We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food...
The post Cropped 17 December 2025: ‘Deadly’ Asia floods; Boosting London’s water birds; UN headwinds appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Mihai Andrei, ZME Sci The floor of the Cueva de Mono, a cave in the Dominican Republic, is a gruesome graveyard. For thousands of years, it served as the dining room for a massive family of...

Marcona almonds from Spain, walnuts, dark chocolate, Agen prunes from France and a few decades of love go into this sumptuous, boozy frangipane tartA recipe box was rifled through, but, alas, much like shopping for a present last minute, nothing leapt to the fore. Out of the corner of an eye I spied…

Despite Trump claim of ceasefire, no end on horizon to latest round of conflict recently reignited by border skirmish.

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As 2025 draws to a close, all year long one question has dogged the most plugged-in of football fanatics: what's up with Gianni Infantino? Why all the cameos by the head of an international sports body at the US president's inauguration, a Middle East peace signing and another for DR Congo and Rwand…

arXiv:2512.14977v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI) is an approach to AI design, development, and deployment that prioritizes human needs, values, and experiences, ensuring that technology enhances human capabilities, well-being, and workforce empowerment. …

arXiv:2411.10029v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Adversarial camouflage is a widely used physical attack against vehicle detectors for its superiority in multi-view attack performance. One promising approach involves using differentiable neural renderers to facilitate adversarial camouflage opti…

The proposed sale includes rocket systems, self-propelled howitzers and drones. China condemned the move, saying it undermined its sovereignty.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court has formally removed the country’s impeached police chief

arXiv:2512.05300v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: We give almost-linear-time algorithms for approximating rooted minimum cut and maximum arborescence packing in directed graphs, two problems that are dual to each other [Edm73]. More specifically, for an $n$-vertex, $m$-edge directed graph $G$ who…

arXiv:2512.11724v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: While voice-based AI systems have achieved remarkable generative capabilities, their interactions often feel conversationally broken. This paper examines the interactional friction that emerges in modular Speech-to-Speech Retrieval-Augmented Gener…

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Whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order performed Sheb-i Arus ceremonies in Istanbul, Turkey, to commemorate the death of 13th-century Islamic scholar, poet and Sufi mystic Jalaladdin Rumi.

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This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

European leaders gathering to decide on using frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine for the next two years.

The unconventional departure of Guinea-Bissau’s president has focused renewed attention on his country’s role in the booming global cocaine trade.

In the 50 years since equal rights for women were enshrined in UK law, the campaigners have been reduced to caricatures, or forgotten. But their struggle is worth rememberingCelia Brayfield was at her desk in the Femail section of the Daily Mail’s Fleet Street office when an editor called her over. …

Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins summit in Brussels pressuring Belgium to drop its opposition to using Russia’s frozen assets

arXiv:2512.15062v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: This letter presents a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach for joint time allocation and power control in a cognitive Internet of Things (CIoT) system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). The CIoT transmitt…

As his 1981 film is rereleased, the director talks about his Oscar-winning fable about an actor’s Faustian pact with the Nazi party – and its new relevanceAt the 54th Academy Awards, in 1982, Chariots of Fire was imperial, and Katharine Hepburn broke records. Less remembered today is a darkly brilli…

Zulekha Samiullah and Hugh Barrett talk about the highlights from this year’s Quantum Carousel, a variety show for quantum physicists 
The post Learning through laughter at Quantum Carousel  appeared first on Physics World.

arXiv:2512.15049v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this paper, we aim to explore the stochastic performance limit of large-field-size Random Linear Streaming Codes (RLSCs) in multi-hop relay networks. In our model, a source transmits a sequence of streaming messages to a destination through multipl…

Angola secured $753 million in financing to speed up development of the Lobito rail corridor, ending months of delays tied to talks over government guarantees.

England's Ashes hopes are vanishing after they are overwhelmed by Australia amid more Snicko controversy on the second day of the third Test.

Quote from: JulesVerneATV on 12/15/2025 02:23 pmStranger Things a scifi fantasy horror series set in the 80s timeline, it got many awards, Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominationsThey...

