Sale makes ‘Jodi’, a smaller relative of T rex, the ‘second most valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction’, Sotheby’s says

A rare skeleton of a Nanotyrannus, a smaller relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex, sold at auction in New York this week for $47.3m, making it one of the world’s most expensive fossils.

The skeleton, named “Jodi” after the person who found the remains in 2019, sold at Sotheby’s on Tuesday for $47.3m, “after a twelve-minute bidding battle that saw six bidders compete online and over the phones, before ultimately selling on the phone”, Sotheby’s said in a statement.

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© Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP

© Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP

© Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

Dems want damning surveillance report

A pair of Democratic senators are accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of hiding a report that “details serious abuses of Americans’ rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., are trying to pry loose a report they say the administration is legally required to make public after a FISA court opinion detailed abuses of the program in March.

Since retaking office, Trump has expanded the federal government’s arsenal of creepy surveillance tools en route to building what appears to be an unprecedented spy machine that can track Americans. It’s in that context that Democrats — with some GOP help — tanked a vote in June that would have extended the controversial FISA powers that give the government broad latitude to sweep up data, including information belonging to Americans.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche, the two Senate Democrats said the damning FISA report from on alleged surveillance abuses should have been released already — and demanded that it be released now so lawmakers can consider whether to extend FISA powers next year.

They wrote:

The administration has now had over seven months to declassify and release this opinion. It is time to stop violating the law and finally release this opinion. And if this administration won’t follow this simple statutory directive, it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702.

Read more at Gizmodo.

AI bots’ banking break-ins

Artificial intelligence bots are increasingly gaining unauthorized access to people’s bank accounts, according to new reporting from Axios. The report homes in on concerns among bank officials about security in the age of AI.

Read more at Axios.

Massive Meta judgment

A judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after the company lost a lawsuit alleging that the company broke New Mexico’s consumer protection laws and jeopardized its users after the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago. Meta has vowed to appeal the ruling.

Read more at MS NOW.

Republican outcry over Colom ad

After Mississippi’s Republican attorney general issued legal threats last week, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee, Scott Colom, deleted an ad using AI tools to mock his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. I wrote about how it seems like Republicans are fretting over this race in a deep-red state.

Read more at MS NOW.

Pro-ICE activist reportedly faces deportation

Samuel Sey, a popular right-wing influencer known for supporting Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown, reportedly has been detained by immigration officials and is now facing deportation after allegedly overstaying a temporary visa.

Read more at The Roys Report.

What AI guidelines?

The good news is the Pentagon apparently has some guidelines around the development of AI tools to avoid the risk of escalating wars or harming civilians and troops. The bad news? Defense officials aren’t always adhering to these rules, according to a congressional report.

Read more at NPR.

Anthropic bots get alarming access

Anthropic says its AI tool accessed Georgia voting data typically only available to people who pay for it. The company and Georgia’s secretary of state said no individual voter records were accessed, but the intrusion marks yet another disturbing security breach involving AI. A new report explains why “the company’s statements about what its bot accessed raise more questions.”

Read more at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Alpha School shortcomings

An investigation from The New York Times suggests that Alpha School, the network of AI-fueled private schools that have been backed by the Trump administration and vow to offer a superior learning experience, is failing to live up to its promises.

Read more at The New York Times.

MAGA influencer meddling fails

Several MAGA influencers have recently been in Brazil and Serbia, hoping to sway elections in both countries — but the pro-authoritarian candidates they supported flamed out over the weekend. Now, especially when it comes to Brazil, Trump and a bunch of extremely online conservatives are pushing lies about the election being rigged, as my colleague Brandy Zydrozny explained.

Read more at MS NOW.

The post Senate Democrats warn that the Trump administration is hiding a damning surveillance report appeared first on MS NOW.

In breathless press releases and posts, the company has touted its models’ ability to deliver scientific breakthroughs. But its IPO filing taps the brakes on just how fast its AI will lead to big discoveries.

Inside a sealed ceramic capsule, an enzyme that should have folded into a useless lump of protein at 70°C stayed perfectly intact. Then, an infrared laser beam struck the material, and the chemical reaction inside accelerated ninefold. This was not a trick of measurement, nor a fleeting flash of activity. It was a controlled, repeatable mechanism where light generated heat, and heat drove a catalytic process without destroying the catalyst. Researchers from Sirius University of Science and Technology and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology demonstrated this precise interaction, published in the journal Chemical Engineering Journal, supported by a Russian Science Foundation grant. The Puzzle of Heat and Stability Enzymes are typically fragile. Carboanhydrase, the specific enzyme used in this study, is a biological catalyst involved in cellular respiration that accelerates the conversion of carbon dioxide. In its free state, the protein has a strict limit: differential scanning calorimetry revealed that at 67°C, the enzyme undergoes irreversible structural changes and loses its function. For most biological catalysts, the breakdown point sits even lower, between 50°C and 60°C. Heat is usually the enemy of enzymatic activity, causing denaturation-the unfolding of the protein's 3D structure that allows it to function. The team's challenge was to invert this relationship. They wanted heat to be the trigger, not the destroyer. To achieve this, they constructed a composite material with three distinct components: the carboanhydrase enzyme, hollow gold nanospheres, and a porous matrix of aluminum oxide. The aluminum oxide serves as a protective scaffold. Think of it as a porous ceramic shell that physically constrains the enzyme, preventing it from unfolding even when heated, while remaining open enough to let reactant molecules enter and exit. Experimental data confirmed this protection: when the free enzyme was heated in a water bath to 70°C, it denatured. The enzyme embedded in the aluminum oxide matrix, however, retained its structural integrity.

