly.
Researchers Hana Burgess and Te Kahuratai Painting contrast Māori time with colonial time, saying: "With settler colonial ontologies, time is flattened, made one dimensional, reduced to a linear process […] Along this arrow of time, the "present" is placed at the pinnacle of existence, disconnected from both the past and future."
Māori, however, do not place the present at the center; as the same researchers put it, "there is no center".
Reading to young kids improves their social skills, and it doesn't matter whether parents stop to ask questions.
Phys.org
In 2024, 51% of families read aloud to their very young children, while 37% read aloud to their kids between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.
Some parents have said they will stop reading aloud to their school-age children because their kids can read on their own.
I'm a neuroscientist with four children, and I wondered whether children might be losing more than just the pleasure of listening to books read aloud. In particular, I wondered whether it affected their empathy and creativity.
A simple idea from the literature
I have studied and written about empathy and creativity as part of my personal effort to better understand how to be a good parent. I have found that empathy and creativity aren't talents you're born with or without. They are skills that respond to practice, just like learning to play piano.
How did humans develop sharp vision? Lab-grown retinas show likely answer.
Phys.org
Humans develop sharp vision during early fetal development thanks to an interplay between a vitamin A derivative and thyroid hormones in the retina, Johns Hopkins University scientists have found. The findings could upend decades of conventional understanding of how the eye grows light-sensing cells and could inform new research into treatments for macular degeneration, glaucoma, and other age-related vision disorders. Details of the study, which used lab-grown retinal tissue, are published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is a key step toward understanding the inner workings of the center of the retina, a critical part of the eye and the first to fail in people with macular degeneration," said Robert J. Johnston Jr., an associate professor of biology at Johns Hopkins who led the research. "By better understanding this region and developing organoids that mimic its function, we hope to one day grow and transplant these tissues to restore vision."
Antipathy toward snakes? Your parents likely talked you into that at an early age.
Phys.org
A study of more than 100 kindergarten-age children suggests kids tend to think of snakes differently than they do other animals and that hearing negative or objectifying language about the slithery reptiles might contribute to that way of thinking.
The study also suggests it takes minimal intervention to "inoculate" a child against snake negativity.
The findings, published in Anthrozoös, are important for multiple reasons, explains co-author Jeff Loucks of Oregon State University.
Snakes are reviled in many human cultures but little is known about how children develop feelings of fear and vilification toward an animal that plays an important role in the balance of many ecosystems.
Want a tall, smart child? How IVF tests are selling a dream.
Phys.org
Prospective parents are being marketed genetic tests that claim to predict which IVF embryo will grow into the tallest, smartest or healthiest child. But these tests cannot deliver what they promise. The benefits are likely minimal, while the risks to patients, offspring and society are real. Parents deserve accurate information, not marketing hype, when making profound decisions about their future children.
Which tests are we talking about?
Prospective parents can already have their IVF embryos tested for inherited conditions. But these tests often relate to a single gene, such as for cystic fibrosis.
However, this latest type of testing tries to predict complex traits influenced by thousands of genes operating together. The testing generates "polygenic risk scores" for individual embryos.
This is said to be an embryo's theoretical risk of developing conditions, such as heart disease or Alzheimer's, or having certain traits, such as high IQ or above-average height. Parents can then use these scores to choose which embryo or embryos to transfer.
Although Australian companies do not offer these tests, multiple companies in the United States do so.
Northern Britain's oldest human remains are of a young female child, DNA analysis reveals.
Phys.org
The oldest human remains ever found in Northern Britain have been identified as a young female three years after being discovered in a Cumbrian cave. Excavated at Heaning Wood Bone Cave in Cumbria's Great Urswick by local archaeologist Martin Stables, the 11,000-year-old bones provide clear evidence of Mesolithic burials in the North.
DNA analysis reveals a Mesolithic child
Now, an international team led by archaeologists at the University of Lancashire have been able to extract enough DNA from the bones to identify the remains as a female child aged between 2.5 and 3.5 years old. "It is the first time we have been able to be so specific about the age of a child whose remains are so old and be certain that they are from a female," said lead researcher Dr. Rick Peterson.
The team has also determined that these remains are the third oldest Mesolithic burial in North West Europe and present some of the earliest dates for human activity in Britain after the end of the last ice age. Jewelry discovered at the same site more recently includes a perforated deer tooth and more beads that have been carbon dated to 11,000 years-old.
Tech
Replacing humans with machines is leaving truckloads of food stranded and unusable.
Phys.org
Supermarket shelves can look full despite the food systems underneath them being under strain. Fruit may be stacked neatly, chilled meat may be in place. It appears that supply chains are functioning well. But appearances can be deceiving.
Today, food moves through supply chains because it is recognized by databases, platforms and automated approval systems. If a digital system cannot confirm a shipment, the food cannot be released, insured, sold, or legally distributed. In practical terms, food that cannot be "seen" digitally becomes unusable.
