Sumatran Tiger Cubs Born in the UK Is Huge Win–with Only 400 Left in Wild

– credit Tony Kershaw via SWNS

In a valuable milestone for the conservation of the Sumatran tiger subspecies, 3 cubs born to a UK zoo have grown old enough to venture out from the maternity den into the enclosure.

It’s thought there are less than 400 Sumatran tigers remaining in the wilds of Indonesia, and they are considered Critically-Endangered by the IUCN.

Tipah and her litter of cubs – credit Tony Kershaw via SWNS

Howletts Wild Animal Park, in Canterbury, Kent, said the cubs’ births represent an important step forward for the conservation of this cat beyond its natural habitat.

The 3 cubs, 2 girls and 1 boy, were born to first-time mom Tipah and dad Nakal and are just 2 months old.

They were born on April 9th and spent their first few weeks with mom Tipah in their den—but in recent weeks have begun to venture outside to the delight of a photographer there to capture their sensory overload.

“Tipah has taken every step of this journey with calmness, patience and a natural ability to be a fantastic mom,” said Head of Carnivores at Howletts Richard Langston said.

“She spends most of her time up on a platform keeping a watchful eye on them while enjoying a little respite from all the jumping, biting and playing that comes with raising energetic tiger cubs.”

GNN has reported on this cat being born in zoos before—at the Wroclaw and San Diego zoos. It’s considered an important priority animal for captive breeding programs, which have saved many species from extinction in the past.

The park added the cubs were becoming increasingly bold and playful, exploring more of their surroundings and beginning to show their individual personalities.

One cub has already developed an independent streak, often choosing to spend time away from its siblings.

– credit Tony Kershaw via SWNS

  

– credit Tony Kershaw via SWNS

 

– credit Tony Kershaw via SWNS 

Sumatran Tiger Cubs Born in the UK Is Huge Win–with Only 400 Left in Wild

Read More........→June 22, 2026

New AI Glasses for Dementia ‘Sees’ Objects With Labels Projected on Lenses to ‘Significantly’ Improve Lives

Carole Grieg testing the CrossSense AI glasses – SWNS

New AI glasses for people with dementia are able to project visual prompts onto the lenses to help folks live more independently—and they could be available in the UK in 2027.

The latest news comes after the glasses wowed both test patients in their homes and a panel of outside judges.

They can guide people living with early-stage dementia through daily activities by identifying common objects and providing audio commentary or answer questions while projecting visual prompts onto the lenses.

By asking gentle questions, the glasses’ AI companion, called ‘Wispy’, understands and learns a person’s unique way of doing things, with the AI adapting to each user’s needs as their dementia progresses.

Wispy will even talk through what to do when a person cannot remember a particular step in a process.

In test trials, three out of four patients reported a significant improvement to their quality of life, thanks to the glasses and Wispy’s tips developed from UK company CrossSense.

Warning appears on the lenses of the CrossSense AI glasses (GNN screenshot of SWNS/CrossSense video)

Spending over a decade creating and tweaking prototypes of the app and gadget, a team of AI engineers trained the glasses with dozens of everyday activities including getting dressed, managing household chores safely, making a cup of tea and interacting with loved ones.

The specs, which work with people’s prescription lens inserts and hearing aids, also capture the environment of the person living with dementia and the AI interprets that information to help the user to do the things that define independence.

“This includes feeling confident in their own home, taking good care of themselves, planning the day ahead, completing planned activities and hosting friends and family,” said the creators.

Screenshot of Wispy AI in the midst of interacting with user of theCrossSense AI glasses, discussing care of a houseplant (Still from SWNS video)

With a release date set for early 2027 in the UK, the inventors hope the specs, which weigh less than 3 ounces (75g), will be used by local authorities, care providers, and NHS hospital memory clinics.

Last week, the London-based team behind the technology, CrossSense, won the Longitude Prize on Dementia with its million dollar prize funded by the Alzheimer’s Society and Innovate UK.

The panel of international expert judges agreed that the winning solution was a genuine breakthrough technology with revolutionary potential for people living with dementia and their families.

CrossSense says the gadget includes a built-in battery that lasts for one hour, but also a portable power bank that can keep the glasses running all day long.

70-year-old Carole Grieg from London (pictured above), who founded a dementia support group called ForgetMeNots, tried the new glasses and is convinced they could help her fellow dementia patients maintain their independence.

“I thought it was an amazing concept, with the potential to provide real, reliable support for people like me, helping to compensate for the cognitive skills we gradually lose as dementia progresses.”

“For many of us, our world slowly becomes smaller as the condition progresses. Innovations like this offer real hope, and I know that as my own circumstances change, I will certainly be relying on them.”

Professor Fiona Carragher, chief research officer at Alzheimer’s Society admires the way the technology can develop its ‘intuitive personal support’.

“By anticipating people’s needs as their condition progresses, easing daily living challenges, and providing reassurance to families, this revolutionary tech will allow people with dementia to maintain their independence for longer, within the familiar environment of home.” New AI Glasses for Dementia ‘Sees’ Objects With Labels Projected on Lenses to ‘Significantly’ Improve Lives

Read More........→April 23, 2026

Surgeons Perform First-Ever Surgery for Critically-Endangered Monkey Weeks Before She Gave Birth

Chester Zoo via SWNS

GNN often stays abreast of births among the Chester Zoo’s incredibly diverse residents of rare and endangered species, but few have ever been cuter or rarer than this Roloway monkey.

Chester Zoo is one of only two places in the UK that Roloway monkeys can be found, a spokesman said, and the breeding population there supports the animal as conservationists ponder what to do to ensure it can survive in its West African home.

The mother is named Masaya, and before the 15-year-old primate gave birth to a daughter named Lagertha, she was the first ever Roloway monkey to undergo surgery in captivity—to remove a golf-ball sized abscess from her foot.

Masaya had to have one toe amputated during the procedure, which was done at the University of Liverpool’s Small Animal Teaching Hospital.

“Masaya is a very experienced mom and she’s parenting magnificently,” said

Zoe Edwards, primate keeper at Chester Zoo. “The fact Masaya’s foot has healed so well is a huge relief. If she’d had a [full] amputation, we’d have been left with real questions about whether she could hold her offspring or continue with her normal behaviors.”

Roloway monkeys originate from West Africa and are listed as Critically-Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Once common in the lush rainforests of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the Roloway monkey now survives only in isolated pockets of old-growth forest.

