Theonila Roka Matbob grew up next to what was — at the time — the world’s largest open-pit mine in Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea, operated by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. This mine wrought environmental and social devastation on the community of Panguna for decades. And many of these impacts carry on today, says Roka Matbob, who is an Indigenous Nasioi woman and politician. With the help of Jubilee Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, Roka Matbob was able to file a legal complaint with Australia’s National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. As a result, Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bougainville government to remediate the impacts of this mine. For this legal achievement, Roka Matbob was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. However, she is skeptical that remediation for these impacts will occur. She joins the podcast this week to tell the Bougainville story and what she wants people to understand about mining’s impacts on the autonomous region and her community. “ The Bougainville story is a result of Australia’s political decision through Papua New Guinea government now implemented on Bougainville and leaving behind a toxic legacy that is already been kind of fenced out, not to have a forum to talk about,” she says. “So my intention is for us to start telling this story.” Late last year, the Bougainville government signed another memorandum of understanding with an Indian metals company, Loyd’s Metals, to redevelop the Panguna mine. Roka Matbob says…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MIAMI (AP) — A cluster of storms along the Gulf Coast could become the first named tropical storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center said. The storms threatened to bring heavy downpours that could lead to dangerous floods across southern states including Texas and Louisiana. The system was centered Tuesday afternoon about 55 miles (85 kilometers) south-southwest of Corpus Christi, Texas, according to a hurricane center advisory. National Hurricane Center director Michael Brennan said meteorologists are expecting the system to strengthen, possibly into a tropical storm by early Wednesday. But coastal areas could experience tropical storm conditions this week, even if the system doesn’t officially get a name, Brennan said. “The main hazard with these types of systems is largely the flooding from the heavy rainfall,” Brennan said. “And we could see potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding across the Texas coast eastward into central Mississippi through Thursday. Prolonged rainfall may extend the flood threat into the weekend.” Tornadoes were possible from the upper Texas coast across southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were around 30 mph (45 kph) Tuesday, just shy of the 39 mph (63 kph) needed to be named a tropical storm. The system had a 70% chance of forming into a tropical cyclone over the next two days, the hurricane center said. Houston, where a World Cup match between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is scheduled for Wednesday, has been under a flood warning since…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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An international team of paleontologists from Romania, Hungary and Italy has identified a new genus and species of herbivorous, duck-billed dinosaur from an incomplete skeleton unearthed in the Hațeg Basin, a bowl-shaped depression in the Carpathians of present-day Romania.

The post New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Unearthed in Romania appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A mine that has been operating for decades in the Peruvian Andes continues to contaminate the soil, water and air for thousands of people living nearby, according to a lawsuit filed last month. The contamination has displaced farming and livestock, the lawsuit said, while causing cognitive issues in children, among other public health concerns. Companies working at the Cerro de Pasco mine, located in Peru’s central highlands, need to be held responsible for the pollution and public health issues that have affected more than 100,000 people, according to Cerro de Pasco Mayor Julio Rupay Malpartida and public prosecutor Darwin Alejandro Ramón Yalico, who filed the injunction petition on behalf of the municipality. “[The] environmental contamination is on such a scale that it’s present in every corner of the city,” the lawsuit said, “a consequence of the accumulation of heavy metals and toxic substances.” The area has been home to mining activity since at least the 16th century, when the Spanish discovered silver deposits during colonization. More recently, the private company Volcan Compañía Minera took over the mines in 2000 and has overseen underground and open pit operations to extract silver, copper, zinc and lead, among other metals. The lawsuit also lists Volcan subsidiaries Óxidos de Pasco, Empresa Administradora Cerro and Empresa Minera Paragsha as defendants. The Cerro de Pasco mine from above. Image courtesy of SkyTruth/Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Some of the operation is located in the center of the city, with a population of more than 74,000. As a result, particulate…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Starting in 2027, France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI will stop certifying security products that lack quantum-resistant encryption, effectively forcing government agencies and critical infrastructure operators to phase out older cryptographic systems. Reuters reports: Samih Souissi, ANSSI's chief of staff, said at the France Quantum conference that the agency would halt such certifications from 2027, and that businesses should be buying only quantum-safe products by 2030. ANSSI approval is required for use in French government agencies and critical infrastructure, making the policy a de facto phase-out of older encryption. "It's not only a technical issue," Souissi said. "It's a matter of governance, industrial planning, regulation, and sovereignty." The move reflects concern that attackers may store encrypted data now and unlock it later when quantum computers become strong enough to crack today's protections, a risk known as "harvest now, decrypt later."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bumble bees demonstrated an unexpected ability to solve a novel object-based challenge without training. A bee’s brain is smaller than a sesame seed, yet in a new experiment, some bumble bees appeared to solve a problem that required more than simple instinct. They had to move an object into position, climb onto it, and use [...]

