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Microsoft’s fourth-quarter earnings and sales missed expectations by a wide margin as the PC market slowdown and a write-down of Surface RT inventory painted a bleak picture. The company reported fourth-quarter earnings of $4.97 billion, or 59 cents a share, on revenue of $19.9 billion. The results include a $900 million inventory write-down for Surface RT that amounts to 7 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting Microsoft to report fourth-quarter earnings of 75 cents a share on revenue of $20....

Flying dinosaur preferred to hoof it while hunting Why fly when you can walk? That’s what the winged azhdarchid dinosaur apparently figured while on the hunt back in the day—65 million to 230 million years ago. Researchers at the University of Portsmouth in England report in PLoS ONE that the dinos were more likely to stalk prey on foot than by flying over and swooping in for the kill. Paleontologists generally believe that pterosaurs (the larger category of dinosaur to which the azhdarchid belongs) lived as gull- or pelican-like predators that flew over lakes and oceans, plucking fish from the water....

The universe is big in both space and time and, for much of humankind’s history, was beyond the reach of our instruments and our minds. That changed dramatically in the 20th century. The advances were driven equally by powerful ideas—from Einstein’s general relativity to modern theories of the elementary particles—and powerful instruments—from the 100- and 200-inch reflectors that George Ellery Hale built, which took us beyond our Milky Way galaxy, to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has taken us back to the birth of galaxies....

The lives of Native Americans changed in dramatic ways after Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492. Written records paint a vivid picture of conquest and epidemics sowing death and disease among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, quickly decimating them. Until recently, in fact, almost all that was known about the biological consequences of contact with the Europeans was based on these old documents, which emphasize epidemics and population collapse....

Found along the edges of much of the world’s tropical coastlines, mangroves are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at an impressive rate. Protecting them, a recent study says, could yield climate benefits, biodiversity conservation and protection for local economies for a nominal cost – between $4 and $10 per ton of CO2. Mangrove forests are ecosystems that lie at the confluence of freshwater rivers and salty seas. While they make up only 0....

I am one of those smug people who get up early, down a cup of coffee, and immediately get active. I hit the gym, run the trails, cycle the path, splash the pool, or whatever tickles my fancy that day. Not necessarily because I think it is the ultimate and optimum time to work out, but rather because I like it. I like how it feels. I like how it sets up my day....

“Good evening,” Jacqueline Mattis says, setting a glass of water down on a podium in the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan. The audience, mostly white and middle-aged, murmurs, “Good evening.” “Oh, no, no, no, no,” Mattis says in a silky voice, holding up her hands in mock surprise. “I study religion. I study religion in the Black context, so let’s start this again: Good evening!” “Good evening!...

Dutch and U.S. researchers are testing new acoustics technology that could be mounted on the outside of small aircraft, listening for characteristic sounds that indicate the presence of other fliers. Called an acoustic vector sensor (AVS), the system uses nanoscale materials to alert pilots to other aircraft within about 10 kilometers, a system that may help prevent midair collisions such as the one between a private plane and a sightseeing helicopter over New York City’s Hudson River in August 2009, the researchers say....

A scientific panel has narrowly recommended South Africa over Australia as the best site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an enormous radio telescope (see “Astronomy in South Africa: The long shot”). But the project’s member states have yet to make a final decision on where the telescope will go. The SKA Site Advisory Committee’s decision was first reported on March 10 in the Sydney Morning Herald. A source familiar with the site-selection process confirmed to Nature that the panel had indeed made a decision, but added that it was a close call....

The Arctic is undergoing an astonishingly rapid transition as climate change overwhelms the region. New research sheds light on the latest example of the changes afoot, showing that parts of the Arctic Ocean are becoming more like the Atlantic. Warm waters are streaming into the ocean north of Scandinavia and Russia, altering ocean productivity and chemistry. That’s making sea ice recede and kickstarting a feedback loop that could make summer ice a thing of the past....

