Only the Han Emperor can prevent forest fires A 2,000-year-old battle ended in fire, and a tree species never recovered An ancient Chinese army set fire to an enemy capital, but things got out of hand. Kiona N. Smith – Apr 24, 2025 5:55 pm | 1 The Chinese swamp cypress is critically endangered. This one seems pretty chill about it, though. Credit: Daderot The Chinese swamp cypress is critically endangered. This one seems pretty chill about it, though. Credit: Daderot Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The buried roots and stumps of an ancient forest in southern China are the charred remains of an ancient war and the burning of a capital city, according to a recent study from researchers who carbon-dated the stumps and measured charcoal and pollen in the layers of peat surrounding them. It may not be obvious today, but there’s an ancient forest hidden beneath the farmland of southern China’s Pearl River Delta. Spread across 2,000 square kilometers are thick layers of waterlogged peat, now covered by agriculture. It’s all that is left of what used to be a thriving wetland ecosystem, home to forests of Chinese swamp cypress along with elephants, tigers, crocodiles, and tropical birds. But the peat hides the buried, preserved stumps and roots of cypress trees; some of the largest stumps are almost 2 meters wide, and many have burn marks on their tops. “These peat layers are locally known as ‘buried ancient forest,’ because many buried trees appear fresh and most stumps are found still standing,” writes Ning Wang of the Chinese Academy of Scientists, who along with colleagues, authored the recent paper. It turns out that the eerie buried forest is the last echo of the Han army’s invasion during a war about 2,100 years ago. Today, the ruins of the palace from which Nanyue's kings ruled is an archaeological site in Guangzhou. Credit: Windmemories When the Fire Nation attacked Wang and colleagues radiocarbon dated the stumps’ outermost rings to find out when the trees had stopped growing, and the answer is around 2,100 years ago (give or take about 70 years). It looks like the cypress trees died at roughly the same time across a broad swath of swampland, in some kind of ecological calamity. Based on the burn marks scarring the tops of many of the stumps, the forest ended in fire. As it happens, history does record a fiery calamity in the Pearl River Delta around 111 BCE. The delta was home to an ancient kingdom called Nanyue, which ruled most of what are now the southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, along with what’s now the northern part of Vietnam. Nanyue rose to power around 204 BCE, just as the Qin Empire (which had united most of China under its rule) was beginning to crumble. A former Qin general, Zhao Tuo, took advantage of the chaos to turn a former Qin province into an independent kingdom, which his descendants ruled for the next century. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation—sorry, the Han Empire—attacked. Han rose to power in the wake of Qin’s collapse, after a short war with a rival dynasty called Chu, and spent the next century smugly referring to Nanyue as a vassal state and occasionally demanding tribute. At times, the rulers of Nanyue played along, but it all came to a head around 111 BCE, in the wake of an attempted coup and a series of assassinations. The Han Emperor sent an army of between 100,000 and 200,000 soldiers to invade Nanyue under a general named Lu Bode. The troops marched across the countryside from five directions, converging outside Nanyue’s capital city of Panyou, which stood in the Pearl River Delta, near the modern city of Guangzhou. An enterprising company commander named Yang Pu got the bright idea to set the city on fire, and it ended badly. “The fire not only destroyed the city but also ran out of control to the surrounding forests,” write Wang and colleagues. The cypress trees burned down to the waterline, leaving only their submerged stumps behind. The brown dots mark the known sites of buried forests, and the orange diamonds mark those confirmed to be ancient. The two yellow diamonds are Wang and colleagues' study sites. Credit: Wang et al. 2025 After war came fire and rice At the time of the invasion, the land around Panyou was mostly swamp, forested with cypress trees. People had lived there for thousands of years, and had been growing rice for about 2,000 years. Bits of charcoal in the peat layers Wang and colleagues sampled reveal that they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, but on a small scale, rotating their fields so the cypress forest could start to recover after a season or two. The small burns are nothing like the forest fire Yang Pu unleashed, or the massive burning and reworking of the landscape that came after. The stumps of the burned cypress trees slowly disappeared under several meters of peat, while above the buried ancient forest, life went on. Tigers, elephants, rhinos, and green peafowl no longer walked here. Instead, grains of pollen from the layers of clay above the peat reveal a sudden influx of plants from the grassy Poaceae family, which includes rice, wheat, and barley. That pollen, along with thicker-than-usual deposits of charcoal, suggests that people were burning the remaining trees on a massive scale to make room for more rice fields. Combined with historical records, Wang and colleagues say the pollen and charcoal buried in those