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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Amazon Expands Health AI Access For Virtual Health Care

https://www.cnet.com/tech/amazon-expands-health-ai-access-for-amazon-users-looking-to-receive-virtual-healthcare/

Health AI will be available to more US Amazon users this year.

Other functions Health AI can help out with include filling prescription refills through Amazon Pharmacy and connecting you with One Medical doctors via video, in-person appointments or messages. 

Health AI isn't the first chatbot to offer health guidance. In January, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, which similarly answers health questions, deciphers lab results and connects to your Apple Health app and medical records with your permission. Anthropic likewise introduced Claude for Healthcare, which connects to Apple Health and can help you understand and sort through health care tasks such as medical bills. Apple is also rumored to be working on its own AI health coach or assistant. 

There have been concerns about chatbots and their use for sensitive topics such as health advice, because misguidance can cause harm. We would always caution against inputting private, sensitive information into AI bots and to take their advice with a grain of salt, since AI is known to hallucinate. Double-check with your provider about any health care advice an AI chatbot gives you.

Amazon's virtual assistant is said to be HIPAA-compliant and intended only for medical support, not to replace a health care provider. Health AI will be able to answer questions such as: "Can you explain my recent cholesterol results and what they mean for me?" or "What allergy medications are safe with my current prescriptions?"

An Amazon representative didn't immediately respond to a request for further comment.

AI Chatbots Miss More Than Half Of Medical Diagnoses, Study Finds

https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/chatbots-miss-medical-diagnoses/

ChatGPT was one of the chatbots used in Nature Medicine's study.

The study acknowledged that LLMs now achieve scores on medical knowledge benchmarks comparable to passing the US Medical Licensing Exam, and that clinical documents from LLMs "are rated as equivalent to or better than those written by doctors."

However, a problem was revealed when the study's participants tried to get the same results by asking the LLM questions but were not successful. This is because users often didn't provide enough information, the study found. It reports that in 16 of 30 sampled interactions, initial messages contained only partial information.

"In two cases, LLMs provided initially correct responses but added new and incorrect responses after the users added additional details," the study said, suggesting that conversing more with the chatbots did not improve the probability of receiving a correct medical diagnosis. 

After the initial diagnosis, the LLMs provided the correct follow-up steps to the person just 44.2% of the time. 

Meta's Llama 3 was one of the large language models used in the study.

According to a survey by OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, 3 in 5 US adults report using AI for health. "They are using AI to get information when they first feel unwell, consulting it to prepare for their visits with their clinicians, and using it to better comprehend patient instructions and recommendations," OpenAI stated.  

And although there's a small disclaimer on ChatGPT's website that reads, "ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info," many people do take the chatbot's word for fact.  

The study serves as a reminder that ChatGPT and similar chatbots should not be relied upon for medical guidance, particularly in serious situations.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

New study challenges notion that aging means decline, finds many older adults improve over time:

Aging in later life is often portrayed as a steady slide toward physical and cognitive decline. But a new study by scientists at Yale University suggests an alternate narrative — that older individuals can and do improve over time, and their mindset toward aging plays a major part in their success.

Analyzing more than a decade of data from a large, nationally representative study of older Americans, lead author Dr. Becca R. Levy, PhD, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), found that nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both, over time.

The improvements were not limited to a small group of exceptional individuals and, notably, were linked to a powerful but often overlooked factor: how people think about aging itself.

"Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities," said Dr. Levy, an international expert on psychosocial determinants of aging health. "What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it's common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process."

For the study, the researchers followed more than 11,000 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, a federally supported longitudinal survey of older Americans. The research team tracked changes in cognition using a global performance assessment, and physical function using walking speed — often described by geriatricians as a "vital sign" because of its strong links to disability, hospitalization, and mortality.

Over a follow-up period of up to 12 years, 45% of participants improved in at least one of the two domains, according to the study. About 32% improved cognitively, 28% improved physically, and many experienced gains that exceeded thresholds considered clinically meaningful. When participants whose cognitive scores remained stable over that period (rather than declining) were included, more than half defied the stereotype of inevitable deterioration in cognition.

