The Pokémon Fossil Museum, a Japanese exhibition that pairs man-made Pokémon fossils with real-world ancient life forms, will make its international debut at Chicago’s Field Museum in 2026, the museum and The Pokémon Company International announced Wednesday. Younger fans who started their adventure in Paldea and OG Kanto fans alike can view real dinosaurs and ancient life forms alongside their Pokémon equivalents. Attendees will discover how Field Museum icons like SUE the T. Rex and the Chicago Archaeopteryx compare to Pokémon such as Tyrantrum and Archeops, while exploring how fossils are uncovered and studied in both the Pokémon universe and the real world. The exhibition features Pokémon “Professors,” the ever-adorable Excavator Pikachu complete with a cowboy hat, and Field scientists exploring fossils from both worlds. “Aligned with the Field Museum’s mission to connect us to the natural world, the Pokémon Fossil Museum will inspire visitors to make new discoveries about some of their favorite Pokémon while offering a pathway to science,” said Jaap Hoogstraten, head of exhibitions at the Field Museum, in a news release, “especially budding paleontologists.” You can see a Japanese-language tour of the Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibition in the video below for a sneak peek at what to expect. Created by Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science and The Pokémon Company, Pokémon Fossil Museum is a traveling exhibition usually scheduled in museums throughout Japan. This year, Pokémon Fossil Museum is currently located at Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum until May 25. It will then move to Nagasaki City’s Dinosaur Museum from June 7 until Sept. 21. Its last stop will be the Tokushima Prefectural Museum in October. Pokémon Fossil Museum will open at the Field Museum on May 22, 2026. We asked the Field Museum when tickets will go on sale, and a representative told Polygon, “We have not yet announced when tickets will be available. Anyone interested in being the first to buy tickets can sign up for email updates on our website.” If interest in the Pokémon Fossil Museum is anything like the fervor associated with the Pokémon exhibition at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, which prompted some very bad behavior when scalpers realized they could sell museum-exclusive merchandise to hardcore Pokémon fans, you’ll want to make a plan to visit sooner rather than later. Let’s hope the Field Museum and The Pokémon Company have learned a few lessons since then, because the Japanese versions of the exhibit have some extremely cool merch.

Whether you’re seeking adventure, mystery, or a good scare, May’s PlayStation Plus Catalog has got you covered. Explore a vast desert world filled with action in Sand Land, delve into the cyberpunk universe of Soul Hackers 2 or step into the eerie world of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted… There’s plenty to choose from in May’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup*. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus Premium welcomes PS2’s FPS simulation classic, Battle Engine Aquila. All titles will be available to play on May 20.  PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium | Game Catalog  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Sand Land | PS4, PS5  From the creator of Dragon Ball comes a new action RPG, Sand Land! Create incredible vehicles to explore a desert world & beyond. Meet the Fiend Prince Beelzebub, his chaperone Thief, and the fearless Sheriff Rao, and follow the team on an extraordinary adventure in search of the Legendary Spring hidden in the desert. Learn how to control Beelzebub’s powers and lead your company of heroic misfits exploring the legendary world of Sand Land. Beware of the many dangers that populate it: between bandits, fierce wildlife, and the Royal Army, reaching the spring won’t be easy! Use your tact and imagination to develop tanks and other vehicles that will help you navigate this vast land, using a wide array of part combinations.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Soul Hackers 2 | PS5  Explore a dark, supernatural realm and investigate the world’s end in this sci-fi, neo-noir mystery. Amidst the glimmer of neon lights, technological advancement causes humans to be consumed by commercial convenience. In the shadows, a war between the Yatagarasu and the Phantom Society is brewing, Devil Summoners who harness the otherworldly powers of “Demons”. Existing in the secret sea of humanity’s data, a digital hivemind has evolved into sentience: Aion. Observing humankind from afar, Aion calculates that a world-ending disaster is imminent and creates two agents to combat against it: Ringo and Figue. Together, these agents of Aion must investigate and prevent a butterfly effect that will lead to the end of the world.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted – Full Time Edition | PS4, PS5  Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted is a collection of classic and original mini-games set in the Five Nights universe. Survive terrifying encounters with your favorite killer animatronics in a collection of new and classic Five Nights at Freddy’s experiences. Repair claustrophobic ventilation systems, troubleshoot broken animatronics that could activate at any moment, or spend your evenings cowering in the nighttime security guard office. Scenes from classic titles have been updated and remade for a fully immersive experience including Five Nights at Freddy’s, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Five Nights at Freddy’s 3, Five Nights at Freddy’s 4, and Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location.   Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted – Full Time Edition is a combined version of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted and its DLC, Curse of Dreadbear, for PS5 & PS VR2. The base version for PS4, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted, is also available as part of Game Catalog’s May lineup. Standard non-VR and VR modes included.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Battlefield V | PS4  Enter mankind’s greatest conflict with Battlefield V as the series goes back to its roots in a never-before-seen portrayal of World War II. Experience all-out multiplayer with your squad in the vast Grand Operations and the cooperative Combined Arms, or take on single player War Stories. Also includes Firestorm – Battle Royale, reimagined for Battlefield.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy | PS4, PS5  Delve into the renowned classics of open-world survival with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy, now upscaled and enhanced for a new generation. Investigate the Zone’s origins, taking on the roles of legendary stalkers and forging paths that can lead to different outcomes based on your actions and decisions. Test your gumption while navigating through radioactive debris and anomalies, and put your reflexes to trial during intense gunfights. Search for the answers to the darkest mysteries that could cost you your sanity in sinister catacombs filled with starved mutants.   View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising | PS4, PS5  Rise to glory in Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, a delightful fighting game experience for beginners and veterans alike. Newcomers can fully enjoy the intensity and thrills of one-on-one combat without needing to memorize complicated controls—simple inputs can be used to perform skills with the press of a single button! Embark on a journey through the vast skies of Granblue Fantasy and immerse yourself in an epic adventure while mastering the fundamentals of gameplay. As you take on more quests in this action RPG-inspired experience, you’ll continue to grow stronger.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Humankind | PS4, PS5  Humankind is a historical strategy game, where you’ll be re-writing the entire narrative of human history and combining cultures to create a civilization that’s as unique as you are. Combine up to 60 historical cultures as you lead your people from the Ancient to the Modern Age. Face historical events, take impactful moral decisions, and make scientific breakthroughs. Each battle in Humankind plays out like a mini turn-based board game on top of the actual world map. Unstack your armies and command each of your units, including the emblematic units of your culture and their special abilities. Construct siege weapons to besiege and occupy cities. Fight in large battles spanning multiple turns, and don’t hesitate to bring in reinforcements!  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life | PS5 This reimagined version of A Wonderful Life brings all of the heart and charm of the original to a new generation as the definitive experience of one of the most cherished entries in the long-running farming series. Put down roots on your new farm in the peaceful town of Forgotten Valley. Forge precious memories as you weave your own generation-spanning tale of friendship, family, and farming. Bring life to the land by cultivating crops and raising animals, find love among the town’s friendly folk, and make lasting memories with a family of your very own in this reimagining of a beloved farming classic.  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Gloomhaven Mercenaries Edition | PS4, PS5 Experience a tough tactical RPG and lead your band of mercenaries through an unforgiving land where every choice is crucial. Carve your way through terrifying dungeons, dreadful forests and dark caves filled with horrific monsters to reap your rewards… or die trying. Sell your sword to anyone who can afford it, may they be city officials or corrupt cultists. You are paid to get results and not ask questions. Where will you draw the line?  PlayStation Plus Premium  View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Battle Engine Aquila | PS4, PS5 The forces of the Forseti and the evil Muspell are in a fight to the death for a flooded world’s most limited resource: land. You are Hawk Winter, plucked from obscurity to pilot Battle Engine Aquila. Airborne or on land, you’ll harness Aquila’s versatile mobility and awesome fire power in guiding legions of allies to victory. By commanding a device so powerful and advanced, your battlefield decisions will shape the direction of each engagement and, ultimately, the entire war.  *PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and PlayStation Plus Premium/Deluxe lineups may differ by region. Please check PlayStation Store on release day. 

