Skip to Content

The Smell of Victory

We round up this week’s most intriguing items from around the Web.

The Smell of Victory
As a new tactic for crowd control, the Pentagon is investigating stench warfare, reports New Scientist. One difficulty: culture determines-at least in part-how people respond to various smells, so the military is searching for a weapon offensive to all the noses of the world.

1984 (+17)

Police in Tampa, FL, are watching you. The New York Times details how a new network of publicly mounted cameras compares pedestrians to an electronic mug shot database, flagging matches for investigation. The city used a similar system to surveil attendees at last year’s Super Bowl. Insert paranoid prophesy here.

Pig Prescription
A mineral remedy, concocted to treat aggressive pigs, may help treat human manic-depressive disorders, a Canadian researcher told the British Psychological Society. Although some scientists dismiss the mix as “snake oil,” reports Reuters, others signed on after preliminary tests showed promising results. Sooie!

Star Treatment
Old stars may be bigger than previously thought, say scientists who mixed starlight and laser light to make superfine measurements on three Red Giants. According to Space.com, the findings may make astronomers rethink how stars evolve.

Eat My Shorts
There are bacteria living in your clothes-and not just the ones hanging in your gym locker. Now a Massachusetts researcher wants to put them to work, by engineering strains that feed on human sweat and other grime, reports New Scientist. If he succeeds, you may end up feeding your shirt instead of washing it.

Last week: Moo River

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.