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Inspired by the shape-shifting skin of octopuses, Penn State researchers developed a smart hydrogel that can change appearance, texture, and shape on command. The material is programmed using a special printing technique that embeds digital instructions directly into the skin. Images and information can remain invisible until triggered by heat, liquids, or stretching.

Inspired by the shape-shifting skin of octopuses, Penn State researchers developed a smart hydrogel that can change appearance, texture, and shape on command. The material is programmed using a special printing technique that embeds digital instructions directly into the skin. Images and information can remain invisible until triggered by heat, liquids, or stretching.

When we exercise more, our bodies may compensate by using less energy for other things – especially if we eat less too

Today we have some flower photos from reader MichaelC.  His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Sri Lanka Flora!

 

Recently I sent WEIT some photos from the Dambulla cave temples in Sri Lanka. My wife and I took a “pre-honeymoon” there (we took our honeymoon before the wedding; we’re olde so rules don’t apply to us!) and I have a large number of photos of Sri Lankan flora.  [Today we have the flora.]

I hope some of the ones I’ve selected are new to readers. I have tried to identify them, some I’m sure of, others not so much, and some I don’t know at all. The countryside in Sri Lanka is bursting with color; there are flowers everywhere. And birdsong! If you don’t like singing birds, Sri Lankan is not a place for you. Most of the flowers are probably familiar to people – I’ve seen many myself. These were mostly taken at the Royal Botanical Gardens or on the estate of the Dilmah Tea Plantation.

A Vanda orchid, possibly Vanda suksamran?

Black Bat flower (Tacca chantrieri). I know some Goth friends of my son who I bet would like this plant!:

Some type of rose. St. Nicholas’ Damask, maybe?:

Scarlet Sage (Salvia splendens):

Bachelor’s buttons (Centratherum punctatum or Centratherum intermedium?):

The familiar Hanging Lobster Claw (Heliconia rostrata):

There were a large variety of Angels trumpets (Brugmansia spp.) in parks, gardens, and jungles all over Sri Lanka. Here are a few;

Some kind of orchid (my notes say it’s a Dendrobium orchid):

Egyptian Starcluster (Pentas lanceolata):

Star of Bethlehem (Hippobroma longiflora):

Quantum computers struggle because their qubits are incredibly easy to disrupt, especially during calculations. A new experiment shows how to perform quantum operations while continuously fixing errors, rather than pausing protection to compute. The team used a method called lattice surgery to split a protected qubit into two entangled ones without losing control. This breakthrough moves quantum machines closer to scaling up into something truly powerful.

Quantum computers struggle because their qubits are incredibly easy to disrupt, especially during calculations. A new experiment shows how to perform quantum operations while continuously fixing errors, rather than pausing protection to compute. The team used a method called lattice surgery to split a protected qubit into two entangled ones without losing control. This breakthrough moves quantum machines closer to scaling up into something truly powerful.

Five volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io erupted simultaneously, spewing a mind-boggling amount of lava onto the surface and giving us clues to what may lie underneath

Sometimes humans get ahead of ourselves. We embark on grand engineering experiments without really understanding what the long-term implications of such projects are. Climate change itself it a perfect example of that - no one in the early industrial revolution realized that, more than 100 years later, the emissions from their combustion engines would increase the overall global temperature and risk millions of people's lives and livelihoods, let alone the impact it would have on the species we share the world with. According to a new release from the Salata Institute at Harvard, we seem to be going down the same blind path with a different engineering challenge in this century - satellite megaconstellations.

Brian gets questioned while giving blood.

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By matching uterine contractions up with the body’s natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency C-sections

My YouTube channel is a reliable history of the pandemic. The NY Times is not.

The post Pandemic Revisionism Is a Pretext for MAHA Vandalism first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists have cracked a key mystery behind spider silk’s legendary strength and flexibility. They discovered that tiny molecular interactions act like natural glue, holding silk proteins together as they transform from liquid into incredibly tough fibers. This same process helps create silk that’s stronger than steel by weight and tougher than Kevlar.

Scientists have found that ancient Martian lakes could have survived for decades despite freezing air temperatures. Using a newly adapted climate model, researchers showed that thin, seasonal ice could trap heat and protect liquid water beneath. These lakes may have gently melted and refrozen each year without ever freezing solid. The idea helps solve a long-standing mystery about how Mars shows so much evidence of water without signs of a warm climate.

Researchers have built a paper-thin chip that converts infrared light into visible light and directs it precisely, all without mechanical motion. The design overcomes a long-standing efficiency-versus-control problem in light-shaping materials. This opens the door to tiny, highly efficient light sources integrated directly onto chips.

Physicists have watched a quantum fluid do something once thought almost impossible: stop moving. In experiments with ultra-thin graphene, researchers observed a superfluid—normally defined by its endless, frictionless flow—freeze into a strange new state that looks solid yet still belongs to the quantum world. This long-sought phase, known as a supersolid, blends crystal-like order with superfluid behavior and has puzzled scientists for decades.

A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels

The discovery by JWST of a substantial population of compact "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) presented astronomers with a major mystery. By reproducing their spectra with simulations, a team argued that they were Direct Collapse Black Holes (DCBHs).

The FLRW metric is a model. And you know the saying, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a "quasi-extremal primordial black hole," explodes.

An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year