On a space mission, timing is everything. An intricate choreography of commands and actions is required to make any such mission a success, and none more so than an escapade on the surface of another world. Now, on February 18, NASA is set for another delicate dance of interplanetary chronology when its Perseverance rover touches down on Mars—the successor to its aesthetically identical sibling, Curiosity, which landed in 2012. This time around, the mission is conducting a search for past life on Mars, alongside other exciting experiments....

The Pentagon has known for years that a significant number of the replacement parts it buys for its missile guidance and satellite systems contain substandard counterfeit microchips. But finding these fakes—as they make their way through a complex global supply chain of fabrication facilities, assembly plants and parts distributors—can be like searching for a needle in a haystack (made entirely of other needles). The military estimates that up to 15 percent of all spare and replacement parts for its weapons, vehicles and other equipment are counterfeit, making them vulnerable to dangerous malfunctions....

How will technology change your life in the near future? Artificial intelligence will greatly hasten the design of innovative drugs and materials. Advanced diagnostic tools will enable increasingly personalized medicine. Augmented reality will be everywhere, overlaying information and animation on real-world images to help you with everyday tasks—and to help industry to operate more efficiently. If you get sick, doctors will be able to implant living cells in your body that will act like drug factories, treating what ails you....

On a rainy afternoon earlier this year, I logged into my OpenAI account and typed a simple instruction for the research company’s artificial-intelligence algorithm, GPT-3: Write an academic thesis in 500 words about GPT-3 and add scientific references and citations inside the text. As it started to generate text, I stood in awe. Here was novel content written in academic language, with references cited in the right places and in relation to the right context....

Like a lot of baby boomers, I find myself gravitating to newspaper obits, cross-checking ages and causes of death with my current health parameters, most notably heart disease (which felled my father and grandfather) and cancer (which slew my mother). And then there is Alzheimer’s disease, which a 2015 report by the Alzheimer’s Association projects will destroy the brains of more than 28 million baby boomers. Given the importance of family history and genetics for longevity, I plunked down $199 for a 23andMe Health + Ancestry Service kit, spit into the little plastic vial, opted in for every test available for disease gene variants and anxiously awaited my reports....

Choosing between instant gratification and future benefit can easily lead to shortsighted decisions: streaming TV instead of going to the gym, for example, or scrolling through social media rather than working on a challenging project. “Because of this misalignment between immediate reward and long-term value, people often struggle to do what’s best for them in the long run,” says Falk Lieder, a cognitive scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany....

A single Hubble Space Telescope image can capture scores of distant galaxies, but the one galaxy we’ll never see from the outside is our own. As a result, no one knows the Milky Way’s exact size and shape. It took more than a century after the discovery of the first spiral in space before astronomers established that our galaxy is a spiral, too, and more years elapsed before they deduced that we inhabit a barred spiral—a type whose bright central region is elongated....

Experiencing the science of climate change rather than learning about it. Convincing Americans that climate change is a real and present danger has proven to be a daunting and often frustrating challenge for scientists. Despite the growing evidence of climate change, and humanity as the driver of that change, there remains a hardcore 20 percent or so that reject the whole notion of it and a healthy percentage that remain unconvinced that humans are causing it....

Predictions about technology’s future are almost always doomed. According to 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, humans should be making flights to the outer reaches of our solar system. Per 1984, by now we should have become a society of brainwashed drones, toiling under constant surveillance for faceless overlords. Clearly, that would never—hey, wait a second! Nevertheless, Isaac Asimov, the revered science-fiction author, made a stab at describing our lives today—back in 1964....

In a lab in Sacramento, California, a wall of plastic boxes lined with corncob bedding holds around 800 mice. Even in this clean and bright room, the smell of so many mice concentrated in one place is overpowering — pungent, and familiar to anyone who has spent time with a pet hamster or gerbil. Most of the boxes hold four adult mice, which flit about, noses twitching as they stare out at the humans staring in....