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Artificial intelligence has moved from a distant idea into daily work. Writers use it to draft outlines. Marketers

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When the US Department of Justice approved Paramount Skydance's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday, a DOJ press release said "a rigorous eight-month investigation led by the [Antitrust] Division’s career staff" showed that the $111 billion deal would not harm competition or American consumers.

But according to The Wall Street Journal, the DOJ career lawyers who led that investigation "were leaning toward recommending a lawsuit challenging it on the grounds that the combination of the two movie studios would be anticompetitive and violate antitrust law." DOJ senior leaders closed the investigation "before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object, according to people familiar with the matter," the WSJ reported.

Commenting on the report that the decision to allow the deal surprised staff investigators, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote that "the American people need to know if this merger was approved as a political favor. This reeks of corruption."

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This piece summarises published research on ageing and emotional well-being. We are not psychologists or clinicians, and nothing here is psychological advice. If you’re struggling with mood, isolation, or a life-stage transition of the kind discussed, a licensed psychologist or your GP is the right place to start.

“When we recognize that we don’t have all the time in the world, we see our priorities most clearly. We take less notice of trivial matters.” That is Laura Carstensen, a Stanford psychologist, describing the shift her research traces in how people spend their attention as they age.

And it is probably not the story most of us expect ageing to tell.

The assumption that age means shrinking

The familiar picture of growing older is one of contraction. The social circle thins. Ambition cools. The appetite for new people, new places and new experiences fades, and what remains looks like a managed decline.

Read that way, an older person with fewer friends and narrower routines is a person who has lost something and is making do with the remainder.

That reading treats the narrowing almost as damage. Carstensen’s work, developed through her socioemotional selectivity theory, points somewhere stranger. The narrowing is real, but it is largely chosen rather than imposed.

What Carstensen found

The shift she documents is selective rather than passive. Older adults do not simply lose contacts; they prune the peripheral ones and hold onto the people who matter most. They put less effort into meeting new people and more into the relationships they already have. When time feels limited, the theory holds, people are motivated to pursue emotional satisfaction over information.

That motivation shows up as a particular set of preferences. Carstensen describes older adults as “more likely to invest in sure things, deepen existing relationships, and savor life.” The hedge in her own phrasing matters. This is a tendency the research finds, not a rule every person follows.

One detail makes the pattern hard to dismiss as mere mellowing. In a memory study, Carstensen found that older adults remembered nearly twice as many positive images as negative or neutral ones — a skew toward the good that younger adults did not show. Attention itself appears to reorganise around what feels emotionally worth keeping.

Time horizon, not age, likely does the work

The central claim is that age is not really the cause. One key tenet of the theory, in Carstensen’s words, is that “perceived time horizons, not chronological age, account for age differences in goals and preferences.” What changes behaviour is the sense of how much time remains, and that sense usually shortens with age, though not always for the same reasons.

The contrast with youth is the cleanest test. When time horizons are long, Carstensen says, “people are constantly preparing, trying to soak up all the information they can.” This makes sense when you are building toward an open future, and tends to lose its appeal once the future feels finite.

Carstensen and colleagues found that shortening or expanding a person’s sense of remaining time changed their goal preferences regardless of how old they were. A similar effect surfaced again under unusual conditions: an analysis published in Psychological Science found that the age advantage in emotional well-being held up during the early COVID-19 pandemic, with older adults reporting better emotional experience than younger ones even under a shared acute threat.

