Sustainability

Data Centres Hold a Third of the Dutch Grid Queue, Enough Capacity for 15 Million Homes

Grid operators want the government to decide where data centres may go. The industry says early, oversized requests inflate the 15-gigawatt figure.

17 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

Science

The Leap Second Is Formally Abolished From 2027. A New Definition of the Second Has to Wait

The weights-and-measures conference adopted continuous UTC unchanged, but found no consensus on which atom should define the second.

17 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

Statistics

Chinese reign era names were reused by rival courts, and most Ming and Qing emperors began theirs at New Year

Chinese emperors named their years by era names, and a date was written as the era plus a year count. Catalogues disagree on how many names there were, many were used by several courts, and the first year of an era was often not the year an emperor came to the throne.

16 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

Riegel's race-time formula comes within about 2% of world records and predicts recreational marathons too fast

Riegel's formula scales a known race time to another distance using an exponent, usually 1.06. Tested against world records it misses by about 2% at most, but for recreational runners in a published 2014 survey it predicted marathons a median 5.5% too fast.

15 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Statistics

Descriptive and algebraic chess notation, and the rules FIDE and PGN files disagree on

Old chess books write moves in descriptive notation, naming each square from the mover's side, while FIDE's Laws recognise only algebraic for its own events. Game files in PGN format use an algebraic of their own, which differs from FIDE's on castling, promotion and which symbols are required.

15 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Bleached Corals Recovered in Seven Weeks After Touching a Healthy Twin

A Stanford lab study found fused tissue lets algae flow from a healthy coral into a bleached clone. It only worked within one genetic line, and only in tanks so far.

15 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Statistics

Hundreds of subject combinations can add up to the same PSLE Score

Singapore's PSLE Score adds four Achievement Levels into a total from 4 to 32, where lower is better, and MOE sorts those totals into three Posting Groups. Counted across every Standard-level grade combination, hundreds of different subject profiles share each score in the middle of the range.

15 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

An X chromosome comes from fewer ancestors than a family tree allows

A man's X chromosome can come only from his mother's side, while a woman's comes from both parents, so the ancestors who could have passed it on follow the Fibonacci numbers. In simulated family trees, far fewer of those candidates passed on any of it.

15 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

Singapore's golf tees turn one handicap index into very different stroke counts

A Course Handicap rescales a golfer's Handicap Index by the Slope Rating of the tee being played. Across the 88 tees the Singapore Golf Association rates over 18 holes, that Slope part alone turns an 18.0 Index into 17.4 to 24.7 strokes.

15 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Science

X-Ray Lasers Catch the Enzyme That Makes Penicillin Midway Through Its Work

An Oxford-led team filmed IPNS building the antibiotic's core rings and found a sulphur atom that lets go of iron when chemists expected it to hold on.

14 Oct 2026 · 4 min read