The baby’s name is Lagertha – credit, Chester Zoo via SWNS

Masaya at the Liverpool Vet. Hospital where she underwent surgery – credit, Chester Zoo via SWNS

Chester Zoo witnessed the first birth of a Roloway monkey in captivity in 2020, and Lagertha is the 3rd to be born since then. Edwards said it marked an important moment in the species’ conservation. There are only a few breeding females in zoos in Europe, and only one other in England at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Masaya had experienced recurring problems with her foot since she came to the zoo in 2023. It was determined to be an abscess, and when the swelling worsened in 2025, the decision was made to take Masaya to Liverpool for a CT scan.

“It’s not every day you take a monkey to vet school,” said Charlotte Bentley, Veterinary Officer at the zoo’s Animal Health Center. “Following the scan, we decided an operation was the way forward.”

According to the New England Primate Conservancy, the Roloway monkey is now considered one of the most urgently threatened primates in the entire world. A big-bodied monkey, they have been hunted to such small populations that, ironically, they’re now considered too uneconomical to pursue anymore, and so have inadvertently gained a short respite from poaching.

he conservancy admits that the most likely chance for survival is for breeding programs like the one at Chester to continue the propagation of the species until such a time as their native forests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast can be appropriately and reliably protected from poachers and logging. Surgeons Perform First-Ever Surgery for Critically-Endangered Monkey Weeks Before She Gave Birt

Read More........→March 22, 2026

Elusive Nightjar Populations Doubled in 5 Years, a ‘Remarkable Comeback’ Conservationists Say

A Lesser Nighthawk in Costa Rica – credit, Jerry Oldenettel – originally posted to Flickr, via CC 2.0.

The population of one of England’s most-elusive birds is flourishing again thanks to conservation efforts in the south of the country.

The nightjar, sometimes called the nighthawk, becomes active at twilight, and they’re famous for their chortling calls and fantastic camouflage.

Their numbers declined some 51% between the 1970s and 2000s after substantial forest loss.

The UK’s South Downs National Park stretches across the areas of Hampshire, West Sussex, and East Sussex, and it’s among the lowland heath and forests that nightjars have staged a remarkable population recovery.

A nightjar survey in the park last year counted more than 70 birds, which is believed to mark a doubling over the last 5 years. The animals migrate 4,000 miles north from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to reside in the UK between April and August. Meanwhile, forest and heathland restoration efforts have raised the number of good nesting habitats to 109 across Britain.

The birds nest on the ground, so conservation work has specifically focused on communication with visitors to places like South Downs. They’re encouraged to keep their dogs on leashes, stay on marked trails, and avoid bushwhacking so as not to disturb or destroy the sensitive nesting areas.

“It’s wonderful to hear the nightjars churring away as dusk falls and we’re looking forward to continuing this incredibly positive conservation work alongside local communities and our partners,” South Downs ranger Kirsty Murray told the BBC.

Murray called good nightjar habitat “as rare as rainforest” in Britain, and thought it was the best thing in the world that the animal was repopulating the park.The nightjar is an extremely versatile and successful species. They inhabit all continents but Antarctica, and can live at virtually any elevation within reason. They steer clear of extremely arid regions, and can migrate long or short distances. Elusive Nightjar Populations Doubled in 5 Years, a ‘Remarkable Comeback’ Conservationists Say:

Read More........→March 21, 2026

Human vision: what we actually see – and don’t see – tells us a lot about consciousness

Henry Taylor, University of Birmingham

What can you see right now? This might seem like a silly question, but what enters your consciousness is not the whole story when it comes to vision. A great deal of visual processing in the brain goes on well below our conscious awareness.

Some studies have probed the unconscious depths of vision. One source of evidence comes from the neurological condition known as blindsight, which is caused by damage to areas of the brain involved in processing visual information. People with blindsight report that they are unable to see, either entirely or in a portion of their visual field. However, when asked to guess what is there, they can often do so with remarkable accuracy.

For example, in an experiment published in 2004 on someone with blindsight, a black bar was displayed in the portion of the visual field to which the person was blind. The person was asked to “guess” whether the bar was vertical or horizontal.

Despite denying any conscious awareness of the bar, the participant could answer correctly at a level well above chance. The participant even showed evidence of being able to pay attention to the bar – they were faster to respond when an arrow (placed in a healthy area of their visual field) correctly indicated the location of the bar.

The most popular interpretation (though not the only one) is that people with blindsight can see these objects, but not see them consciously. They see what is there, but it all goes on unconsciously, below their awareness.

The phenomenon of inattentional blindness seems to show you can see without the information crossing into your consciousness. Anyone can experience inattentional blindness. The phenomenon has been known about for a long time, but we can most easily get a handle on it by looking at a well-known experiment reported in 1999.

In this experiment, participants are shown a video of people playing basketball, and told to count the number of passes between the players wearing a white shirt. If you’ve never done this before, I urge to you stop reading now and watch the video.

In many cases, people are so busy counting the passes that they completely miss a large gorilla walking across the middle of the scene and beating its chest, then walking off. The gorilla’s right there, in the centre of your visual field. Light from the gorilla enters your eyes, and is processed in the visual system, but somehow you missed it, because you weren’t paying attention to it.

The gorilla has more to teach us. In another experiment reported in 2013, radiologists were given a series of lung scans. They were told to look for nodules (which show up as small light coloured circles) on each scan. In one of the scans, a large picture of a dancing gorilla was superimposed on top of the lung scan. In this study, 83% of the radiologists failed to spot it, even though it was 48 times bigger than the average nodule they were looking for. Some of them even looked directly at the gorilla and still didn’t notice it!

The interpretation of these experiments is controversial. Some scientists suggest that in these kinds of cases, you consciously see the gorilla, but immediately forget it (although a dancing gorilla in someone’s lung doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d forget). Others argue that you see the gorilla, but the information never made its way into consciousness. You saw the gorilla, but unconsciously.

Let’s assume that in the case of blindsight, and inattentional blindness, the information is seen, but didn’t make it all the way to consciousness. Then, the question is: what makes some information conscious, rather than the information that stays unconscious? This is one of the central questions for consciousness studies in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.

The brain’s loudspeaker

There’s no agreement on which is the best theory of consciousness, but in my opinion, the strongest contender is the global neuronal workspace theory.

According to this theory, consciousness is all to do with a particular area of the brain which is the seat of the “workspace”. The workspace is a system with a small capacity, so it can’t hold a lot of information at any one time. The job of the workspace is to take unconscious information and broadcast it to lots of different networks all across the brain. Global neuronal workspace theorists say that broadcasting the information in this way is what makes it conscious.

The job of the workspace is to act like the brain’s loudspeaker, and consciousness is the information that gets broadcast. The workspace takes unconscious information and boosts it so that many of the different systems in the brain hear about it and can use that information in their own processes. The late philosopher Daniel Dennett used to call consciousness “fame in the brain”. The workspace idea is similar.