"What's striking is that these gains disappear when you only look at averages," said Dr. Levy, author of the book "Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & How Well You Live."

"If you average everyone together, you see decline," Dr. Levy continued. "But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants that we studied got better."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Every month most people receive a bill for water, gas, electricity, internet, or insurance, and in the future, if the CEO of OpenAI has anything to say about it, a monthly bill for AI use.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has sparked debate after suggesting artificial intelligence could soon be sold like electricity or water – with users paying for "intelligence" on a meter.

The ChatGPT creator made the bold prediction during an appearance at the BlackRock US Infrastructure summit in Washington this week

"We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people will buy it from us on a meter"

"Fundamentally, our business and I think the business of every other model provider is going to look like selling tokens.

"They may come from bigger or smaller models, it makes them more or less expensive. They may use more or less reasoning, which also makes them more or less expensive.

"They may be running all the time in the background trying to help you out. They may run only when you need them if you want to pay less. They may work super hard and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a single problem and that's really valuable."

The idea provoked backlash from commentators with one person posting on Twitter to say "I don't need AI to live, dude. I've literally never seen a more delusional tech founder in my life".

Where do you stand on this? Would you sign up for a monthly billing for AI use, or can you live without it?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A new, general theory argues it is not about costly or exaggerated show-offs but about the inherent trade-offs between investments and benefits animals (and humans) face when they signal:

For decades, scientists have tried to answer a simple question: why be honest when deception is possible? Whether it is a peacock's tail, a stag's roar, or a human's résumé, signals are means to influence others by transmitting information and advantages can be gained by cheating, for example by exaggeration. But if lying pays, why does communication not collapse?

The dominant theory for honest signals has long been the handicap principle, which claims that signals are honest because they are costly to produce. It argues that a peacock's tail, for example, is an honest signal of a male's condition or quality to potential mates because it is so costly to produce. Only a high-quality birds could afford such a handicap, wasting resources growing it, demonstrating their superb quality to females, whereas poor quality males cannot afford such ornaments.

A new synthesis by Szabolcs Számadó, Dustin J. Penn and István Zachar (from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, respectively) challenges that logic. They argue that honesty does not depend on how costly or wasteful a signal is, but rather on the trade-offs between investments and benefits, faced by signalers.

They explain that signals are not honest because they are costly, instead, honesty evolves when it is beneficial and deception is costly. Previous studies inspired by the handicap principle (refuted by the authors in the paper) misleadingly focused on only the costs of signalling. Yet biological functions, like signalling, cannot be understood in the evolutionary context without their benefits, often realized in the long run.

The new theory, called Signalling Trade-Off Theory, shifts the focus from absolute cost to choice in what to invest. In biology, every organism faces competing demands: investing more in one thing means having less for another. Time spent courting cannot be spent feeding; energy put into bright feathers cannot be used for immune defence. These are trade-offs. And these are also present in economic choices for humans. Crucially, they differ between individuals. A healthy, well-fed animal can afford different choices than a weak or starving one. According to several theoretical studies, signalling trade-offs and not absolute costs define whether deception or honesty evolves.

"Signals, in theory, can be absolutely cost free in terms of immediate energy investment." – István Zachar, one of the authors explains – "Honesty does not come from how much a signal harms you but from what kind of cost-benefit ratio you can realize with it." And this trade-off between investments and benefits is defined by the condition of the individual.

According to theory, honest signals arise when these trade-offs respect the true quality of the individual, i.e. are condition-dependent. High-quality individuals get more return from the same investment than low-quality ones. As a result, the best strategy for a strong individual is to signal more, while the best strategy for a weak individual is to signal less. "Both are behaving optimally," the author says, "but because their trade-offs are different, their signals end up revealing who they are." This is how honesty is defined.

[...] Why does this matter beyond biology? Because the same logic applies to human communication, from advertising to cooperation based on reputation. We all operate under trade-offs (inherited or learnt) between short-term gains and long-term consequences. Signals are reliable when those trade-offs differ across people in ways that make bluffing unprofitable.

