It’s a bumper year for wild mushrooms – here’s what you could find in the woods today

This autumn looks like it could be a good year to spot large numbers of wild mushrooms. Already many can be seen covering tree roots and shady spots. Mushrooms are the part of certain fungi that you see above ground. The rest of it is either underground or within a tree trunk. All mushrooms are […]

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The Binance hack exploited familiar weaknesses – all organisations should learn from it

Hackers have stolen around US$6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, most of which was taken in under an hour. According to Binance, the attack exploited systems and individuals with the authority to carry out transactions involving such large sums. Such vulnerabilities exist everywhere; statistics show that people and the systems they directly […]

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We used ancient DNA to track the origins and spread of the Germanic and Celtic languages – new research

Ales stenar (Ale’s Stones) in southern Sweden is a monumental Iron Age stone ship-setting overlooking the Baltic Sea. These structures were graves or cremations surrounded by stones in the shape of a ship. It dates to around 600–1000 AD and broadly coincides with the period of back-migration into the region. Nicolas Delgado Clausen, CC BY […]

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AI and blockchain are coming to African farms: 4 things must happen for farmers to benefit

The use of digital agriculture is expanding across Africa. Tools like artificial intelligence (AI), sensors and blockchain are helping farmers receive information about weather, pests, markets and farm management. AI can analyse images and other farm data to detect problems or support decisions. Digital traceability systems can record where food comes from and what happens […]

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Jonathan Swift foresaw the pitfalls of AI in Gulliver’s Travels

Wikimedia We think of artificial intelligence based on large language models as a discovery of our own moment. But Jonathan Swift – yes, the writer of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – foresaw it all in the 18th century. In our modern world we are repeatedly told by companies, governments, journalists and others that our lives can […]

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Stone age hunters in northern Europe may have used poison arrows to hunt big prey

Autumn walks in Britain are glorious, as the foliage changes colour and cool crisp air begins to bite. However, some of these European trees hide a much darker secret. For example, the yew tree’s lovely red arils – the cup-shaped coverings around the seeds – carry toxins that may have been used to poison arrow […]

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The US$6.3 billion Binance hack is the biggest heist ever – it should be a wake up call for cryptocurrency users

Dusan Zidar The cyberattack on crypto-asset exchange Binance is potentially the largest theft of its kind on record. Binance has estimated the assets stolen at an eye-watering US$6.3 billion (£4.7 billion). On October 29, 2026, analytics firms reported that large amounts of crypto-assets had been moved from wallets used by the exchange across multiple blockchain […]

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Medieval monks were early ecologists and left a wealth of knowledge for later generations of gardeners

An illustration from the Wellcome Collection of a medieval monk's herb garden. Wellcome Collection For whatever the land you possess, whether it be where sand And gravel lie barren and dead, or where fruits grow heavy In rich moist ground; whether high on a steep hillside, Easy ground in the plain or rough among sloping […]

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Chemists create disappearing tattoos: here’s the science behind how they work

How handy would it be if you could make your tattoos invisible for a job interview in the morning, and reveal them again for a party in the evening? This sounds like science fiction, but it may soon be reality. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed invisible tattoo ink than can be […]

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Google’s Gemini 4 Carbon Tops Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with 59 Score

SAN FRANCISCO — Google DeepMind’s latest frontier AI model, Gemini 4 Carbon, has claimed the top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 with an aggregate score of 59. The benchmark result places Google’s newest release one point ahead of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5, which holds a score of 58, and two points ahead […]

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