One of the most striking implications of the global neuronal workspace theory is how little information makes it to consciousness. Since the workspace has quite a small capacity, it follows that we can only ever be conscious of a little at a time. We might think there’s a rich visual world in front of us, full of details, all of which we’re conscious of, but really – according to the theory – we’re only ever conscious of a small portion of that.

Some philosophers and scientists have objected to the theory on these grounds. They suggest that consciousness “overflows” the workspace: we are conscious of more information than can “fit” into the workspace at any one time. Even with these debates still ongoing, I think the global neuronal workspace theory gives us a reasonably clear answer to the question of what consciousness is for, and how it interacts with other systems in the brain.

In our brains, consciousness is only the tip of a very large iceberg. But the global neuronal workspace theory might give us insight into what makes that tip so special.

Henry Taylor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→March 18, 2026

Rare Species of Pink 'Fairy Club' Fungus Discovered in UK for First Time

A Clavaria calabrica fungus – credit Diana Walker via SWNS

A rare, pale pink, fairy club fungus native to Italy was found during a mushroom survey in England last autumn, the first recording sighting anywhere in Great Britain.

The tennis ball-sized fungus has now been confirmed through DNA testing, as there are other species that look similar to it.

The “exceptional” discovery was made by a group of Naturewatch volunteers from Somer Valley Rediscovered in England’s southwest.

DNA extraction was done in Scotland and then sent to the University of Aberystwyth in Wales for sequencing, making the discovery a truly pan-British effort.

“This discovery further demonstrates that the South West is home to some of the most spectacular and diverse examples of these unique grassland fungi communities anywhere on the planet,” a local enthusiast named Dan Nicholas who led the mushroom survey told England’s Southwest News Service.

“We are truly blessed to have such a colorful spectacle of nature’s calendar right on our doorstep, something we need to cherish and protect at all costs.”

Clavaria calabrica is a small member of an informal group of fungi called fairy clubs, or coral fungi, that was first identified by scientists in Italy in 2017. Clava is the Latin word for “club,” and calabrica refers to the Italian region of Calabria.

It is usually found in grasslands that have been managed gently over time and are rich in wildlife. While the species has previously been recorded in Northern Ireland, this is the first time it has been confirmed in mainland Britain.

The fungus was discovered as part of the Somer Valley Rediscovered project, a partnership made up of local town and parish councils that aims to improve biodiversity whilst better connecting communities to their local green spaces and landscapes.

People across the region are being encouraged to take part in the West of England Wildlife Index, a citizen science program tracking wildlife at 20 sites across West England, contributing to the region’s State of Nature report.

Volunteers are asked to help count bees, butterflies, plants and wetland birds as part of well-established national monitoring programs, with guidance and support from the project’s ecologist.

“Finding a species never before recorded in Great Britain here in the West is something we can all be proud of. This shows again just how rich and unique landscapes across our region can be,” said Helen Godwin, Mayor of the West of England, a combined administrative authority that makes up Somerset but also Bristol and other areas around the River Avon.“The work of the West of England Nature Partnership helps make sure these habitats are understood and protected. I encourage everyone to get involved in the West of England Wildlife Index, helping us record and safeguard the nature that makes our region so special.” Rare Species of Pink 'Fairy Club' Fungus Discovered in UK for First Time

Read More........→March 09, 2026

Scientists Develop Biodegradable Smart Textile–A Big Leap Forward for Eco-Friendly Wearable Technology

Flexible inkjet printed E-textile – Credit: Marzia Dulal

Wearable electronic textiles can be both sustainable and biodegradable, shows a new study.

A research team led by the University of Southampton and UWE Bristol in the UK tested a new sustainable approach for fully inkjet-printed, eco-friendly e-textiles.

Named SWEET—for Smart, Wearable, and Eco-friendly Electronic Textiles—the new ‘fabric’ was described in findings published in the journal Energy and Environmental Materials.

E-textiles are those with embedded electrical components, such as sensors, batteries or lights. They might be used in fashion, for performance sportswear, or for medical purposes as garments that monitor people’s vital signs.

Such textiles need to be durable, safe to wear and comfortable, but also, in an industry which is increasingly concerned with clothing waste, they need to be kind to the environment when no longer required.

“Integrating electrical components into conventional textiles complicates the recycling of the material because it often contains metals, such as silver, that don’t easily biodegrade,” explained Professor Nazmul Karim at the University of Southampton.

“Our eco-friendly approach for selecting sustainable materials and manufacturing overcomes this, enabling the fabric to decompose when it is disposed of.”

The team’s design has three layers, a sensing layer, a layer to interface with the sensors and a base fabric. It uses a textile called Tencel for the base, which is made from renewable wood and is biodegradable.

The active electronics in the design are made from graphene, along with a polymer called PEDOT: PSS. These conductive materials are precision inkjet-printed onto the fabric.

The research team, which included members from the universities of Exeter, Cambridge, Leeds, and Bath, tested samples of the material for continuous monitoring of heart rates. Five volunteers were connected to monitoring equipment, attached to gloves worn by the participants. Results confirmed the material can effectively and reliably measure both heart rate and temperature at the industry standard level.

Gloves with e-textile sensors monitoring heart rate – Credit: Marzia Dulal

“Achieving reliable, industry-standard monitoring with eco-friendly materials is a significant milestone,” said Dr. Shaila Afroj, an Associate Professor of Sustainable Materials from the University of Exeter and a co-author of the study. “It demonstrates that sustainability doesn’t have to come at the cost of functionality, especially in critical applications like healthcare.”

The project team then buried the e-textiles in soil to measure its biodegradable properties.

After four months, the fabric had lost 48 percent of its weight and 98 percent of its strength, suggesting relatively rapid and also effective decomposition.

Furthermore, a life cycle assessment revealed the graphene-based electrodes had up to 40 times less impact on the environment than standard electrodes.

Four strips in a variety of decomposed states, during four months of decomposition – Credit: Marzia Dulal

Marzia Dulal from UWE Bristol, the first author of the study, highlighted the environmental impact: “Our life cycle analysis shows that graphene-based e-textiles have a fraction of the environmental footprint compared to traditional electronics. This makes them a more responsible choice for industries looking to reduce their ecological impact.”

The ink-jet printing process is also a more sustainable approach for e-textile fabrications, depositing exact numbers of functional materials on textiles as needed, with almost no material waste and less use of water and energy than conventional screen printing.“These materials will become increasingly more important in our lives,” concluded Prof. Karim, who hopes to move forward with the team to design wearable garments made from SWEET, particularly in the area of early detection and prevention of heart diseases. Scientists Develop Biodegradable Smart Textile–A Big Leap Forward for Eco-Friendly Wearable Technology

Read More........→February 19, 2026

AI tool can simulate complex fusion plasma in seconds

(Image: UKAEA)

A team of scientists from the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Johannes Kepler University Linz, and Emmi AI, have developed an artificial intelligence tool - named GyroSwin - which can create simulations up to 1,000 times faster than traditional computational methods.