US president is unlikely to oust long-ruling Caracas strongman without military muscle, experts say

Players' distrust of 'Snicko' grows as controversy continues with the dismissal of Jamie Smith in the Adelaide Ashes Test.

arXiv:2504.13460v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Traditional temporal action localization (TAL) methods rely on large amounts of detailed annotated data, whereas few-shot TAL reduces this dependence by using only a few training samples to identify unseen action categories. However, existing few-…

arXiv:2507.23600v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Signal unmixing analysis decomposes data into basic patterns and is widely applied in chemical and biological research. Multivariate curve resolution (MCR), a branch of signal unmixing, separates mixed signals into components (base patterns) and t…

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arXiv:2512.14930v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: High-content screening microscopy generates large amounts of live-cell imaging data, yet its potential remains constrained by the inability to determine when and where to image most effectively. Optimally balancing acquisition time, computational ca…

Sony Music Taiwan has boarded India-Taiwan co-production “Demon Hunters” as global music distributor, marking a significant commercial partnership as the action-fantasy feature prepares for its international rollout. The film is directed by Chen Mei-Juin (“The Gangster’s Daughter”) and produced by L…

arXiv:2501.03840v5 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in archaeology have increased significantly in recent years, and these now span all subfields, geographical regions, and time periods. The prevalence and success of these applications have …

https://twitter.com/EShoreSpaceflt/status/2001539989545291881QuoteEasternShoreSpaceflight@EShoreSpacefltIt was an amazing launch tonight. I still have some 4K slow-motion video from my phone to go through, but here’s what I’ve got so far. Way to g...

arXiv:2512.15595v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Bloom filters are a fundamental data structure for approximate membership queries, with applications ranging from data analytics to databases and genomics. Several variants have been proposed to accommodate parallel architectures. GPUs, with massive t…

Phys.org Careful reanalysis of data from more than a decade ago indicates that Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, does not have a vast ocean beneath its icy surface,

Theo Rose was "misled" by police into accepting a sanction for violence he didn't admit, review finds.

Interest rates in Europe are going to stay right where they are at a meeting of European Central Bank officials

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsUK inflation falls sharply to 3.2% amid slowdown in food price risesOver in Beijing, China’s commerce minister has criticised the European Union’s investigations into whether Chinese companies are unfairly subsidised by the state.The ministry…

arXiv:2512.14778v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This study investigates the key skills and competencies needed by new cybersecurity graduates in the Philippines for entry-level positions. Using a descriptive cross-sectional research design, it combines analysis of job listings from Philippine onlin…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced 'the largest gas deal in Israel's history' with Egypt.

Eman Abu al-Khair mourns as cold weather kills her newborn, exposing harsh realities faced by displaced families.

During a pv magazine Week Europe 2025 webinar, storage specialists gave their thoughts on what to consider when purchasing battery energy storage systems in Europe, with pricing, supplier options and product reliability all on the agenda.

arXiv:2512.14869v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We present an oscillatory neuromorphic primitive implemented with networks of coupled Wien bridge oscillators and tunable resistive couplings. Phase relationships between oscillators encode patterns, and a local Hebbian learning rule continuously adap…

The rover has been acing a long-term series of durability tests, making the most of its enhanced navigation capabilities, and ferreting out new findings about Mars’ geologic past. After nearly five years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has traveled almost 25 miles (40 kilometers), and the mission…

arXiv:2508.09320v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Graph neural networks (GNNs) are increasingly employed in high-stakes applications, such as fraud detection or healthcare, but are susceptible to adversarial attacks. A number of techniques have been proposed to provide adversarial robustness guar…

What do you get for the person who has everything? I'm a gadget reviewer, and there's a good chance that something on this list will appeal to them - and arrive before Christmas.

arXiv:2512.15030v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The web3 applications have recently been growing, especially on the Ethereum platform, starting to become the target of scammers. The web3 scams, imitating the services provided by legitimate platforms, mimic regular activity to deceive users. However…

Kylian Mbappe scored two goals to help Real Madrid overcome a stubborn challenge from third-division side Talavera.

Letter from 39 backbenchers threatens rebellion over proposal to expedite court backlog in England and WalesKeir Starmer is facing the threat of a backbench rebellion over plans to reduce the number of jury trials in England and Wales, as dozens of Labour MPs signed a letter describing the move as “…

arXiv:2512.14760v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Underwater images are severely degraded by wavelength-dependent light absorption and scattering, resulting in color distortion, low contrast, and loss of fine details that hinder vision-based underwater applications. To address these challenges, we pr…

Nova Power & Gas’s 400 MWh project in Cluj County is the largest battery energy storage system (BESS) to date to have been connected to Romania’s grid.