The paradox of ageing

If ageing were simply loss, emotional life should worsen with it. Instead, research suggests the opposite.

Her explanation for the paradox is plain. She describes the sequence this way: “we invest in more emotionally important parts of life and life gets better.” It tends to get better, in her reading, because the investment has shifted to the things that reliably pay off in contentment.

What this reframes

Seen through Carstensen’s lens, the older person with a smaller circle and quieter ambitions is not a diminished version of their younger self. They are perhaps simply someone acting on a clearer sense of what their time is for. The same behaviour that looks like withdrawal from the outside can be, from the inside, a deliberate reallocation toward what already matters.

The practical reach of the idea extends well beyond ageing. Because perceived time, not the calendar, sets the priorities, anyone whose horizon suddenly shortens — through illness, upheaval, or simply paying attention to the clock — can find the same reordering arriving early. Later life is simply where it shows up most reliably.

The post Psychologist Laura Carstensen uncovered a surprising upside to growing older: as our sense of the time we have left grows shorter, we invest more in the people and activities that matter most to us appeared first on Space Daily.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The driving technology company Mobileye plans to launch a robotaxi service in an as-yet-unnamed US city in 2027, it said earlier today. The service will be vertically integrated, using Mobileye's Moovit mobility platform to interact with customers booking rides, coordinate drivers, and so on. The Israeli company, which was bought by Intel in 2017 before going public again in 2022, says it will start with around 100 robotaxis early next year. The company first rose to prominence in the mid-2010s, when Tesla began using Mobileye's advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) as part of Autopilot. That relationship lasted until 2016, when Mobileye dropped Tesla as a customer after being alarmed that a driver assistance system was being sold to end users as driverless technology. Since then, Mobileye has continued to work with other partners on ADAS and autonomous vehicles. It has developed a new "SuperVision" ADAS that combines cameras and radar sensors, used by Porsche and Polestar, among others. On the robotaxi front, it has partnered with Volkswagen Group's MOIA to develop a commercially available robotaxi based on the VW ID. Buzz minivan, and last year, Mobileye revealed plans to work with Lyft to deploy robotaxis in Dallas, "as soon as" this year. [...] If Mobileye's experience with the initial 100 robotaxis goes well, it says it will scale up to around 17,000 robotaxis within the following five years. "The robotaxi revolution has only just begun, and its potential for transforming how we travel around the world continues to increase," Shashua said. "This initiative is not a replacement for our existing partnerships; it is an extension of them," said Amnon Shashua, founder and CEO of Mobileye. "We remain deeply committed to enabling automakers and mobility providers with Mobileye Drive. At the same time, operating our own service allows us to accelerate adoption, gain direct operational experience, and showcase the full potential of autonomous mobility."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Marine biologists have identified a new species of the shark genus Hemiscyllium in the waters of eastern Papua New Guinea, expanding a remarkable group of reef-dwelling sharks known for using their four fins to ‘walk’ across the seafloor.

