A recent encounter between a human diver and a humpback whale has illustrated how concern for the safety of others can reach across species. Marine biologist Nan Hauser was on an expedition to the South Pacific’s Cook Islands to study whales for a film that she is making. But while diving with a humpback whale, her 25-tonne subject appeared to be attacking her, at least at first. But what she learned after extricating herself from the leviathan’s advances made her see the whole situation in a completely different light.
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On January 3, a group of cybersecurity experts announced the existence of two security flaws affecting virtually every microprocessor on the planet, codenamed ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’: the Meltdown exploit affects computer processors that were built by Intel over the past decade, used in the majority of consumers’ personal computers, and over 90 percent of the world’s computer servers; Spectre is somewhat less dangerous, but is more widespread, as it affects not only Intel processors, but also those of their main competitor, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Britain’s Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) chips. These vulnerabilities could potentially allow hackers to access personal data from computers, mobile devices, smart TVs, and cloud servers around the world.
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The revised dating and uncovering of new artifacts from an archaeological site in Australia’s Arnhem Land has prompted archaeologists to revise theories as to when the ancestors of present-day Aboriginies first settled in what we now call Australia, pushing that date back by 20,000 years to a point in time 65,000 years ago. This revised timeline also implies that modern humans may have begun the colonization of Asia much earlier than previously assumed.
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 Researchers in Belgium have developed a technique that allows coma patients that are in a minimally-conscious state to become aware enough to communicate — for up to a week — using mild electrical stimulation to their brains.

Building on the results of a 2014 study that showed that electrical stimulation of the brain could briefly help raise the state of awareness in coma patients, a research team from Belgium’s University of Liège performed a similar experiment using longer sessions, where 16 participants, either in a minimally conscious or vegetative state, were given 20-minute treatments for five days.
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