Think tap to pay — but smarter and safer. Visa is tapping into AI to enhance services for its global network of customers, focused on fraud prevention, personalization and agentic commerce. Sarah Laszlo, senior director of Visa’s machine learning platform, joined the AI Podcast to discuss how artificial intelligence is powering the next generation of payment experiences. Visa processes hundreds of billions of transactions each year, so even small technological enhancements can have a large impact. The company prevents $40 billion in fraud annually. “There’s so much attempted fraud that, even though we’re very good at preventing it, marginal improvements save large dollar amounts,” Laszlo said. AI also powers Visa’s personalization systems, delivering smarter, more relevant offers and recommendations to cardholders. The company’s unique dataset presents a huge opportunity to improve transaction predictions — but also brings privacy challenges. “The key to addressing those challenges is building abstract representations of users — embeddings that capture preferences without exposing private data,” Laszlo said. The company is also working toward agentic commerce — where AI agents help customers with payments. For example, AI agents with access to payment credentials can handle transactions on behalf of consumers, like booking travel arrangements, when instructed. Laszlo shared best practices for enterprises adopting generative AI. She also recommended using open-source models when possible and developing strong relationships between governance and technical teams. In one success story, Visa used GPT-4 to convert legacy code to Python, saving $5 million, with just one engineer completing 50 conversion jobs in a quarter. To learn more, watch Laszlo’s GTC session, The Next Era of Payments: How Generative AI is Shaping the Future. Time Stamps 03:28 – Visa’s priorities for AI use. 07:09 – How Visa optimizes resources using virtual GPUs. 14:42 – AI factories and unified pipelines. 18:52 – Best practices for AI in financial services. You Might Also Like…  NVIDIA’s Jacob Liberman on Bringing Agentic AI to Enterprises Agentic AI enables developers to create intelligent multi-agent systems that reason, act and execute complex tasks with a degree of autonomy. Jacob Liberman, director of product management at NVIDIA, explains how agentic AI bridges the gap between powerful AI models and practical enterprise applications. Firsthand’s Jon Heller Shares How AI Agents Enhance Consumer Journeys in Retail Jon Heller, co-CEO and founder of Firsthand, discusses how the company’s Brand Agents are transforming the retail landscape by personalizing customer journeys, converting marketing interactions into valuable research data and enhancing the customer experience with hyper-personalized insights and recommendations. Telenor Builds Norway’s First AI Factory, Offering Sustainable and Sovereign Data Processing Telenor opened Norway’s first AI factory in November 2024, enabling organizations to process sensitive data securely on Norwegian soil while prioritizing environmental responsibility. Telenor’s Chief Innovation Officer and Head of the AI Factory Kaaren Hilsen discusses the AI factory’s rapid development, going from concept to reality in under a year.

Deal  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Buy Windows 11 Pro for 2 devices with a copy of Office 2021 Pro for only $55 Neowin Deals · May 14, 2025 13:00 EDT Today's highlighted deal comes via our Apps + Software section of the Neowin Deals store, where you can save 86% on Windows 11 Pro (for 2 devices) + Microsoft Office Pro 2021. Upgrade your computing experience with Windows 11 Pro. This cutting-edge operating system boasts a sleek new design and advanced tools to help you work faster and smarter. From creative projects to gaming and beyond, Windows 11 delivers the power and flexibility you need to achieve your goals. With a focus on productivity, the new features are easy to learn and use, enhancing your workflow and efficiency. Whether you're a student, professional, gamer, or creative, Windows 11 Home has everything you need to take your productivity to the next level. 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html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" We seem to have more video footage and still images than ever before, thanks to smartphones, GoPro cameras and the backlog of older ones collected across a lifetime. Managing all these formats, as well as making sure they look their best, can be a frightening proposition. Thankfully, Winxvideo AI is a powerful all-in-one solution that not only uses advanced Artificial Intelligence software to upgrade the quality of your content but can rescue old photos and footage too. The newly updated version 4.0 also brings huge improvements to speed, plus a special price offer, so you can save both time and money while you upgrade your photo and video library. Grab your discount on Winxvideo AI Winxvideo AI comes with an impressive array of features that can turn tired, old, blurry videos into something far more professional. For example, if you have footage of a significant event that was shot on an old device and only displays in low resolution, then the AI upscaling tool can cleverly convert it to 720p ,1080p or even 4K! It offers dedicated AI models for different video types – whether enhancing fine details, smoothing low-detail footage, refining animations, or upscaling photorealistic content. Digiarty Winxvideo AI significantly improves video quality thanks to its advanced AI models that remove noise, sharpen footage, and clean up compression artifacts caused by low light or poor equipment. This means that the unimpressive video you shot of an important occasion can instantly look better than you thought possible, and play back in glorious 4K