Royal Netherlands Air Force pilots tested brain-reading technology in a simulator Alireza Boeini/Alamy Fighter pilots in training are having their brainwaves read by AI as they fly in virtual reality to measure how difficult they find tasks and ramp up the complexity if needed. Experiments show that trainee fighter pilots prefer this adaptive system to…
Ryan Wills for New Scientist; Alamy John Martinis is a hardware guy. He prefers the nitty-gritty of doing physics in the lab over the idealised world of textbooks. But you couldn’t write the quantum computing history books without him: he was central to two of the most pivotal moments in the field. And he is…
The use of melatonin gummies to help kids sleep is on the rise Shutterstock/neko_de_mar Arriving at a friend’s house party recently, I was impressed to find that her three children were already sound asleep. It was only 7pm. The music blared and the guest chatter became increasingly lively, but still they snoozed on. “They’re great…
An artist’s impression of Neanderthal life CHRISTIAN JEGOU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were probably interbreeding over a huge area stretching from western Europe into Asia. We have long known that early humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) interbred, which is why most non-African people today have some Neanderthal DNA, typically about 2…
At first glance, it might not seem like people have much in common with deer. But a strange discovery about how their antlers regenerate is lifting the lid on the unseen ways that our bodies work, too. Biologist Chunyi Li, who has long studied deer in north-east China, noticed something odd that happened when the animals regrew their antlers each…
Administering cancer treatments at a particular time could be a relatively simple but effective intervention Kenneth K. Lam/ZUMA Press/Alamy Delivering cancer immunotherapy earlier in the day really could extend survival, according to the first randomised-controlled trial into how the timing of such interventions affects patient outcomes. Our body’s cells and tissues follow 24-hour cycles of…
There might be a big clump of dark matter in our galactic neighbourhood Alamy There seems to be an enormous cloud of dark matter next to our solar system. We have never found one of these clouds in the Milky Way before, but precise cosmic clocks called pulsars finally made it possible. Our best cosmological…