The post New Species of Walking Shark Discovered off Papua New Guinea appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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Snap is launching its first consumer augmented-reality glasses this fall for $2,195. "You can preorder a pair of Specs now at specs.com with a $200 refundable deposit, and Snap says they're expected to ship 'this fall' in the US, UK, and France," reports The Verge. From the report: This is a big moment for Snap: The company made a big entry into smart glasses with its original Spectacles in 2016, and the company has been toiling away on nonpublic AR versions of Spectacles over the past few years. CEO Evan Spiegel promised the company would launch consumer AR glasses in 2026 and even turned its smart glasses team into a separate business. The company says that Specs are "fully standalone, with no puck and no tether." (Which is perhaps a jab at Apple's Vision Pro, which is tethered to a separate battery pack.) They'll be offered in two sizes, a 47mm model weighing 132g and a 52mm model weighing 136g, and will have removable inserts that Snap says will support "a wide range of prescriptions." You probably won't mistake Specs, with their wide, bold frames, for any of Meta's smart glasses -- Snap clearly picked a design that it wants to stand out. (They're not my style -- I don't think I can pull off the "snow goggles, but fashionable" look -- though maybe Jony Ive might like them.) They have visible light and infrared cameras, and while the Specs are recording, a little LED bar will glow in the middle of the glasses. Both of the lenses will be able to show you content, and Snap says that its display system is powered by a "proprietary liquid crystal on silicon technology" that offers a 51-degree field of view and can show 16 million colors. The lenses can also go from clear to tinted in 10 seconds, Snap says. The Specs have two Snapdragon processors onboard, and while Snap isn't specifying exactly which ones they are, the company says that one is focused on "computer vision" while the other is focused on running AR Lenses. "Together, they enable fast hand tracking, low latency, and responsive interactions that help digital content feel anchored in the real world," Snap says. You can also expect up to four hours of battery life on a charge, which Snap says accounts for things like "audio and video playback, AI assistance, Bluetooth notifications, and more." The Specs come with a charging case that Snap says will offer four more charges for a total of 20 hours of battery.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US scientists have shed light on the physics behind diamond’s superconductivity, which could help engineers develop more powerful quantum devices, including multifunction quantum chips.

The joint research team consisted of experts from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. It discovered new insights into how electricity can flow through a diamond without resistance under the right conditions.

The findings could lead to multifunctional quantum chips capable of combining several quantum technologies within a single material. “This offers a new way of thinking by integrating superconducting and semiconductor behavior to create opportunities for multifunction quantum devices,” David Awschalom, PhD, from UChicago PME, said.

According to Awschalom, who is the Liew Family Professor of Quantum Science and Engineering and Physics at UChicago PME and the director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, the breakthrough could make quantum technologies more efficient and better integrated with classical technologies. 

An unexpected discovery

Diamond is valued in advanced technology because of its exceptional hardness, optical properties, and thermal conductivity (Tc). It features the highest thermal conductivity and mineral hardness of any material known. It can also become superconducting when doped with boron, an element that alters its electrical conductivity.

More than two decades ago, scientists discovered that diamond can also become superconducting when doped with atoms of boron, an element that can alter its electrical behavior. Until now, however, the mechanisms behind the phenomenon remained largely unclear.

To analyze the phenomenon, the researchers synthesized high-quality diamond thin films, which contained carefully distributed boron atoms. They were stunned to find that despite appearing structurally uniform, the films had a hidden mosaic of microscopic superconducting regions.

The research team called these regions “puddles.” It was further discovered that they eventually connect with one another, therefore allowing electrical current to travel through the material without resistance.

“This serendipitous discovery caught us totally by surprise because these are structurally homogeneous, crystalline films,” Nitin Samarth, PhD, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, and co-corresponding author of the paper, said. “So, the question was: Where is this granularity coming from?”

A new quantum platform

According to the researchers, these superconducting regions are not fixed. Their shape and behavior can be modified by changing magnetic fields, temperature, and electrical currents. The researchers believe they can learn to connect them more efficiently by identifying how electrons move between them.

This could boost the performance of future quantum devices and allow them to operate at higher temperatures. Meanwhile, several parameters can be adjusted independently to tailor the material’s properties, including boron concentration, crystal orientation, mechanical strain, and dimensionality.

“We now have a reliable roadmap for engineering diamond superconductors by independently adjusting the material’s core properties,” Samarth said in a press statement. “There are a lot of exciting possibilities here, for both quantum and classical technology.”

Awschalom noted that the discovery could lead to the creation of multifunctional quantum-on-chip devices. “Imagine a future technology that combines light, spin, superconductivity, and magnetism, all in a single material that one could also integrate with today’s microelectronics,” he concluded.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Rivian laid off hundreds of workers on Tuesday, or less than 2% of its workforce, just one week after it began deliveries of its all-important R2 SUV.

The electric automaker confirmed the cuts hit its service and customer teams, which include sales and marketing, as it tries to claw its way to a profit it has yet to ever post.

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In an age of AI hallucinations and collapsing trust, Jimmy Wales argues that Wikipedia’s human transparency may be exactly what makes it worth trusting.