Magnetic nuclear fusion is considered a promising technology for sustainable and emission-free energy supply. However, to achieve fusion, machines need to confine plasma at extreme temperatures using powerful magnets. Managing turbulence within the plasma is a key fusion challenge so it needs to be accurately modelled.

Plasma scientists rely on state-of-the-art numerical simulations, using five-dimensional (5D) gyrokinetics, which includes three spatial dimensions plus two additional dimensions which account for parallel and perpendicular velocity of particles within the plasma. This 5D approach requires immense supercomputing power. Traditional simulations are extremely slow and computationally expensive, significantly lengthening design and development cycles. Previously, computation methods simulated a plasma by actively calculating the complex plasma dynamics.

GyroSwin uses the latest AI methods to learn the 5D simulation dynamics and the resulting surrogate models can run in seconds, in contrast to the hours or even days for conventional simulations. It was trained on six terabytes of data. This speed allows for much faster, more agile prediction of plasma turbulence, crucial for optimising fusion machine designs.

"Designing, developing, and operating a fusion power plant will involve millions of plasma simulations," said Rob Akers, Director of Computing Programmes at UKAEA. "Reducing runtimes from hours or days to minutes or seconds - whilst preserving sufficient accuracy - will be essential for making this challenge manageable. Pioneering AI-based tools like GyroSwin therefore show great promise for being genuinely transformative around time-to-solution and cost."

Processing 5D data has never previously been tackled by an AI surrogate model, and GyroSwin outperforms other AI methods it's been compared against, UKAEA noted. This increased performance is made possible because GyroSwin preserves key physical information from a fusion plasma, including the length scale of fluctuations, and the sheared flows that can reduce turbulence - all crucial to the physical interpretability of plasma simulations.

"We love scientific challenges, and building AI models that accelerate 5D gyrokinetic simulations is definitely one of the toughest challenges out there," said Johannes Brandstetter, Professor at JKU, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Emmi. "We are very proud of how far we got in this great collaboration, but we know that we have just scratched the surface."

UKAEA will now research how GyroSwin's advanced capability can be applied to next generation power plants such as the UK's Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), where millions of simulations will potentially be required to optimise plasma scenario designs with uncertainty quantification. As more complex physics is included for power plant conditions, simulations become even more lengthy, making faster plasma modelling essential.This GyroSwin project was part-funded by the International Computing element of the UK Government's Fusion Futures Programme. AI tool can simulate complex fusion plasma in seconds

Read More........→February 11, 2026

Time of day may determine heart surgery outcomes: Study

(Photo: AI generated image/IANS)

New Delhi, (IANS) Heart surgery that begins late in the morning may raise the risk of cardiovascular deaths when compared to other times of the day, according to a study.

Researchers at The University of Manchester, UK, suggested that integrating body clock biology into the planning of heart surgery could support a more personalised, precision medicine approach, as some people’s body clock makes them early birds and others make them night owls.

The data, based on the analysis of national datasets comprising over 24,000 patients in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, showed late-morning surgery was linked to an 18 per cent higher risk of death -- almost one fifth -- from heart-related causes compared with early-morning surgery.

And the most common surgical start time was 07:00 am to 09:59 am -- accounting for 47 per cent of all surgeries.

Though complication rates and readmissions were unaffected by the time of day, the findings still pose questions about the best time to schedule heart surgery.

The study, published in the journal Anaesthesia, also gives an important insight into the potential influence of the body clock -- a set of 24-hour biological cycles present in our cells and organs -- on surgery as a whole.

“This research shows that a slightly higher risk of heart-related mortality is likely to occur when heart surgery starts in the late morning. Even small improvements in timing-related outcomes could have significant benefits to patients,” said lead author Dr Gareth Kitchen, Clinical Senior Lecturer at The University of Manchester.

“However, though the risk is statistically significant, it is relatively modest, and patients can be reassured that most people will almost certainly be unaffected. It is, though, our duty as clinicians to ensure the best possible outcomes, and moderating timings is a potentially inexpensive method to achieve that,” Kitchen added.“With more understanding of how body clock biology varies between individuals, precision and personalised scheduling of cardiac surgery may one day allow us to achieve better patient outcomes,” the researcher said. Time of day may determine heart surgery outcomes: Study | MorungExpress | morungexpress.com

Read More........→January 13, 2026

2025 Was 'Year of the Octopus' Says UK Wildlife Trust, Amid Record Cephalopod Sightings

Pia

It was 75 years ago the last time there were as many octopus in British waters as there are now, with the UK’s Wildlife Trusts declaring that 2025 was the ‘Year of the Octopus.’

These eight-legged spineless creatures, one of the most fascinating to inhabit our planet, have been seen in record numbers by divers, and caught in record amounts by commercial fishermen.

Scientists suggest it could be milder winters leading to the “bloom,” which is the term for octopus birthing seasons.

“It really has been exceptional,” says Matt Slater from the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. “We’ve seen octopuses jet-propelling themselves along. We’ve seen octopuses camouflaging themselves, they look just like seaweeds,” he told the BBC.

“We’ve seen them cleaning themselves. And we’ve even seen them walking, using two legs just to nonchalantly cruise away from the diver underwater.”

Regarding the fisheries, it’s been a banner year for the industry. 2021 and 2023 have seen the highest yearly catches recently, when around 200 metric tons were landed. This year it was 12-times that amount.

Interestingly, their chief prey species, lobsters, crayfish, and scallops, have maintained year-over-year populations, with only crab falling.

It’s up to scientists now to figure out whether this octopu-nanza is part of a one-off event, or something that will be a more permanent feature of British seas. If the suggestion that warmer winters may be behind the massive bloom, future hatching seasons could be similarly large.While it may be premature to celebrate an unusual effect that seems tied to climate change, it’s hard to argue with the smiles on the faces of the divers, the diners, and the fishermen. 2025 Was 'Year of the Octopus' Says UK Wildlife Trust, Amid Record Cephalopod Sightings

Read More........→January 06, 2026

Polar bears are adapting to climate change at a genetic level – and it could help them avoid extinction

Alice Godden, University of East Anglia: The Arctic Ocean current is at its warmest in the last 125,000 years, and temperatures continue to rise. Due to these warming temperatures more than two-thirds of polar bears are expected to be extinct by 2050 with total extinction predicted by the end of this century.

