Como esperado, as Releases Candidates (RCs) dos próximos sistemas operacionais da Apple foram disponibilizadas hoje, logo após o evento especial de apresentação dos novos iPhones, Apple Watches e AirPods.

Ainda que se tratem das versões esperadas para o lançamento, que acontecerá na semana que vem, elas trouxeram algumas mudanças e novidades que vale a pena conferirmos. A começar pelo app Câmera (Camera) do iOS 27, que ganhou a opção de customizar os botões da barra de ferramentas.

A RC do iOS 27 também adiciona um design renovado, além de dois recursos, ao Apple TV Remote: um inicializador de aplicativos, bem como os principais conteúdos do aplicativo aberto na Apple TV. É possível também visualizar a lista “Continuar assistindo”.

Apple TV Remote is getting more useful. #AppleEvent

iOS 27 RC adds a refreshed design and two features, both currently disabled:
1. An app launcher to open apps on your Apple TV.
2. Top Shelf content from the selected app on your Apple TV, with Continue Watching as a fallback. pic.twitter.com/Si3EZc1b8L

— pdfu (@itspdfu) September 9, 2026

Embora não seja necessariamente um novo recurso, o sistema também inclui um easter egg na seção de customização do Liquid Glass, presente no app Ajustes (Settings). Ao rolar pela prévia exibida no próprio app até o fim, é possível visualizar uma animação que representa uma versão repaginada do Clarus, mascote do famoso desenho de computador Dogcow criado pela Apple nos anos 1980 — o qual emite o som “Moof!”, que mistura o mugido de uma vaca com o latido de um cão.

iOS 27 has a fun Easter egg found in the Liquid Glass settings. Scroll to the bottom and keep scrolling to see it. Here is a screen recording on my iPhone on iOS 27 RC so you can see it. pic.twitter.com/HJ3MxIApnp

— Aaron Zollo (@zollotech) September 9, 2026

O iOS 27 (bem como o watchOS 27) também incluirá um aplicativo Saúde (Health) repaginado que utiliza a Apple Intelligence para interpretar melhor seus dados de saúde. As novidades incluem uma aba Insights com um resumo das informações mais relevantes do momento, além de orientações personalizadas, avaliações, uma nova pontuação de “prontidão” e o cálculo da sua “Idade de Saúde”.

🩻 iOS 27 RC Brings a more vibrant and reworked Health App – pending the upcoming improvements to it in an expected iOS 27.1 update. pic.twitter.com/dZgI9QmrKJ

— Is iOS Stable? (@isiosstable) September 9, 2026

As novidades incluem também uma nova aba de longevidade, que utiliza métricas do Apple Watch e do iPhone para avaliar sua saúde com base no sono, na movimentação, na saúde cardíaca e em outros fatores.

Além disso, o app renovado permitirá que os usuários realizem avaliações detalhadas sobre a movimentação do corpo, o que pode ajudar pessoas que estão envelhecendo ou se recuperando de lesões. Um instrutor pode até demonstrar certos movimentos para você experimentar durante a avaliação — uma experiência que, segundo a Apple, equivale a ter um treinador acompanhando você pessoalmente.

A versão atualizada do aplicativo Saúde será lançada ainda neste ano — possivelmente com o iOS 27.1 —, a princípio somente em inglês (versão dos EUA).

watchOS 27

A RC do watchOS 27 inclui um novo mostrador chamado Siri Modular, disponível tanto nos Apple Watches intermediários quanto nos modelos Ultra — no entanto, a versão para este último oferece algumas opções de personalização adicionais.

Ambas as versões do mostrador utilizam o mesmo layout, que conta com uma complicação na linha central superior, a hora (centralizada), uma complicação larga e uma linha com três complicações circulares. O Apple Watch Ultra também oferece opções de borda, adicionando mais uma maneira de configurar o novo mostrador.