The risks laid out by the San Francisco company in its filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission range from the mundane to involvement in cyberattacks and the spread of dangerous misinformation.

The data center buildout could cause a massive increase in gas prices as companies scramble for limited supplies and infrastructure fails to meet demand.

For most amphibians, the ocean is a death sentence. Their skin, designed for respiration and moisture absorption, is highly permeable, making them vulnerable to osmotic shock; in saltwater, they quickly dehydrate or lose critical minerals. Even the rare crab-eating frog, capable of enduring brackish water, must eventually return to freshwater to recover its body mass. Yet, 237 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, an organism called Gerrothorax maritimus lived and thrived deep in the ocean off the coast of what is now Guizhou, China. The discovery of nearly complete skeletons of G. maritimus in deep-sea sediments-hundreds of miles from any coastline-challenges the biological assumption that amphibians are strictly excluded from marine environments. These creatures were not accidental travelers washed out to sea by a storm; they were permanent residents of the ocean floor. The Armor as a Biological Barrier A research team from the University of California, Davis, Peking University, and the Guizhou Provincial Geological Museum, publishing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that the animal's survival depended on its unusual anatomy. G. maritimus possessed a disk-shaped body encased in dense bony plates. While this armor provided a shield against predators, such as three-meter-long ichthyosaurs, its primary physiological function was likely an osmotic seal.

In the hydraulic systems of excavators and bulldozers, the piston seals are the unsung heroes holding back tons of pressure. Yet, these critical rubber components exist inside a sealed "black box." From the outside, a healthy cylinder looks identical to one on the verge of failure. This opacity forces the heavy machinery industry into a binary choice: replace parts on a strict calendar schedule, regardless of actual condition, or risk catastrophic breakdowns when the arm suddenly freezes mid-lift. To break this stalemate, researchers from Perm National Research Polytechnic University (PNIPU) and Perm Agrarian and Technological University have developed a diagnostic method that detects seal wear at its earliest mechanical stage, rather than waiting for the final failure. The breakthrough relies on a counterintuitive physical maneuver. Instead of passively monitoring the cylinder during normal operation-a method that only triggers alerts when oil leakage reaches a critical 13 to 15 milliliters per minute-the researchers create a controlled hydrostatic dead end. By fully blocking the oil exit while the pump continues to inject fluid, they force the system into a state of rapid pressure buildup. A single pressure sensor, connected to a programmable device and a laptop, tracks the velocity of this rise. The resulting graph provides a clear diagnostic signature: a healthy seal allows pressure to spike sharply, creating a steep curve, while an aged seal lets oil seep through microscopic cracks, damping the rise and producing a noticeably flatter line. In tests involving cylinders with up to 4,000 hours of service, this technique successfully identified defects at leakage rates of just 6.5 milliliters per minute, effectively doubling the detection window compared to standard diagnostic systems. The precision of this method was refined by accounting for a subtle physical variable that traditional models often ignore: the elastic expansion of the rubber hoses themselves. Under the intense load of the test, the flexible lines stretch slightly, a "balloon effect" that distorts the pressure rate by 17 to 20 percent. By mathematically correcting for this compliance, the team ensures that the system does not misinterpret a healthy node as defective or overlook critical wear, a distinction that can mean the difference between a minor maintenance stop and a total equipment failure.

Two orbiters have long outlasted their expected lifespans and completely reshaped our understanding of the Red Planet, all while operating 140 million miles from Earth.

Observers can see the cup in two distinctive contrasting colours, based on whether they see reflected light or light directly passing through it

© Ed Cartledge, Sort of Films via University of Sheffield

Study may have uncovered ancient Egyptian word for Aloe Vera

© Claudia Sachße via Eurekalert

Palaeontologists are reexamining fossils in Natural History Museum's care in recent years to find new species

© Guilherme Gehr

For five years, the surface of the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica remained still, or so it appeared. But when scientists analyzed satellite radar data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 missions, a different picture emerged. Between 2016 and 2021, a massive subglacial lake beneath the ice shelf drained approximately 78 million cubic meters of water. The loss was not a sudden collapse, but a slow, systematic transfer that left a measurable imprint on the ice above: a circular depression roughly 61 square kilometers in area, where the ice had settled under its own weight as the support from below disappeared. The discovery, led by researchers at Kangwon National University, offers a clearer view of how water moves beneath the continent's frozen crust. The team did not detect the water directly; instead, they identified the change by monitoring the vertical displacement of the ice surface. As the lake emptied, the ice above it subsided, creating a distinct topographical anomaly. This indirect method is crucial because drilling or direct observation in such remote, deep, and hostile environments is technically impractical and scientifically limited. A Connected System, Not Isolated Pools The key finding is not just that water was lost, but where it went. The data indicate that the water did not burst through the ice to reach the open ocean. Instead, it flowed laterally into neighboring subglacial cavities. This behavior confirms a long-held hypothesis: the subglacial hydrology of Antarctica is not a collection of isolated, static lakes, but a dynamic, interconnected network of channels and reservoirs.