"The real question is not 'how costly is this signal?'" – Zachar says – "It is 'what would it cost this person, in terms of what else they could have done, to fake it?'"

By reframing honesty in terms of trade-offs rather than waste, the new theory brings signalling back in line with a broader understanding of evolution: organisms are not rewarded for squandering resources, but for allocating them efficiently under constraints. In that light, honest communication is not a miracle. It is a natural outcome of living in a non-quantum biological world where every choice closes off another.

Journal Reference: Szabolcs Számadó, István Zachar, Dustin J Penn, A general signalling theory: why honest signals are explained by trade-offs rather than costs or handicaps, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Volume 39, Issue 2, February 2026, Pages 171–189, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voaf144

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

After 14 years in orbit, NASA's Van Allen Probe A dropped back into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean:

The Van Allen Probe A satellite spent seven years measuring radiation and nearly 14 years total in space. 

Once the mission ended, NASA originally calculated that the probes would fall back to Earth sometime in 2032. The agency acknowledges, though, that it didn't account for the current solar maximum, a period of increased instability on the sun, which leads to more intense space weather events. NASA says the extra solar wind caused drag on the probe, causing a descent faster than initial calculations predicted. 

Data from these probes is still used today to measure and predict the impact of solar winds and radiation on communications systems, navigation satellites, power grids and even astronauts in space. The radiation that the Van Allen Probes studied is also the same radiation responsible for all of those gorgeous auroras Earth has been getting lately.

NASA said most of the spacecraft likely burned up as it sped downward through the atmosphere, although some components may have survived.

The agency originally predicted the return for around 7:45 p.m. ET Tuesday, noting that it could take up to 24 hours for the event to occur. It was off by 11 hours.   

Before the splashdown, NASA predicted a 1 in 4,200 chance of any wreckage landing somewhere that could cause human harm. The coordinates that the space agency gave Wednesday for the reentry point -- approximately 2 degrees south latitude and 255.3 degrees east longitude -- are just south of the Equator and west of South America, meaning well out over the ocean. 

The probe's partner, Van Allen Probe B, is also scheduled to crash back to Earth, but it isn't expected to arrive until 2030 or later. 

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2119616/americans-diy-solar-panels-avoid-high-electric-bill/

Homeowners and renters alike have seen utility costs increase in the mid-2020s, directly impacting their monthly budgets. This is due to a range of factors, from some providers having virtual monopolies in specific areas to attempts to offset the costs of power-hungry AI data centers. Even common mistakes can run up utility costs. To that end, some have turned to homemade solar setups to generate their own energy and save money — all without letting their utility providers know, avoiding potentially costly connection fees on their already rising bills.

These small, relatively simple setups are known as balcony or plug-in solar: two to four panels that can be placed in an outdoor area, like a balcony, and powered via a wall outlet to harvest solar energy. These setups are easy to hook up, much simpler than a full-on solar roof installation, and save money on utility bills — alongside the usual environmental benefits of solar panels.

Reports by outlets such as Canary Media, The Washington Post, and CNN indicate that savings can range from around $100 per year to $35 to $50 per month. Exact numbers depend on elements like location, existing utility rates, and the size and strength of the solar setup. While DIY solar does seem like a good idea, there's also the legal side of it to be aware of. Unfortunately, laws across the United States are a bit hazy on the matter, but that could change soon.

[...] At the time of publication, the only state with solid DIY solar laws on the books is Utah. In 2025, the state passed House Bill 340, or the Solar Power Amendments bill, which approves and encourages the use of small solar setups in residential settings. These devices and their owners are exempt from needing approval and from utility provider fees. While many states haven't even introduced potential legislation on this front, others, such as New York and California, have taken steps to make balcony solar legal and offer protections to those hoping to equip their homes with it.

Depending on size, plug-in solar setups can cost between a few hundred and over $1,000, offering between 200 and 800 watts of power. This means that users should have no problem running lights, device chargers, radios, and fans, amongst others, from their balcony solar setups. Some may even be able to run appliances like refrigerators.