The 200 square meter facility is targeting an annual manufacturing capacity of 2 GW of solar cells and 2 GW of solar modules. The solar cell production will be 100% for export.

European Union leaders are gathering for a summit aimed at agreeing on a massive loan to cover Ukraine’s military and other financial needs for the next two years

Reducing atom loss and re-using already-measured atoms enables more complex quantum computations
The post Qubit ‘recycling’ gives neutral-atom quantum computing a boost appeared first on Physics World.

The Oscars will be shown only on YouTube from 2029, the Academy said Wednesday, in a radical gambit for a movie industry that remains wary of streaming platforms even as viewing habits shift online.

A model-independent approach reduces uncertainty in hadronic light-by-light scattering, strengthening Standard Model tests
The post Improving precision in muon g-2 calculations appeared first on Physics World.

arXiv:2512.15089v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive performance across various language tasks. However, existing LLM reasoning strategies mainly rely on the LLM itself with fast or slow mode (like o1 thinking) and thus struggle to balance reason…

There’s a good chance you own a couple of gadgets that support wireless charging now, be it your iPhone or Android phone, wireless earbuds or smartwatch. Multi-device wireless chargers can help power them all up in one place, without the need for a bunch of cords messing up your space. There are doz…

With ancient standing stones and modern midwinter festivals, the West Penwith peninsula is a land of magic and mysteryThe light is fading fast as I stand inside Tregeseal stone circle near St Just. The granite stones of the circle are luminous in this sombre landscape, like pale, inquisitive ghosts …

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arXiv:2412.06196v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: 5G networks provide secure and reliable information transmission services for the Internet of Everything, thus paving the way for 6G networks, which is anticipated to be an AI-based network, supporting unprecedented intelligence across application…

"We live in a bleak time, especially for young people, so this film is an attempted antidote to that," the actor explained on The Tonight Show

Ares Management is providing a $100 million facility to Dubai-based multifamily office Patrimium, as global finance firms step up their pursuit of private credit opportunities in the Gulf region.

Parveen doesn’t know if she’s getting a sponge cake or a burger bap, but Joe thinks she needs to embrace his northern-isms. You decide who is sweet and who is sour• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a jurorJoe says ‘buns’ covers all sweet things in the north, but I worry he’ll bri…

arXiv:2410.14839v4 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: We study the dynamic pricing problem faced by a broker seeking to learn prices for a large number of credit market securities, such as corporate bonds, government bonds, loans, and other credit-related securities. A major challenge in pricin…

The first major original musical created and produced in the Middle East begins its run December 19. 'Once Upon a Time in Dubai' will be an attempt to explain expat life in the UAE. The show's Producer Stéphane Boukris spoke to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Zabasajja on Horizons Middle East and Africa about …

arXiv:2512.15353v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Recent evidence shows that the versification of prompts constitutes a highly effective adversarial mechanism against aligned LLMs. The study 'Adversarial poetry as a universal single-turn jailbreak mechanism in large language models' demonstrates that…

California researchers are preparing for the possible return of the New World screwworm, a parasitic fly that feeds on living flesh and once devastated U.S. livestock. By monitoring traps and educating veterinarians and farmers, they hope to stop the pest before it gains a foothold.

arXiv:2511.01140v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Medical imaging often operates under limited labeled data, especially in rare disease and low resource clinical environments. Existing multimodal and meta learning approaches improve performance in these settings but lack a theoretical expla…

Confusion reigns on day two of the third Ashes Test with England's Jamie Smith at the centre of the controversy after he's given not out after review, only to be given out moments later in a separate delivery, due to a contentious use of the Snicko technology.

T-9hr 13minI'll plan to cover this flight if I wake up in time.

Bulgaria’s second standalone energy storage procurement exercise of 2025, worth close to BGN 229 million ($137.2 million), received a lot of interest and there are 30 project proposals included in a reserve list, the government said.

Sydney’s devastated Jewish community gathered for the funeral of “Matilda Bee,” an ebullient, smiling 10-year-old girl.

