Enlarge/ We have doubts that any amount of Force powers will bring the show back. (credit: YouTube/Disney+)
In news that will delight some and disappoint others, Disney has canceled Star Wars series The Acolyte after just one season, Deadline Hollywood reports. The eight-episode series got off to a fairly strong start, with mostly positive reviews and solid ratings, albeit lower than prior Star Wars series. But it couldn't maintain and build upon that early momentum, and given the production costs, it's not especially surprising that Disney pulled the plug.
The Acolyte arguably wrapped up its major narrative arc pretty neatly in the season finale, but it also took pains to set the stage for a possible sophomore season. In this streaming age, no series is ever guaranteed renewal. Still, it would have been nice to see what showrunner Leslye Headland had planned; when given the chance, many shows hit their stride on those second-season outings.
(Spoilers for the series below. We'll give you another heads-up when we get to major spoilers.)
In April, the National Library of France removed four 19th century books, all published in Great Britain, from its shelves because the covers were likely laced with arsenic. The books have been placed in quarantine for further analysis to determine exactly how much arsenic is present. It's part of an ongoing global effort to test cloth-bound books from the 19th and early 20th centuries because of the common practice of using toxic dyes during that period.
Chemists from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, have also been studying Victorian books from that university's library collection in order to identify and quantify levels of poisonous substances in the covers. They reported their initial findings this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver. Using a combination of spectroscopic techniques, they found that several books had lead concentrations more than twice the limit imposed by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The Lipscomb effort was inspired by the University of Delaware's Poison Book Project, established in 2019 as an interdisciplinary crowdsourced collaboration between university scientists and the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library. The initial objective was to analyze all the Victorian-era books in the Winterthur circulating and rare books collection for the presence of an arsenic compound called cooper acetoarsenite, an emerald green pigment that was very popular at the time to dye wallpaper, clothing, and cloth book covers. Book covers dyed with chrome yellow—favored by Vincent van Gogh—aka lead chromate, were also examined, and the project's scope has since expanded worldwide.
Enlarge/ A camel chills next to the Step Pyramid of Djoser in the Saqqara necropolis in Egypt, built around 2680 BCE. (credit: Charles J. Sharp/CC BY-SA 3.0)
It's long been a hotly debated open question regarding how the great pyramids of Egypt were built, given the sheer size and weight of the limestone blocks used for the construction. Numerous speculative (and controversial) hypotheses have been proposed, including the use of ramps, levers, cranes, winches, hoists, pivots, or any combination thereof. Now we can add the possible use of a hydraulic lift to those speculative scenarios. According to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, ancient Egyptians during the Third Dynasty may have at least partly relied on hydraulics to build the Step Pyramid of Djoser.
"Many theories on pyramid construction suggest that pure human strength, possibly aided by basic mechanical devices like levers and ramps, was utilized," co-author Xavier Landreau, of Paleotechnic in Paris and Universite Grenoble Alpes, told Ars. "Our analysis led us to the utilization of water as a means of raising stones. We are skeptical that the largest pyramids were built using only known ramp and lever methods."
The Step Pyramid was built around 2680 BCE, part of a funerary complex for the Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser. It's located in the Saqqara necropolis and was the first pyramid to be built, almost a "proto-pyramid" that originally stood some 205 feet high. (The Great Pyramid of Giza, by contrast, stood 481 feet high and was the tallest human-made structure for nearly 4,000 years.) Previous monuments were made of mud brick, but Djoser's Step Pyramid is made of stone (specifically limestone); it's widely thought that Djoser's vizier, Imhotep, designed and built the complex. The third century BCE historian Manetho once described Imhotep as the "inventor of building in stone." As such, the Djoser Pyramid influenced the construction of later, larger pyramids during the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties.
Enlarge/ CT scans and other techniques allowed scientists to "virtually dissect" this 3,500-year-old "Screaming Woman" mummy. (credit: Sahar Saleem/CC BY)
There have been a handful of ancient Egyptian mummies discovered with their mouths wide open, as if mid-scream. This has puzzled archaeologists because Egyptian mummification typically involved bandaging the mandible to the skull to keep the mouth closed. Scientists have "virtually dissected" one such "Screaming Woman" mummy and concluded that the wide-open mouth is not the result of poor mummification, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. There was no clear cause of death, but the authors suggest the mummy's expression could indicate she died in excruciating pain.