with realistic detail, revealing textures like skin, hair, fur, and fabric with impressive clarity. Is a great shot spoiled by the camera shaking? No problem, the AI Stabilization capabilities in Winxvideo AI can fix that in only a few clicks. If you find that your video is jerky and stutters due to a low frame rate, that’s fixable too thanks to the AI frame interpolation that can boost frame rates for smooth footage or allow you to convert it to slo-mo instead. Alongside these tools there’s also a full suite of video editing features so you can put together your own films, remove noise from audio tracks, the option to convert video to and from a wide range of formats, plus the helpful ability to compress file sizes to make them easier to share over email or messaging services. Restore and enhance photos and images  It’s not only video that you can improve with Winxvideo AI, as it also brings serious enhancements to still images. The AI upscaler technology instantly improves low-quality images by up to 10x, removing noise and blurriness to give you pin-sharp results. If you want to enhance portraits, Winxvideo AI’s Face Recovery restores fine details like eyelashes, pupils, and skin texture, while removing blemishes. It works perfectly for both individual portraits and group photos.Digiarty The same thing works on old photographs, which you can scan and then make them look like they were taken yesterday. Should you want to modernize old black and white pictures, then the colorize feature in Winxvideo AI makes this incredibly simple, bringing old images to life with full color versions. Everything is handled by the simple-to-use software that does all the heavy-lifting for you. Winxvideo AI version 4.0 takes things to a new level Thanks to big improvements in two of the AI models used in version 4.0, the latest iteration of Winxvideo AI boasts incredible performance gains, with upscaling speeds increased by up to 80% over version 3.9! Digiarty Not only that, the finished results also come with enhanced quality and details too. All this, while the CPU/GPU usage has been lowered, so your PC won’t be punished while working on the video or images. Grab time-limited special deals for Winxvideo AI This year also marks the 19th anniversary of Winxvideo AI’s creators Digiarty, which is being celebrated by a superb deal on the software where you can buy it for only $29.95, saving you $40 off the normal price. Hurry, though, as this is a time-limited deal to accompany the Digiarty festivities. With so many useful tools to upgrade your video and photo library, there’s never been a better time to buy Winxvideo AI, and thanks to the special deal there’s never been a cheaper time either. View Offer

Figma announced 'Sites' at Config 2025, which lets users create simple static websites from designs. Imagine a website generator like Framer or Webflow, but embedded inside Figma.The buzz is serious. Sites could become the de facto tool for quick marketing campaigns or small personal websites. But what if you need Sites to integrate with your existing design systems, custom components, and production code?Figma SitesFigma Sites is a visual developer tool similar to Webflow or Framer. It's focused on letting designers build websites without coding or leaving Figma.Its greatest strength is its integration with the Figma ecosystem. For designers already comfortable with the platform, Sites offers a path to deploy a design as a live website quickly.Easy interactivity and AI-enhanced codeFigma Sites includes numerous presets for everyday website interactions and effects. For instance, you can add a hover effect to a button or a typewriter effect to a text block.A future version of Sites will also include an AI tool for generating code.Responsive design and hands-off infrastructureFigma Sites can also display your design in desktop, tablet, and mobile layouts side by side. The preview version (press shift + space) and the published version are both fully responsive websites.Press the Publish button in the top-left corner once you’re ready to deploy the design into a working website. After some quick validations (it can even help with auto layout), Figma Sites will deploy your project to a generated URL. For a fee, you can wire up a custom domain.Coming soon: CMS and Code LayersRight now, Figma Sites translates your design into HTML and CSS. The team's future improvement, "Code Layers,” will take a user prompt and transform it into React and Tailwind CSS.Another future improvement is a CMS feature inside Figma Sites. This would allow users to manage their website content more efficiently. The idea of a fully integrated design-to-publish tool with an internal CMS is very appealing.Going from Figma to website to complete applicationSimple site builders are great for getting something online, but aren’t great at creating fully integrated applications that mesh with an existing codebase. This is a familiar problem.The challenge lies in moving beyond a static page built with HTML and CSS. What happens if you need this new site to use the Next.js framework and the App Router patterns that your team has adopted? Can you leverage your company's custom components? Is there a way to add complex user interactions? These limitations become significant hurdles for any product beyond a basic landing page or marketing campaign.Visual Editor: stepping beyond simple sitesBuilder.io's Visual Editor satisfies this larger need. Figma Sites gets you something fast without ever leaving the Figma ecosystem. Visual Editor gets you something nearly as fast, but it connects designs directly to your production codebase on one canvas.The core idea is different. Visual Editor is for feature-rich applications where your existing production codebase and design systems are first-class citizens.Figma Sites was engineered to