New Siri Modular face in watchOS 27 pic.twitter.com/ayOdDUkbrg

— Ben (@idocode01) September 9, 2026

Três opções de estilo permitem ajustar a tela do relógio. A primeira opção apresenta o relógio mais alto e três complicações circulares. O segundo estilo traz um relógio compacto, acompanhado pela complicação larga e três complicações circulares. O terceiro estilo apresenta um relógio de tamanho médio com uma complicação larga.

Tanto no modelo intermediário quanto no Ultra também há opções de fonte para o relógio. Por fim, há a opção de definir a cor do mostrador, incluindo diversas novidades como bronze-escuro, ouro-brilhante e outras novas alternativas.

via TechCrunch, 9to5Mac

The EHRC has released new trans schools guidance on how to comply with the Equality Act. But from changing rooms to pronoun use it puts children at risk, says Caroline Ffiske.

The post The EHRC’s New Trans Schools Guidance Puts Children at Risk appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

A new type of synthetic motion developed at City University of New York (CUNY) gives physicists access to impossible, faster-than-light speeds in an experimental environment. Previously, for researchers to explore such extremes of physics, their only option was simulations, and such real-world effects could not be studied in any practical sense.

In a recent paper published in Nature, scientists from CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) revealed their new wave amplification technique, which mimics motion without any physical movement.

The synthetic motion machine relies on radio frequencies modulated around a ring-shaped structure to create the illusion of motion.

Extreme Black Holes

The SUNY team traces its inspiration back to the work of Sir Roger Penrose more than fifty years ago, when the scientists proposed a scenario in which a particle could leech energy from a black hole.

Frame-dragging measurements, which involve the pull on spacetime around the edge of a black hole’s ultra-fast rotation, have become a major focus for astrophysics in recent years. Penrose was interested in the region where this pull occurs, known as the ergosphere. He suggested that a particle entering the ergosphere may be torn into two pieces, one of which would fall into the black hole, while the half that escaped would contain even greater energy than the original particle.

Another physicist, Yakov Zel’dovich, built on Penrose’s work to describe a more general version of this effect. He predicted that a sufficiently fast-rotating object could transfer energy to a wave, amplifying it.

A Synthetic Motion Machine

In their quest to study how a rotating body can amplify a wave, the researchers produced a radio-frequency device that mimics a spinning motion. Crucially, this mimicry is unbound by certain physical constraints on motion, allowing for incredible speeds beyond what can be mechanically produced, opening up new experimental possibilities.

“Our approach facilitates a new method of wave–matter interaction in which waves with selected rotational properties extract energy from synthetic time-engineered rotation, producing a form of broadband selective amplification,” said principal investigator Andrea Alù, Distinguished Professor and Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center and founding director of the CUNY ASRC’s Photonics Initiative.

“This successful experiment moves ideas about extreme rotational dynamics from theory to practice and creates a versatile experimental platform for exploring a broad range of phenomena at the intersection of astrophysics, wave physics, and quantum science,” said lead author Hadiseh Nasari, a postdoctoral researcher with the CUNY ASRC’s Photonics Initiative. “The work has implications for advances in fundamental science and in communications, optics, and photonics.”

Mimicking Motion

For the project, the CUNY team constructed a ring of networked electronic resonators, whose properties were rapidly modulated in a precisely timed sequence, producing a traveling pattern around the ring. The device itself is stationary, yet the modulated pattern led electromagnetic waves to react as though the device were spinning at the speed of the pattern.

“Waves with the appropriate rotational characteristics extracted energy from the system and became amplified, reproducing the essential physics of the Penrose–Zel’dovich process,” said co-lead author Hady Moussa, a former PhD student with the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative. “Our approach relies on engineered metamaterials that are designed to control how waves propagate.

This work in developing synthetic motion has implications far beyond just a single theory on wave amplification. Researchers can now access previously unattainable rotational speeds in experimental physics work thanks to the new device.

Beyond those experimental possibilities, this technique could be used in communication and optics applications, including quantum systems. Future work will involve adapting this revolutionary technique beyond the initial problem into practical technologies for information processing and exploring the universe’s most extreme physics.