"The Screaming Woman is a true ‘time capsule’ of the way that she died and was mummified,” said co-author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University in Egypt. "Here we show that she was embalmed with costly, imported embalming material. This, and the mummy's well-preserved appearance, contradicts the traditional belief that a failure to remove her inner organs implied poor mummification."
Saleem has long been involved in paleoradiology and archaeometry of "screaming" Egyptian mummies. For instance, she co-authored a 2020 paper applying similar techniques to the study of another "Screaming Woman" mummy, dubbed Unknown Woman A by the then-head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Gaston Maspero, and one of two such mummies discovered in the Royal Cache at Deir el Bahari near Luxor in 1881. This was where 21st and 22nd Dynasty priests would hide the remains of royal members from earlier dynasties to thwart grave robbers.
Enlarge/ New research lends further credence to the "population crash" theory about Easter Island being just a myth. (credit: Arian Zwegers/CC BY 2.0)
For centuries, Western scholars have touted the fate of the native population on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as a case study in the devastating cost of environmentally unsustainable living. The story goes that the people on the remote island chopped down all the trees to build massive stone statues, triggering a population collapse. Their numbers were further depleted when Europeans discovered the island and brought foreign diseases, among other factors. But an alternative narrative began to emerge in the 21st century that the earliest inhabitants actually lived quite sustainably until that point. A new paper published in the journal Science Advances offers another key piece of evidence in support of that alternative hypothesis.
As previously reported, Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago and typically mounted on platforms called ahu. Scholars have puzzled over the moai on Easter Island for decades, pondering their cultural significance, as well as how a Stone Age culture managed to carve and transport statues weighing as much as 92 tons. The first Europeans arrived in the 17th century and found only a few thousand inhabitants on a tiny island (just 14 by 7 miles across) thousands of miles away from any other land. Since then, in order to explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people.
But perhaps they didn't need tens of thousands of people to accomplish that feat. Back in 2012, Carl Lipo of Binghamton University and Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona showed that you could transport a 10-foot, 5-ton moai a few hundred yards with just 18 people and three strong ropes by employing a rocking motion. [UPDATE: An eagle-eyed reader alerted us to the 1980s work of Czech experimental archaeologist Pavel Pavel, who conducted similar practical experiments on Easter Island after being inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki. Pavel concluded that just 16 men and one leader were sufficient to transport the statues.]
German archaeologists discovered that the skulls of three medieval Viking women found on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea showed evidence of an unusual procedure to elongate their skulls. The process gave them an unusual and distinctive appearance, according to a paper published in the journal Current Swedish Archaeology. Along with evidence that the Viking men from the island may have deliberately filed their teeth, the discovery sheds light on the role body modification may have played in Viking culture
When people hear about Viking body modification, they probably think of Viking tattoos, particularly since the History Channel series Vikings popularized that notion. But whether actual Vikings sported tattoos is a matter of considerable debate. There is no mention of tattoos in the few Norse sagas and poetry that have survived, although other unusual physical characteristics are often mentioned, such as scars.
The only real evidence comes from a 10th century travel account by an Arab traveler and trader named Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, whose travel account, Mission to the Volga, describes the Swedish Viking traders ("Rusiyyah") he met in the Middle Volga region of Russia. "They are dark from the tips of their toes right up to their necks—trees, pictures, and the like," Ibn Fadlan wrote. But the precise Arabic translation is unclear, and there is no hard archaeological evidence, since human skin typically doesn't preserve for centuries after a Viking burial.
Enlarge/ A kitty named Clover prepares to play with a robot arm in the Cat Royale "multi-species" science/art installation . (credit: Blast Theory - Stephen Daly)
Cats and robots are a winning combination, as evidenced by all those videos of kitties riding on Roombas. And now we have Cat Royale, a "multispecies" live installation in which three cats regularly "played" with a robot over 12 days, carefully monitored by human operators. Created by computer scientists from the University of Nottingham in collaboration with artists from a group called Blast Theory, the installation debuted at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, Australia, last year and is now a touring exhibit. The accompanying YouTube video series recently won a Webby Award, and a paper outlining the insights gleaned from the experience was similarly voted best paper at the recent Computer-Human Conference (CHI’24).
"At first glance, the project is about designing a robot to enrich the lives of a family of cats by playing with them," said co-author Steve Benford of the University of Nottingham, who led the research, "Under the surface, however, it explores the question of what it takes to trust a robot to look after our loved ones and potentially ourselves." While cats might love Roombas, not all animal encounters with robots are positive: Guide dogs for the visually impaired can get confused by delivery robots, for example, while the rise of lawn mowing robots can have a negative impact on hedgehogs, per Benford et al.
