Every four years, at an international gathering of mathematicians, the subject's youngest and brightest are honored with the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

This year's recipients, announced on Wednesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, include one of the youngest ever: Peter Scholze, a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn who is 30 years old.

Two weeks ago, Peter Woit, a professor at Columbia University who blogs about mathematics and physics, was among those who anticipated that Dr. Scholze would receive the medal. Dr. Woit said Dr. Scholze was "by far the most talented arithmetic geometer of his generation."

By custom, Fields medals are bestowed to mathematicians 40 years old or younger. That means Dr. Scholze would have still been eligible for another two rounds of medals. The medal, first awarded in 1936, was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician. The youngest winner, Jean-Pierre Serre in 1954, was 27.

Scientists at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have discovered a behavior in materials called cuprates that suggests they carry current in a way entirely different from conventional metals such as copper.

The research, published today in the journal Science, adds new meaning to the materials' moniker, "strange metals."

Cuprates are high-temperature superconductors (HTS), meaning they can carry current without any loss of energy at somewhat warmer temperatures than conventional, low-temperature superconductors (LTS). Although scientists understand the physics of LTS, they haven't yet cracked the nut of HTS materials. Exactly how the electrons travel through these materials remains the biggest mystery in the field.

Bayer and BASF, among Europe's largest makers of farm supplies, all but ruled out pursuing genetic plant breeding at home after the EU ruled the technology should be regulated like genetically modified organisms (GMO).

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said on Wednesday mutagenesis-based gene-editing methods such as CRISPR/Cas9, which can rearrange targeted bits of DNA, fall under rules that now apply to genetic modification via strands of DNA from a different species.

"As we run a global platform, it would mean that basically these applications of these instruments would not be used in Europe and Germany. So overall, that does not impact us as a company too much, but as a European, I'm worried about what that means to the Europeans," Chief Executive Martin Brudermueller told analysts in a call on Friday.

It's hard to imagine an ice age would be the ideal climate for horses, but almost 12,000 years ago, it was. Swathed in short shrubs and dry grass, the open tundra was a perfect place to gather, graze, and keep an eye out for predators. But when natural global warming turned up the thermostat on the Pleistocene period-or what some refer to as "the Last Ice Age"-the grasslands disappeared, and so did the wild horses.

At least that's what new research suggests. Ludovic Orlando, a professor of molecular archaeology at the University of Copenhagen, helped create a database of more than 3,000 horse fossils spanning 44,000 years-one of the largest collections to date-and noticed a steep decline in wild horse populations across Eurasia once the Holocene period (the beginning of the warm weather we live in today) hit 11,700 years ago.

Orlando says it was likely the disintegration of habitats that led wild horses to a similar fate (although not so permanent) as fellow prairie animals like the woolly mammoth.

A court has ruled that plants modified with CRISPR technology are subject to the restrictions of the 2001 GMO Directive

In 2001, the European Parliament passed a law known as the GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Directive, which allows any of the 28 member states of the European Union to implement a blanket ban on the growth of GMO crops or import of GM organisms within their borders. But with the advent and rapid rise of CRISPR gene-editing technology, the definition of what is and what is not a GMO has gotten fuzzy. Scientists were hoping the EU restrictions on GMOs would not apply to crops created through CRISPR gene editing, but Arthur Nelson at The Guardian reports the Court of Justice of the European Union has weighed in on the issue, ruling that gene edited crops are also classified as GMOs and subject to the same stringent regulations.

The ruling comes after the French agricultural trade union, Confédération Paysanne and a consortium of other groups asked the court to interpret the GMO Directive in light of the new emerging technologies.

A new radio telescope has picked up milliseconds-long radio bursts originating in a mysterious source from across the universe. Exploding stars and black holes, as well as alien civilizations, have been cited as possible explanations.

The CHIME (which stands for the Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) telescope, located in British Columbia, could pick up the first-ever "fast radio bursts" (FRB) at frequencies below 700 MHz, according to a report by Patrick Boyle from McGill University on Astronomer's Telegram, which space researchers use to share the information about new discoveries. The signal, named FRB 180725A, was detected on July 25th and lasted milliseconds.

Besides this signal at 580 MHz, the scientists also detected several weaker signals, at frequencies as low as 400 MHz. They were registered in the day as well as at night. Although the results are said to be preliminary, the astronomers still posted them on-line to encourage fellow scientists to "to search for repeated bursts at all wavelengths."

British oceanographers have concluded a decades-long investigation into the Bermuda Triangle and finally determined what is behind the hundreds of mysterious disappearances in the region.

The mysterious 700,000sqm triangle, stretching between the tip of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, and has been the center of public fascination for over 100 years, when reports first started emerging of an unusual amount of shipwrecks in the region. The New York Times claimed at least 50 ships, 20 aircraft, and more than 1,000 people have succumbed to the Triangle over the past 500 years.

Now, researchers from the University of Southampton say ships are being sucked into the ocean by "rogue waves" over 30 meters (100ft) in height, and explained their theory on the Channel 5 documentary The Bermuda Triangle Enigma.

A team of Italian researchers has discovered a salt lake on Mars using the Marsis radar on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. Sputnik spoke with Roberto Orosei, a researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and the Marsis' scientific director, to find out how important the discovery is for the future of humankind.

Sputnik:The news about your discovery has spread throughout the world. It's the first confirmation of the presence of water on Mars. What exactly does the discovery mean?

Roberto Orosei: This is a subglacial lake, similar to those in the Arctic Region or Greenland, such as Lake Vostok, which is the Arctic's largest subglacial lake. The Martian lake is located under a kilometer and a half of ice and it was discovered thanks to a radar similar to those used to study the glaciers on Earth. This type of radar is able to penetrate below the surface and obtain echoes from the material under the ice.

In that case, the water was recognizable because it better reflects the radio waves. When the radar is over a subglacial lake, the echoes coming from the bottom suddenly become very strong and even stronger than the echoes coming from the surface of the ice.

A patent application filed by Facebook in 2015 reveals some of the spycraft behind the company's ongoing quest to mine user data and leverage it for profit. This particular technology, however, isn't just about monitoring what you click or like as you create a treasure trove of data for the company to gleefully do what they please with.

Instead, it eliminates the need for any conscious action at all on the part of the user by using emotional recognition technology to interpret facial and physical expressions of mood, affect, and emotional reaction and deliver "content" - the media industry's catch-all phrase for everything from banal advertisements for dog food and diapers to propaganda efforts launched by Russian Intelligence Services on American social media platforms in an effort to destabilize the country - calibrated for each of those emotions.

How could Facebook possibly see you? Easy: your phone or computer's camera. That electrical tape has to come off eventually.

The patent application, titled "Techniques for emotion detection and content delivery," begins with a faulty syllogism that illustrates the simplicity of thought reigning at Facebook. "Users of computing devices spend increasing amounts of time browsing streams of posts on social networks, news articles, video, audio, or other digital content," goes Facebook's reasoning. "The amount of information available to users is also increasing. Thus, a need exists for delivering content [to] a user that may be of current interest to them" and that a "user's interests may be determined based upon their current emotional state."

Who would have guessed that raising the cost of energy with regressive carbon taxes would harm a vital, low margin energy intensive economic activity?

Climate taxes on agriculture could lead to more food insecurity than climate change itself

• Date:July 30, 2018
• Source:International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
• Summary:New research has found that a single climate mitigation scheme applied to all sectors, such as a global carbon tax, could have a serious impact on agriculture and result in far more widespread hunger and food insecurity than the direct impacts of climate change. Smarter, inclusive policies are necessary instead.

New IIASA-led research has found that a single climate mitigation scheme applied to all sectors, such as a global carbon tax, could have a serious impact on agriculture and result in far more widespread hunger and food insecurity than the direct impacts of climate change. Smarter, inclusive policies are necessary instead.

This research, published in Nature Climate Change, is the first international study to compare across models the effects of climate change on agriculture with the costs and effects of mitigation policies, and look at subsequent effects on food security and the risk of hunger.

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The researchers stress that their results should not be used to argue against greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts. Climate mitigation efforts are vital. Instead, the research shows the importance of "smart," targeted policy design, particularly in agriculture. When designing climate mitigation policies, policymakers need to scrutinize other factors and development goals more closely, rather than focusing only on the goal of reducing emissions.

"The findings are important to help realize that agriculture should receive a very specific treatment when it comes to climate change policies," says Hasegawa. "Carbon pricing schemes will not bring any viable options for developing countries where there are highly vulnerable populations. Mitigation in agriculture should instead be integrated with development policies."