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Sea Lions Can Use Their Whiskers Like Humans Use Fingertips
Humans have amazing fingertips. They are sensitive and can be moved over objects to feel its softness, texture, size and shape. These movements are both complex, and “task-specific”. This means that you adopt different movements depending on what you want to feel about an object. We squeeze or push objects to judge softness, and feel…
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We Only Just Discovered These Deep-Sea Species, and They May Already Be Threatened by Mining
Deep sea hydrothermal vents harbour some of the most extraordinary species on our planet. Lying at two to three kilometres below the surface, these extreme, insular ecosystems are powered, not by the sunlight-driven photosynthesis that we’re used to, but by energy from superheated mineral-rich seawater jetting from cracks in the seafloor. This supports thriving and…
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Australia Needs Its Own Satellites to Better Prevent Bushfires
As climate change worsens, bushfires are likely to become more intense and frequent. We must find new ways of managing bushfires to prevent catastrophic events. Satellite data can help in this task. It helps us identify where and when vegetation such as grass and leaves forms a continuous swath of fuel dry enough for a…
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What Are Self-Replicating ‘Xenobots’ and How Might They Turn the World Into Grey Goo?
In 2020, scientists made global headlines by creating “xenobots” – tiny “programmable” living things made of several thousand frog stem cells. These pioneer xenobots could move around in fluids, and scientists claimed they could be useful for monitoring radioactivity, pollutants, drugs or diseases. Early xenobots survived for up to ten days. A second wave of…