But in our new study my colleagues and I found that the changing climate was driving changes in the polar bear genome, potentially allowing them to more readily adapt to warmer habitats. Provided these polar bears can source enough food and breeding partners, this suggests they may potentially survive these new challenging climates.

We discovered a strong link between rising temperatures in south-east Greenland and changes in polar bear DNA. DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops. In processes called transcription and translation, DNA is copied to generate RNA (molecules that reflect gene activity) and can lead to the production of proteins, and copies of transposons (TEs), also known as “jumping genes”, which are mobile pieces of the genome that can move around and influence how other genes work.

In carrying out our recent research we found that there were big differences in the temperatures observed in the north-east, compared with the south-east regions of Greenland. Our team used publicly available polar bear genetic data from a research group at the University of Washington, US, to support our study. This dataset was generated from blood samples collected from polar bears in both northern and south-eastern Greenland.

Our work built on the Washington University study which discovered that this south-eastern population of Greenland polar bears was genetically different to the north-eastern population. South-east bears had migrated from the north and became isolated and separate approximately 200 years ago, it found.

Researchers from Washington had extracted RNA from polar bear blood samples and sequenced it. We used this RNA sequencing to look at RNA expression — the molecules that act like messengers, showing which genes are active, in relation to the climate. This gave us a detailed picture of gene activity, including the behaviour of TEs. Temperatures in Greenland have been closely monitored and recorded by the Danish Meteorological Institute. So we linked this climate data with the RNA data to explore how environmental changes may be influencing polar bear biology.

Does temperature change anything?

From our analysis we found that temperatures in the north-east of Greenland were colder and less variable, while south-east temperatures fluctuated and were significantly warmer. The figure below shows our data as well as how temperature varies across Greenland, with warmer and more volatile conditions in the south-east. This creates many challenges and changes to the habitats for the polar bears living in these regions.

In the south-east of Greenland, the ice-sheet margin, which is the edge of the ice sheet and spans 80% of Greenland, is rapidly receding, causing vast ice and habitat loss.

The loss of ice is a substantial problem for the polar bears, as this reduces the availability of hunting platforms to catch seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. The north-east of Greenland is a vast, flat Arctic tundra, while south-east Greenland is covered by forest tundra (the transitional zone between coniferous forest and Arctic tundra). The south-east climate has high levels of rain, wind, and steep coastal mountains.

Temperature across Greenland and bear locations

Author data visualisation using temperature data from the Danish Meteorological Institute. Locations of bears in south-east (red icons) and north-east (blue icons). CC BY-NC-ND

How climate is changing polar bear DNA

Over time the DNA sequence can slowly change and evolve, but environmental stress, such as warmer climate, can accelerate this process.

TEs are like puzzle pieces that can rearrange themselves, sometimes helping animals adapt to new environments. In the polar bear genome approximately 38.1% of the genome is made up of TEs. TEs come in many different families and have slightly different behaviours, but in essence they all are mobile fragments that can reinsert randomly anywhere in the genome.

In the human genome, 45% is comprised of TEs and in plants it can be over 70%. There are small protective molecules called piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) that can silence the activity of TEs.

Despite this, when an environmental stress is too strong, these protective piRNAs cannot keep up with the invasive actions of TEs. In our work we found that the warmer south-east climate led to a mass mobilisation from these TEs across the polar bear genome, changing its sequence. We also found that these TE sequences appeared younger and more abundant in the south-east bears, with over 1,500 of them “upregulated”, which suggests recent genetic changes that may help bears adapt to rising temperatures.

Some of these elements overlap with genes linked to stress responses and metabolism, hinting at a possible role in coping with climate change. By studying these jumping genes, we uncovered how the polar bear genome adapts and responds, in the shorter term, to environmental stress and warmer climates.

Our research found that some genes linked to heat-stress, ageing and metabolism are behaving differently in the south-east population of polar bears. This suggests they might be adjusting to their warmer conditions. Additionally, we found active jumping genes in parts of the genome that are involved in areas tied to fat processing – important when food is scarce. This could mean that polar bears in the south-east are slowly adapting to eating the rougher plant-based diets that can be found in the warmer regions. Northern populations of bears eat mainly fatty seals.

Overall, climate change is reshaping polar bear habitats, leading to genetic changes, with south-eastern bears evolving to survive these new terrains and diets. Future research could include other polar bear populations living in challenging climates. Understanding these genetic changes help researchers see how polar bears might survive in a warming world – and which populations are most at risk.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Alice Godden, Senior Research Associate, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→December 23, 2025

Engineer Powers Entire Home Using 500 Discarded Vapes–Documented in Fascinating Viral Video

Chris Doel with his home battery – credit, Anita Maric / SWNS

A man has built a rechargeable battery pack big enough to power his whole home using just the batteries from discarded vapes.

British engineer Chris Doel thinks it’s “absolutely insane” that people use disposable vaping pens, as they come with a lithium-ion battery that can be recharged again and again; they’re literally powered with a technology that’s advertised as the alternative to disposable batteries.

The 26-year-old ended up stripping the lithium batteries from 500 thrown away vapes, some of which he collected, and some of which were given to him by a local shop, to create a single battery bank large enough to run his entire house for 8 hours, or his workshop for multiple days.

He kept wiring the batteries together until they totaled 2.5 kWh of capacity, before a test saw him run all electrical components entirely off-grid for eight hours, including the microwave, kettle, and all the lighting.

Doel, who works for Jaguar Land Rover, got the idea after watching friends just toss out the depleted vapes despite them all containing rechargeable batteries.

“Some of my mates were puffing on them. But as soon as they were empty, they’d have a little blinking light, and they’d throw it straight in the bin,” he told SWNS. “The engineer in me was thinking ‘that is just absolutely ridiculous.'”

“None of these components are disposable. They should never really be thrown just straight in the bin, so them being marketed as ‘disposable’ just seemed insane to me.”

Chris picked up several discarded vapes while volunteering at a festival in the city of Leeds, and opened them up. Inside, rather than a disposable battery, they all had fully rechargeable batteries, despite them being marketed as a single-use product.

Doel set up a YouTube channel and began building power banks with these vape cells.

In September 2024, he turned 35 recovered batteries into a portable charger capable of charging up phones and laptops. He then built a battery pack for his electric bike.

“People just wanted to see bigger and better stuff, so I thought ‘surely as big as I can physically get is powering my entire house?’ There’s no argument we are throwing away super valuable stuff if I can literally power my entire house for eight hours with it.”

Doel went to his local vape shop in May 2025 and asked if they would donate some of their returns for his project and walked away with bags containing 2,000 vapes.