transform a Figma design into a static site using no third-party tools and the most minimal toolchain possible. Visual Editor was engineered to transform designs into production applications at the enterprise scale:Figma-like precisionVisual Editor gives you a familiar, precise visual editing experience, but you're building interactive applications, not just static mockups. Use prompts to generate UI, then fine-tune it visually. The output isn't just a picture; it's code that works.Solving handoffsImport Figma designs with a click, and Builder translates them into interactive code using your component library. The CLI deeply integrates with your specific framework and codebase patterns, generating clean, maintainable code that developers want to work with. It respects your tech stack.On-brand generation, every timeStop worrying about brand drift. Because Builder understands your codebase, it uses your actual design system context—your colors, typography, spacing, and components—automatically ensuring everything generated is consistent and on-brand. No more manual checking.Dual workflows (develop & publish)Builder offers flexibility. Developers can use it to build new UIs that integrate directly with application code. Marketers or designers can use the 'Publish' workflow to create and update content visually using pre-built components, without needing a developer or a new deployment. This addresses the content bottleneck, too.Smashing workflow silosVisual Editor provides a unified canvas for design, development, and content updates. It fits into existing developer workflows (like Git) rather than trying to replace them, enabling better collaboration across the entire digital team.Getting started with Visual EditorReady to see the difference? You can try Visual Editor and experience how it connects to a real codebase.Open the Visual Copilot Figma plugin. Install it from the Figma Community if you haven't already.Select a layer or design in your Figma file that you want to bring into Builder.io.Click the "Export Design" button within the plugin.Click the "View Code in Builder" button. This will open your design directly in the Builder.io Visual Editor.(Optional) Enhance in the Visual Editor: Use AI prompts or manual controls to add interactivity, connect data, or refine the design within Builder.Generate code with the CLI: Copy the provided CLI command from Builder.io and run it in your local project's terminal. The CLI will analyze your codebase and generate the integrated, production-ready code components.The best way to understand the power of Visual Editor is to experience how it generates code that uses your components and fits your workflow.ConclusionFigma Sites is a big step forward for Figma. If you already work with the platform, you get all your favorite Figma features and a near-frictionless path to simple, real websites.Sites fills an essential market need. But you might find the tool underpowered if your team faces the challenges of integrating designs with a complex codebase, maintaining brand consistency across an extensive application, or enabling collaboration between large, diverse teams. In those cases, Builder's Visual Editor is the enterprise-grade solution. It provides a robust, integrated visual development environment that respects your code and scales with your product.Further reading Introducing Visual Copilot: convert Figma designs to high quality code in a single click.Try Visual CopilotGet a demo

Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don’t think about a lot when you’re young. But maybe you should.You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you’ll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both ears, and about two-thirds of people end up with hearing loss, which can range from mild to severe, by their 70s. But talking to your parents or grandparents about getting hearing aids can be tough — I’ve done it. They might not like the idea of sticking things in their ear canals or confronting the difficult realities of aging and health. They surely shy away from the price tag of hearing aids, which can cost thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance or Medicare. But plugging tiny and exorbitantly expensive speakers into your ears isn’t the only way. Your mom might already own hearing aids without even knowing it.Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic. In April, a company called Nuance started selling glasses that double as hearing aids thanks to microphones and beam-forming speakers built into the frame. Although at $1,200, they’re not cheap, they cost far less than a pair of prescription hearing aids, which tend to range from $2,000 to $7,000.The Nuance glasses joined an increasingly crowded market of FDA-regulated over-the-counter hearing aids that includes everything from the latest Apple AirPods Pro, which gained the capability through a software update, to bean-sized buds from Sony. Prices for these devices start as low as $100, and you don’t need an audiologist to help set them up. Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic.You can also buy something that’s legally considered a personal sound amplification product (PSAP), which is not designed to treat hearing loss but does make things louder. Some of them can play music and handle phone calls too. In the age when earbuds are ubiquitous, these devices appeal to all ages.