Blue light emitted from the screens of phones, tablets and televisions could induce puberty early, a study has found. In the modern day, children are raised with devices all around them, with many having a phone or tablet to keep them entertained from a young age. But, researchers in Turkey have discovered that it exposure to the blue light such devices give off could speed up the onset of puberty. Teams from the Gazi University and Bilkent City Hospital in Ankara revealed how they saw the effect in male rats, which could suggest a link between device screens and early childhood development. Their findings were presented at the 61st Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in The Hague and published in the Frontiers in Endocrinology journal. The study emulates the same findings that were observed in female rats, where early puberty was seen. Lead researcher Dr. Aylin Kılınç Uğurlu, of Bikent City Hospital, said: “For the first time, we found a direct relationship between blue light exposure and early puberty in male rats.” They continued: “Our findings align with our previous work on female rats, which also showed similar effects, thereby providing a more comprehensive view of how blue light may influence puberty in both male and female rats.” As part of the study, 18 male rats, all 21 days old, were split into three groups. Two of the groups were assigned either six or 12 hours of blue light exposure per day. The last group was a control and was not exposed to any blue light from screens. Results showed that the rats with exposure to blue light experienced signs of puberty “significantly earlier” compared with the control group. Uğurlu noted in a news report: “I want to emphasise that this is a rat study and direct results cannot be interpreted for humans. “However, we provide an experimental foundation to further investigate the health consequences of ever-increasing screen time in modern society.” Researchers hope to continue their study on the effects of blue light on rats to “understand its long-term effects on reproductive organ damage and fertility”. Uğurlu continued: “Ultimately, this research could lead to preventative measures and contribute to the ongoing discourse on how modern lifestyles affect physiological development and long-term health.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander only touched down on the Moon a month ago, but already it's made some major contributions to science. The spacecraft arrived on the satellite's unexplored south pole on 23 August, securing India's place as the first country to achieve this ambitious feat. Its rover, named Pragyan (or "wisdom" in Sanskrit) then embarked on an exploration of the rocky terrain, equipped with two instruments for conducting chemical experiments. And now, India's space agency, the ISRO, has published the ground-breaking data collected by the bold robot. Pragyan's findings offered a new, detailed insight into what makes up the lunar soil. And whilst scientists were unsurprised by the presence of iron, titanium, aluminium and calcium in the rocks, they were stunned to note a much higher concentration of sulphur than expected. The discovery is significant for a number of reasons. Most significantly, perhaps, because the sulphur could be used to help create a human base on the Moon. As Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, a planetary scientist, pointed out in a piece for Science Alert: "Astronauts and robots could travel from the south pole base to collect, process, store and use naturally occurring materials like sulfur on the Moon – a concept called in-situ resource utilization. "In-situ resource utilization means fewer trips back to Earth to get supplies and more time and energy spent exploring. Using sulfur as a resource, astronauts could build solar cells and batteries that use sulfur, mix up sulfur-based fertilizer and make sulfur-based concrete for construction." Gillis-Davis went on to explain that sulfur-based concrete has a number of advantages over the more common variety used in building, pointing out that it "hardens and becomes strong within hours rather than weeks, and it's more resistant to wear". "It also doesn't require water in the mixture, so astronauts could save their valuable water for drinking, crafting breathable oxygen and making rocket fuel," he added. The presence of sulphur near the Moon's south pole also suggests that highland soils at the lunar poles could have very different compositions to highland soils at the lunar equatorial regions. This would have key implications for our understanding of how the Moon works as a geological system, given that sulfur mainly comes from volcanic activity. Still, there's plenty of work to be done. And while this is all just one small step in Chandrayaan-3's mission, it could mean a great leap in how we view our dear celestial companion. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

European Union officials on Tuesday called on large social media platforms to step up their enforcement against online mis- and disinformation, particularly about the war in Ukraine.

Ancient clay tablets unearthed from ancient ruins in Turkey by archaeologists have revealed a language lost to the passages of time. The new language was discovered in the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire at Hattusa (known as Boğazköy-Hattusha). The well-preserved tablets are among many incredible artworks found at the site - a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Over the past four decades, researchers have dusted off nearly 30,000 unique tablets - with most written in Hittite. New research, however, shows that some of the tablet haul shows that they are written in a language previously unknown to modern man. Of course, the meaning and words of this language have not been deciphered, but it appears from early inspection to branch off from languages used within the Hittite Empire - and is being referred to as Kalašma. archaeologist Interestingly though, researchers from the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute have noted that the new language is found within a recitation in a 'cultic ritual text'. While that's usually the basis of a middling horror movie, we're certain that there's nothing to worry about - it stems from an ancient Hittite practice. Professor Daniel Schwemer explains that the discovery wasn't unexpected. "The Hittites were uniquely interested in recording rituals in foreign languages," he said. These ritual texts provide insight into little-known languages, and thanks to this discovery, one more has been added to the list. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Apple has provided a software update for its iPhone 12 to French regulators following concerns about radiation levels of the smartphone. France suspended sales of iPhone 12 handsets last week after claiming it failed to pass tests relating to electromagnetic radiation exposure limits. The US tech giant risked a product recall if a fix was not found, while other European countries warned they may follow France’s initiative. French authorities received a software update from Apple for its iPhone 12 on Tuesday, a source at the French digital ministry told Reuters. Apple had earlier contested the French findings, saying the iPhone 12 was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global standards. A spokesperson for Apple told The Independent that it was engaging with regulators in an effort to prove that its iPhone 12 is compliant. The US tech giant said it has provided France’s National Frequency Agency (ANFR) with independent third-party lab results proving the iPhone 12’s compliance, and met SAR regulations. Apple then said on 15 September it would issue a software update to accommodate the testing methods used in France. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The move by Paris to suspend sales of the iPhone 12 handsets had prompted concerns in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Belgium also reportedly requested the software update but it was limited to France, Belgian industry regulator said in an emailed statement. The Belgian regulator also said it expected more steps at a European level after the French authorities inform their peers about the fix and the fact that is not available widely in the European Union. French regulator Agence Nationale des Frequences did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Dutch digital watchdog also did not respond to a request for comment. Italian authorities will wait for French deliberations over the Apple update before taking any decision, an Italian government source said. Researchers have conducted multiple studies over the last two decades to assess the health risks of mobile phones. According to the World Health Organisation, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by them. The radiation warning in France was based on results of tests that differ from those carried out in other countries. Industry experts said there were no safety risks as regulatory limits, based on the risk of burns or heatstroke from the phone’s radiation, were set well below levels where scientists have found evidence of harm. Apple launched the iPhone 15 earlier this month and the iPhone 12 is not available to buy from Apple directly. It can, however, be bought from third parties that have inventory, or trade old phones. Apple routinely provides software updates for its phones and computers, mostly to fix a security issue. They can be focused on a particular model or a region, and sometimes Apple issues several updates in a month. The iPhone 12 update is set to be similar to any of these regular software fixes. Apple pings iPhones for eligible software updates and users install them. It is not clear if or when the update will be available for users. Additional reporting from agencies Read More Apple iPhone 15 and 15 Plus review: Quiet colours, impressively fast Google Pixel 8 camera will include ‘creepy’ face-changing AI iPhone 15: Apple workers strike in France ahead of biggest launch of the year You need to update your Apple devices right now iPhone 15 goes on sale – but you might struggle to actually get one iPhone 15: Apple workers strike in France ahead of biggest launch of the year

The boss of Spotify has said he would not completely ban content generated by artificial intelligence from the music streaming service. Daniel Ek told the BBC he thought there were legitimate use cases for the technology in music, but that it should not be used to impersonate real artists without their consent. He said there were three “buckets” of AI use in music: tools such as auto-tune, which he said was acceptable; software which impersonated artists, which was not; and a more controversial middle ground where AI-generated music was inspired by a specific artist but did not directly mimic them. But he said the issue would likely be debated for “many, many years”. “You can imagine someone uploading a song, claiming to be Madonna, even if they’re not. We’ve seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system,” he said. “We have a very large team that is working on exactly these types of issues.” Spotify does not allow content from its platform to be used to train AI models. Last month, Irish singer Hozier said he would consider striking over the threat of AI to the music industry, and a number of other artists have spoken out about their concerns about the use of technology in creating music. Regulators worldwide are stepping up their scrutiny of AI, given its explosion into general use worldwide and fears over its impact on jobs, industry, copyright, the education sector and privacy – among many other areas. We've seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system Daniel Ek, Spotify The UK will host a safety summit on the potential opportunities and threats posed by AI in November. Read More Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages Spotify CEO Daniel Ek denies existence of alleged artist streaming scheme Streaming service Deezer signs Universal Music royalty deal to prioritise musicians over AI

The boss of Spotify has said he would not completely ban content generated by artificial intelligence from the music streaming service. Daniel Ek told the BBC he thought there were legitimate use cases for the technology in music, but that it should not be used to impersonate real artists without their consent. He said there were three “buckets” of AI use in music: tools such as auto-tune, which he said was acceptable; software which impersonated artists, which was not; and a more controversial middle ground where AI-generated music was inspired by a specific artist but did not directly mimic them. But he said the issue would likely be debated for “many, many years”. We've seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system Daniel Ek, Spotify “You can imagine someone uploading a song, claiming to be Madonna, even if they’re not. We’ve seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system,” he said. “We have a very large team that is working on exactly these types of issues.” Spotify does not allow content from its platform to be used to train AI models. Last month, Irish singer Hozier said he would consider striking over the threat of AI to the music industry, and a number of other artists have spoken out about their concerns around the use of technology in creating music. Regulators worldwide are stepping up their scrutiny of AI, given its explosion into general use worldwide and fears over its impact on jobs, industry, copyright, the education sector and privacy – among many other areas. The UK will host a safety summit on the potential opportunities and threats posed by AI in November. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Reddit will start paying some people for their posts on the site. The new announcement comes after a run of controversies at the site. And it also follows changes at X/Twitter that saw users who pay the site’s monthly membership fee receive a share of the ad revenue from their tweets. Reddit’s new system will work slightly differently – with users able to donate money for posts that they find particularly useful. It comes with new changes to Reddit’s “Gold” system, which has long allowed users to give people special rewards for posts. That has traditionally given people virtual rewards including “Reddit Gold”. Now, Reddit will be getting rid of that system, and the existing gold will not transfer over. Instead, people will be able to buy golden upvotes: at a price of around $2 each. And that gold will be worth actual money. As on X, users will have to satisfy certain requirements before they can take part in the “Contributor Program”. They need to be at least 18, live in an eligible location, and have received enough upvotes – and if they have even more “karma”, as Reddit refers to feedback from users, they will receive more money for each gold they are awarded. There will be other limits on the way the system works. Users will have to earn at least 10 gold to be able to cash it out, at which point they will be given either 90 cents or $1 for their contributions. On X, the revenue sharing system has led to some controversy, with users writing intentionally inflammatory or misleading posts in an attempt to get more engagement and thereby drive up their revenues. Reddit says that users will be checking users’ posts to ensure they are abiding by its rules. The new system comes after a run of controversies at Reddit, including the loss of the old Reddit gold, which angered some users. That came soon after an even bigger outrage at the site, when the company announced it would start charging apps and bots to use its API, which led to a number of popular clients shutting down and protests that included many of the world’s biggest forums shutting down.

Engineers have figured out how to repurpose disused wind turbine blades to serve as bridges capable of supporting up to 30 tonnes of weight. Turbine blades have a lifespan of around 20 to 25 years, meaning hundreds of wind farms set up at the start of the century are now being upgraded. Decommissioned blades are typically sent to landfill or incinerated, with the thousands of non-biodegradable units now posing a major environmental challenge. In an effort to address the issue, five universities and research institutes in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US set up the Re-Wind Network, which has come up with several ways the blades can be recycled. Potential solutions include bus shelters, street furniture and telecommunications towers, however bridges already offer a practical way to repurpose the blades, with two footbridges successfully built in Draperstown and Cork. “With so many of these blades due to reach the end of their lifespan, we need to find ways to transform them into something useful,” said Jennifer McKinley, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Natural and Built Environment. “I am delighted that by working together we’ve been able to find a way to repurpose wind turbine blades. This can only be a good thing, as without intervention they would end up in landfill or they would have to be incinerated.” A third bridge is set to be built in Atlanta, Georgia, before the research team turn their focus towards increasing the length and size of the bridges. The researchers estimate that there will be around 8.6 million tonnes of scrapped wind turbine blades within the next 20 years, though the glass fibre reinforced polymer material could prove useful for building a huge range of objects, like motorway noise barriers and playground equipment. Three of the engineers from the Re-Wind Network project have also formed a spin-out startup called BladeBridge that will look to commercialise the idea, while also looking for new ways to reuse old turbine blades. “We are partnering with well-known designers here in Ireland to create a portfolio of durable and sustainable products, such as greenway furniture and bridges,” said BladeBridge co-founder Dr Angie Nagle. Read More Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production Scientists invent solar panels that work in a snow blizzard

A natural phenomenon consisting of polka-dot-style formations has been cropping up around the world, and scientists are baffled as to why. The circular-shaped patches of ground have been seen in deserts in Australia and Namibia but now experts believe they are more widespread than originally thought. Known as “fairy circles”, there are now 263 known sites across the globe where they can be found, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). They have been documented in 15 countries, across three continents, including the Sahel region of Africa, Madagascar, and in Middle-West Asia. And yet, despite the spread of these anomalies, scientists are still none the wiser about how they actually form. A team led by environmental scientist Emilio Guirado, of the University of Alicante in Spain, explained in their paper on the "intriguing" phenomenon: “We conducted a global and systematic assessment of fairy circle-like vegetation patterns and discovered hundreds of [fairy-circle]-like locations on three continents. “Our study provides insights into the ecology and biogeography of these fascinating vegetation patterns and the first atlas of their global distribution.” The mysterious circles appear in desert regions and can be as wide as 12 metres (39 feet) in diameter. They are almost always spaced out and rarely connect or overlap with one another. Several theories have been put forward as to what causes them, including, tiny insects, termites, and plant toxins. But, none have been accompanied by any significant evidence and some have been debunked completely. One significant factor limiting their study is they are often found in places that are difficult to access and are inhospitable. Locating the 263 different sites of “fairy circles” involved analysing high-resolution satellite imagery. Guirado and his team wrote in their paper: “[The sites] include those already identified in Namibia and Western Australia, as well as areas never described before, including the Sahel, Western Sahara, Horn of Africa, Madagascar, Southwest Asia, or Central and Southwest Australia. “By doing so, our study provides a global atlas of areas showing FC-like vegetation patterns and expands the known existence of this vegetation type to new countries and continents.” The team hopes that locating new sites will enable them to find common traits that may point towards their cause. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The US government aims to restore sweeping regulations for high-speed internet providers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, reviving "net neutrality" rules for the broadband industry -- and an ongoing debate about the internet's future.

ChatGPT has a new upgrade that lets the viral artificial intelligence tool “see, hear, and speak”, according to OpenAI. The update for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot will allow users to have voice conversations with the AI chatbot and interact with it using images as well, the firm said in a blog post on Monday. “ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak,” the firm also said in a post on X/Twitter. The features will be rolled out “over the next two weeks” and enable users to “use voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation” with the AI assistant. With the new features, ChatGPT can be used to “request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate,” according to the company, bringing it closer to the services offered by Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri AI assistants. Providing an example of how the feature works, OpenAI shared a demo in which a user asks ChatGPT to come up with a story about “the super-duper sunflower hedgehog named Larry”. The chatbot replies to the query with a human-like voice and also responds to questions such as “What was his house like?” and “Who is his best friend?” OpenAI said the voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech model that generates human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech, the company said. “We collaborated with professional voice actors to create each of the voices. We also use Whisper, our open-source speech recognition system, to transcribe your spoken words into text,” the company said. The AI firm believes the new voice technology is capable of crafting realistic-sounding synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech, and could opens doors to many creative applications. However, the company also cautioned that the new capabilities may also present new risks “such as the potential for malicious actors to impersonate public figures or commit fraud”. Another major update to the AI chatbot allows users to upload an image and ask ChatGPT about it. “Troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data,” OpenAI explained. This new feature, according to the company, also lets users focus on a specific part of the image using a drawing tool in the ChatGPT mobile app. This kind of multimodal recognition by the chatbot has been forecast for a while, and its new understanding of images is powered by multimodal GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. These models can apply their language reasoning skills to a range of images, including photographs, screenshots and documents. OpenAI said the new features will roll out within the next two weeks in the app for paying subscribers of ChatGPT’s Plus and Enterprise services. “We’re excited to roll out these capabilities to other groups of users, including developers, soon after,” the AI firm said. Read More Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages Meta plans to develop chatbot with ‘sassy robot’ persona for young users, report says ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Meta plans to develop ‘sassy robot’ chatbot for young users, report says Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say