A team of researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover new details about SIMP 0136, a free-floating planet in the Milky Way that does not orbit a star.

Aventon delivers with its Abound SR e-bike, that's great for commuting, hauling cargo, or hitting the trail thanks to its fat tires, 440-pound capacity, and built-in 4G capabilities.Aventon Abound SR review: a great mid-range e-bikeThere are a lot of e-bikes out there and it's been a while since I've tried an Aventon model. They've definitely stepped up in the tech space with the Aventon Control Unit, and the Abound SR is a great mid-sized bike as well.I tested the black model that comes with a rear rack and mesh covers on the rear tire. It has a 750W motor, three pedal assist modes, and comes out of the box as a class 2 e-bike. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

The world is not enough for Foster + Partners, whose designs for a speculative lunar habitation were unveiled as part of the special EARTH to SPACE Festival taking place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.from March 30th through April 13th, 2025.The British firm's contribution, titled From Earth to Space and Back, speculates a four-person habitation built using lunar regolith soiland erected underneath the surface of the moon to protect against gamma radiation and meteorites. The base will comprise an inflatable dome structure that is then covered in layers of the dense (1.5 g/cm3) material in situ.This is being presented also to posit a similar Mars human habitat and is part of the firm's involvement with both NASA and theEuropean Space Agency that extends to 2012.

The Kefermarkt altarpiece is a richly decorated wooden altarpiece in the Late Gothic style in the parish church of Kefermarkt in Upper Austria. Commissioned by the knight Christoph von Zelking, it was completed around 1497. Saints Peter, Wolfgang and Christopher are depicted in the central section. The wing panels depict scenes from the life of Mary, and the altarpiece also has an intricate superstructure and two side figures of Saints George and Florian. The identity of its maker, known by the notname Master of the Kefermarkt Altarpiece, is unknown, but at least two skilled sculptors appear to have created the main statuary. Throughout the centuries, it has been altered and lost its original paint and gilding; a major restoration was undertaken in the 19th century under the direction of Adalbert Stifter. The altarpiece has been described as "one of the greatest achievements in late-medieval sculpture in the German-speaking area". This image shows the upper-right wing panel of the Kefermarkt altarpiece, depicting the Annunciation. Mary is portrayed kneeling in a praying stool inside a half-open structure, supported by unusually carved pillars, crowned above their capitals with figures which are probably intended to be prophets from the Old Testament. The archangel Gabriel is entering the structure, and holds a speech scroll where parts of his greeting, the Ave Maria, is visible. In the upper-left corner is a depiction of God the Father among clouds and flanked by two angels. The panel originally also contained a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, but it has been lost.Sculpture credit: Master of the Kefermarkt Altarpiece; photographed by Uoaei1Recently featured: Hyacinth macawStrawberryBig Sky, MontanaArchiveMore featured pictures

