Science

22.4 litres is only correct if you say at what pressure

A mole of ideal gas occupies 22.414 litres at one atmosphere and 22.711 litres at one bar, and NIST publishes both as separate exact constants. IUPAC moved standard pressure to 100 kPa in 1982, exam boards went four different ways, and the number that fails is the one with no conditions attached.

16 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Fourteen elements have no single atomic weight

Carbon is printed as 12.011 on every wall chart. IUPAC does not publish a single figure for carbon, or for thirteen other elements — it publishes a range, because their isotopic makeup varies with where the sample came from. Lithium is the widest case, and not for the reason usually given.

16 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

NASA and IBM Open-Sourced a Moon Model. It Is Best at Finding Ice.

Trained on about two million tiles from 17 years of lunar orbiter data. The headline 23 per cent is really three results — 22 on ice, 19 on craters, 3 on volcanic patches.

14 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

A Thousand Control Cycles Became One. What That Buys Is Time.

Chalmers researchers compressed control of a quantum encoding into a single Floquet period. The speed matters because quantum states decay while you work on them.

12 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

AI Alerts Grew 685 Per Cent. They Are 0.43 Per Cent of the Queue.

Three numbers from one study, and 94.1 per cent of these alerts are noise. Each figure supports a different decision, and quoting one alone produces a different story.

12 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Statistics

One Singapore quarter, two official growth rates, four times apart

In August 2020 the economy had shrunk 41.2% in the second quarter; in October the same quarter was a 13.2% contraction. The basis changed in between, and both bases are still published today — same system, same update date, roughly four times apart. The explanatory note the footnote points to now returns 404.

12 Sep 2026 · 5 min read

Science

Twenty Minutes a Week on the Phone Beat the Ed-Tech, at $11 a Child

Five randomised trials, including one in the Philippines, found phone tutoring tripled the gains of the average closure-period intervention. A Sierra Leone trial found nothing.

12 Sep 2026 · 7 min read

Sustainability

There is no such thing as Malaysia's grid emission factor

The Energy Commission publishes three regional factors spanning 3.7 times — Peninsular 0.740, Sabah 0.539, Sarawak 0.199 — while a second Malaysian body publishes the same three on a marginal basis that diverges by −24% in one region and +55% in another. The Philippines publishes two values for one grid in one year.

12 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

The Oldest Evidence of Habitual Drug Use Rests on Two Sets of Teeth

Arecoline in the dental calculus of two Sulawesi hunter-gatherers, 15,000 years apart. Oldest evidence is a statement about what survives, not about when people started.

11 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

The standard behind your headphone warning advises against the warning

Your iPhone's 80 dB for 40 hours limit comes from ITU-T H.870, implementing WHO recommendations. That standard says dose estimates can be uncertain by hundreds of percent, advises against signalling 'safe' from them, and states that auto-reducing the volume at 100% is not fully protective.

11 Sep 2026 · 6 min read