[...] While customer complaints indicate that some solar companies are worth avoiding, there are many more vying for the business of homeowners and renters. Given advancing legislation supporting balcony solar and increasing energy costs spurring its adoption, it stands to reason that some of these companies' offerings will soon become more popular with Americans.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Troubled SaaS icon Adobe tumbled after hours, sending its stock to 7 year lows after the company announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen will resign from the creative software giant amid deep skepticism about the company's ability to survive and thrive in the AI era:

The CEO change "adds questions around strategic continuity, capital allocation priorities, and pace of innovation," Grace Harmon, an analyst at Emarketer, said in an email. "Investors will likely focus on whether incoming leadership maintains a balance between disciplined execution and aggressive AI investment, especially as competition in creative and enterprise AI intensifies."

The company also gave a sales forecast for the current quarter that just topped estimates, but failed to ease investor fears that the software maker is being left behind by new competitors.

In the fiscal first quarter, revenue increased 12% to $6.4 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $6.28 billion. Adjusted earnings were $6.06 a share in the period, which ended Feb. 27. The average projection was $5.88 a share.

Annual recurring revenue for the company's AI-first products such as Firefly more than tripled compared to the same period last year, Narayen said in a script prepared for a conference call scheduled after the results. In September, Adobe said sales from these products exceeded $250 million.

[...] The shares fell about 6% in extended trading after closing at $269.78 in New York. The stock has declined about 23% this year, and is about to drop the lowest level since 2019.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Most of the devices are made by Asus and are located in the US:

Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices—primarily made by Asus—that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime.

The malware—dubbed KadNap—takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, told Ars. The high concentration of Asus routers is likely due to botnet operators acquiring a reliable exploit for vulnerabilities affecting those models. He said it's unlikely that the attackers are using any zero-days in the operation.

The number of infected routers averages about 14,000 per day, up from 10,000 last August, when Black Lotus discovered the botnet. Compromised devices are overwhelmingly located in the US, with smaller populations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Russia. One of the most salient features of KadNap is a sophisticated peer-to-peer design based on Kademlia, a network structure that uses distributed hash tables to conceal the IP addresses of command-and-control servers. The design makes the botnet resistant to detection and takedowns through traditional methods.

"The KadNap botnet stands out among others that support anonymous proxies in its use of a peer-to-peer network for decentralized control," Formosa and fellow Black Lotus researcher Steve Rudd wrote Wednesday. "Their intention is clear: avoid detection and make it difficult for defenders to protect against."

[...] Kademlia uses a 160-bit space to designate (1) keys—which are unique bitstrings derived by hashing a chunk of data—and (2) node IDs, both of which are assigned to each node. Nodes then store the keys of other nodes. The stored keys are organized by their similarity to the ID of the node storing them. Proximity is measured by XOR distance, a mathematical means of mapping a network. When a node polls another node, it uses this metric to locate other nodes with the closest distance to the key it's looking for until it finally finds a match. KadNap, a variant of Kademlia, obtains the key to be searched through a BitTorrent node.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Craig H. Barratt's appointment should settle a governance issue over Intel's Foundry future:

Intel made the announcement on March 3, clarifying that Yeary will not stand for reelection in May. It's the most consequential governance change at Intel since the board’s forced exit of former CEO Pat Gelsinger in late 2024. It also consolidates authority around Barratt, who will lead the board’s focus on scaling U.S. R&D and manufacturing, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who has publicly supported Intel Foundry since taking the role.

[...] But some industry analysts have reported that Yeary and Tan were not aligned on keeping Intel Foundry. In a post to X on August 7, Citrini Research analyst Jukan cited insiders who claimed that Yeary drafted a plan to spin off Intel Foundry as an independent entity, bring in minority investment from companies including Nvidia and Amazon, and effectively step back from contract manufacturing as a core business.

[...] What’s confirmed is that Yeary is leaving, and the new chair has publicly stated that his focus will be on supporting “rigorous execution” in investing and scaling U.S. R&D and manufacturing.

Intel launched Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3) on 18A at CES in January, with consumer systems shipping later that month, making it the first commercial platform built on the node and the most advanced process ever manufactured in the United States, using RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery.