Blast Theory and the scientists first held a series of exploratory workshops to ensure the installation and robotic design would take into account the welfare of the cats. "Creating a multispecies system—where cats, robots, and humans are all accounted for—takes more than just designing the robot," said co-author Eike Schneiders of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab about the primary takeaway from the project. "We had to ensure animal well-being at all times, while simultaneously ensuring that the interactive installation engaged the (human) audiences around the world. This involved consideration of many elements, including the design of the enclosure, the robot, and its underlying systems, the various roles of the humans-in-the-loop, and, of course, the selection of the cats.”
Enlarge/ UNSW Sydney engineers developed a new way to make cold brew coffee in under three minutes without sacrificing taste. (credit: University of New South Wales, Sydney)
Diehard fans of cold-brew coffee put in a lot of time and effort for their preferred caffeinated beverage. But engineers at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, figured out a nifty hack. They rejiggered an existing espresso machine to accommodate an ultrasonic transducer to administer ultrasonic pulses, thereby reducing the brewing time from 12 to 24 hours to just under three minutes, according to a new paper published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry.
As previously reported, rather than pouring boiling or near-boiling water over coffee grounds and steeping for a few minutes, the cold-brew method involves mixing coffee grounds with room-temperature water and letting the mixture steep for anywhere from several hours to two days. Then it is strained through a sieve to filter out all the sludge-like solids, followed by filtering. This can be done at home in a Mason jar, or you can get fancy and use a French press or a more elaborate Toddy system. It's not necessarily served cold (although it can be)—just brewed cold.
The result is coffee that tastes less bitter than traditionally brewed coffee. “There’s nothing like it,” co-author Francisco Trujillo of UNSW Sydney told New Scientist. “The flavor is nice, the aroma is nice and the mouthfeel is more viscous and there’s less bitterness than a regular espresso shot. And it has a level of acidity that people seem to like. It’s now my favorite way to drink coffee.”
Enlarge/ A decorative ring made from carved stone is embedded in the wall of a ballcourt in the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza. (credit: Kåre Thor Olsen/CC BY-SA 3.0)
It's well-known that the ancient Maya had their own version of ball games, which were played with a rubber ball on stone courts. Such games served not just as athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices. Archaeologists have now found evidence that the Maya may have blessed newly constructed ball courts in rituals involving plants with hallucinogenic properties, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.
“When they erected a new building, they asked the goodwill of the gods to protect the people inhabiting it,” said co-author David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati. “Some people call it an ensouling ritual, to get a blessing from and appease the gods.” Lentz and his team previously used genetic and pollen analyses of the wild and cultivated plants found in the ancient Maya city Yaxnohcah in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, revealing evidence of sustainable agriculture and forestry spanning a millennia.
As we've reported previously, there is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman join forces in Deadpool and Wolverine.
We were already looking forward to the summer release of Deadpool and Wolverine, which will bring together Ryan Reynolds' R-rated antihero with Hugh Jackman's iconic X-Man. We're even more eager to see the film after Marvel dropped the official trailer, which is chock-full of off-color witticisms, meta-references, slo-mo action, and a generous sprinkling of F-bombs. (But no cocaine! Wade promised Feige! "They know all the slang terms. They have a list.")
"You’re talking about two massive movie stars in their most iconic roles,” Director Shawn Levy (Free Guy) told Screen Rant earlier this month. “It also gave me an opportunity. It’s the third Deadpool movie, but it’s not Deadpool 3. It’s a different thing that’s very much Deadpool and Wolverine. And it’s not trying to copycat anything from the first two movies. They were awesome, but this is a two-hander character adventure.”
Enlarge/ The final letter from George Mallory from Camp I, Mount Everest, to his wife Ruth Mallory, May 27, 1924. (credit: The Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge)
In June 1924, a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew "Sandy" Irvine set off for the summit of Mount Everest and disappeared—just two casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date. Mallory was an alumnus of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, which maintains a collection of his personal correspondence, much of it between Mallory and his wife, Ruth. The college has now digitized the entire collection for public access. The letters can be accessed and downloaded here.