The paper, “Observation of Floquet Rotational Super-Radiance,” appeared in Nature on July 8, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

Last week, just before the US started its break for the July Fourth holiday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed a new rule that would change how it regulated exposure to radiation. The Trump administration has been pushing to restart construction of nuclear power plants in the US, and many pro-nuclear advocates have been complaining about the US's existing regulations, portraying them as the main barrier to the flourishing of the industry. So, it had seemed likely that major revisions were coming.

Instead, the NRC's proposed new rules endorse the science behind its current rules and suggest that any problems are largely in the vagueness of the terminology that it has been using. So, instead, it's endorsing standards that are meant to accomplish the same thing, but avoid using some of the language it had relied on. Probably the clearest indication of the evolutionary change at play is that the NRC estimates the changing rules will save industry—not just power, but also medical and research applications—only about $9.5 million a year.

LNT and ALARA

There are two technical abbreviations at the center of US nuclear regulations. The first is LNT, which stands for "linear non-threshold." It's in reference to the issue of whether there's any level of radiation that is so low that it no longer produces harmful biological effects—the "threshold" in LNT. The "non-threshold" implies that it doesn't, and that's in keeping with biology, which has demonstrated that even single particles or photons of radiation can damage DNA and that the mechanisms cells have for repairing that damage are inherently error-prone. The "linear" in LNT simply describes how the impact of radiation scales directly with the dose.

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Amazon and several other non-geostationary satellite operators have formed a trade association to represent their fast-growing market, with SpaceX notably absent despite having by far the largest NGSO constellation.

The post NGSO trade association launches without industry giant SpaceX appeared first on SpaceNews.

Researchers from the private nuclear fusion energy company Commonwealth Fusion Systems have published a series of papers that they claim confirm that their flagship ARC reactor will produce more usable energy than it consumes if built as designed.

Although the company projects it will deliver the first commercial fusion plants by the early 2030s, other researchers say there are remaining challenges to overcome, and won’t declare the ARC reactor successful until an operational version is constructed to validate the research team’s theoretical predictions.

ARC Fusion Reactor ‘Will Work’ When Built

Scientists have long dreamed of capturing the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels our Sun and using it to generate clean, renewable power. Private fusion firms like CFS have received nearly $10 billion in funding over the last decade alone.

The first laboratory “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction, which fusion scientists call “ignition,” didn’t occur until 2022, when physicists at the US National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, successfully produced more energy than was used to generate the reaction. Although brief, that moment has fueled speculation that practical fusion energy generation may be right around the corner.

Now, the Commonwealth team, which includes 58 researchers from the company and partner institutes, has published scientific papers outlining the physics of their ARC reactor, including new models that they say account for the “expected behavior” of the superhot plasma at the heart of the design.

Brandon Sorbom, the company’s chief science officer, said that the published works  “confirm that when we build the ARC fusion power plant, it will work”.

Company Claims ARC Will Produce 400 Megawatts of Net Electricity

After nearly a decade of research, CFS, founded in 2018, is currently preparing its prototype for a 2027 demonstration it calls ‘SPARC.’ The company said they expect that trial run, which will demonstrate their technology’s ability to generate more energy than it needs to heat the plasma, will help them fine-tune ARC’s final design.

According to the Commonwealth-led team, ARC will generate more energy than is required to operate the entire facility, including plasma heating, resulting in a true net-positive power-generation facility. This includes producing approximately 400 megawatts of net electricity, which the team noted is enough to power 280,000 average US homes. For comparison, recent census data indicates that Boston, Massachusetts, near the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, has around 271,000 U.S. homes.

Like SPARC, the ARC reactor uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to compress the plasma, which remains suspended by the magnetic fields, preventing it from damaging the chamber walls and terminating any potential fusion reaction. Under this extreme pressure, the nuclei of heavy hydrogen trapped inside the chamber fuse to form helium, the same reaction that takes place inside the Sun.