Yields are sufficient to support Panther Lake shipments, but Intel CFO David Zinsner said in October that they are not yet high enough to deliver normal profit margins, with industry-standard yield results not expected until 2027. It’s understood that Intel doesn’t plan to add significant 18A capacity in 2026 beyond current commitments.

In Barratt, Intel will gain a chair who has publicly committed to scaling U.S. manufacturing, who operates inside a semiconductor ecosystem that depends on foundry diversity, and who has worked inside Intel's own infrastructure business. That’ll obviously matter to potential foundry customers doing long-term planning who need confidence that Intel Foundry will still exist and be resourced in five years.

"The company has taken significant steps to strengthen its financial position, advance its technology and product roadmap, and enhance operational discipline," said Barratt. "The board thanks Frank for his leadership and for helping position Intel for this next phase."

Intel's board will also shrink from 12 to 11 members following the May meeting, as Yeary's seat will not be filled. Given that four new directors with technology operating backgrounds have joined the board since 2024, its overall composition is moving in a consistent direction away from purely financial oversight and towards technical expertise.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/03/after-outages-amazon-to-make-senior-engineers-sign-off-on-ai-assisted-changes/

Amazon's ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a "deep dive" into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.

The online retail giant said there had been a "trend of incidents" in recent months, characterized by a "high blast radius" and "Gen-AI assisted changes" among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.

Under "contributing factors" the note included "novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established."

"Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently," Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT.

The note ahead of Tuesday's meeting did not specify which particular incidents the group planned to discuss.

Amazon's website and shopping app went down for nearly six hours this month in an incident the company said involved an erroneous "software code deployment." The outage left customers unable to complete transactions or access functions such as checking account details and product prices.

Treadwell, a former Microsoft engineering executive, told employees that Amazon would focus its weekly "This Week in Stores Tech" (TWiST) meeting on a "deep dive into some of the issues that got us here as well as some short immediate term initiatives" the group hopes will limit future outages.

He asked staff to attend the meeting, which is normally optional.

Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes, Treadwell added.

Amazon said the review of website availability was "part of normal business" and it aims for continual improvement.

"TWiST is our regular weekly operations meeting with a specific group of retail technology leaders and teams where we review operational performance across our store," the company said.

Separately, the company's cloud computing arm—Amazon Web Services—has suffered at least two incidents linked to the use of AI coding assistants, which the company has been actively rolling out to its staff.

AWS suffered a 13-hour interruption to a cost calculator used by customers in mid-December after engineers allowed the group's Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, and the AI tool opted to "delete and recreate the environment," the FT previously reported.

Amazon previously said the incident in December was an "extremely limited event" affecting only a single service in parts of mainland China. Amazon added that the second incident did not have an impact on a "customer facing AWS service."

The FT previously reported multiple Amazon engineers said their business units had to deal with a higher number of "Sev2s"—incidents requiring a rapid response to avoid product outages—each day as a result of job cuts.

Amazon has undertaken multiple rounds of lay-offs in recent years, most recently eliminating 16,000 corporate roles in January. The group has disputed the claim that headcount cuts were responsible for an increase in recent outages.

Original Submission

According to Tech Review, a number of different "dashboard" websites have popped up recently, displaying a variety of data sources related to the current war in Iran. They are meant to mimic the sorts of dashboard displays used by governments...but these have been "vibe coded" and don't have traceable sources of data. As well as being entertaining, it seems that these are often tied to gambling on various war-related topics. Story at https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/09/1134063/how-ai-is-turning-the-iran-conflict-into-theater/ or if paywalled, try https://archive.ph/G0zut

AI-enabled dashboards, combined with prediction markets and fake imagery, are reshaping how war is observed.
[...]

As a journalist, I believe these sorts of intelligence tools have a lot of promise. While many of us know that real-time data on shipping routes or power outages exist, it's a powerful thing to actually see it all assembled in one place (though using it to watch a war unfold while you munch on popcorn and place bets turns the war into perverse entertainment). But there are real reasons to think that these sorts of raw data feeds are not as informative as they may feel.