This affects the resilience of the UK food system, and is increasingly identified as a critical vulnerability.
Look at the consequences, for example, when recent cyberattacks on grocery and food distribution networks disrupted operations at multiple major US grocery chains. This took online ordering and other digital systems down and delayed deliveries even though physical stocks were available.
Betting on floating ports: Researchers test technology for faster construction.
Phys.org
Building a port on land takes time. On water, the job can be done quickly. Hagbart Skage Alsos and his research colleagues at SINTEF are investigating how to build floating ports. Ports in Northern Europe are full. Offshore wind and other projects need a port for everything that requires transport to those construction sites. Such as when a landslide obliterates and closes a road or railway for a long time. A solution has to be found—and SINTEF researchers think running test scenarios in the fjord is the place to start.
"The idea of floating infrastructure isn't entirely new. Japan has talked about floating airports, and Norway has carried out projects with long floating bridges," Alsos says.
Offshore wind first
Alsos is a research manager at SINTEF and responsible for research collaboration with SFI Blues.
"We started by talking about offshore wind. Developing 30 GW of offshore wind will require a major change in the infrastructure on the port side," he says.
Organic molecule stores solar energy for years, then releases it as heat on demand.
Phys.org
When the sun goes down, solar panels stop working. This is the fundamental hurdle of renewable energy: how to save the sun's power for a rainy day—or a cold night. Chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a solution that doesn't require bulky batteries or electrical grids. In a paper published in the journal Science, Associate Professor Grace Han and her team detail a new material that captures sunlight, stores it within chemical bonds and releases it as heat on demand.
The material, a modified organic molecule called pyrimidone, is the latest advancement in molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage.
"The concept is reusable and recyclable," said Han Nguyen, a doctoral student in the Han Group and the paper's lead author.
"Think of photochromic sunglasses. When you're inside, they're just clear lenses. You walk out into the sun, and they darken on their own. Come back inside, and the lenses become clear again," Nguyen continued.
"That kind of reversible change is what we're interested in. Only instead of changing color, we want to use the same idea to store energy, release it when we need it, and then reuse the material over and over."
Turning down the heat: Researcher identifies better way to remove heat from AI data centers.
Phys.org
A University of Houston professor has taken on the global challenge of reducing the staggering amount of heat generated in artificial intelligence data centers. Hadi Ghasemi, J. Willard Gibbs Distinguished Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, has found that thin films designed into tree-like, or branched shapes release heat at least three times better than today's best methods
….
The ascension of thin films
Remarkable advances in modern electronics, photonics and power systems have led to significant increases in power density while simultaneously introducing complex challenges related to thermal management.
Traditional cooling methods, including microchannel flow and spray cooling, have shown limitations when exposed to extreme heat flux because the liquid layer over the heat can become unstable as it evaporates, impeding its ability to carry away heat.
"Thin film evaporation is a promising thermal management strategy due to its inherent ability to sustain high heat fluxes with minimal thermal resistance," said Ghasemi.
Power in motion: Transforming ocean wave energy harvesting with gyroscopes.
Phys.org
Ocean waves are one of the most abundant and predictable renewable energy sources on the planet, yet efficiently harnessing their power remains a major challenge. Traditional devices typically operate efficiently only within a narrow range of wave conditions, highlighting the need for more novel, constructive converters.
A new gyroscopic converter concept
Now, one researcher from The University of Osaka has analyzed the feasibility of a novel device for generating wave power. The device, called a gyroscopic wave energy converter (GWEC), was assessed for its potential in providing practical, large-scale energy generation. The findings are published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
The GWEC device is capable of generating electricity using the complex motion of a spinning flywheel mounted inside a floating structure. It is this gyroscopic flywheel system that can be tuned to absorb energy efficiently over a broad range of wave frequencies.
The key to absorbing energy lies in gyroscopic precession, which is the motion that occurs when a spinning object is subjected to an external force. As waves cause the floating structure to pitch (move up and down), the rotating flywheel responds by precessing (changing the direction it is spinning in), which drives a generator and consequently produces electricity.
"Wave energy devices often struggle because ocean conditions are constantly changing," says Takahito Iida, author of the study. "However, a gyroscopic system can be controlled in a way that maintains high energy absorption, even as wave frequencies vary."
The insect-inspired bionic eye that sees, smells and guides robots.
Phys.org
The compound eyes of the humble fruit fly are a marvel of nature. They are wide-angle and can process visual information several times faster than the human eye. Inspired by this biological masterpiece, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an insect-scale compound eye that can both see and smell, potentially improving how drones and robots navigate complex environments and avoid obstacles.
Traditional cameras on robots and drones may excel at capturing high-definition photos, but struggle with a narrow field of view and limited peripheral vision. They also tend to be bulky and power-hungry.
