An ecologist’s long walks and detailed observations allowed him to chronicle the shifts in an iconic habitat and grow a once-overlooked branch of science

Demand for observing time on Webb outpaces supply by a factor of nine.

The botnet is being skillfully used to launch "highly evasive" password-spraying attacks.

A federal judge sentenced Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard member, to prison after he pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine.

A now nine-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by a priest last year in Little Grand Rapids First Nation told court on Tuesday she remembers feeling scared as the priest allegedly walked her to his bedroom inside the church that day.

The conflict in Syria rages on, the United States' relationship with Iran remains strained, and China is taking hold as an emerging superpower. As part of TOTN's "Looking Ahead" series, NPR commentator Ted Koppel looks to the future of international relations.

NPR's Neal Conan reflects on his 11 years of hosting Talk of the Nation and thanks some of the influential contributors to the show along the way. After 36 years at NPR, Conan signs off.

1. Magnus Carlsen returns to Kolkata after almost five years at Tata Steel India Rapid and Blitz 2024  ChessBase India
2. "It's Chaotic": Chess World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen Reveals Why He Does Not Play In India  NDTV Sports
3. King Carlsen hails growth of Indian chess, praises Praggnanandhaa's fighting spirit  Telegraph India
4. Tata Steel Chess set for a Carlsen-Pragg opening  Hindustan Times
5. Tata Steel Chess India Rapid & Blitz 2024: Schedule, Venue, Players, Tickets, Prize Money  Firstpost

1. Netflix's The Great Indian Kapil Show: Navjot Singh Sidhu is back after 5 years of exit, Archana Puran Singh says, 'He’s taken over my...'  Firstpost
2. Did you know! Navjot Singh Sidhu was ousted from The Kapil Sharma Show for this reason  The Times of India
3. Navjot Singh Sidhu makes a roaring comeback; Archana Puran Singh worried about her The Great Indian Kapil Show throne  Hindustan Times
4. The Great Kapil Sharma Show: Navjot Sidhu shares his fast-track fatherhood plan. Kapil’s response is too f  The Economic Times
5. Navjot Singh Sidhu shares BTS pics from The Great Indian Kapil's show set with Archana Puran Singh and...  Moneycontrol

RSI said single-player Star Citizen campaign was "feature complete" a year ago.

A quarter-century in, Eiichiro Oda’s sprawling Japanese pirate saga has transformed into an ever-evolving odyssey, spawning a multimedia franchise to rival its Western counterparts 

Peruvanam Satheesan Marar recalls his initiation into the percussion ensemble and how he gained expertise in playing different instruments

President-elect Trump has promised mass deportations, including workplace raids like those that took place during his first term at chicken processing plants in rural Mississippi.

Single-player campaign, ranked multiplayer available free of charge.

The contract software company closed a $110 million Series D round in 2023, one of the largest venture capital deals in Washington last year.

Researchers describe a new nudibranch that is genetically drastically different from its closest relatives.

TV personality responded to rumours that she is exempt from some challenges

The sound of silence, no more: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who as folk duo Simon & Garfunkel were one of the most popular American musical acts of the 20th century, recently reunited after years without speaking.

Canadian rental prices fell 1.2 per cent in October compared to the same time last year. It's the first time that annual rents have declined since July 2021, according to a new report.

A Canada Border Services Agency superintendent is speaking out after being targeted by the Indian government with allegations of murder and terrorism — allegations Canadian authorities say are not backed by any evidence.

A plan to penalise public hospitals for procedures that resul­t in errors is proving harder than first thought.

Founded in 1924 as J&G Hardie, Hardie Polymers, the Glasgow-based polymer supplier, celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Pesky leaks on the International Space Station aren’t the most serious issue facing U.S. human spaceflight

The proposed American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) has taken its first step U.S. House legislative process with several issue disagreements becoming more evident. On May 23, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Data, Innovation and Commerce approved the updated APRA, advancing the bill to full committee consideration. Just prior to the […]

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.

Sea turtles are remarkable creatures for a number of reasons, including the way they hear underwater—not through openings in the form of ears, but by detecting vibrations directly through the skin covering their auditory system. Inspired by this ability to detect sound through skin, researchers in China have created a heart-monitoring system, which initial tests in humans suggest may be a viable for monitoring heartbeats.