Patrick Lawler previously featured in a BBC undercover investigation into far-right views.

arXiv:2512.11295v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: The integrity of many contemporary AI systems is compromised by the misuse of Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) models to obscure systems that remain heavily dependent on human labor. We define this structural dependency as Human-Instead-of-AI (HISOAI), an…

arXiv:2503.01459v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Motivation: PCR is more economical and quicker than Next Generation Sequencing for detecting target organisms, with primer design being a critical step. In epidemiology with rapidly mutating viruses, designing effective primers is challengin…

arXiv:2512.14932v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this work, we propose a method to efficiently find the regularization parameter for low-rank MMSE filters based on a Kronecker-product representation. We show that the regularization parameter is surprisingly linked to the problem of rank selection…

“Bloomberg: The China Show” is your definitive source for news and analysis on the world's second-biggest economy. From politics and policy to tech and trends, Yvonne Man gives global investors unique insight, delivering in-depth discussions with the newsmakers who matter. (Source: Bloomberg)

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arXiv:2512.15033v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) in complex reasoning domains typically relies on performance alignment with ground-truth oracles. In the domain of chess, this standard manifests as accuracy benchmarks against strong engines like Stockfi…

arXiv:2512.15295v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Controller synthesis is a formal method approach for automatically generating Labeled Transition System (LTS) controllers that satisfy specified properties. The efficiency of the synthesis process, however, is critically dependent on exploration polic…

US stocks are heading into 2026 with positive momentum and a host of bullish forecasts at their backs. For the fourth year of strong gains that many predict to play out, they must still overcome plenty of potential threats.

How polymer behavior, panel mechanics, and thermal coupling affect reliability in 3D integration.
The post Reliability Risks Shift To The Materials Stack appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

arXiv:2508.13255v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: In recent years, multiplexed Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) or FISH-omics methods have rapidly expanded, enabling the quantification of chromatin organization in single cells, often in conjunction with measurements of RNA and prot…

YouTube won't share music streaming data with Billboard any more, objecting to how it weights streams when calculating U.S. charts.

arXiv:2512.15212v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Reconstructing accurate 3D human meshes in the world coordinate system from in-the-wild images remains challenging due to the lack of camera rotation information. While existing methods achieve promising results in the camera coordinate system by assu…

Thousands of European farmers are converging on Brussels on Thursday to protest against the EU-Mercosur treaty as European leaders meet for a summit. Protesters are worried about the prospect of an influx of South American products into the bloc and the reform of agricultural subsidies.

arXiv:2512.15281v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Digital twin (DT) technology integrates heterogeneous data and models, along with semantic technologies to create multi-layered digital representation of physical systems. DTs enable monitoring, simulation, prediction, and optimization to enhance deci…

arXiv:2512.15707v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Active Speaker Detection (ASD) aims to identify who is currently speaking in each frame of a video. Most state-of-the-art approaches rely on late fusion to combine visual and audio features, but late fusion often fails to capture fine-grained cross-mo…

arXiv:2510.15022v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Low-rank Adaptation (LoRA) models have revolutionized the personalization of pre-trained diffusion models by enabling fine-tuning through low-rank, factorized weight matrices specifically optimized for attention layers. These models facilitate the…

Turing award winner is in early talks to raise €500mn ahead of January launch

Your “roommate’s” genes could be affecting the bacteria living in your gut, and vice versa, according to a rat study published today (December 18) in Nature Communications. By analyzing more than four thousand animals, researchers found that the mix of microbes in a rat’s gut is influenced not only …

For the first time, a study analyzes and compares the intensity and expansion of the phenomenon of gentrification (replacement of a population of lower socioeconomic status by another with higher purchasing power) in Spain over a period of 10 years.

Hayling Island, Hampshire: Piles of goose barnacles are stranded on the beach after a long journey hitched on a barrel. They’re fascinating creatures, but they won’t survive longA message pinged on to my phone – a photo from a friend out walking her dog. Her whippet, head cocked and nose quivering, …

arXiv:2512.14895v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: A popular paradigm for training LM agents relies on imitation learning, fine-tuning on expert trajectories. However, we show that the off-policy nature of imitation learning for multi-turn LM agents suffers from the fundamental limitation known as cov…

US President Donald Trump said the Gaza truce brought peace to the Middle East “for the first time in 3,000 years."

The Wall Street titan’s recent embrace of a public blockchain is a harbinger of things to come.

From aerial footage of an Indian pilgrimage to portraits of Romanians in bear costumes, this year’s awards featured stunning images from the streets of 23 countries Continue reading...