sediments point to a dramatic increase in the local population and the scale of their agricultural industry. That was probably an effort to feed the huge invading army at first, but was followed by what Wang and colleagues describe as “a government action aimed at consolidating the results of the victory”—in other words, moving more people into the region and putting them to work on farms. Nearby ocean sediments reveal that around the same time, about 2,100 years ago, more copper and lead started washing into the sea from the Pearl River Delta, suggesting that people were making copper farming tools and coins and using lead in cosmetics and metalware (always a fantastically healthy idea). Biodiversity as a casualty of war Meanwhile, the cypress trees that had once grown across thousands of square kilometers had been burned out of their home as surely as the Nanyue rulers had been burned out of theirs. The Han army’s out-of-control fire attack, followed by the years of burning and farming that followed, pushed the species (Chinese swamp cypress, formally called Glyptostrobus pensilis) to the brink of extinction. Most of southeast China is still technically good habitat for the trees today, but no wild Chinese swamp cypress trees grow anywhere in China. In northern Vietnam, its numbers are small and dwindling, confined to a few remote patches of land. The problem is not climate or environmental change; it’s that so many of the trees were destroyed. “Most G. pensilis populations are small and scattered, unable to provide the ecosystem services they once did,” write Wang and colleagues. G. pensilis is a critically endangered species, and according to Wang and colleagues, that’s mostly due to the Han invasion of Nanyue more than 2,000 years ago. Science Advances, 2025 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adt1736; (About DOIs). Kiona N. Smith Science correspondent Kiona N. Smith Science correspondent Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica. 1 Comments

Bone collector caterpillars from the Waianae mountain range in Oahu, HawaiiDaniel Rubinoff et al. 2025 The newly described “bone collector” caterpillar species disguises itself with the body parts of dead insects so that it can live among spiders and poach their prey. This is the only caterpillar known to use such grisly camouflage or have spiders as roommates – and it’s a carnivore and a cannibal to boot. Daniel Rubinoff at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and his colleagues discovered the caterpillar while hiking the Waianae mountains in Oahu more than two decades ago. They were searching for other species in the same genus, Hyposmocoma, also known as Hawaiian fancy case caterpillars. “We see this little, tiny sac covered in bug bits, and honestly, we weren’t sure what it was,” says Rubinoff. “And then we take it back [to the lab], and we realise there is a little caterpillar in there.” The newly described species of Hyposmocoma – which has not yet received a scientific name – lives on cobwebs inside tree trunks, among rocks and other enclosed spaces. It is about the length of a fingernail and feeds on insects trapped in spider webs. “Only 0.13 per cent of all caterpillars on the planet are carnivorous,” says Rubinoff. “So it is incredibly hard for a caterpillar to evolve to eat meat.” The bone collector avoids becoming prey itself with a macabre method: adorning its silken case with fragments of dead insects and the spider’s moulted exoskeleton. The critter carefully sizes up each body part – which might include ant heads, beetle abdomens or fly wings – before weaving it into its disguise. The bone collector caterpillar (left) uses its grisly disguise to live safely with a spider (right)Daniel Rubinoff et al. 2025 “That’s the only way to survive, probably, living with a spider – by covering yourself in bits of the spider’s own shed skin and its past meals,” says Rubinoff. This leaves the caterpillar smelling and tasting more like a bag of trash than a juicy snack to its arachnid housemate. After about two to three months, it then metamorphoses into a moth smaller than a grain of rice. If the bone collector’s accessorising weren’t gnarly enough, this caterpillar is also a cannibal. The researchers learned this after placing two of the larvae in the same cage, leading to the larger one feasting on its smaller, weaker brethren. This is why you only ever see one bone collector per spider web, says Rubinoff. The researchers have found just 62 of these critters across more than 150 field surveys conducted over roughly 22 years, all within the same 15 square kilometres of the Waianae mountain range. Genetic analysis indicates its lineage is about 3 million years older than the island of Oahu, meaning it was once more widespread. “Since the arrivals of humans in a place like this, we’ve lost lots of native species,” says Rubinoff. “It is both a miracle that we were able to find [the bone collector], and really sad that they are so restricted to this one spot.” Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.ads4243 Topics:

I haven't always loved having the name Lynda — but at least it's not Linda. Courtesy of Lynda Rucker. 2025-04-24T21:45:02Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? I'm a Gen X woman with a name beloved by baby boomers, but often misunderstood by my peers. Today the name Linda is often associated with a frumpy archetype, as seen in TV shows and memes. The unique "y" in the spelling of my name helps me stand out from the Lindas of the world. "Linda? That's my aunt's name!"I probably wasn't even out of my teens before I'd lost count of the number of times a cute boy said this to me. "You have an old name because you had old parents," my older sister flatly told me once. My friends more tactfully insisted that "No, the 'y'But my sister wasn't wrong: I'm a Gen X Lynda with a name beloved by the parents of baby boomers and even the silent generation. These days, the name has been reduced to a frumpy archetype. How did a name that was the equivalent of a TikTok sensation of its day become so relentlessly uncool?Lindas are getting a bad rapThe "y" is the only thing standing between me and the Lindas of the world. As a Linda, I'm an episode-long joke on "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" in which everyone is confounded by a baby named Linda because Lindas are adult women who work in HR. There's also the bossy busybody of the "Listen Linda" meme (there but for the grace of Karen go I), which originated with a Linda recording her three-year-old son repeatedly insisting "Listen, Linda" with all of the exasperated patience he can muster faced with the implacable bureaucracy that a Linda embodies. As a Lynda, I have plausible deniability.The comedic success of both the TV show and the meme relies on the confidence that we've all noticed certain things about people named Linda and that we'll all get the joke, and we do. "Who's Linda? Your mom's friend?" Linda is the type of person who carries SlimFast in her purse and gets mad when she can't find her keys. Linda says things like "Mondays," with that little rueful head shake, you know the one. Of course she does.We all know this Linda, but why? How did this extraordinarily popular name become this frumpy archetype?The name isn't poised for a comeback — yetOne thing all the characters in the Kimmy Schmidt episode agree on — including the five middle-aged Lindas who all work in HR at the same company — Linda definitely can't be a baby.These days, they aren't wrong. In the US, the name Linda began its sharp rise in popularity in the late 1930s, peaked in the late 1940s, and declined dramatically throughout the 1960s and 1970s to become one of the unlikeliest names given to babies today.This is my name, and I'm keeping itOf course, we Lyndas with a "y" were always somewhat rare, which is why I've always side-eyed HR departments, try not to make everything my business, and can solemnly swear not a sip of SlimFast has ever passed my lips. I do get mad when I can't find my keys though. I try not to think much about the fact that I was almost an Elizabeth as I'm convinced my life would have taken a completely different trajectory. Elizabeth surely would have been several inches taller than my five-foot-one-inch frame and would probably have had a decent sense of direction. She'd have published a novel in her twenties and probably landed on one of those "30 Under 30" lists.However unenamoured I have always been of my name, I've also never considered changing it. Wouldn't that just leave me with another name I'd also get tired of, only I'd have no one but myself to blame?There's another reason I'm kind of attached to Lynda though. My father loved the name and had always wanted a daughter named Linda. My mother suggested the "y" addition just so it would be a little different. The name meant something to them even if it seems slightly ridiculous to me. Now that they're both gone, it feels like a lasting thread of connection with them both.That and the fact that it's Lynda with a "y." I'm not one of those Lindas other people talk about — at least not as long as I can find my keys. Recommended video

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.Welcome to The Logoff. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that takes aim at a longtime core principle of civil rights law known as disparate impact. And though he can’t get rid of it entirely on his own, he may be hoping conservative justices on the Supreme Court will.What is disparate impact? It’s the legal concept that certain practices can violate federal civil rights law because they affect certain demographics differently — even if no explicit or intentional discrimination is proven. For instance: Everyone knows it would be illegal for an employer to say they won’t hire people of a certain race. But what if an employer screens out applicants who’d previously been arrested? Under disparate impact analysis, if doing that ends up disproportionately hurting applicants of one demographic, it could be an illegal violation of civil rights law. Disparate impact is a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement, but activists on the right have pushed back against it, arguing progressives have taken the idea too far, and that standards that affect different demographics differently should not necessarily be presumed illegal.What did Trump do? Trump’s order declares it US policy “to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.” It starts the rollback of some regulations, while deprioritizing the enforcement of others. Pending federal actions that rely on disparate impact analysis, such as civil rights lawsuits or investigations, must be assessed for compliance with this order, Trump says. He also broaches the possibility that state laws or policies relying on disparate impact could be illegal.Can he do this? Trump can try to roll back enforcement, but disparate impact was codified in a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that he can’t get rid of on his own. But activists on the right are hoping that the Court’s conservative majority is ready to throw out that long-held precedent.And with that, it’s time to log off…Bonobos are one of the rare mammal species with female-dominated societies. How do they pull it off? A new study explores their strategy — and, one researcher told the New York Times, it suggests that male dominance isn’t inevitable for humans either.You’ve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you — join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