Doel explained it was really awkward for them—they still have to pay for them to be recycled, “they were extremely happy for me to just load up thousands of them in a big bag and walk away with them.”

In order to quickly sort them, he used a pump from a C-PAC machine to mechanically vape the vapes and determine whether their batteries were damaged or not.

Chris Doel with his battery inventions – credit, Anita Maric / SWNS

It took him 6 months to extract the rechargeable lithium batteries from the devices before he used a 3D printed case to combine 500 cells wired in parallel into groups, connected in series, to make a massive battery pack.

He soldered a fuse between each of the former vape batteries to prevent his creation from short circuiting, and is now working on converting it to solar power so he can recharge and run it constantly, or recharge overnight when electricity is cheaper.

His YouTube video documenting the process from creation to powering his house has already racked up over 4 million views.

Fortunately, it became illegal for businesses in the UK to sell or supply single-use vapes In June.

“I think the ban on disposable vapes, even though it’s not the best implementation, has definitely made an impact. There has certainly been a reduction in the waste. But I still think the devices themselves are built to be mass-consumed, and they’re still incredibly cheap,” Doel explained.“These things last for years and years,” he said, suggesting that refillable vapes just seem to make so much more sense. Engineer Powers Entire Home Using 500 Discarded Vapes–Documented in Fascinating Viral Video

Read More........→December 18, 2025

Boy with Rare Genetic Disorder Amazes Doctors After World-First Gene Therapy

Courtesy of Oliver Chu family

The first child in history has successfully been treated with a new genetic therapy for an ultra-rare developmental defect called Hunter syndrome.

Several years in the making, Oliver Chu became the first in the world to receive the stem cell-based treatment in February, and 3 months later seemed to be a normal child again, meeting important milestones and playing without supervision.

Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, which oversaw the trial of Oliver and 4 other patients, says that children with severe Hunter syndrome cannot properly break down complex sugar molecules and have widespread symptoms including rapid and progressive learning and memory problems, heart and lung dysfunction, hyperactivity and behavioral problems, bone and joint malformations and hearing impairment.

They cannot break down the sugars because their genetic code was formed with a defect: the gene that codes for the production of an enzyme called iduronate-2-sulfatase (IDS) doesn’t work properly.

Professor Brian Pigger, professor of cell and gene therapy at the University of Manchester, developed a method of replacing the faulty gene with a functioning copy, called autologous hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) gene therapy.

In December, Oliver Chu, from California, arrived at Royal Manchester for the first stage of the procedure. The 3-year-old had his blood cycled in a machine to extract the hematopoietic stem cells he produces naturally. These were then sent off to a laboratory at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where a functioning copy of the defective gene is inserted into a virus and placed inside the stem cells.

In February, mother Jingru cradled Oliver in his hospital bed as he received an injection of 125 million modified cells twice in the space of 2 hours. It was a momentous day that the young boy was completely oblivious to.

After a few days, Oliver flew back to California to reunite with his older brother Skyler, who also has the disease, and his father Ricky.

Hunter syndrome affects almost exclusively boys, and then only 1 in 100,000 live births. A major challenge in the disease that can often be fatal is that treatment methods can’t cross the blood-brain barrier, as the major manifestation of the inability to break down sugars occurs in the brain.

One commercially available drug called Elaprase can slow the effects, but can’t cross the blood brain barrier. It costs as much as a house for a year’s prescription. Another treatment has been to give regular infusions of the missing enzyme, just like a diabetic would take infusions of insulin.

In May of this year, BBC reports that Oliver’s development has become remarkably normal. He’s talking all the time, and been able to stop the enzyme infusions. He runs around like any other 3-year-old, utilizing a newly-exploded vocabulary, and demonstrates genuine inquisitiveness.

“Every time we talk about it I want to cry because it’s just so amazing,” his mother Jingru told the BBC.

“We can see he’s improving, he’s learning, he’s got new words and new skills and he’s moving around much more easily,” said Professor Simon Jones, who ran the trial that saw Oliver and four other boys receive the gene therapy. “We need to be careful and not get carried away in the excitement of all this, but things are as good as they could be at this point in time.”

Unfortunately for Skyler, who also has Hunter syndrome, he’s too old to receive his younger brother’s treatment. The 5-year-old receives infusions like Oliver used to, it allows him to regain some physical development normalcy, but the infusions can’t cross the blood-brain barrier.The treatment window in the trial was 3 months to 1 year of age. It was originally believed that Oliver was too old, but a battery of tests concluded there was still a window where the therapy might reverse the genetic defect in the brain as well as the body. Ricky is hopeful the treatment will prove successful, prompting further innovation into how it might help treat older children like Skyler. Boy with Rare Genetic Disorder Amazes Doctors After World-First Gene Therapy

Read More........→December 01, 2025

Recyclers Switch from Smelting to Solvents, Recovering Precious Metals from E-waste with Fewer Emissions

– credit Unsplash Vlad

A startup in the UK is recovering important manufacturing metals without energy-hungry smelting methods.

Using an intense solvent at room temperature, shredded circuit boards can have plastic retaining components left behind, while metals like gold, cobalt, and copper are selectively dissolved and made available for recovery with simple magnets.

It’s one part recycling research, one part national security, as governments around the world attempt to secure long-term supplies of these metals for tech and defense sectors.

Look across the hard news sections from around the world, from the financial pages to politics, conflict, and international development, and these days you’ll inevitably find two alternating terms that stand out for their relative novelty and repetition: ‘critical’ or ‘rare earth’ minerals.

These terms refer to what many Americans and Brits have taken for granted over the years: copper, lithium, nickel; which have now become key components in geopolitical strategies worldwide.

Yet one of the richest sources of these minerals in the West could be the circuit boards embedded in the millions of broken and discarded devices that pile up higher and higher every year.

“What you see with this pile of electricals is actually central to geopolitics at the moment,” Executive Director of nonprofit Material Focus in the UK, Scott Butler, told Reuters in front of a giant mound of discarded electronics, which his organization helps collect and ‘mine.’

“All the shenanigans of 2025 with calls on taking over [Greenland], disputes over land in Ukraine, big mines coming in Latin America, and geopolitical relations with China, this is all about the materials that’s inside this urban mine of tech. It’s lithium, it’s cobalt, it’s nickel, it’s gold, it’s aluminum, and steel. And this is why it’s really, really important. This isn’t just a pile of old tech, a pile of mess, this is the future.”

DEScycle uses deep eutectic solvents to extract metals from the UK’s electronic waste that would normally have been sent to Japan. Once there, the plastic components would be incinerated, and the metals recovered in a molten soup. Not only is there a large emissions impact from shipping it to Japan in the first place, but running the furnace as well.