“It’s good that we’re seeing people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, talking about it, because it’s totally changing the paradigm for them of engaging in hearing care earlier,” Nicholas Reed, a faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told me.I’m a millennial, but I’ve also dealt with hearing loss my entire life. A bad stretch of childhood ear infections left me mostly deaf in one ear and pretty spotty in the other. I learned to read lips as a teenager and avoid conversations at loud parties in college. Some surgery in my 20s brought me closer to normal, but I could still use a little help. I’ve spent the past few weeks trying out the Nuance glasses in various settings. They’re remarkable, not only because they feel almost indistinguishable from my regular glasses but also because I forget they’re hearing aids. Made by EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and dozens of other glasses brands, the Nuance glasses employ some of the same technology that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses use to play music and help you talk to AI. And while the Nuance glasses don’t currently offer the option to stream audio, they do help you hear what your friend is saying in a loud bar.The AirPods Pro 2, which retail for $250, work equally as well. After Apple announced last fall that a software update would unlock an accessibility setting — it’s appropriately called Hearing Aid — I started using it all the time, toggling between listening to podcasts to ordering cold brew in a crowded coffee shop. In instances where I may have needed to ask people to repeat themselves in the past, I hear them fine the first time. I just have to wear AirPods all the time, which makes the glasses solution even more appealing. For most people, hearing loss typically starts in your 50s and gains momentum in your early retirement years. If you’ve ever been to a busy restaurant with your parents or grandparents, you know this can be alienating for the person left out and frustrating for the hearing person, too. The social isolation can lead to loneliness and anxiety, which can hasten cognitive decline and lower life expectancy.Nevertheless, neither traditional clinical hearing aids or the newer category of devices are easy fixes. Once you start wearing any sort of hearing aid, it takes time to adjust, and you might need help tweaking the sound as you get used to it. That’s one reason why so many people avoid it — only one in five who need hearing aids actually have them. You can’t put them in your ears and immediately have perfect hearing. Your brain adjusts over time, and so it may take weeks or months to adapt to the new frequencies hearing aids help you hear.Still, it’s a worthwhile project.“Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long,” Reed said. “It’s something that’s vital to your existence and how you connect with other people.”It’s not clear how the latest hearing aid innovation will move the needle on adoption. Even though over-the-counter hearing aids have been available since 2022, when the FDA implemented new regulations for the devices, it’s still an uphill battle to get people to wear them. “Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long.”— Nicholas Reed, faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine“We are not seeing large increases in hearing aid uptake since over-the-counter hearing aids have become available,” said Tricia Ashby, senior director of audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). “And I have to say that mimics other countries who had over-the-counter hearing aids before the US did.”Given the fact that the older people who need them most are potentially less likely to try the latest technology, it might still take a few years for over-the-counter hearing aids to go mainstream. Given the precedent set by companies like Apple and Nuance, though, it’s possible that more devices will add hearing assistive features to existing products. You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. You might have glasses that project walking directions onto your field of view and help you hear which direction traffic’s coming from when you have to cross the street. These kinds of features together only get more important as you get older and need a little more help.“We are in an age now where you’re thinking about optimizing aging, and how do you do it?” Reed said. “And it’s things like this.”A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!See More:

May 13, 20256 min readDeep Math from String Theory Appears in Clashing Black HolesResearchers have shown that abstract mathematical functions from the frontiers of theoretical physics have a real-world use in modeling gravitational wavesBy Ramin Skibba edited by Lee BillingsAn illustration of two black holes about to merge and emitting copious gravitational waves. Chris Henze/NASA/SPL/Getty ImagesA decade ago astrophysicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, managed to detect subtle ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, released by a pair of black holes spiraling into each other, for the first time. That impressive discovery—which earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—has since become commonplace, with researchers regularly detecting gravitational waves from myriad far-distant celestial sources.And as the numbers of gravitational-wave observations have increased, physicists’ careful modeling is revealing new details about their mysterious origins. Some of the most intriguing gravitational-wave events, it turns out, could arise not from catastrophic collisions but rather from near misses. Furthermore, these cosmic close calls might be best understood using concepts derived from string theory—a notional theory of everything that posits that all of nature is fundamentally composed of countless, wriggling subatomic strings. This arguably marks the first linkage to date between a core mathematical aspect of the arcane theory and real-world astrophysics.At least, that’s the conclusion of an international team of researchers that applied geometric structures inspired by particle physics and string theory to the behavior of black holes when the colossal objects closely pass and deflect each other. Such