It’s better to just wait for new stock (Nintendo) The eBay vigilantes fighting back against Nintendo Switch 2 scalpers have come up with a new plan, now that US pre-orders have gone live. Despite Nintendo’s efforts to mitigate Nintendo Switch 2 scalping, listings for the console soon popped up on eBay after pre-orders went live here in the UK, earlier in the month. Unsurprisingly, the same thing is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, now that pre-orders are finally open in the US and Canada, following a two week delay brought on by Donald Trump’s tariffs. Disgruntled Nintendo fans have already tried getting these sort listings removed, by reporting scalpers to eBay for violating the site’s terms and conditions. Now, they’ve adopted a new and slightly more bizarre strategy: flood the market with fakes. If you take a quick glance at the US eBay site, you’ll find plenty of Switch 2 listings. Some are naturally more expensive than Nintendo’s asking price of $449.99, while others are around the same price or slightly cheaper. However, as highlighted by Nintendeals on Bluesky, a number of these listings have ‘read the description’ in their headings and if you do exactly that, you’ll see they’re not offering Switch 2 pre-orders but screenshots of the console. ‘This is a screenshot! You are purchasing a picture of a Nintendo Switch 2! This listing is to prevent bots and scalpers. No refunds and no cancellations! I will mail you a picture of a Switch 2. Don’t buy if you’re a real person!’ warns this listing. Similar descriptions can be found on several other listings, so it’s not as if these people are looking to swindle desperate customers out of their money. The goal here is to flood eBay with enough phony listings that it’ll be harder to find actual Switch 2 listings and thus prevent scalpers from successfully selling their pre-orders. More Trending While it’s not that difficult to discern which ones are fakes, the fact that they’re marked at lower prices does mean they’ll be the first ones people track down and push the more expensive listings out of the top page of the search results. Plus, this should counter any bots that have been set up to scour eBay for potential stock, to hoard up and sell afterwards. It’s not just the UK and America that are struggling to meet customer demands. Things aren’t any better in Japan, with Nintendo already having apologised for not having enough stock. Demand is so high for the Switch 2 that it could be the single biggest launch for a video game console ever, despite the widespread complaints about the price of its games. If you see a Mario Kart World bundle with a price that’s too good to be true, that’s because it is (eBay) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

The first three episodes of Andor season two are finally streaming on Disney+, offering a breakneck blast back into the early days of Star Wars rebellion. During io9’s interview with showrunner Tony Gilroy and star Genevieve O’Reilly, who plays Mon Mothma, the duo broke down the last moments of the third episode of this week’s drop. Gilroy also discussed how framing these pivotal years as three-episode mini-movies came about. Sabina Graves, io9: The initial plan was for Andor to run five seasons, with each season covering a year—but that evolved into these three-episode “movie” arcs. How much of the backstory was provided and developed as you went along? Tony Gilroy: I think when we came up with the idea and started to experiment with it, I originally thought, “Oh my god, well… is it going to work? Is it going to have lots of exposition when we come back?” Where people have to say “Oh since last I saw you…”? I didn’t want to do that, and if you’d asked me in the beginning I would have thought “Oh, I’m going to have to write a huge bible of negative space of all the things that happen in between,” you’ll have to issue these other memos and that’s a whole other month of writing and no, no. I mean in episode four, Adria [Arjona] and Diego [Luna] really needed to know what had happened with the soldier and what the missions had been like. That jump was specific; they needed to know certain things but as we went along there were so few questions. The pickups, the beginning of the episodes where people were and what they were talking about, seemed to be so available that I never had to write a memo about it. I had some conversations about it but I never had to go back in and and do the heavy lifting I thought in the beginning, no. io9: Genevieve, was it really liberating to have that negative space and those broad strokes to find Mon in these formative years in building the rebellion? I found her moment of letting loose in particular in episode three