But this is in a case where the E-waste was recycled, which is hardly the norm. In 2024 alone, the UN estimated that some three-fourths of all electronic waste wasn’t accounted for in recycling streams, leaving an estimated $62 billion worth of natural resources buried or sitting idly in landfills.

According to Reuters, DEScycle is set to incorporate its solvent-based method into the waste processing stream of a leading UK recycler, promising progress where little has been made.

Aware of the E-waste problem in its country, however, the Royal Mint has also been investing and sponsoring ways of extracting gold from discarded circuit boards in the UK, and in 2024 they opened a large processing plant for recovering this gold that boasts the capacity to break down 4,000 metric tons of circuit boards every year, amounting to hundreds of kilograms of the yellow metal.

But the really cool thing about the process is that the British government isn’t pocketing the gold, but rather minting standardized gold coins to back the shares of an electronically traded physical gold fund that allows investors to diversify into gold without any environmentally damaging mining activities taking place. Recyclers Switch from Smelting to Solvents, Recovering Precious Metals from E-waste with Fewer Emissions

Read More........→November 19, 2025

Birth of UK's Only Bonobo Baby Gives Fresh Hope for World's Most Endangered Ape

credit – Adam Kay, Twycross Zoo / SWNS

Conservationists and zookeepers are celebrating our closest living relative giving birth to a healthy baby.

Heart-tugging photos show the bonobo mother Yuli cradling her tiny newborn after it was born at Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire last Thursday.

Experts have hailed the birth as a ‘globally significant’ moment which could help save one of the world’s rarest apes and humanity’s cousin.

Twycross Zoo is the only UK zoo to care for the species, and says the new arrival has the distinguished status as the only baby bonobo in the whole country.

The infant’s mother Yuli arrived at Twycross Zoo from Vallée Des Singes in France as part of the European-led conservation program in 2023.

“Bonobos are human’s closest living relatives, yet they remain one of the most endangered and least understood apes on Earth,” said Dr. Rebecca Biddle, chief conservation officer at Twycross Zoo. “Every birth is a true milestone and a powerful reminder of what can be achieved when zoos work together.

“As the only UK zoo caring for bonobos, here at Twycross Zoo, we are immensely proud and feel a great responsibility to play our part in protecting this incredible species,” she added.

credit – Adam Kay, Twycross Zoo / SWNS

Bonobos, which are listed as “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, are indeed as Biddle says—Homo sapiens’ closest living relatives, sharing more than 98% of our DNA.

In the wild, their population is said to be decreasing due to many human-caused threats such as poaching and deforestation.

Found only in the wilds of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the bonobo is a highly unique ape due to their matriarchal society. Typically, primate troops are led by a dominant male, but bonobos are one of few primate species, and the only great ape, to live in female-led societies.

The conservation program looks after 10% of all the bonobos in Europe, and is a key part of a collaborative effort between EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria) member zoos.At the moment, neither mother nor newborn will be visible to the public as they enjoy a critical period of bonding and nurturing. Birth of UK's Only Bonobo Baby Gives Fresh Hope for World's Most Endangered Ape

Read More........→November 02, 2025

Poor sleep may make your brain age faster – new study

Abigail Dove, Karolinska Institutet

We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep, yet sleep is anything but wasted time. Far from being passive downtime, it is an active and essential process that helps restore the body and protect the brain. When sleep is disrupted, the brain feels the consequences – sometimes in subtle ways that accumulate over years.

In a new study, my colleagues and I examined sleep behaviour and detailed brain MRI scan data in more than 27,000 UK adults between the ages of 40 and 70. We found that people with poor sleep had brains that appeared significantly older than expected based on their actual age.

What does it mean for the brain to “look older”? While we all grow chronologically older at the same pace, some people’s biological clocks can tick faster or slower than others. New advances in brain imaging and artificial intelligence allow researchers to estimate a person’s brain age based on patterns in brain MRI scans, such as loss of brain tissue, thinning of the cortex and damage to blood vessels.

In our study, brain age was estimated using over 1,000 different imaging markers from MRI scans. We first trained a machine learning model on the scans of the healthiest participants – people with no major diseases, whose brains should closely match their chronological age. Once the model “learned” what normal ageing looks like, we applied it to the full study population.

Having a brain age higher than your actual age can be a signal of departure from healthy ageing. Previous research has linked an older-appearing brain to faster cognitive decline, greater dementia risk and even higher risk of early death.

Sleep is complex, and no single measure can tell the whole story of a person’s sleep health. Our study, therefore, focused on five aspects of sleep self-reported by the study participants: their chronotype (“morning” or “evening” person), how many hours they typically sleep (seven to eight hours is considered optimal), whether they experience insomnia, whether they snore and whether they feel excessively sleepy during the day.

These characteristics can interact in synergistic ways. For example, someone with frequent insomnia may also feel more daytime sleepiness, and having a late chronotype may lead to shorter sleep duration. By integrating all five characteristics into a “healthy sleep score”, we captured a fuller picture of overall sleep health.

People with four or five healthy traits had a “healthy” sleep profile, while those with two to three had an “intermediate” profile, and those with zero or one had a “poor” profile.

When we compared brain age across different sleep profiles, the differences were clear. The gap between brain age and chronological age widened by about six months for every one point decrease in healthy sleep score. On average, people with a poor sleep profile had brains that appeared nearly one year older than expected based on their chronological age, while those with a healthy sleep profile showed no such gap.

We also considered the five sleep characteristics individually: late chronotype and abnormal sleep duration stood out as the biggest contributors to faster brain ageing.

A year may not sound like much, but in terms of brain health, it matters. Even small accelerations in brain ageing can compound over time, potentially increasing the risk of cognitive impairment, dementia and other neurological conditions.

The good news is that sleep habits are modifiable. While not all sleep problems are easily fixed, simple strategies: keeping a regular sleep schedule; limiting caffeine, alcohol and screen use before bedtime; and creating a dark and quiet sleep environment can improve sleep health and may protect brain health.

How exactly does the quality of a person’s sleep affect their brain health?

One explanation may be inflammation. Increasing evidence suggests that sleep disturbances raise the level of inflammation in the body. In turn, inflammation can harm the brain in several ways: damaging blood vessels, triggering the buildup of toxic proteins and speeding up brain cell death.

We were able to investigate the role of inflammation thanks to blood samples collected from participants at the beginning of the study. These samples contain a wealth of information about different inflammatory biomarkers circulating in the body. When we factored this into our analysis, we found that inflammation levels accounted for about 10% of the connection between sleep and brain ageing.

