Ecology

Sydney's new 1,780-hectare mega international airport will open in October: a record-breaking project

Sydney’s new 1,780-hectare mega international airport will open in October: a record-breaking project

An image of the Western Sydney International Airport in Australia, still under construction. Source: By BulbazaurREX – Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. The Western Sydney International Airport represents one of the most impressive infrastructural works made in Australia over the last fifty years. The project, which should be finished by on the 25th October 2026aims to decongest Sydney’s Kingsford ...

An unbeatable air hockey robot challenges humans in real life: how AI learned to play

An unbeatable air hockey robot challenges humans in real life: how AI learned to play

Credit: UBC (Via GitHub). A gaming table, a disc whizzing at full speed across a gaming table air hockey and a robotic arm that plays like a pro. Three engineering physics students fromUBC (University of British Columbia) have succeeded in a feat that could potentially redefine how robots are trained. The three young researchers created a AI-driven air hockey robot ...

Why phone models without social media are coming back into fashion: what are dumbphones

Why phone models without social media are coming back into fashion: what are dumbphones

Commodore callback. Credit: Commodore While smartphones become increasingly powerful, faster and feature-rich, some users seem to be looking in the opposite direction. In recent years, they have returned to the spotlight dumbphonephones designed to perform only the essential functions such as calling and texting and limiting access to social networks, notifications and other sources of distractions. At first glance it ...

US-Iran Agreement, is the Islamabad Memorandum really a strategic victory? What does the text say?

US-Iran Agreement, is the Islamabad Memorandum really a strategic victory? What does the text say?

Image created for illustrative purposes only with AI. On the left, US President Donald Trump, on the right, the Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. The official signature of the so-called has arrived Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran which put an end, at least for the moment, to hostilities between the ...

Summer solstice 2026, when it falls and why from June 21st the days start to get shorter

Summer solstice 2026, when it falls and why from June 21st the days start to get shorter

Sunrise during the summer solstice at Stonehenge, when the Sun aligns perfectly with the center of the megalithic monument. In 2026 the summer solstice falls June 21st at 10.24am (Italian time): this will be the longest day of the year and, from an astronomical point of view, at that moment the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere will also begin. ...

Maturity 2026, Lake Bracciano in the second mathematics test: the problem of water levels

Maturity 2026, Lake Bracciano in the second mathematics test: the problem of water levels

Lake Bracciano, in Lazio. After the Italian theme, the course has officially begun second written test of theMaturity exam 2026the one dedicated to matters of direction: at the scientific high school, high school graduates are facing the mathematics test which this year includes problems linked to episodes that actually happened, from the earthquake in Friuli in 1976 to the water ...

Women's faces are considered on average 60% more beautiful: studies on the gender attractiveness gap

Women’s faces are considered on average 60% more beautiful: studies on the gender attractiveness gap

A scene from the film “Ex Machina”. Credits: Andrea Gesund There research on the perception of facial attractiveness has shown a recurring and partly counterintuitive result in recent decades: female faces tend to receive higher ratings on average than male faces, regardless of the gender of the evaluator. This phenomenon has been discussed in the literature as a possible form ...