This fusion reaction results in the release of energy, primarily high-speed neutrons. At its hottest, the donut-shaped ring of plasma reaches seven times the temperature of the Sun.

Critics Applaud Publication While Highlighting Unproven Concepts and Systems

Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at the University of Cambridge, UK, conceded that the CFS team and its collaborating authors are “some of the best in the fusion business” and noted the company’s ARC reactor concept is the result of “good work over many years.” However, Roulstone also warned of the pressure on researchers in privately funded companies to “claim things before the evidence is fully in place.”

David Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said it is a good sign that the team is publishing at a high volume, but also warned that published papers will not guarantee that the built device will work as intended.

Their modeling “has to be proven correct by a fusion reactor that works as designed”, he adds. If the firm can get SPARC operating successfully next year, “it will be an important step forward”, he says.

Hamner also noted that several of the design’s subsystems require further development before it can be declared complete. This includes addressing how plasma will behave in the real world when it becomes unstable versus its modeled behavior, proving out the process for extracting usable energy from the generated heat, and demonstrating that the reactor is robust enough to operate for long periods.

The scientists also noted the challenges in sourcing tritium, the isotopic fuel the reactor requires to operate. Although CFS has outlined its tritium generation process, Hamner noted that the series of published papers neither details the process nor demonstrates its viability.

“There are candidate blanket materials and blanket designs, but there are many engineering person-years needed” to bring a functional ARC-style plant to fruition, he explained.

“We certainly have to build more on top of that foundation laid out in these papers,” a company spokesperson said, adding that they will “be able to produce tritium for operations and for future power plants.”

The following articles were published by the CFS-led team: “Overview of the physics basis for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC disruption physics and strategy“; “Performance and Transport in the ARC Tokamak“; “Power and particle exhaust for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC Physics Basis-Magnetohydrodynamics.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct a previous version that described neutrinos, rather than fast-neutrons, in the context of the reporting, and to clarify that the first achievement of a “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction (ignition) occurred in 2022. 

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

The first thing a future anti-woke UK government should cut is the billions spent on useless Left-wing research, says Charlotte Gill. For starters, here are 10 studies funded by UKRI's Future Leaders Fellowships.

The post Ten Expensive and Woke Studies Funded by the Government’s UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

An analysis of dental tartar containing traces of human diets dating back over 33,000 years has revealed that ancient Europeans and many early Asian populations likely only ate insects by accident, perhaps as larvae in the carcasses of dead animals.

Conversely, the new study found that intentional insect consumption, called entomophagy, was more common in tropical regions and among Neanderthal populations.

Although the difference has some cultural and religious roots, the team found evidence that the abundance of insects in the tropics and the decreasing ability of humans migrating away from the tropics to digest insects likely led to the modern-day separation over thousands of years.

The Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), research team behind the new findings suggests their research could help explain why some modern populations still consume insects as food while other parts of the world consider it gross or taboo, especially given the increasing food demands of a rising world population.

Insect Consumption in Ancient Northern Europeans Likely Accidental

According to a statement announcing the new research, hundreds of millions of people currently include insects in their diet. However, they also note that most of the Western world continues to “show an aversion” to including any of the more than 1,611 insect species designated as edible by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in theirs. Although some theories suggest the difference is almost purely cultural, the team concedes that “its origin remains unknown.”

To explore the origins of human entomophagy, the IBE analyzed 745 samples of ancient human dental tartar dating back to 33,000 before present. According to the team’s results published in the journal Science Advances, dental tartar (sometimes called dental ‘calculus’) is a critical archaeological tool because it preserves the DNA of the species these human ancestors consumed during their lifetimes.

Although the analysis found evidence for entomophagy amongst virtually all ancient populations sampled in the study, the levels varied dramatically. Notably, the evidence suggested that ancient humans in northern Eurasia did not routinely eat insects in measurable quantities. Instead, any consumption was likely incidental, including consumption of insect larvae in rotting food.

