Many people want to develop better screen-time habits, but don’t have a good set of tools to do so. A new startup, Opal, aims to help. The company, now backed by $4.3 million in seed funding, has developed a digital well-being assistant for iOS that allows you to block …

An international team of paleontologists has examined the fossilized remains of baby tyrannosaurid dinosaurs found in Alberta, Canada, and Montana, the United States. An artist’s impression of a juvenile tyrannosaur. Image credit: Julius Csotonyi. Tyrannosaurids were the apex predators of the supercontinent Laurasia in the Late Cretaceous epoch, and were …

Using the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) observatory on the International Space Station (ISS), researchers have observed five intense blue flashes, one of which initiated a pulsating blue jet into the stratosphere, over the Pacific Ocean, close to the island of Nauru. Blue jet: (a) the cloud-top altitude of the storm …

Dr. Laura Chornogubsky, a paleontologist in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’ and CONICET, has described one new genus and three new species in the marsupial family Polydolopidae. Kramadolops maximus, the youngest known species of polydolopid marsupial. Image credit: Gabriel Lío. Polydolopidae is a family of extinct marsupials …

  Intel’s new CEO is already putting his own stamp on the company, even if he doesn’t formally take power until February 15. News broke today that Intel will rehire former Intel Senior Fellow Glenn Hinton to work on an “exciting high-performance CPU project.” Hinton spent 35 years with Intel …

  TSMC recently announced it would spend an extra $10 billion on capital expenditures in 2021, and it sounds as if Samsung may approximately match the increase. There are new reports that the Korean giant could build a new $10B foundry in Texas to handle advanced logic manufacturing at the …

  There’s a rumor going around that Intel and Nvidia have conspired to block AMD’s Ryzen Mobile 4000 series from high-end gaming laptops. This information has supposedly been provided by an unnamed OEM, and claims that a secret agreement between Intel and Nvidia specifies that top-end RTX GPUs can only …

Paleontologists have identified a new fossil genus and species of primitive praying mantis from fore- and hind-wing imprints discovered in Labrador, Canada. Labradormantis guilbaulti. Image credit: Demers-Potvin et al., doi: 10.1111/syen.12457. Paleontologists know that most modern praying mantises, with their characteristic grasping forelegs, look very different from their oldest fossil …

Neonicotinoid insecticides, such as imidacloprid, clothianidin, thiamethoxam and thiacloprid, affect the amount of sleep taken by both buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) and fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), according to two new studies led by University of Bristol researchers. The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Image credit: Myriam. “The neonicotinoids we tested had …

  It’s not uncommon for the latest computer hardware to be in short supply, but the pandemic has pushed everything into overdrive. Being stuck inside for months on end has led to an explosion of interest in gaming, and that has made new high-end hardware like the AMD Ryzen 5000 …