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    A new AI-based weather tool surpasses current forecasts

    Weather forecasting is getting cheaper and more accurate. An AI model named Aurora used machine learning to outperform current weather prediction systems, researchers report May 21 in Nature.

    Aurora could accurately predict tropical cyclone paths, air pollution and ocean waves, as well as global weather at the scale of towns or cities — offering up forecasts in a matter of seconds.

    The fact that Aurora can make such high-resolution predictions using machine learning impressed Peter Dueben, who heads the Earth system modeling group at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Bonn, Germany. “I think they have been the first to push that limit,” he says. More

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    The unsung women of quantum physics get their due

    Senior physics writer Emily Conover has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award and a winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award. More

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    As quantum mechanics turns 100, a new revolution is under way

    Senior physics writer Emily Conover has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award and a winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award. More

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    New audio tech could let you listen privately without headphones

    Controlling sound has long been a staple of science fiction and fantasy. In Dune, the cone of silence allows characters to converse privately, even in open spaces. The eerie billboards of Blade Runner 2049 whisper advertisements into the ears of those passing by.

    In the real world, quirks of architecture, intentional or not, can direct where sound goes. In the U.S. Capitol’s hall of statues, for example, a whisper can travel silently across the room from one spot to another. The sound waves interact with curved surfaces to focus the audio. Now, scientists are looking to precisely control sound, perhaps one day resulting in a world without earbuds, but directing sound waves is a challenge. More

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    Seafloor amber may hold hints of a tsunami 115 million years ago

    Wavelike patterns in 115-million-year-old amber suggest that a long-ago tsunami inundated what is now northern Japan, researchers report May 15 in Scientific Reports.

    Tsunamis can be destructive and, to anything alive nearby, often terrifying. But the physical damage wrought by these giant waves eventually erodes away, typically leaving behind little evidence of their passage. As a result, there’s scant records of tsunamis stretching back beyond the current geologic epoch, which began roughly 12,000 years ago. More

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    This tool-wielding assassin turns its prey’s defenses into a trap

    Add a little-known species of assassin bugs to the list of animals that can fashion and wield tools. And true to their name, the insects use that tool to draw their prey into an ambush, researchers report May 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Found in Thailand and China, Pahabengkakia piliceps is a species of predatory insects called assassin bugs that has a taste for the region’s stingless bees. When researchers at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China began studying the assassin bugs in 2021, they became intrigued by how P. piliceps hunt. While lying in wait at a hive’s entrance, the assassin bugs use their front legs to proficiently pick off bees that fly by. More

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    Skyborne specks of life may influence rainfall patterns

    Sprinklings of life appear key to the recipe for rain.

    Lofted flecks of organic material like bacteria, pollen and fungal spores play a profound role in regulating rainfall patterns, a new study suggests. These bioparticles can make up a major portion of all the particles that can seed rain in the sky, and their levels fluctuate in a daily cycle, researchers report May 5 in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.

    The study is the first to clearly show that the movements of bioparticles drive daily fluctuations of rainmaking particles more broadly. “This really has not been included in any [weather] models before,” says atmospheric scientist Athanasios Nenes of EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. “It’s something we need to start thinking about.” More

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    Before altering the air, microbes oxygenated large swaths of the sea

    Ancient oxygen-making microbes may have oxygenated large swaths of Earth’s seafloor hundreds of millions of years before the element filled the atmosphere.

    Geochemical analysis of sediments deposited roughly 2.6 billion years ago reveals that pulses of oxygen may have swept through large regions of the ocean, researchers report April 26 in Nature Geoscience. The findings suggest that cyanobacteria, the microorganisms responsible for oxygenating Earth’s atmosphere, were more widespread at the time than previously believed.

    This shows that not only had cyanobacteria already evolved, but they were around in vast numbers and had even oxygenated the seafloor, says geochemist Kurt Konhauser of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who was not involved in the study. And that, he says, means aerobic organisms might have evolved on the seabed long before oxygen permeated the sky. More