Curious whether the lack of entomophagy in ancient European and Central and Northern Asian populations was purely cultural or whether genetic and geographic factors were involved, the team studied human genes involved in chitin digestion. Chitin, which can be found in some marine animal shells, is also part of an insect’s hard exoskeleton.

According to the study authors, the analysis revealed that the ‘chitinase’ genes in North Eurasian human populations “carry mutations that confer a reduced capacity to digest insect exoskeletons.” Their analysis revealed that this reduced capacity to digest insect exoskeletons has persisted in the genomes of modern Eurasian populations “for the last 9,000 years,” which would coincide with the widely accepted date for the origin of agriculture.

Pablo Librado, study leader and a principal investigator at the IBE, said the “scarce presence of insects in the diet of northern Eurasians” suggests that the cause may not lie solely in more recent cultural factors but also in ecological and evolutionary components dating back several millennia. 

Neanderthals and Denisovans Probably Ate Insect Larvae in Rotting Meat

When the team compared data from ancient human tartar with that of ancient Neanderthals, they found that Neanderthals engaged in much higher levels of entomophagy than humans living in the same regions. According to the study authors, Neanderthal insect consumption levels were similar to those found in western chimpanzee populations, which the researchers note “rely on entomophagy to supplement their diet on the savanna, especially during periods of drought.”

Further analysis of the extracted insect DNA showed that the group most commonly consumed by the Neanderthal specimens included flies and mosquitoes. Although the team only analyzed the DNA, they noted that a recent hypothesis suggests Neanderthals ate carcasses laden with mosquito larvae.

“The abundance of mosquito remains reinforces the possibility that the carcasses of their prey were kept in ponds and marshy areas, where mosquitoes lay their eggs,” the team’s statement explained.

An analysis of the Neanderthal DNA and the DNA from the lone Denisovan study subject revealed that both ancient hominid populations could digest chitin. This result reinforced the genetic basis for increased or reduced entomophagy beyond cultural factors. 

Humans Ate Fewer Bugs When They Moved Away from Tropical Regions

One geographic component identified by the chitinase DNA analysis showed higher levels of digestive enzyme expression among humans living in or near the tropics. However, the expression of these enzymes gradually decreased as populations moved away from tropical regions. The team said this variation, which has been maintained for at least the last 9,000 years, “reflects the abandonment of entomophagy in European populations.”

Manuel Piñero, a predoctoral researcher at the IBE and first author of the study, noted that large numbers of insects must be consumed to offset the “high caloric cost” of collecting them, which might explain the higher levels of entomophagy in this region.

“In the tropics, there is a greater availability of social insects, such as termites and locusts,”  Piñero  explained, adding that the biomass and diversity of tropical edible insects enable “sustainable exploitation throughout the year.” The researcher also noted that insect consumption “adds to pest control.”

When discussing the implications of their findings, Librado highlighted the DNA and geographic factors the IBE team uncovered.

“Beyond cultural or religious factors, our results suggest that the reduced availability of insects in non-tropical areas may have been a key factor in the abandonment of entomophagy, leading to a reduced capacity to digest insect exoskeletons,” the researcher explained.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Most of the Steam Deck imitators on the market right now use AMD silicon, specifically the Ryzen Z-series chips. These are the same chips AMD makes for regular laptops, but with different power settings better suited to a compact handheld system. There are handhelds based on Intel silicon (MSI’s Claw is the main one), but Intel hasn’t yet tried making silicon marketed specifically for that purpose.

Today, the company is throwing its hat in the ring with two Intel Arc G-series processors, which will allow gaming handhelds to leverage the company's genuinely quite good Arc B-series integrated GPUs. Intel says that several Arc G-series handhelds will arrive "starting in June 2026, with broader availability throughout the year." These systems will include a new MSI Claw model, a Predator Atlas 8 from Acer, and a device from OneXPlayer.

Intel normally uses its "Arc" branding for integrated and dedicated GPUs, but in this case, the "Arc" brand encompasses the entire chip, including the CPU, GPU, NPU, and other components.

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