so cathartic. Can you take me behind where you were in having that moment unfold for her? Genevieve O’Reilly: Yeah, I mean those first three episodes go over three days. It’s in her ancestral home, it’s within her family culture. I felt really steeped in her history there and we didn’t—like Tony said, there was there was very little exposition. It’s just: there she is, that’s the practice, that’s the ritual. We understand it implicitly and then moving through those three days of that wedding and the inter-complications of the family relationships with her daughter, with her husband, the in-laws and then having Luthen there—there was so much going on. And as we come to the pointy end of those three episodes you really feel the implications of where she is at that moment, not just with the weight of those familial kind—that rigorous tension of what that wedding was, but then with Luthen being there and coming in with a clear eye in regard to her friend Tay Colma. We know Tay Colma so well from season one, he was such a fierce ally of hers, and so we start season two with him very loose, very tethered, or she sees that in him. It’s like he’s seeing those false gold idols of Davos Sculdun, he’s drinking that in and he wants some of that for himself and that is an implicit threat. Of course she sees the friend, she sees that’s maneuverable, but of course Luthen sees it much clearer—he’s much more brutal in his vision and he calls her on it. He calls her on her romanticism and he kind of really asks her to be honest with herself in regard to what rebellion really takes. He asks her to have that blood on her hands and she tacitly agrees, and so that moment that you’re talking about, that crescendo of movement and culture and celebration, is also a woman just wrestling with her own internal chaos. io9: it’s such a beautiful moment and the dancing and the drinking—Tony, what did you see as the strength and beauty of intercutting that with where everyone else is in that moment of crossroads? Gilroy: My brother John, who’s been with me forever, who’s just the master builder, post-production builder—we built a lot of crescendos. We’ve learned how to build these crescendos in the movies we’ve made over the years and then we did it in season one, the funeral. So this is really going to be a very complicated crescendo, we’re using a piece of electronic dance music which is really unusual. I’m getting to juxtapose Cassian saving the day and Mon Mothma with blood on her hands with Eedy showing up for lunch. I get to do everything all at once. I’m really pleased with the end of three. I’ll say one other thing about about Mon on the dance floor: it does another thing. It binds the audience to her because the only people in that room who know what’s going on are you and her. Everybody else is partying, everybody else is dancing, but you know what she’s into, and so that just creates what it does with the audience. I love how it binds the audience to the characters. Andor is now streaming on Disney+. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Agora des Arts / Chevalier Morales ArchitectesSave this picture!© James Brittain Architects: Chevalier Morales Architectes Area Area of this architecture project Area:  2087 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:James Brittain Lead Architects: Sergio Morales, Stephan Chevalier More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. Nestled in the heart of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the Agora des Arts in Rouyn-Noranda stands out as a specialized venue for theatrical production and acoustic music. This project is a thoughtful rehabilitation and redesign of the historic Notre-Dame-de-Protection church, recognized as a cultural heritage site in Quebec. Having served as a gathering place for nearly a century, the Agora des Arts continues this tradition of bringing people together to celebrate community connections.Save this picture!Save this picture!The symbolic staircase has been laterally repositioned within the church, seamlessly linking both foyer levels. This striking feature is showcased through the expansive glass walls of the first floor, while the richly crafted wooden staircase adds an imposing sense of grandeur to the Agora. Inspired by the polished wooden finishes of traditional church interiors, this staircase also acts as a gateway to the imaginative realm of performance, guiding visitors toward the auditorium.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The Agora des Arts breathes new life into this heritage site, allowing it to continue serving as a vibrant cultural hub in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region while honouring its historic and symbolic significance. The newly added suspended volume features a striking red brick façade arranged in a lattice pattern, juxtaposed against a transparent glass wall that allows a warm, inviting light to permeate the space and create a luminous aura in harmony with the building's original composition.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The rooftop terrace is designed to echo the church's original forecourt and features a unique outdoor gathering space. The Agora des Arts represents a pivotal center for artistic expression in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, where community spirit and celebration thrive.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this office Published on April 24, 2025Cite: "Agora des Arts / Chevalier Morales Architectes" 24 Apr 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028252/agora-des-arts-chevalier-morales-architectes&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

