Author: Curated by: NewYorkGazette.com Est. 1725

For decades, cobalt has been considered one of the best understood magnetic metals. Its crystal structure and basic properties have been studied extensively, leading scientists to believe there were few surprises left to uncover. But new research has revealed that this familiar element harbors an unexpectedly complex quantum landscape hidden within its electronic structure. An international team led by Dr. Jaime Sánchez-Barriga of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) discovered that cobalt contains a rich network of topological electronic states that remain stable even at room temperature. The findings challenge long-held assumptions about the metal and suggest it could play an important role…

Courts are starting to grapple with this question. In February, a federal court in Michigan ruled that a self-represented person’s conversations with ChatGPT to prepare her case were work product—legal work that is shielded from the opposing side. The decision came on the same day a federal court in New York held that documents a criminal defendant had generated using Claude were not privileged attorney-client conversations or work product. The court argued that Claude is not an attorney and that a user has no “reasonable expectation of confidentiality in his communication” with it because AI companies can disclose user data…

Many stars are born inside vast clouds of gas and dust in space. As parts of these clouds collapse under gravity, they create dense regions known as molecular cloud cores where new stars begin to take shape. Star formation often occurs in groups rather than in isolation. In some cases, two newborn stars become gravitationally bound, creating what astronomers call a binary star system. Observations indicate that many of these systems form very early, before the stars themselves have fully developed. However, researchers have long struggled to understand how two growing protostars can move close enough together to become a…

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The EU has proposed new legislation to end its Big Tech dependenceThe laws aim to boost domestic ​cloud, AI and semiconductors. (CNBC)+ US firms would be blocked from critical public tenders. (Reuters $)+ It also wants to make sure non-EU actors cannot disrupt tech services with a “kill switch.” (The Guardian)+ But the proposal needs to be negotiated with EU member states. (Politico $)2 Intelligence agencies warn Chinese spies are recruiting on LinkedInThe Five Eyes alliance said Beijing is using job platforms for espionage. (BBC)+ The spies are…

Astronomers from the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) have outlined a new strategy for uncovering one of the universe’s most elusive objects: tightly bound pairs of supermassive black holes. These giant black hole duos are expected to form naturally after galaxies merge. Although astronomers have identified some widely separated supermassive black hole pairs, finding those that orbit much closer together has proven far more difficult. In a study published in Physical Review Letters, the researchers suggest searching for a distinctive signal. As the black holes orbit each other, their immense gravity…

This week I’ve been at SXSW London. There’s been music, film, and a lot—and I mean a lot—of talk about AI. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the last 30 years studying how people interact with digital technologies. Early in her career, the biggest concerns were the potential impacts of internet and email use on our brains. We may laugh those concerns off today, but it’s true that as the technologies became more ubiquitous and ingrained in our daily lives, our attention spans began…

Octopuses have long been known for their remarkable intelligence. One famous example was Inky, the octopus that escaped from New Zealand’s National Aquarium in 2016 by squeezing through a drainpipe and making its way back to the ocean. Now, researchers at Dartmouth have uncovered another impressive ability. A new study published in Current Biology found that octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate food hidden from direct view, demonstrating sophisticated spatial thinking. “Our findings are the first to demonstrate that invertebrates can use mirrors to understand their environment to find prey,” says lead author Mary Kieseler, Guarini ’25, who…

Gong and other scholars have been issuing warnings about the security vulnerabilities of AI agents for a while. They publish papers and blog posts detailing exploits such as indirect prompt injection, which involves hijacking agents using commands hidden in websites, emails, or other seemingly anodyne data sources. Compared with these techniques, the Meta hack was practically mindless. The only complication that hackers had to overcome was using a VPN that matched the true account owner’s location; then they directly asked the support agent to change the account’s email address, and it complied. Meta has not commented publicly on how this…

More than one-quarter of people with Type 2 diabetes now use GLP-1 receptor agonists, a class of medications that includes Ozempic. But new research from Stanford Medicine and international collaborators suggests these widely prescribed drugs may be less effective for some patients because of their genetics. The study found that about 10% of people carry genetic variants linked to a phenomenon known as GLP-1 resistance. Individuals with these variants appear to produce higher levels of the hormone GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1), which helps regulate blood sugar, yet the hormone does not seem to work as effectively in their bodies. Researchers focused…

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Anthropic has called for a global slowdown in AI developmentIt flagged the risk of models “self-improving.” (WSJ $)+ And wants a coordinated plan to stop them. (Reuters $)+ Skeptics note that the timing is awfully convenient. (The Register) 2 In a first, scientists have precisely edited human embryo genesThey relied on a newer gene-editing technique. (NYT…