Science

Singapore's sunrise time moves half an hour a year while its day length barely changes

Singapore's sunrise drifts from 06:46 around the turn of October and November to 07:17 in mid-February, while the day changes length by only nine minutes. The equation of time sets those dates, which is why none of the extremes falls near a solstice.

27 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

How the degree of kinship between two parents sets their child's inbreeding coefficient

The inbreeding coefficient, F, is the chance that a child inherits two copies of the same gene from one ancestor through both parents. For most relatives it follows from how many generations separate the parents, so first cousins and a great-uncle and great-niece both give a child an F of 1/16.

27 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Ancient Proteins Show Xujiayao Fossils From Northern China Came From Denisovans

A Nature study finds a Denisovan-only collagen variant in two bones dug up in the 1970s, then uses them to sketch what Denisovans looked like across East Asia.

26 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Eighteen Years of Whale Calls Show Rare Omura's Whales Favour Warm, Food-Rich Waters off Australia

Curtin University researchers reused recordings from 35 sites to map where a Data Deficient whale is heard, and found its presence tracks warm water and a rise in ocean productivity.

24 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Crows Pick a Direction in 235 Milliseconds, About Twice the Speed Seen in Humans and Monkeys

Tübingen neuroscientists recorded crow neurons signalling a choice about 70 milliseconds after a visual cue, well before the bird pecked its answer.

23 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Science

Fossil From Fujian Suggests Some of the Earliest Birds Had Already Given Up Flying

A crow-sized Late Jurassic bird with a raptor's sickle claw and short forelimbs was probably a ground-dwelling hunter, a Nature paper argues.

20 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

Roman numerals on Roman stones fail today's strict standard form

Roman numerals today follow a strict standard form that allows six subtractive pairs, no letter more than three times, and nothing above 3,999. Numerals carved on Roman legionary stones break that form, and software writes numbers past 3,999 in several different ways.

19 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Hazen-Williams C values and how far the published tables disagree

Hazen-Williams estimates friction loss in a water pipe from one roughness number, C, and published tables give a cement-lined pipe anything from 120 to 150. We measured how much that choice moves the answer, and how far the formula sits from Darcy-Weisbach by bore, speed and water temperature.

19 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Nearly 27% of the World's Land May Already Be Conserved, Well Above the Official 18.5%, Nature Study Estimates

A sample of 25 countries finds protected areas missing from global records, putting the 30 by 30 land goal within reach. Most of the extra land adds little to under-protected ecosystems.

19 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

How reading-time estimates turn words and Chinese characters into minutes

A reading-time label divides a text's length by an assumed reading speed, and the speeds in use for English run from 200 to 300 words a minute. For Chinese the bigger difference is what a tool counts: characters, segmented words or text split at spaces.

18 Oct 2026 · 6 min read