interactions between black holes or neutron stars (compact remnants of exploded massive stars) can be studied through the deflection angle, the energy released through the near miss and the momentum of the objects’ recoil—all of which may be discerned in gravitational waves. The team’s results were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Black Holes as ParticlesIn their study, the researchers used an obscure class of abstract mathematical functions to solve the formidable equations involved in determining the radiated energy from a near miss. “You need these new functions, which, in math and mathematical physics, have been studied intensively but, to date, have not appeared in any real physical observable. That’s what makes it quite interesting,” says Jan Plefka, a theoretical physicist at the Humboldt University of Berlin and a co-author of the new study. Those obscure functions, known as six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds, had never been shown as directly relevant to descriptions of real astrophysical phenomena before.In the years since LIGO’s initial detection, two additional major gravitational-wave observatories, Europe’s Virgo and Japan’s Kamioka Gravitational-Wave Detector (KAGRA), have come online. Together, they form the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration and have amassed detections of nearly 300 gravitational-wave events over the past decade, mostly from colliding pairs of black holes. Also called black hole “mergers,” such events are the cacophonous moment when these dense gravitational behemoths smash together to form a single, larger beast. Plefka and his colleagues are studying different interactions known as “scattering” events, which occur when paired black holes slip by each other, usually in prelude to their eventual coalescence. During these close encounters, the clashing gravity of the black holes causes each to accelerate past the other, generating a significant gravitational-wave signal, but the objects are sufficiently separated to avoid merging.It’s no coincidence that this resembles elementary particles deflecting each other. “You can use the techniques developed for the scattering of microscopic objects to describe this scattering of macroscopic ones,” Plefka says. Considered from far enough away, well beyond the event horizon—that pivotal region within which neither matter nor light can escape—a black hole can be modeled as a particlelike point with mass and spin, albeit one that generates gravitational rather than electromagnetic waves.On that basis, Plefka and his colleagues applied techniques from quantum field theory that are more typically used to analyze the behavior of elementary particles. “We’re building on decades of work that has been done to make predictions for collider experiments,” says Gustav Mogull, a particle physicist at Queen Mary University of London and one of Plefka’s co-authors.Closer to Complex RealitiesThe team’s goal was to bring its numerical approximations as close as possible to mirroring reality—which, of course, tends to be more messy. To do that, Mogull, Plefka and their team toiled to crank up the complexity of their calculations. In this work, the researchers incorporated five levels of that complexity—to what is known as the fifth post-Minkowskian order of precision—for describing the scattering angles of black hole pairs, their radiated energies and their recoils.This is where the Calabi-Yau geometric structures, normally associated with string theory, come in. In string theory, Calabi-Yau geometries involve the compactification of higher dimensions. Here, they are not merely abstractions but instead emerge from the researchers’ calculations of black hole scattering. It’s perhaps ironic that string theory, notoriously derided as untestable, has given rise to mathematical structures of relevance to measurable physics far from the rarefied realm of strings.A visualization of two black holes scattering off each other and emitting gravitational waves, which are rendered in shades of blue (darker shades correspond to higher energies). This visualization was computed with the aid of advanced mathematical functions known as Calabi-Yau manifolds.Mathias Driesse/Humboldt Universtität zu BerlinAny mathematical function is associated with some kind of geometry, Mogull explains—and as the function increases in complexity, so, too, does its geometry. In the case of something basic, such as the sine or cosine functions used in trigonometry, that geometry is a simple circle. Elliptic functions, on the other hand, imply a doughnut-shaped geometry called a torus, which is also a Calabi-Yau onefold. It turns out that the functions Mogull, Plefka and their team developed for black hole scattering are associated with Calabi-Yau threefold structures, which involve six-dimensional surfaces. “I don’t think the appearance of Calabi-Yaus was that unexpected within our community. I would say this represents confirmation of something that people had suspected but was yet to be verified,” Mogull says.To demonstrate the utility of their approach in their study, Plefka, Mogull and their colleagues compare their approximations of black hole scattering angles to other, presumably more precise ones that were derived from numerical simulations. Such simulations can be time-consuming to run, even on state-of-the-art supercomputers—hence the search for accurate approximations. The team’s highest-order approximation closely matches the results of supercomputer number crunching for cases of black holes that gently deflect each other across great distances. But when the black holes come closer to a head-on collision, the team’s calculations begin diverging from the numerical simulations.Such work may seem to be a purely academic exercise, but in fact, the research could prove vital