Craig Silverman, a digital investigations expert who teaches investigative techniques, has been keeping a log of these dashboards (he's up to 20). "The concern," he says, "is there's an illusion of being on top of things and being in control, where all you're really doing is just pulling in a ton of signals and not necessarily understanding what you're seeing, or being able to pull out true insights from it." [Silverman page, debunking many things, https://x.com/CraigSilverman ]

One problem has to do with the quality of the information. Many dashboards feature "intel feeds" with AI-generated summaries of complex, ever-changing news events. These can introduce inaccuracies. By design, the data is not especially curated. Instead, the feeds just display everything at once, with a map of strike locations in Iran next to the prices of obscure cryptocurrencies.

Anyone here tried one of these sites? I suspect you need a big monitor...

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.thewave.engineer/articles.html/productivity/legos-0002mm-specification-and-its-implications-for-manufacturing-r120/

A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a brick molded this morning in Denmark, China, Hungary, Mexico, or the Czech Republic. The 66-year-old brick will have the exact same interference fit, the same clutch power, the same 4.8mm stud diameter. This is the result of maintaining mold tolerances to 0.01mm (10 microns) across billions of parts annually.

For hardware engineers developing products with tight-fit mechanical interfaces, LEGO represents an extreme case study in what's possible when you can't compromise on dimensional consistency. A brick that's 0.02mm oversize won't fit into existing structures. A brick that's 0.02mm undersize falls apart when you pick it up. There is no acceptable tolerance range for functional failure. This creates engineering constraints that most consumer products never face. Understanding how LEGO achieves this - and more importantly, where they make deliberate trade-offs - provides practical frameworks for tolerance analysis, mold design, and manufacturing process control.

The frequently cited "0.002mm tolerance" is misleading without context. LEGO's actual mold precision is 10 microns, but different features have different critical tolerances. The cylindrical studs on top are 4.8mm in diameter with a tolerance of ±0.01mm. The hollow tubes underneath create the interference fit that makes bricks stick together. Standard bricks are 9.6mm tall, and three plates stack to exactly one brick height. The cumulative tolerance across a stack of 100 bricks determines whether a tall structure maintains dimensional accuracy.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

(15 Dec 2025) Fortescue Infinity Train gets 14.5 MWh battery that never needs charging [update]
Goes loaded downhill and recharges the 14.5 MWh battery by "regenerative braking" with enough energy to drag the empty train cars uphill - didn' quite fully work.

(15 Feb 2026) Fortescue trials battery-electric locomotives in Pilbara as decarbonisation race tightens

Fortescue launched two battery-electric locomotives this week, rounding out its fleet of 70 diesel-powered machines hauling precious iron-ore from pit to port.
...

^{The locomotive's battery is the equivalent of "200 to 300 average electric vehicles" and capable of powering a refrigerator for 30 years, according to Mr Otranto.}

...
The locomotives, purpose-built by Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail, boast what Fortescue has called the world's largest land-mobile battery, with a capacity of 14.5 megawatt-hours.

The pair will save the company 1 million litres of diesel each year, still just a fraction of the 80 million litres the company consumes annually.

"It is a large undertaking: these take probably a couple of years to manufacture, so once we pull an order, you can see it will take a couple of years to transition the entire fleet," Mr Otranto said.

The company hopes to complete the transition ahead of its "real-zero" deadline of 2030.
...
The locomotives' massive battery will be charged in two ways.

The first is via Fortescue's growing renewable energy apparatus, which it says it is expanding aggressively at a rate of more than 3,000 solar panels a day.

The second charging method is through regenerative braking, a mechanism drawing closely from the company's stalled "Infinity Train" concept.

Andrew Forrest had previously touted an in-house electric rail model, developed with Australian engineering firm Downer Group, that generated all the power it needed using the uphill-downhill dynamics of the Pilbara ranges.

