Next El Niño could be tipping point for a hotter climate

Pacific heat pulse is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not. The Pacific Ocean is a giant climate cauldron, with a powerful heat engine that affects storms, fisheries, and rainfall patterns half a world away, and scientists are watching closely to see if it’s about to…

New robotic control software avoids jamming their joints

Software lets robots learn from each other even if they have different hardware. Switching from one smartphone to another is mostly a smooth procedure. You log into your accounts and your apps, preferences, and contacts should sync to the new hardware. But in the world of robotics, swapping an…

Why are top university websites serving porn? It comes down to shoddy housekeeping.

Hundreds of subdomains from dozens of universities have been hijacked by scammers.  Websites for some of the world’s most prestigious universities are serving explicit porn and malicious content after scammers exploited the shoddy record-keeping of the site administrators, a researcher found recently. The sites included berkeley.edu, columbia.edu, and washu.edu,…

Meet the 19-meter Cretaceous kraken that swam with mosasaurs

Layer by layer, researchers revealed the jaws of an ancient predator. Some 80 million years ago, the late Cretaceous oceans were patrolled by 17-meter mosasaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs, and massive, predatory sharks. For decades, the paleontological consensus was that this was the age of vertebrates; anything without a backbone was…

As electric aspirations fade, Porsche sells its stake in Bugatti

​Porsche’s stake in Bugatti and Rimac Group have been sold to private equity.  A new chapter in the Bugatti story begins today. Twenty-eight years after bringing the storied luxury brand back from the dead, Volkswagen Group no longer counts Bugatti among its stable of brands. Porsche, which became the…