In this video, I show how to create a custom lighting model that renders as fast as possible. This might work well for low power mobile phones or XR headsets that have weak GPUs or require high frame rates. In order to render faster, this model does not support specular, reflections, metallic, screen space ambient occlusion, light cookies, etc. It leaves out features in favor of faster rendering. Here's the code for the additional lights subgraph: ---------------------------------- Diffuse = MainDiffuse; Color = MainColor * MainDiffuse; #ifndef SHADERGRAPH_PREVIEW uint pixelLightCount = GetAdditionalLightsCount(); #if USE_CLUSTER_LIGHT_LOOP // for Foward+ LIGHT_LOOP_BEGIN macro uses inputData.normalizedScreenSpaceUV and inputData.positionWS InputData inputData = (InputData)0; inputData.normalizedScreenSpaceUV = ScreenPosition; inputData.positionWS = WorldPosition; #endif LIGHT_LOOP_BEGIN(pixelLightCount) // Convert the pixel light index to the light data index #if !USE_CLUSTER_LIGHT_LOOP lightIndex = GetPerObjectLightIndex(lightIndex); #endif Light light = GetAdditionalPerObjectLight(lightIndex, WorldPosition); float NdotL = saturate(dot(WorldNormal, light.direction)); float thisDiffuse = light.distanceAttenuation * NdotL; Diffuse += thisDiffuse; Color += light.color * thisDiffuse; LIGHT_LOOP_END float total = Diffuse; Color = total !!!!= 0 ? MainColor : Color / total; #endif ---------------------------------- In the code above, please replace the !!!! with the less than sign on the second to last line. YouTube doesn't allow that symbol in video descriptions. Here's last week's video on converting a scene to use custom lighting: https://youtu.be/oXo7pN8YnAw Shader Book Recommendations https://www.bencloward.com/resources_books.shtml ------------------------------ Theme Music Peace in the Circuitry - Glitch Hop http://teknoaxe.com/Link_Code_3.php?q=1526 Background Music Speo - The Little Things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvCYuyyLgC0 #UnrealEngine #shadergraph #Unity

In this Unreal Engine 5 tutorial, we'll be exploring the power of Rays Material MAGIC on Skeletal Mesh. Learn how to create stunning, realistic effects on your skeletal mesh assets using this advanced material technique. From setting up the material to tweaking the settings for maximum impact, we'll cover it all. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced UE5 developer, this video is perfect for anyone looking to take their project to the next level. So, let's dive in and uncover the magic of Rays Material on Skeletal Mesh in Unreal Engine 5! FAB - https://www.fab.com/sellers/CGHOW Whatsapp - https://bit.ly/3LYvxjK Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/Ashif Twitter - https://twitter.com/cghow_ 👉👉 If you Liked it - http://bit.ly/2UZmiZ4 Channel Ashif - http://bit.ly/3aYaniw Visit - https://cghow.com/ Gumroad - https://cghow.gumroad.com/ #cghow #UE5 #UE4Niagara #gamefx #ue5niagara #ue4vfx #niagara #unrealengine #realtimevfx

It can be difficult to understand quantum mechanics. That’s okay, because, in the early days of the Internet, few could understand how that worked. Now, new developments in quantum communication may turbocharge just how quickly and securely information is delivered among us. Scientists demonstrated that such a system could work on our existing telecommunications infrastructure, they report in the journal Nature Communication.This is kind of a big deal, because many physicists had thought that transmitting quantum information over any distance would require cryogenically cooling whatever kinds of cables needed to transmit it. They also weren’t sure if standard fiber optic cables would even work for such a process.A Quantum TurbochargeThe scientists proved such super-cooling unnecessary by sending encryption information 158 miles between Frankfurt and Kehl, Germany. One key challenge they needed to overcome was achieving “optical coherence” — the ability to keep different parts of a light wave — or, in the case of quantum mechanics, photons — in consist relationship to one another as they travel through space. Addressing this issue was one key to the test’s success.“Our research aligns the requirements of coherence-based quantum communication with the capabilities of existing telecommunication infrastructure, which is likely to be useful to the future of high-performance quantum networks,” according to the paper.Coherence in Quantum CommunicationsCoherence is both key to quantum communications and theoretically difficult to achieve. Although the qbit — the currency of quantum information — is exponentially more powerful than the standard computational bit, qbits are considered fragile. The tiniest interaction with its environment could, in theory interrupt it — thus destroying the information it was intended to carry.The short explanation of quantum mechanics is that it uses mysterious states in physics to achieve things demonstrably impossible with conventional methods. An even shorter explanation of the implication of the experiment in Germany is that we may someday have access to an exponentially faster, more secure set of information-carrying infrastructure.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.