Modern dual-flush toilets intended to save water actually waste BILLIONS of gallons every year, reveals report Some 88 million gallons of water is wasted by toilets in the UK every day Up to eight percent of toilets are leaking, experts say, mostly dual-flush toilets The two buttons also confuse users, who often use the wrong … Read more
Facebook has officially slid Messenger into Instagram’s Direct Messages. The social media giant announced an update that merges the two messaging services into one unified system. The rollout includes more than 10 new features including stickers, Watch Together and a vanish mode that allows users to set messages to automatically disappear after they are seen. … Read more
Greenland is on track to lose ice mass faster at the end of this century than during any other century over the last 12,000 years, according to a new study. US researchers simulated high-carbon-emission scenarios of the Greenland Ice Sheet – a 660,000 square mile body of ice that covers around 80 per cent of … Read more
More than half of nation-state cyber attacks in the last year have originated from Russia, Microsoft has revealed in a new report. According to the firm’s annual Digital Defense Report, 52 per cent of state-sponsored hacking attempts from July 2019 and June 2020 were Russian in origin. Exactly a quarter during this time period came … Read more
Astronauts on the International Space Station have finally found the source of an air leak that was first detected a year ago in September 2019, according to NASA. Three members of the ISS crew were woken in the middle of the night on Monday by ground control to search for the leak’s source – as … Read more
An artificial intelligence equipped robot named ‘Curly’ beat one of the world’s best curling teams by adapting to changes in the ice, its developers claim. The sport of curling involves constantly changing and uncontrollable environmental conditions – providing the perfect ‘test bed’ for an AI-driven robot. Curly, who delivers the stone but doesn’t sweep, won … Read more
Frogs that live in wet environments have bigger testicles and higher quality sperm than those in drier regions, a new study has found. Frogs of the Crawling Toadlet species (Pseudophryne guentheri) are native to south-western Australia, and can experience between approximately 300 and 1250 mm of rainfall per year depending on where they live. The Aussie … Read more
Beekeeping has become TOO trendy and almost unsustainable in some urban areas because there is not enough nectar and pollen to go round, study warns The ‘World’s Plants and Fungi’ report warned urban beekeeping can do harm Beekeepers only raise honey bees — which can outcompete wild colonies Colonies need access to sufficient forage like flowering … Read more
Two fifths of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction, up from an estimated fifth in 2016, according to Kew Gardens. In total, 140,000, or 39.4 per cent, of plants are threatened with extinction, up from an earlier estimate of 21 per cent from four years ago, the organisation says. Kew’s annual State of the … Read more
Earth may have lost up to 60 per cent of its atmosphere in the collision that is thought to have formed the Moon Researchers carried out hundreds of collision simulations on a supercomputer They looked at different impact angles, planet densities and even atmospheres Earth could have lost 10-60 per cent of its atmosphere in an … Read more