A key way in which doctors monitor heart health involves “listening” to the heartbeat, either using a stethoscope or more sophisticated technology, like echocardiograms. However, these approaches require a visit to a specialist, and so researchers have been keen to develop alternative, lower cost solutions that people can use at home, which could also allow for more frequent testing and monitoring.

Junbin Zang, a lecturer at the North University of China, and his colleagues specialize in creating heart-monitoring technologies. Their interest was piqued when they learned about the inner workings of the sea turtle’s auditory system, which is able to detect low-frequency signals, especially in the 300- to 400-hertz range.

“Heart sounds are also low-frequency signals, so the low-frequency characteristics of the sea turtle’s ear have provided us with great inspiration,” explains Zang.

At a glance, it looks like turtles don’t have ears. Their auditory system instead lies under a layer of skin and fat, through which it picks up vibrations. As with humans, a small bone in the ear vibrates as sounds hit it, and as it oscillates, those pulses are converted to electrical signals that are sent to the brain for processing and interpretation.

iStock

But sea turtles have a unique, slender T-shaped conduit that encapsulates their ear bones, restricting the movement of the similarly T-shaped ear bones to only vibrate in a perpendicular manner. This design provides their auditory system with high sensitivity to vibrations.

Zang and his colleagues set out to create a heart monitoring system with similar features. They created a T-shaped heart-sound sensor that imitates the ear bones of sea turtles using a tiny MEMS cantilever beam sensor. As sound hits the sensor, the vibrations cause deformations in its beam, and the fluctuations in the voltage resistance are then translated into electrical signals.

The researchers first tested the sensor’s ability to detect sound in lab tests, and then tested the sensor’s ability to monitor heartbeats in two human volunteers in their early 20s. The results, described in a study published 1 April in IEEE Sensors Journal, show that the sensor can effectively detect the two phases of a heartbeat.

“The sensor exhibits excellent vibration characteristics,” Zang says, noting that it has a higher vibration sensitivity compared to other accelerometers on the market.

However, the sensor currently picks up a significant amount of background noise, which Zang says his team plans to address in future work. Ultimately, they are interested in integrating this novel bioinspired sensor into devices they have previously created—including portable handheld and wearable versions, and a relatively larger version for use in hospitals—for the simultaneous detection of electrocardiogram and phonocardiogram signals.

This article appears in the July 2024 print issue as “Sea Turtles Inspire Heart-Monitor Design.”

Admitting that they are "facing a tough time in the courts," Asif related that the LHC has asked for the evidence that the Home Department used to extend the detention. "There has never been a case against them," he noted, "and we have no criminal record of these gentlemen."

Apr 1, 2024

Report by Trevor Findlay about recent politics surrounding the Iranian Nuclear Program.

Samruk Kazyna Corporate Transformation is Set to Generate an Additional $11bn in Revenues to Kazakhstan in the Next Six Years

#GeneralMills150 in :50 Seconds

Carhartt. Sweating the details since 1889.

1981 Ferrari Recovered After Theft 29 Years Ago

Rob Stevens presents groundbreaking AdlensFocuss� eyeglasses at New York�s CE Week.

Explore RIBA's online collection with Google Arts & Culture, featuring new virtual tours and stories.

For 18 months after Charlie’s death, my only desire was to grieve. I celebrate how deeply I let myself experience my grief and how completely I prioritized myself during this time. I took a sabbatical, and only did what I felt like doing. At first it was mostly crying in bed. After a couple of […]

Writer’s Digest is celebrating its 100th anniversary, which is pretty epic. At the same time, the parent company of F&W is also declaring bankruptcy. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… I’ve been at the writing game since the early 1990s. I was a teenager when I first mailed off […]

The recent surge in warming led to fears that climate change may be accelerating beyond model projections, but a fall in how much heat Earth is gaining makes this less likely

Antibiotics can reduce diversity in the gut microbiome, raising the risk of infections that cause diarrhoea - and the effects may last years

A fossil of a tadpole from Argentina is 161 million years old - and isn't that different from some modern species

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation

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The government's official forecaster raises its prediction for UK growth in 2024 and 2025 but reduces it for later years.

On the campaign trail the president-elect pledged to make America "the crypto capital of the planet".