March 25: Feast of the Annunciation (Christianity); Bangladesh Genocide Remembrance DayEnrico Fermi1458 Wars of the Roses: A formal reconciliation ceremony between the Lancastrians and Yorkists led to a brief period of peace.1725 Bach's chorale cantata Wie schn leuchtet der Morgenstern was first performed on the Feast of the Annunciation, which coincided that year with Palm Sunday.1934 Enrico Fermi (pictured) published his discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.1949 The Soviet Union began mass deportations of more than 90,000 "undesirable" people from the Baltic states to Siberia.K no Moronao (d.1351)Melita Norwood (b.1912)Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas (d.1927)Russell Sherman (b.1930)More anniversaries: March 24March 25March 26ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Ted Scheinman Photographs by Wayne Martin BelgerWayne Martin Belgers photographs sometimes look like the product of time travel, or peculiar magic. In a way, they are.In his journeys around the globe, Belger takes on grim assignments and produces photographs that have a quality of revelation. Hes reported for Smithsonian from a refugee camp in Greece, made intimate portraits of Native activists at Standing Rock and embedded with Zapatistas at an armed compound in Mexico.For many of his stories, Belger builds a custom camera from boutique materials, often drawn from the landscape hes about to photograph. His bold material choices, in his cameras and in his prints, always serve a specific end: For his ongoing Untouchable project, about people living with HIV and AIDS, Belger installed a filter that circulated HIV-positive blood, adding a poignant, striking tinge to each shot.In early 2022, Belger got the assignment from Smithsonian to tag along with researchers doing remarkable work at Tse Yaa Kin, a sacred Native site within Canyon de Chelly National Monument, on the part of the Navajo Nation overlapping with Arizona. Belger brought more than just his portfolio to the assignment: Hes been rock climbing since 17 and today is an undisputed master, capable of ascending and descending Tse Yaa Kins sheer, sometimes eroding walls. A shot of the tower at Tse Yaa Kin. Wayne Martin BelgerBelger was jazzed by the assignment and began planning a new camera that would suit it. Then, one day that April, when he was riding home to Tucson from California on his 1985 Harley Davidson, another vehicle swerved at an intersection and ran right over him.I actually went underneath the SUV at 65 and bounced around quite a bit, Belger recalls, mildly.At the hospital, doctors found the crash had broken 14 bones, severed the link between Belgers spine and right leg, and destroyed two vertebrae. (I vaporized L1 and L5. The doctor said I didnt break them, crack them or anything. He said they exploded.)Instead of building a new camera, Belger had to get rebuilt himself. He spent the next three months in the hospital, relearning how to walk with 35 bolts, screws and rods newly installed in his body.If he was ever going to get to Canyon de Chelly, Belger would need something close to a miracle. He found it in meditation.I got to a point where I was meditating four to five hours a day, just doing body scans and focusing on moving my big toe and then my foot, and then everything started coming together. I did so much work that after I got out of the hospital, I went to physical therapy twice, and the therapist said, Look, theres nothing that we could do to help you more or anything, because youre doing far beyond what you should be doing.Meanwhile, Belger says the Canyon de Chelly assignment loomed as a potent inspiration to heal. I promised myself I would get thereone way or another.One of Belgers doctors credited his remarkable recovery to his decades of rock climbing. He said my back muscles were so massive and so strong that it actually kept the spinal column together.Three or four months later, I was in Canyon de Chelly and climbing up a 100-foot cliff. A view of the canyon from Tse Yaa Kin. Wayne Martin Belger Belgers custom-made camera, constructed with local Arizona box elder, mesquite and juniper. Wayne Martin BelgerAnd he had time to create a new camera, after all. For this vintage-style view camera, Belger crafted the body from local Arizona mesquite and juniper and installed a late-19th-century French landscape lens in front, to give the prints a timeless feel.His expertise at climbing ended up proving crucial to the researchers at Tse Yaa Kin, a group led by Angelyn Bass, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico, and Joshua Ramsey, an archaeologist with the National Parks Service.They knew I was a climber, and they actually hired me to set up all the rope systems, the pulley systems, the hauling systems to bring scientists up in the Canyon de Chelly up into Mummy Cave, and to get all the gear up there. To arrange this elevated perspective onto a window at Tse Yaa Kin, Belger hauled 8-foot-long wooden planks, plus a ladder, up the sheer cliff to the sacred site. Wayne Martin Belger The tower at Tse Yaa Kin, on a platinum-palladium print, and shot on Belger's homemade camera. Belger arranged the composition to match a photo taken by Simeon Schwemberger at the site in 1905. (When you compare the two photos, you can see some repairs that a Smithsonian team made more than a century ago.) Wayne Martin BelgerBelger said spending time with the researchers and with friends on the Navajo Nation impressed on him the urgency of photographing the site now, before these extraordinary structures degenerate further.You can see the climate change in action, and theyre getting more and more fires along the rim plus all the erosion destroying some of the structures. So I wanted to document what is here, before something tragic happens.Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