“It has been a real pleasure to work with these letters," said Magdalene College archivist Katy Green. "Whether it’s George’s wife Ruth writing about how she was posting him plum cakes and a grapefruit to the trenches (he said the grapefruit wasn’t ripe enough), or whether it’s his poignant last letter where he says the chances of scaling Everest are '50 to 1 against us,' they offer a fascinating insight into the life of this famous Magdalene alumnus.”
As previously reported, Mallory is the man credited with uttering the famous line "because it's there" in response to a question about why he would risk his life repeatedly to summit Everest. An avid mountaineer, Mallory had already been to the mountain twice before the 1924 expedition: once in 1921 as part of a reconnaissance expedition to produce the first accurate maps of the region and again in 1922—his first serious attempt to summit, although he was forced to turn back on all three attempts. A sudden avalanche killed seven Sherpas on his third try, sparking accusations of poor judgement on Mallory's part.
Enlarge/ A Day octopus (Octopus cyanea) named Scarlet parachutes her web over a coral head while Dr. Alex Schnell observes. (credit: National Geographic/Disney/Craig Parry)
With Earth Day fast approaching once again, it's time for another new documentary from National Geographic and Disney+: Secrets of the Octopus. It's the third in what has become a series, starting with the remarkable 2021 documentary Secrets of the Whales (narrated by Sigourney Weaver) and 2023's Secrets of the Elephants (Natalie Portman as narrator). James Cameron served as producer on all three.
Secrets of the Octopus is narrated by Paul Rudd. Per the official synopsis:
Octopuses are like aliens on Earth: three hearts, blue blood and the ability to squeeze through a space the size of their eyeballs. But there is so much more to these weird and wonderful animals. Intelligent enough to use tools or transform their bodies to mimic other animals and even communicate with different species, the secrets of the octopus are more extraordinary than we ever imagined.
Each of the three episodes focuses on a specific unique feature of these fascinating creatures: "Shapeshifters," "Masterminds," and "Social Networks." The animals were filmed in their natural habitats over 200 days, and all that stunning footage is accompanied by thoughtful commentary by featured scientists. One of those scientists is Dr. Alex Schnell, a native Australian and self-described storyteller who has worked at Macquarie University, the University of Cambridge, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, among other institutions. Her research focuses on the intelligence of marine animals, particularly cuttlefish and octopuses.
Enlarge/ Daniel Dennett, a leading philosopher with provocative takes on consciousness, free will, and AI, has died at 82. (credit: Alonso Nichols/Tufts University)
World-renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett, who championed controversial takes on consciousness and free will among other mind-bending subjects, died today at the age of 82.
(Full disclosure: This loss is personal. Dennett was our friend and a colleague of my spouse, Sean Carroll. Sean and I have many fond memories of shared meals and stimulating conversations on an enormous range of topics with Dan over the years. He was a true original and will be greatly missed.)
Stunned reactions to Dennett's unexpected passing began proliferating on social media shortly after the news broke. "Wrenching news. He's been a great friend and incredible inspiration for me throughout my career," the Santa Fe Institute's Melanie Mitchell, author of Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, wrote on X. "I will miss him enormously."
A Vault Dweller navigates a post-apocalyptic wasteland in Fallout, based on the bestselling gaming franchise.
Amazon Prime Video has dropped the full official trailer for Fallout, the streaming platform's forthcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi series. It's based on the bestselling role-playing gaming franchise set in a satirical, 1950s-style future post-nuclear apocalypse. There's plenty for gaming fans to be pleased about, judging by the trailer, but casting national treasure Walton Goggins (Justified) as a gunslinging Ghoul was quite simply a stroke of genius.
The first Fallout RPG was released in 1997, followed by several sequels and spinoffs. According to the game's lore, modern civilization is destroyed in 2077 by a global nuclear war between the US and China. Survivors live in various underground vaults (fallout shelters). Each iteration of the game takes place somewhere across a post-apocalyptic US metro area and features a Vault Dweller—someone born and raised underground—as the protagonist. The first game takes place in 2161 and features a Vault Dweller from Vault 13, deep in the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller must complete various missions to save the residents of Vault 13, which takes said protagonist to in-world places like Junktown; a merchant city called the Hub; and Necropolis, filled with Ghouls, i.e., humans badly mutated by exposure to nuclear radiation.
