Emily Smith

cyano66/GettyBy Donna Lu Artificial intelligence has finally cracked the biggest challenge in poker: beating top professionals in six-player, no-limit Texas Hold ’Em, the most popular variant of the game. Over 20,000 hands of online poker, the AI beat 15 of the world’s top poker players, each of whom has won more than $1 million playing…

Antonio Guillem/GettyBy Michael Le Page The transmission and viewing of online videos generates 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or nearly 1 per cent of global emissions. On-demand video services such as Netflix account for a third of this, with online pornographic videos generating another third. This means the watching of pornographic videos…

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe landed successfully on a distant asteroid for a final touchdown on July 11BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images By New Scientist Staff and Press AssociationThe spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has successfully landed on a distant asteroid and completed its mission of collecting underground samples that scientists hope will provide clues to the origin of the solar…

Environment 11 July 2019 A post-EU environmental watchdog could be ready soonRussell Hart / Alamy Stock Photo By Adam VaughanThe government has begun preparations to have its environmental watchdog ready within a month of a no deal Brexit, a source close to the process has told New Scientist. In a sign of how seriously the…

Health | Analysis 10 July 2019 Which drug to choose?Maskot/plainpicture By Clare WilsonWhen it comes to healthcare, new isn’t necessarily better. An analysis of 216 medicines launched in Germany since 2011, most of which would have been made available throughout Europe, has found that only a quarter brought significant benefits over existing treatments, according to…

Health 10 July 2019 Getty/Andrew Bret WallisBy New Scientist staff and Press Association Drinking an average of just under 200 ml of a sugar-sweetened drink or fruit juice each day has been linked to an 18 per cent increase in cancer risk. Researchers from the French Public Health Agency and the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team…

Hannah Peters/Getty ImagesBy Ruby Prosser Scully People who hold authoritarian views or endorse unequal social hierarchies are less willing to make sacrifices for the environment than the average person. These findings come from a study of thousands of people in New Zealand. Samantha Stanley at the University of Canberra and her colleagues looked at the…

Mind | Analysis 10 July 2019 We are all different – something personality tests can fail to captureArcher/plainpicture By Jessica HamzelouPersonality tests are widely used by researchers, employers and even to shape policy, but a new study has found that the most widely used measures of personality doesn’t seem work for people in low- and…

Shifting to electric vehicles is an essential part of tackling climate change and China is doing far better than the West Technology 10 July 2019 BYD Auto sells more electric cars than any other firm in the worldChen Wen/China News Service/VCG/Getty By Donna LuFORGET Tesla – the world’s biggest electric car manufacturer is a Chinese…

Helium’s essential for party balloons, but also for MRI scanners, physics experiments and space rockets. But supplies on Earth are getting dangerously low, warns Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Earth | Comment 10 July 2019 Luxx Images/GettyBy Chanda Prescod-Weinstein WHEN I was 4, my favourite book was Balloonia by Audrey Wood. It tells the story of a little…