Other processes may also play a role

Another explanation centres on the glymphatic system – the brain’s built-in waste clearance network, which is mainly active during sleep. When sleep is disrupted or insufficient, this system may not function properly, allowing harmful substances to build up in the brain.

Yet another possibility is that poor sleep increases the risk of other health conditions that are themselves damaging for brain health, including type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Our study is one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, benefiting from a very large study population, a multidimensional measure of sleep health, and a detailed estimation of brain age through thousands of brain MRI features. Though previous research connected poor sleep to cognitive decline and dementia, our study further demonstrated that poor sleep is tied to a measurably older-looking brain, and inflammation might explain this link.

Brain ageing cannot be avoided, but our behaviour and lifestyle choices can shape how it unfolds. The implications of our research are clear: to keep the brain healthier for longer, it is important to make sleep a priority.

Abigail Dove, Postdoctoral Researcher, Neuroepidemiology, Karolinska Institutet

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→October 17, 2025

The Subtle Power of Unhearable Sound: Mood and Cognition-Altering Agents

For representational purpose (Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Shreyas Kannan, Plaksha University: The human ear has a maximum hearing range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. However, in all reality the range at which we are most sensitive is from 1000 Hz to 4000 Hz at which most natural speech occurs. As frequency decreases, the sound energy or decibels needed to hear sounds increases, which makes the sound effectively “too soft” unless played at a high enough volume. What this means is that the lower and higher frequencies are both difficult to perceive normally, and frequencies outside of this range entirely, Infrasound, which vibrates below 20 Hz, and ultrasound, which is above 20,000 Hz, are simply imperceptible.

These imperceptible sounds however, have a very perceptible effect. Vic Tandy, a British engineer, believed his laboratory was haunted—until he discovered that a silent 19 Hz sound wave, produced by a fan, was resonating with his eyeballs and triggering shadowy hallucinations. Even though these sounds were below the threshold of human hearing, it could still alter mood, physiology, and cognition.

Infrasound and ultrasound can also have indirect subliminal effects. They can very subtly and over long durations of time have a negative or positive effect on the psyche of the listener. Infrasound, although inaudible, can cause a range of adverse effects, including fatigue, sleep disturbance, and cognitive dysfunction.

How does this work, especially for sounds we can’t even hear? The sounds in the Ultrasonic range tend to stimulate the emotional centers of the brain, which generally are the amygdala and hippocampus, to name a few. A study proceeded to track this and found that sounds containing inaudible high-frequency components induced activation in deep brain structures associated with emotion and reward. This effectively demonstrates a reflexive unconscious emotional response, be it positive or negative, toward a specific band of sound frequencies.

The issues do not end here. There is a persistent worry of chronic exposure to just basic sound, not just ultrasonic or infrasonic sound, having long term effects on the brain. Symptoms such as ‘chronic fatigue,’ ‘repeated headache,’ and ‘backache’ are observed to be highly associated with low- and mid-octave band center frequency noise exposure among the sampled workers. Among the major psychological symptoms... It is evident that ‘irritability’ is highly associated with low- and mid-octave band noise frequency characteristics. In conclusion even when the noise isn't painfully loud, its frequency can still degrade physical and mental health over time which should be raising ethical and public health concerns.

These effects, as can be surmised, are highly weaponizable “smart consumer devices produce possibly imperceptible sound at both high (17–21kHz) and low (60–100Hz) frequencies, at the maximum available volume setting, potentially turning them into acoustic cyber-weapons.”

The physical and systemic effects that can be caused by long exposure to something that can technically originate from our devices, especially considering previously what the Infrasonic and ultrasonic bands can potentially do. Overall, we find that many of the devices tested are capable of reproducing frequencies within both high and low ranges, at levels exceeding those recommended in published guidelines. Such attacks are often trivial to develop and, in many cases, could be added to existing malware payloads, as they may be attractive to adversaries with specific motivations or targets.

One particular patent actually claims that 1/2 Hz frequency (Around 0.5 Hz) affects the autonomic nervous system and can produce a variety of effects, not limited to Eyelid drooping (ptosis) Relaxation and drowsiness Feeling of pressure on the forehead Visual effects with eyes closed Stomach sensations Tenseness (at certain frequencies). It goes on to propose how this can be used in law enforcement in the form of Non-lethal crowd control Creating disorientation in standoff situations and Remote manipulation from a distance. It goes on to list the effects of the 2.5 Hz range and the other set of effects this has.

However, not all sound effects are bad. Certain ways of application of sound can be used to actually help treat mental issues. One example is through the use of binaural beats, a form of imperceptible or subtle auditory stimulation, which are being studied for their effects on mood regulation, anxiety, and depression. Binaural beats are a type of sound that can influence brainwave activity by playing two slightly different frequencies in each ear, creating a perceived third “beat” in the brain in the way of a non-invasive sound-based intervention. A systematic study conducted to this end found positive effects in the short term while stressing that further research was needed in the long term to determine the full scope of positive effects.

It should also be noted that while these frequencies can be used negatively, it is perfectly possible for them to be used positively. Playing the right type of sound, be it music or a particular frequency set at a volume too low to be heard tended to elicit a positive response on mood and well being.

From the different sources of literature and patent claims, it can be surmised that with the exact know-how and mapping of which exact frequency to use to affect a person in a certain manner, one could be completely manipulated to actually feel a certain way about a topic that we might actually dislike. Any emotion can be aroused as necessary. Furthermore, it can be done through the speakers in everyday devices! An advertisement for a product could play the right sounds to make you view it more favourably, documentaries could potentially use this to make you feel particularly worse about a certain topic to increase the impact, electoral candidates can subtly change their image playing the right sounds at the right time, interviewees could potentially be influenced to feel uneasy for no ‘explainable’ reason as a form of sabotage, etc! The actual potential for abuse of the sounds we cannot even hear, is extreme.

How can we protect ourselves from these phenomena? The answer is quite difficult, especially at this age where sounds come from everywhere around us. The solution to this is to call for scientific transparency, proper protocols to monitor the actual playing sounds and strictly maintaining awareness of one's surroundings. In this day and age we must learn to listen to sounds that we cannot hear.Shreyas Kannan is a B.Tech student in Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems (RCPS) at Plaksha University, and part of its inaugural graduating batch. He has an ardent passion for all things related to movement and propulsion in vehicles, and brings boundless curiosity and energy to projects that make objects move—whether on land, underwater, or in space. From autonomous underwater navigation to aerospace systems, Shreyas is eager to explore and contribute to the frontier of motion-driven technologies. The Subtle Power of Unhearable Sound: Mood and Cognition-Altering Agents | MorungExpress | morungexpress.com

Read More........→October 08, 2025