Building the robot eye
...
The resulting structure has 1,027 tiny individual visual units packed onto a tiny area of about 1.5 by 1.5 millimeters. They also printed tiny hairs (setae) between the lenses just as they are in real fruit flies. These are designed to help keep the lenses clear during humid conditions.
Paleontology
Oldest known reptile skin impressions dated to 298 million years found in Germany.
Phys.org
An international research team led by Dr. Lorenzo Marchetti from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin has described the oldest known impressions of reptile skin from the Thuringian Forest in central Germany. Particularly remarkable is the possible preservation of a cloacal opening within the skin imprint. The fossils, dated to approximately 298 to 299 million years ago from the early Permian period, document detailed scale patterns of the stem group of modern reptiles for the first time. The results were published today in the journal Current Biology.
Earliest reptile skin (is) from Germany
The exceptionally well-preserved skin impressions were discovered in association with fossil resting traces and footprints of early reptiles within the Goldlauter Formation. The sites include the Cabarz quarry near Tabarz as well as Floh-Seligenthal. Modern radiometric dating of volcanic ash layers has enabled precise age determination, making these the oldest direct evidence of reptile skin known to date.
Skin structures such as scales, feathers, or horny beaks are known from numerous dinosaur fossils, sometimes preserved as organic material and sometimes only as surface impressions. "Such soft tissue structures are extremely rare in the fossil record—and the further back we look in Earth's history, the more exceptional they become," explains Dr. Lorenzo Marchetti. "The traces from the Thuringian Forest open new perspectives on the early development of reptiles and their skin structures."
Rare fossils reveal 91 new species that survived ancient mass extinction.
Phys.org
Almost a hundred new animal species that survived a mass extinction event half a billion years ago have been discovered in a small quarry in China, scientists revealed Wednesday.
The treasure trove of fossils offers a rare glimpse into a cataclysmic event that brought a sudden end to the greatest explosion of life in Earth's history.
The site where the fossils were found in the southern Chinese province of Hunan was "extraordinary," Han Zeng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told AFP.
"We have collected over 50,000 fossil specimens from a single quarry that is 12 meters high, 30 meters long and eight meters wide," added the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature.
In this small space, the Chinese team uncovered more than 150 different species—91 of them new to science—between 2021 and 2024.
Football-sized fossil creature may have been one of the first land animals to eat plants.
Phys.org
Life on Earth started in the oceans. Sometime around 475 million years ago, plants began making their way from the water onto the land, and it took another 100 million years for the first animals with backbones to join them. But for tens of millions of years, these early land-dwelling creatures only ate their fellow animals, rather than grazing on greenery.
In a paper in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, scientists describe the 307-million-year-old fossil of one of the earliest known land vertebrates that evolved the ability to eat plants.
"This is one of the oldest known four-legged animals to eat its veggies," says Arjan Mann, assistant curator of fossil fishes and early tetrapods at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-lead author of the study.
"It shows that experimentation with herbivory goes all the way back to the earliest terrestrial tetrapods—the ancient relatives of all land vertebrates, including us."
Costa Rica digs up mastodon, giant sloth bones in major archaeological find.
Phys.org
Researchers in Costa Rica have unearthed fossils from a mastodon and a giant sloth that lived as many as 40,000 years ago, officials announced Friday, calling it the biggest such find here in decades.
The National Museum said the bones were found by accident on private property in Cartago province of the Central American country, east of the capital San José.
"Preliminary studies based on geological analysis of the terrain and the different layers of soil indicate the remains could be between 10,000 and 40,000 years old," the museum said in a statement.
Researchers have so far recovered 49 bone pieces including a femur, vertebrae, and ribs, it added.
The museum called the find of the elephant relative and the ancestor of today's slow-moving tree-dwellers with long, curved claws "one of the most relevant" in Costa Rica in decades.
Jurassic amphibian with a projectile tongue named as a new species.
Phys.org
A new species of amphibian that lived 150 million years ago has been discovered in Portugal. The tiny animal was one of the earliest species belonging to a mysterious group of amphibians that lived from the time of the dinosaurs right up until the last Ice Age.
As dinosaurs roamed the landscape of the Late Jurassic, a huge diversity of smaller animals crawled among their feet. Many of them are yet to be described by scientists.
One of these animals was a tiny amphibian no more than 5 centimeters long with dry scaly skin, keratin-like claws and eyelids. They also had a ballistic tongue that they projected at their prey, in a similar way to how chameleons hunt.
This tiny creature has recently been described by scientists after hundreds of bone fragments were uncovered at the site in western Portugal. The new species has been named Nabia civiscientrix in honor of the many citizen scientists, most of whom were from the local community, who helped unearth the remains.
Hope everyone has a loverly Valentine’s Day. :-)
