Submissions Open for National Science Video Contest - Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine

Some preprint servers report being flooded with submissions. Credit: Michael Szebor/NatureIn a bid to tackle the deluge of manuscripts it now receives, the preprint server arXiv has announced a cap of two papers per month for each submitting researcher, which began on 1 October. The move follows a steep rise in submissions driven mainly by the slop generated by artificial-intelligence tools, says Steinn Sigurðsson, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and scientific director of arXiv. In September, 40,000 preprints were uploaded to arXiv, up from about 30,000 between March and July. Closing the floodgates The cap is the latest measure introduced by arXiv to prevent its nearly 300 voluntary moderators from being completely overwhelmed by submissions, says Sigurðsson. They are now collectively checking about 1,000 manuscripts per day. This step is “holding up too many legitimate papers,” Sigurðsson says, noting that nearly 4,000 submissions are currently waiting to be posted on the site. Some see the limit as entirely reasonable.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Orcas are hunting great White Sharks around the world, scientists confirmThe killing of great whites by orcas has been reported in the waters of South Africa, California, and Australia, and the implications that the hunting behaviour would have on the marine ecosystem have been considered. In fact, it all started back on May 3, 2017, when the body of a female great white, weighing 1,100 kilograms, washed ashore in Gansbaai, close to Cape Town, with a deep gash through which its 90-kilogram liver had been extracted. Five more corpses of great whites appeared with similar wounds in the coming months, as claimed by shark biologist Alison Towner of Rhodes University. Two adult males, called Port and Starboard, who are supposed to be brothers judging by their dorsal fins that fold differently, were identified as the most probable perpetrators. The connection was officially established in 2022 based on video footage of a drone that caught three orcas chasing and biting a 3-meter great white off Mossel Bay. The sharks quickly disappeared from Dyer Island, one of the best places in the world to witness a great white.