The series was announced in July 2020, with Westworld writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it was revealed that Nolan would direct the first three episodes but that two other writers—Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner—would be the showrunners. Todd Howard, who directed several games in the franchise, is also an executive producer and has said the series is not an adaptation of any particular game, but it is set within the same continuity. Per the official premise:
Cate Blanchett stars as an infamous outlaw named Lilith in director Eli Roth's Borderlands, adapted from the popular gaming franchise.
The Borderlands video game franchise is one of the bestselling of all time, racking up more than $1 billion globally in sales over all the titles in the series. So naturally, there would be a film adaptation: the forthcoming Borderlands, directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, The House with a Clock in its Walls). Lionsgate just dropped the official trailer, and Roth has certainly captured the trademark cel-shaded look of the film—especially Cate Blanchett's fluorescent-haired outlaw.
The Borderlands games all take place on a planet called Pandora, home to many dangerous lifeforms as well as bandits and raiders—former prisoners of corporations that previously tried to colonize the planet, believing there were precious minerals to be mined. Pandora's long-extinct race, called the Eridians, also left behind numerous alien artifacts, which eventually led to the discovery that there are various mythical vaults purportedly filled with treasure and guarded by ancient monsters. Along with corporate and military interests, there are renegade Vault Hunters who seek to claim the hidden treasures for themselves.
It might feel like Borderlands the film has been in development forever. Lionsgate announced the adaptation in 2015 and initially considered Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) to direct. The script went through multiple revisions by several different writers, and Roth was hired as director in February 2020. Primary filming took place in Budapest, Hungary, in 2021, mid-pandemic, with reshoots occurring early in 2023. Tim Miller (Terminator: Dark Fate) directed the reshoots with Roth's blessing since, by then, the latter was already working on another film (2023's Thanksgiving). Initial first-look images were released in June 2021, although those were just black-and-white silhouettes of the cast.
Enlarge/ Oil painting by Victor Eustaphieff of Charles Darwin in his study at Down House. One of the many bookcases that made up his extensive personal library is reflected in the mirror. (credit: State Darwin Museum, Moscow)
Famed naturalist Charles Darwin amassed an impressive personal library over the course of his life, much of which was preserved and cataloged upon his death in 1882. But many other items were lost, including more ephemeral items like unbound volumes, pamphlets, journals, clippings, and so forth, often only vaguely referenced in Darwin's own records.
For the last 18 years, the Darwin Online project has painstakingly scoured all manner of archival records to reassemble a complete catalog of Darwin's personal library virtually. The project released its complete 300-page online catalog—consisting of 7,400 titles across 13,000 volumes, with links to electronic copies of the works—to mark Darwin's 215th birthday on February 12.
“This unprecedentedly detailed view of Darwin’s complete library allows one to appreciate more than ever that he was not an isolated figure working alone but an expert of his time building on the sophisticated science and studies and other knowledge of thousands of people," project leader John van Wyhe of the National University of Singapore said. "Indeed, the size and range of works in the library makes manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.”
Enlarge/ A new lens-free and compact system for facial recognition scans a bust of Michelangelo’s David and reconstructs the image using less power than existing 3D-surface imaging systems. (credit: W-C Hsu et al., Nano Letters, 2024)
Facial recognition is a common feature for unlocking smartphones and gaming systems, among other uses. But the technology currently relies upon bulky projectors and lenses, hindering its broader application. Scientists have now developed a new facial recognition system that employs flatter, simpler optics that also require less energy, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nano Letters. The team tested their prototype system with a 3D replica of Michelangelo's famous David sculpture and found it recognized the face as well as existing smartphone facial recognition can.
The current commercial 3D imaging systems in smartphones (like Apple's iPhone) extract depth information via structured light. A dot projector uses a laser to project a pseudorandom beam pattern onto the face of the person looking at a locked screen. It does so thanks to several other built-in components: a collimator, light guide, and special lenses (known as diffractive optical elements, or DOEs) that break the laser beam apart into an array of some 32,000 infrared dots. The camera can then interpret that projected beam pattern to confirm the person's identity.
Packing in all those optical components like lasers makes commercial dot projectors rather bulky, so it can be harder to integrate for some applications such as robotics and augmented reality, as well as the next generation of facial recognition technology. They also consume significant power. So Wen-Chen Hsu, of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and the Hon Hai Research Institute in Taiwan, and colleagues turned to ultrathin optical components known as metasurfaces for a potential solution. These metasurfaces can replace bulkier components for modulating light and have proven popular for depth sensors, endoscopes, tomography. and augmented reality systems, among other emerging applications.
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