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Top storyClay tablets reveal how Babylonian students learned about their gods phys.org · 46m ago

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Clay tablets reveal how Babylonian students learned about their gods

When it came to religious education in ancient Babylonia, in what is now Iraq, students had a lot to learn, ranging from the names of gods to their divine characteristics. A new study published in the journal Iraq has taken a deep dive into ancient texts and surviving clay tablet

Brief phys.org · 46m ago
Unlocking AI as a research tool for plant microscopy

Software created by University of Queensland scientists could help AI platforms overcome a blind spot limiting their value in plant research. UQ Ph.D. student Tianqi Wei said even advanced vision-language models (VLMs) had difficulty interpreting images of microscopic plant detai

Brief phys.org · 20h ago
Biologists may have discovered two of the world's loudest birds

University of Massachusetts Amherst's Jeff Podos and his former graduate student João C.T. Menezes have identified two contenders for the title of world's loudest bird: the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema. Their findings also help explain why some birds are so m

Brief phys.org · 1d ago
For principals, not all stress is equal

Student discipline, staffing problems, frustrated parents—school principals spend their days moving from one problem to the next.

Brief phys.org · 2d ago
Digital textbooks significantly boost students' intrinsic learning motivation

A research team from The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) and East China Normal University (ECNU) has published a meta-analysis demonstrating the impact of digital textbooks (DTs) on student motivation. Synthesizing 27 experimental and quasi-experimental studies conducte

Brief phys.org · 4d ago
Natural proteins can guide active ingredients to diseased cells

After taking a pill, the drugs it contains are distributed throughout the body, reaching the tissues and cells affected by disease and performing their intended function. However, they also enter healthy cells, where they often cause more harm than good.

Brief phys.org · 5d ago
Pompeii's destruction helps calibrate volcanic dating to within decades

When Pliny the Younger recorded his firsthand experience of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago—a cataclysm that buried Pompeii and killed his uncle, Pliny the Elder—he provided enough detail about the date to allow scientists to benchmark methods for dating volcanic e

Brief phys.org · 5d ago
Students help researchers study how people experience temperature

Are there any geographical differences in how people experience weather conditions? This question was investigated in the citizen science project Kallt och svettigt (Cold and sweaty) for a year with the help of school pupils throughout Sweden.

Brief phys.org · 5d ago

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Clay tablets reveal how Babylonian students learned about their gods

When it came to religious education in ancient Babylonia, in what is now Iraq, students had a lot to learn, ranging from the names of gods to their divine characteristics. A new study published in the journal Iraq has taken a deep dive into ancient texts and surviving clay tablet

phys.org · 46m ago
Tracking the fin whale and the sperm whale in the Mediterranean

Where are the great marine animals of the Mediterranean, such as the fin whale, the sperm whale or the bottlenose dolphin? How does their distribution change over a few weeks? All indications suggest that these species shift between marine areas in a remarkably short time and ove

phys.org · 6m ago
Anti-fibrotic drug could be repurposed to control cell communication

An experimental antifibrotic compound can dramatically alter how cells release the microscopic packages they use to communicate, according to new research from the University of Surrey. Researchers found that the compound, SD-208, which reduces scar tissue in organs, substantiall

phys.org · 6m ago
Fossil long known as world's oldest reptile dethroned

For nearly 30 years, a small fossil from Scotland has been celebrated as one of the earliest known reptiles. A new study out today in Nature and led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the European Synchrotr

phys.org · 26m ago
'Molecular movie' fills in blanks of how nonenveloped viruses infect cells

Viruses come in two major flavors—not chocolate and vanilla, quips Harvard Medical School structural biologist Stephen Harrison, but those enveloped in membranes, such as herpesvirus, influenza virus, HIV and SARS-CoV-2, and those that are not, such as poliovirus, HPV, rotavirus

phys.org · 36m ago
Classifying groundwater systems by their ability to recover from drought

A few days of rain do not change low groundwater levels after a long drought. To better determine how groundwater systems recover after a drought and which groundwater reserves are most vulnerable, hydrologist Sandra Hauswirth developed a method to classify groundwater systems ba

phys.org · 46m ago

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