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Phys.org / These computer voices sound human enough to mislead, but one layer of speech still breaks the illusion

We are surrounded by computer-generated voices these days, from navigation systems and voice assistants to automated announcements. But how human do these voices actually sound? A recent study by the Max Planck Institute ...

May 13, 2026
Science X / Cities are rewriting growth rules as wealth rises, pollution drops and a long-assumed link starts to break

Cities are a double-edged sword. They provide plenty of job opportunities, and most of the world's money is made in them, but on the other hand, they create most of the planet's pollution. For decades, the prevailing view ...

May 13, 2026
Phys.org / Ancient iceberg scratches reveal reverse Great Lakes snowbelt

Buffalo's legendary snowfall totals are largely the result of one unlucky geographic reality: the city sits east of the Great Lakes instead of west. Anyone who has lived through a winter in Buffalo, Cleveland or any snowbelt ...

May 13, 2026
Phys.org / The first domesticated horses: 6,000 years of a complex story

Horses were being ridden, worked, and traded long before anyone thought it possible. New research pushes back the accepted timeline of human use of horses by centuries, showing that humans used horses in organized ways as ...

May 13, 2026
Phys.org / Rice plants observed trapping and killing fall armyworm caterpillars

Rice plants and Venus flytraps share something in common that was not scientifically documented until recently. Using a faint smell to lure caterpillars into a trap, rice plants killed early-stage fall armyworm larvae by ...

May 13, 2026
Tech Xplore / Governments may shape what AI chatbots say by shaping the web they learn from

Ask an AI model the same political question in two different languages, and you may get two very different responses. A new study in Nature suggests one reason why: governments can indirectly influence large language models ...

May 13, 2026
Phys.org / Gravitational wave detectors can now 'autotune' signals to harmonize the heavens

Gravitational wave researchers working on the world's most sensitive scientific instruments have found a way to tune their detectors using a process akin to the pitch-correction used in music production.

May 12, 2026
Phys.org / A twinkling pulsar reveals invisible structures in space

The twinkling stars in the night sky are not just beautiful to look at. Their flickering reveals something about the varying temperatures and densities in the layers of Earth's atmosphere, which refract the light as it travels ...

May 13, 2026
Dialog / Optical meta‑conveyors enable programmable nanomanipulation along arbitrary open paths

The task of gently transporting a microscopic particle from one point to another along a winding path, and then bringing it back using nothing more than a single, compact chip is a challenge we set out to address in our new ...

May 13, 2026
Dialog / Researchers identify stability range for piezoelectric glycine using nanoconfinement

Have you ever wondered if the simple building blocks of life could one day power our wearable electronics? Glycine, the simplest amino acid found in our bodies, has a superpower in its β-phase form: it is highly piezoelectric, ...

May 13, 2026
Science X / Our ancient continents were built from sun-baked ocean leftovers, proving Earth was recycling long before it was cool

New isotopic evidence is rewriting the story of Earth's first continents. Imagine the planet nearly 3.8 billion years ago: a water world ringed by volcanic islands. How did solid continents arise in such an alien world?

May 12, 2026
Phys.org / Bee magnetism appears far more widespread than expected across 120 species

As married research professors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Dustin Gilbert and Anne Murray often discuss their work once they get home each night. Their fields of study rarely crossover. That changed six years ...

May 13, 2026