Deborah Bloomfield

A team of researchers has tested ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, on its clinical reasoning skills using questions from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). The team, publishing their results on preprint server medRxiv, wrote that they chose to test the generative language AI on questions from the USMLE as it was a […]

Crusty arthropods are known to be pretty gifted at regrowing lost limbs, but it was thought their regeneration capabilities didn’t extend to the body. However, new research has turned that assumption on its head, finding that after losing reproductive organs, musculature, and even their anus, sea spiders can grow functional replacements. It was thought that […]

When we think of mummies, the imagination instantly flicks to ancient civilizations preserving the deceased to ensure a smooth passage into the afterlife. However, even godless societies of the modern age have their own traditions of mummification. Chief among them are the communist regimes of the 20th century, which made many of their boldest leaders […]

If you ever spent your lunch break at school caring for a Tamagotchi then be prepared, as new research takes this concept one step further. Researchers were keen to look at people’s attitudes around care by using an interactive device like a smartwatch. Studies like these are normally done with virtual needs, such as caring […]

Two 3,000-year-old mummies found buried in the fetal position in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides turned out, upon closer inspection, to be made of six people intentionally merged together. During excavations at a Bronze Age site in Cladh Hallan on the island of South Uist in 2001, archaeologists found what looked like two well-preserved skeletons. The bodies […]

Scans have been used to digitally unwrap Ancient Egypt’s “Golden Boy” – and it’s easy to see how this privileged teen got his nickname. The mummy had 49 amulets made of gold, stone, and semiprecious stones carefully placed inside and around his body, including a golden heart scarab beetle placed inside the chest and a […]

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) can not only count, they do it better than a great many animals that can’t get past three or four. The evolutionary benefit is well understood, but how a plant achieves this feat is a mystery. Just as mice with a deactivated gene can teach us what that does for other […]

Being on a video call can be a nightmare. You want to look at the camera, but it feels unnatural to look at essentially nothing, so then you look at the screen to see the person talking, but now it looks like you are looking away. If you’re like me, you end up trying to […]

There are lots of different names given to numbers in math. There are prime numbers, obviously, and square numbers; triangle and cube numbers; perfect numbers, practical numbers, and sublime numbers. Numbers can be polite, happy, evil or odious; there are lucky numbers and fortunate numbers; they can be amicable, sociable, betrothed, or untouchable. But there’s […]

The new electric Ram Revolution truck will come with your very own little robot that charges it when you arrive home, according to a Ram presentation at CES. Shaped like a huge Roomba, the charging bot detects how much charge you need and positions itself underneath the vehicle to wirelessly charge it, allowing you to […]

Dust grains brought back by the Hayabusa mission from the asteroid 25413 Itokawa are a scientific goldmine, giving us a glimpse of a space rock in its natural environment, unaffected by passage through Earth’s atmosphere. Studying three of these grains has led one team to conclude Itokawa has a very different history from what we […]

The swirling solid ball at the center of Earth’s inner core appears to have recently paused and may even now be rotating in the opposite direction from previous decades, according to a new study. A pair of scientists from Peking University in China have been looking at the movements of Earth’s mysterious innards by studying […]

Inside the Great Pyramid Of Giza, there is a massive void. The room, sealed when the pyramid was completed some 4,500 years ago, is of unknown purpose, though some have speculated it could be a secret burial chamber of the pharaoh Khufu, who ordered the pyramid to be built.  In 2017, a team known as […]

Elephants are natural eco-warriors that sequester carbon, so protecting their numbers is vital for the environment as well as their species. The carbon offsetting capacity of elephants has long been overlooked as a tool in our arsenal against the climate crisis – but now, new research is reporting on the pivotal influence of African elephants […]

Many of us are returning to work or school after spending time with relatives over the summer period. Sometimes we can be left wondering how on earth we are related to some of these people with whom we seemingly have nothing in common (especially with a particularly annoying relative). However, in evolutionary terms, we all […]

The first light free to move through the universe is what we now call the cosmic microwave background, emitted 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Before then, photons – the particles of light – were constantly interacting with matter, so we can’t use light to see what happened back then. But gravitational waves were already […]

Some stunning artifacts have been discovered at the site of a prehistoric campsite that was home to a group of hunter-gatherers in Britain around 10,500 years ago. This was a time long before metal or even pottery had been introduced to this strange island, but there’s a bunch of evidence that suggests the inhabitants were […]

An international team using JWST has been able to obtain a phenomenal census of the deepest and coldest ices found in a molecular cloud yet, a vast interstellar structure from which stars and planets can form. Beyond water ice, the team found frozen ammonia, methane, methanol, and carbonyl sulfide. Having such a detailed description of […]

Since at least the neolithic, humans have been creating calendars to keep track of the changing seasons. Secularly today, we used the Gregorian calendar introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. This is a solar calendar, where one solar year is measured by one rotation of the Sun by Earth and is equivalent to 365.2422 […]

Monoclonal antibodies inserted directly into the vagina via a dissolvable film are being tested as a method of both contraception and protection against sexually-transmitted infections (STIs).  Nicknamed “plantibodies” as they are produced using tobacco plants, researchers aim to use them against sperm cells, HIV, and herpes. The contraceptive and STI-preventative applications of the antibodies are […]