The project was canned, however, in September, axing more than 100 staff.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/ig-nobels-ceremony-moves-to-europe-over-security-concerns/

Every year, we have a blast covering a fresh crop of winners of the Ig Nobel prizes. After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, this year and will continue to be held in a European city for the foreseeable future. The reason: concerns about the safety of international travelers, who are increasingly reluctant to travel to the US to participate.

"During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country," Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of The Annals of Improbable Research magazine, told The Associated Press. "We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the US this year."

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." As the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of scientific merit. The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures, in which experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and again in just seven words.

Traditionally, the awards ceremony and related Ig Nobel events have taken place in Boston at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. However, four of last year's 10 winners opted to skip the ceremony rather than travel to the US, and the situation has not improved.

Nor is it just the Ig Nobels being affected by the hostile US environment for international travel. Many international gaming developers are choosing to skip this year's weeklong Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, citing similar concerns. "I honestly don't know anyone who is not from the US who is planning on going to the next GDC," Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who's based in Spain, told Ars. "We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it."

So this year, the Ig Nobel organizers are joining forces with the ETH Domain and the University of Zurich for hosting duties. "Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things—Albert Einstein's physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind—and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas," Abraham said.

The Ig Nobels will not be returning to the US any time soon. Instead, the plan is for Zurich to host every second year; every odd-numbered year, the ceremony will be hosted by a different European city. Abraham likened the arrangement to the Eurovision Song Contest.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Two deeply rooted assumptions in global demographic debates are challenged: that fertility will rebound as societies develop, and that "replacement-level fertility" is an ideal to be pursued:

Drawing on the latest evidence, the authors show that neither view is supported by available data and argue that persistently low fertility can be sustainable and even economically desirable.

In their piece, published in Nature Human Behaviour, IIASA Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar Wolfgang Lutz and IIASA Senior Researcher Guillaume Marois, who is also an associate professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute of the Shanghai University, respond to political and public concern over declining birth rates in highly developed countries. While low fertility is increasingly framed as a crisis, associated with population ageing, labor shortages, and fiscal pressure, the authors argue that this narrative is based on outdated assumptions that no longer reflect current demographic realities.

A central motivation for the paper was the widespread belief based on earlier studies that fertility would recover as human development continues. However, using the most recent data up to 2023, the authors demonstrate that this pattern has reversed. Today, the global cross-sectional relationship is clearly negative: the higher a country's Human Development Index, the lower its fertility tends to be.

"This finding came as a surprise to much of the demographic community," says Marois. "Even countries once considered models for balancing work and family life, such as the Nordics, have experienced unexpectedly steep fertility declines. The idea that development alone will bring fertility back up simply doesn't hold anymore."

The commentary also questions the normative status of replacement-level fertility, often defined as 2.1 children per woman. This benchmark, the authors argue, is an artificial construct that only leads to long-term population stability under unrealistic assumptions, notably the absence of further mortality decline. More importantly, population stability does not automatically translate into economic or social wellbeing.

Instead, the authors emphasize that economic sustainability depends more on population structure than on population size. Higher levels of education, increased labor force participation, and rising productivity can offset – and even outweigh – the effects of having fewer births. Lower fertility can enable greater investment per child, strengthening human capital and innovation while reducing dependency burdens over the coming decades.

The policy implications are clear. While pro-natalist measures can improve family wellbeing, increasing fertility should not be their main objective, as their impact on fertility is typically modest and higher fertility does not necessarily improve economic wellbeing. Governments should instead adapt social security, labor market, and pension systems to the reality of sustained low fertility, while strengthening investments in education and productivity. This shift is particularly relevant for countries such as South Korea, China, and Japan, which currently record some of the world's lowest fertility rates and face especially intense political pressure to raise birth numbers.

"Our message is not that low fertility is inherently good or bad," concludes Lutz. "There is no single 'ideal' fertility level that guarantees prosperity. Instead of trying to push birth rates back to an arbitrary target, governments should focus on adapting social security systems to the changing demographic realities and invest strongly in education and productivity. Under those conditions, societies can thrive even with fewer births."

Journal Reference: Marois, G., Lutz, W. (2026). Low fertility may persist and could be good for the economy. Nature Human Behaviour DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02423-6

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