A few milligrams of enamel became a thermometer for T. rex
Temperature-sensitive bonds in three fossil teeth produced an estimate of 36.3°C, while five crocodilian teeth helped test whether burial had rewritten the signal.
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Today's paper
The daily briefing ↗The US proposed an AI incident channel with China. Six missing pieces will determine what it does
The September 20 talks produced an idea, not an operating crisis line—and the difference lies in its institutional details.
Inch-long sand hoppers move 38 kilograms of beach per metre overnight
Researchers weighed fresh burrow mounds, then used hopper biomass to model a much larger—but carefully bounded—single-day estimate.
Science
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A tiny shift in iron’s X-rays reveals a stellar wind falling onto a pulsar
XRISM turned a displacement of only a few electronvolts into a measurement of otherwise invisible plasma racing toward a neutron star.
Red blood cells adapt to low oxygen by rearranging what they already have
Experiments reveal an oxygen-sensitive switch around the membrane protein Band 3 that redirects existing cellular machinery without making anything new.
Study finds adults’ chosen task information outperformed random selection
An experiment suggests that useful knowledge accumulates more effectively when adults choose what to pass on, rather than merely sending along information.
Nature
More →How one giant cell launches—and brakes—a millisecond contraction
Three studies divide Spirostomum’s roughly half-length contraction into a calcium-linked signal, a modeled mechanical response and a proposed internal damping system.
On Okinawa, plastic has seeped into the pores of coral rubble
Lab instruments showed that bright specks on dead coral fragments were polyethylene and polypropylene embedded in the skeleton—not loose litter resting on it.
When does helping a young chimpanzee become a lesson?
Two remarkable encounters in Senegal show how scientists can identify teaching by its effects without pretending to know exactly what an animal intended.
Technology
More →360-degree video catches AI scene models losing track
PersistBench uses a second view of the same moment to test whether dynamic-scene models preserve an object’s existence, motion and appearance after it leaves the frame.
Polonius lets Rust skip an allocation the borrow checker used to demand
A nightly-only borrow-checker upgrade accepts the natural borrowed-key lookup-or-insert pattern, avoiding owned-key construction on cache hits.
How a 44-gram drone feels its way past transparent walls
Two flexible whiskers turn gentle contact into an estimate of a surface’s forward distance, helping an experimental drone navigate when optical sensing becomes unreliable.
World
More →At least 112,000 displaced within Yemen in two weeks as nearly 3,000 reach Djibouti
Separate snapshots show a rapid internal displacement crisis and a smaller cross-border movement, each measured across a different place and reporting window.
Trenton’s data-center fight is headed to voters after a 336-signature dispute
After Ohio’s highest court rejected the city council’s 820-signature threshold, the council certified a proposed ban on large data centers for a November 3 special election.
Nanyin returned to China with sounds shaped in Singapore
A Fujian musical tradition carried by migrants to Singapore is being presented in Shanghai alongside relationships it acquired there—including Indian classical music and dance.
Economy
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Japan’s deposit, loan and mortgage rates are moving at different speeds
Savings accounts now pay noticeably more, but official data and current bank offers show that borrowing costs have also climbed—and the rate on the page may not be the rate a customer receives.