In a metal, electrons are typically expected to behave like waves spreading freely across the crystal lattice, similar to ripples on the surface of a calm ocean. However, researchers at Columbia University have captured evidence of a phenomenon that defies this intuition: electronic waves trapped at a single point. This observation occurred in the metal Pd5AlI2, where, despite the presence of pathways for movement, electronic states ceased to propagate. A publication in the journal Science marks the first experimental confirmation of a long-standing theoretical prediction: the existence of a bound state in the continuum (BIC) within a metallic material. The key evidence consists of spectroscopic images obtained through atomic scanning. These snapshots reveal localized electronic waves surrounding atomic defects in the lattice. Previously, this form of quantum interference trapping had been demonstrated only for photons. For electrons in a metal, it remained a hypothesis. The finding indicates that destructive interference is capable of completely suppressing electron propagation, even if other states in the same material continue to move freely.

A molecular screw can be forced to rotate using only an electric current, but the most striking observation is not the movement itself-it is the relationship between that motion and the flow of electricity. In a discovery involving the molecule dithioacetylhelicene, researchers found that the molecule's ability to conduct electricity increases by two orders of magnitude specifically when it begins to rotate. In a static state, the molecule naturally adopts spatial configurations that hinder the flow of electrons; rotation is not a byproduct of the current, but a necessary condition for the current to flow efficiently. The Mechanism of Molecular Rotation The experimental setup involves a dithioacetylhelicene molecule-a spiral structure-tethered between two atomically thin gold electrodes via sulfur atoms. While traditional molecular motors often require external manipulation, such as the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope, this system is driven by the voltage difference between the electrodes. As electrons pass through the spiral structure, they transfer angular momentum to the molecule, effectively acting like a ball striking a pinwheel to initiate rotation. The researchers demonstrated precise control over this movement: by simply reversing the polarity of the applied voltage, they could switch the direction of the molecule's rotation. This establishes the device as a current-driven molecular motor with a reversible directional trigger.

There are more than 8,000 species of amphibians on Earth, and not one of them lives in the sea. Fewer than 2% tolerate any salt at all, and even those have limits. It is a striking gap. Whales, sea turtles and penguins each show that mammals, reptiles and birds can live at sea, with no […]

When the James Webb Space Telescope began photographing galaxies from the universe’s earliest chapters, astronomers ran into a problem. There were more very bright galaxies than their models predicted, and some looked far too massive for such a young cosmos. Part of that puzzle has since faded. Some of those objects turned out to be […]

Some studies have linked disgust sensitivity to socially conservative attitudes. But ahead of the US midterm elections, does disgust shape our politics, or do our beliefs shape what we find disgusting?

Between 34,000 and 25,000 years ago, much of Europe shared a way of life that archaeologists call the Gravettian. It is recognized by its stone and bone tools, by the way people buried their dead, and by small carved figurines of women known as Venus figurines. They turn up from the Atlantic side of the […]

In the dense forests of Brazil, a quiet genetic drift was dismantling the most reliable tool used to detect a deadly virus. For three decades, since its first identification in 1990, the Sabia virus has circulated in the region, causing severe hemorrhages and brain damage. Yet, in recent years, it began to disappear from laboratory results. Patients died of the infection while their blood tests returned negative, not because the medical staff missed the diagnosis, but because the virus itself had quietly altered the genetic lock that standard tests were designed to pick. The failure was not a result of human error or equipment malfunction, but a specific consequence of viral evolution. Standard diagnostic methods, such as PCR (polymerase chain reaction), rely on primers-short sequences of molecules that act like keys. They must bind perfectly to specific regions of the viral DNA to trigger a detectable reaction. Over thirty years of circulation, the Sabia virus accumulated mutations precisely at these binding sites. The code changed, the lock was effectively swapped, and the old keys no longer turned. The result was a pathogen that remained present in the blood, invisible to the very instruments meant to find it. The Unseen Patient The puzzle came into focus when researchers at the University of São Paulo (FM-USP) investigated two fatal cases from 2019 and 2020 that defied standard diagnosis. One of the victims was a 52-year-old man with a history of hiking in wooded areas. He was hospitalized with symptoms suggestive of yellow fever, but standard screenings, including tests for Sabia virus, came back negative. Recognizing that a standard panel might have missed the culprit, the team turned to metagenomics. Unlike targeted tests that look for a specific signature, metagenomic sequencing reads all the genetic material in a blood sample and compares it against vast databases of known pathogens.