for making new discoveries. Signals from scattering black holes and neutron stars should be within reach of the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors that are set to come online in the late 2030s. These detectors, which will also need a new generation of models called waveform templates to discern true gravitational-wave signals from a sea of cosmic and terrestrial noise, include the proposed Einstein Telescope in Europe and Cosmic Explorer in the U.S. The latter, like LIGO, is supported by the National Science Foundation, and so far these kinds of gravitational-wave projects have avoided being directly targeted by the Trump administration’s aggressive proposed cuts to federally funded science.The work’s prospect for enhancing our understanding of gravitational-wave sources excites scientists who are gearing up for this new wave of detectors. They include Jocelyn Read, a physicist at California State University, Fullerton, who works with the Cosmic Explorer project. “Next-generation facilities can measure nearby signals with exquisite fidelity,” she says. (Here “nearby” means “within a few billion light-years.”) “So having very accurate and precise predictions from our current theories is definitely needed to test them against those kinds of future observations,” Read adds.Yet she also urges caution when assessing the significance of Plefka, Mogull and their colleagues’ work. “If they’re talking about implications for gravitational-wave astronomy, there are a few more steps that are needed,” she says. And their team has competitors, too, including some who have been deploying numerical simulations of their own.These kinds of approximate methods could eventually inform the waveform templates that are so crucial for filtering out noise in upcoming gravitational-wave detectors, Plefka says. Geraint Pratten, a LIGO physicist at the University of Birmingham in England, agrees. “I think it’s a heroic calculation by the group. It will provide a lot of insight into how we can structure next-generation waveform models,” he says. Pratten adds that more work will need to be done to move past the new study’s limitations. For example, the paper focuses on black holes without spin and those that undergo “unbound” scattering, which means that they deflect each other and never meet again. In reality, most, if not all, black holes are thought to spin, and usually scattering events precede an eventual merger.But in any case, he believes some gravitational waves from black hole and neutron star deflections will eventually be detectable, such as through observations of globular clusters, where these dense objects are packed together in a small space, cosmically speaking.For Plefka, Mogull and their peers, this macroscopic version of quantum field theory is still a young field, and there are many new types of astrophysically relevant calculations that they and others can do. These esoteric Calabi-Yau structures, formerly on the frontier of theoretical physics, could be just the beginning. “You’ve had this whole new class of mathematical functions—these theoretical things that had appeared in string theory,” Mogull says. “And we’re saying, ‘Look, this is tangible. This [radiated energy from scattering] is something you can try to detect, try to measure. This is real physics now.’”

At Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction last night, Frank Lloyd Wright's double-pedestal lamp broke a record when it sold for $7.5 million after an 11-minute battle between bidders. The iridescent lamp, in shades of gold, green, blue, and purple, is now the most valuable Wright work ever sold at auction, more than doubling his previous record. The price is four times what the lamp sold for when it was last on the block in 2002. Courtesy Sotheby'sFormally titled "An Important Double-Pedestal Lamp for the Susan Lawrence Dana House, Springfield, Illinois," the piece was initially commissioned for one of Wright's early residential homes. There are just two versions of this lamp in existence: the one that sold last night and one that Illinois Governor Jim Thompson and the Dana-Thomas House Foundation acquired in 1988 for the permanent collection of the Dana-Thomas House, which is now a museum.Courtesy Sotheby'sThe lamp is made from iridized and opalescent glass and bronze in a brass-plated “colonial” zinc frame. Wright designed the work in 1903 and it was executed by the Linden Glass Company in Chicago the next year. The lamp's gold, amber, and green shade features geometric patterns and the "sumac motif," a prairie plant Wright used as design inspiration throughout the Dana-Thomas House. Parts of the lamp gently move: the two vertical blue-green glass panels on each side have hinges. Sotheby's notes that these panels may reference Japanese “shoji” screens—believed to repel evil spirits—which Wright admired during visits to Japan.Courtesy Sotheby's Overall, this sale is a boon to the architect's already storied legacy. Jodi Pollack, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of 20th century design notes that the sale, "celebrates not only a remarkable piece of American design but a landmark moment in the legacy of one of the most visionary architects in history."She continued: "A true testament to his genius, the lamp stands as a beacon of the American pursuit of design, innovation and progress that reflects Wright’s lasting influence on American architecture and culture." Annie GoldsmithSenior EditorAnnie Goldsmith is the senior editor and digital lead at ELLE Decor, where she covers design, culture, style, and trends. She previously held positions at The Information, covering technology and culture, and Town & Country, writing about news, entertainment, and fashion. Her work has also appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, and the SF Standard.