Early avocado farmers left a lasting mark on the development of agriculture. Safaritravelplus via Wikimedia Commons under CC0 1.0Thousands of years before avocados graced supermarket shelves or were spread across sourdough toast, they were once astaple in the diets ofground sloths,gomphotheres andtoxodons that roamed across Central America during the latePleistocene.These megafauna ate prehistoric avocados whole, spreading the pitsand, as a consequence, the fruitsacross the region. But then, some 12,000 years ago, these massive mammals wentextinct, leaving avocados with an uncertain future.Thats where humans come in. According to a new study published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, humans in Central America were consuming wild avocados roughly 11,000 years ago.To discover how avocado farmers left a lasting mark on the development of early agriculture, archaeologists studied preserved pits and rinds, charting subtle changes in the size and shape of the fruit over thousands of years.Our work shows that Indigenous farmers selected bigger and thicker-skinned avocados through time that made these nutritious fruits more productive and easier to transport, co-author Doug Kennett, an environmental archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says in astatement.These intentionally selected characteristics promoted their widespread use in Central and South America that set the stage for their global economic importance today, he adds. Researchers excavate the El Gigante Rockshelter in Honduras. Ken Hirth / UC Santa BarbaraThe researchers case study centered aroundEl Gigante Rockshelter, a cave site in western Honduras thats known for its immaculately preserved plant remains, accumulated over thousands of years of human use.For decades, archaeologists have sifted through this long-term trash pile to get a better sense of how and when humans switched from foraging to farming, co-author Amber VanDerwarker, an anthropologist at the university, tells theNew York Times Cara Giaimo.VanDerwarker and her fellow researchers used radiocarbon dating to arrange discarded avocado pits and rinds into chronological order to see if any cultivation patterns emerged.They found that the oldest pits from El Gigante were small, and the rinds were just scraps. At first, humans were just picking wild fruits from their trees as they need[ed] to, VanDerwarker tells the Times.But avocado remains from around 7,500 years ago tell a different story. Pits became consistently larger, and skins became thicker. Humans, it appears, began intentionally cultivating avocados by pruning trees to encourage larger fruits to grow.Around 4,500 years ago, rind thickness surpassed the natural variations found in the avocado remains, an indicator that people had started saving seeds and planting their own trees, VanDerwarker adds. The growing size of pits shows how humans cultivated larger avocados over time. Thomas Harper / UC Santa BarbaraFull-blown avocado farming had begun. These people literally domesticated their forests, VanDerwarker tells a Forbes contributor who goes by Grrl Scientist.The consequences of this discovery are widespread, not only for the history of avocados but also for understanding which crops played a significant role in the development of early agriculture.According to a 2017study of El Gigante, maize was domesticated in Honduras 4,300 years ago. As VanDerwarker says in the statement, that means that El Gigante residents had already domesticated avocados by the time maize arrived in the region, complicating the narrative that grains and animals were some of the first food sources domesticated by prehistoric Mesoamericans.This completely alters our understanding of Mesoamerican agriculturetraditionally seen as maize transforming foragers into farmers upon its arrival to a new location, she adds.Instead, by the time maize arrived in this part ofMesoamerica, Indigenous farmers already understood the whole notion of planting seeds and managing growth, VanDerwarker tells Forbes. Scientists are worried about the lack of genetic diversity among modern avocado crops. Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsThis research may help scientists learn to manage crop cultivation more sustainably. Ninety percent of the modern avocado industry is dominated by theHass avocado, a variety primarily grown through cloned populations. Thats a risky endeavor in an era of unprecedented climate unpredictability, VanDerwarker says in the statement.In contrast, the seedling cultivation methods used at El Gigante helped preserve genetic diversity and allowed avocado trees to adapt to changing landscapes and climatic conditions.As VanDerwarker tells the Times, I think people have probably been eating guacamole now for a good 10,000 years. To keep eating guacamole for the next 10,000, it might be time to learn from the avocados past.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Agriculture, Archaeology, Central America, Farming, Food, Food History, Food Science, History, New Research

There's still a lot of juice left to be squeezed, cognitively and performance-wise, from classic Transformer-based, text-focused LLMs.Read More

A report in the New York Post on Monday revealed the existence of a new 10-person FBI task force focused on vandalism and other activity aimed toward Tesla in response to the actions of Elon Musk. Like Attorney General Pam Bondis re-announcement last week of old charges against people accused of targeting Tesla locations for vandalism and arson, todays announcement didnt come with specific new details. It did come with more statements calling the acts domestic terrorism, a line pushed by Musk, Trump, and others in recent weeks. FBI Director Kash Patel repeated the phrase while sharing the story on X, also saying, The FBI has been investigating the increase in violent activity toward Tesla, and over the last few days, we have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response. RelatedUnlike international groups branded as terrorism that the US government can bar support for, the US doesnt have a similar formal designation for domestic terrorist groups. A recent report by Wired cites civil liberties experts who said possible effects of the designation could give law enforcement more surveillance authority over Musk protestors and possibly the ability to share information from investigations with Musk and Tesla.CNBC reports that earlier on Monday, police said theyd found multiple incendiary devices at a Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas. The Post article also said the task force is tracking the Tesla Takedown mass protests scheduled for March 29th and looking into a Dogeque.st site that claimed to dox some Tesla owners and locations, which it said appears to be run out of Sao Tome, the second-smallest country in Africa. 404 Media reports that after going offline the same day it appeared, a version of the site has reappeared on the dark web.See More:

Three Democratic senators are urging President Donald Trump to work with Congress to save TikTok from going dark in the US after April 5th, rather than plow ahead with plans that could leave TikToks service providers open to hundreds of billions of dollars in liability.Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) say they oppose the TikTok ban, which was passed by Congress in an overwhelming vote last year and required the apps Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest it by January 19th or face an effective expulsion. But, they write in a letter to Trump, it is unacceptable and unworkable for your Administration to continue ignoring the requirements in the law, as you did in January by extending the divestment deadline to April 5. The law punishes service providers that work with TikTok after the divestment deadline, leaving them open to up to $850 billion in liability. Trump who was the original proponent of a TikTok ban in his first term, before billing himself as its savior during his most recent campaign signed an executive order on his first day back in office promising not to enforce the ban for 75 days. It is unacceptable and unworkable for your Administration to continue ignoring the requirements in the lawThis was always a legally shaky plan, experts told The Verge. For one thing, the ban deadline had technically passed by the time Trump was sworn into office, even though former President Joe Biden effectively punted the ball to him in his final days in the White House. The law has an extension mechanism that the president can employ to extend the deadline 90 days if a sale is underway, but neither Biden nor Trump tried to use that, and the 75 day extension by executive order is something entirely different.The order cant override the law itself, and even if service providers like Oracle, Apple and Google take Trump at his word that his Justice Department wont enforce the law against them, the statute of limitations extends past his term limit. That said, its not clear how much that will constrain Trumps actions congressional Republicans have so far mostly avoided criticizing Trump (though at least one has warned him against a weak deal), and in a separate case, Trump has suggested that a judge that disagrees with him should be impeached.The senators charge that Trumps 75-day extension was unlawful and its effectiveness in keeping TikTok operating in the US ultimately relies on the risk tolerance of TikToks service providers. While some of TikToks service providers, including Oracle, were willing to trust Trumps promise of legal safety, others, like Apple and Google, held off on returning it to their app stores until reportedly receiving a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi assuring them the law wouldnt be enforced against them.Trump seems to be weighing two options to keep TikTok running past April 5th: extending the deadline or cutting a deal to bring TikTok into compliance with the law. One proposal before the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported based on unnamed sources, would involve Oracle providing assurances that US user data was safe from Chinese government access, but letting the apps recommendation algorithm remain with ByteDance. The arrangement appears similar to Project Texas, a proposed TikTok-Oracle partnership that lawmakers and officials rejected as inadequate to resolve concerns.Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who chairs the House Select Committee on China, has warned that under the law, ByteDance must fully divest its control of TikTok and have no say in its operations; nor can the two share data, content, or algorithms. These are non-negotiable, and any deal that doesnt meet these requirements simply isnt legal.Any further extensions of the TikTok deadline will require Oracle, Apple, Google, and other companies to continue risking ruinous legal liabilityBut the senators warn that in either case, the reported approaches Trump is considering would leave TikToks service providers exposed to potentially crushing liability. To the extent that you continue trying to delay the divestment deadline through executive orders, any further extensions of the TikTok deadline will require Oracle, Apple, Google, and other companies to continue risking ruinous legal liability, a difficult decision to justify in perpetuity, they write. On the other hand, if your Administration works to complete a deal with Oracle under which Oracle would reportedly take a small stake in TikTok and provide certainty about the security of TikToks user data such a deal would almost certainly not satisfy the Acts requirements around a qualified divestiture.The lawmakers propose an alternative: Work with Congress. They urge Trump to ask Senate Republicans to pass the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act a bill Markey proposed shortly before Trumps inauguration, before the ban took place, to give the company until October to complete a sale.If Trump is set on moving forward with an Oracle partnership instead of a full sale, the lawmakers urge him to work with Congress to modify the original law to ensure TikTok can still legally operate. Regardless of your approach, the path to saving TikTok should run through Capitol Hill, they write.See More: