Science: Slowly Accepting a Non-Materialist View of the Mind? - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Artistic depiction of Invictibellatrix amberina alongside contemporary fauna in the lower part of the Wessex Formation. Credit: Sergey Krasovskiy and Pedro Salas, Royal Society Open Science. The first thing people think of when talking about a paleontological discovery is that it takes place in the field. Dinosaur fossils gradually emerge after the meticulous use of special instruments. But a group of scientists has just made an important discovery without digging it up, instead searching through stored drawers.

AustraliaAqua Paradiso was an exhibition curated in 2022 by the National Asian Culture Center (ACC). This contemporary art project brought together 11 artists from Asia and around the world to explore the theme of “water” from aesthetic, philosophical, and ecological perspectives. The exhibition took place over a three-month period at ACC in Gwangju, offering a multilayered examination of the primordial  nature of life contained within water and its relationship with human society. Aqua Paradiso now continues in 2026 as a touring exhibition at Korean Cultural Centres in India and Australia. This edition features three of the Korean artists who took part in the original exhibition: Hyewon Kwon, Boo Jihyun, and Eunhae Jung (eco orot). Each uses a different visual language to approach the responsiveness and dynamics of water and the transformative sensibilities of the Anthropocene era. More than just a resource or part of the backdrop, the exhibition looks at water as a sensory presence and ecological actor. Ancient civilizations viewed water as the emotional product of transcendent deities, harboring feelings of the sublime in the face of its overwhelming majesty.

A Japanese spacecraft rocketed toward Mars on Tuesday on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples. Five of the world’s space agencies joined forces for the five-year mission that will attempt to land a robotic prospector plus a rover on Phobos, the larger and closer of Mars’ two pint-sized moons. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which is leading the bold sampling effort, launched the spacecraft before dawn from the country’s main spaceport on Tanegashima Island. Officials declared success an hour later when the spacecraft separated as planned from the rocket’s upper stage. Flight controllers burst into applause and jumped to their feet, shaking hands and embracing. No one has managed to get samples from Mars or its moons yetWhile NASA has successfully landed nine spacecraft on Mars over the past 50 years and China scored a 2021 touchdown, no one has ever reached Phobos or its sidekick Deimos. And no one has managed to fetch samples from Mars, let alone its moons. If successful, bits of dust, soil and rocks from Phobos will arrive on Earth in 2031.

HHMI investigator Harmit Malik is uncovering the evolutionary rules that guide genetic conflicts—competitions between different entities trying to maximize their success at the expense of another. Credit: Robert Hood The Malik Lab thrives on competition. But for HHMI investigator Harmit Malik and his team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, it's the genomes—not the people—that are in conflict. The lab studies rapid evolution—the genetic changes that happen in a species over a few generations rather than thousands of years. These fast changes are often fueled by genetic conflicts—competitions between different entities trying to maximize their success at the expense of another.