Science

Climate Change: Salvation Through Poetry
ChronicleClimate Change: Salvation Through Poetry

The current heatwave scorching Europe and the drought gripping Lebanon trace back to a single root cause: climate disruption driven by global warming and soaring CO₂ emissions—both reflecting what Pope Francis memorably called “despotic anthropocentrism,” a worldview that elevates humankind above all else, heedless of the rich diversity ...

IRCAD Lebanon: The Liver and Pancreas Go Robotic
IRCAD Lebanon: The Liver and Pancreas Go Robotic

Under the luminous ceilings of the Clinique du Levant, IRCAD Lebanon officially launched yesterday its very first international course on robotic liver and pancreas surgery. A first in Lebanon, described by its president, Dr. Antoine Maalouf, as “a quantum leap in regional surgical practice.” “What we are launching here goes beyond the ...

How Robots and Raw Earth Are Redefining Homebuilding
SpotlightHow Robots and Raw Earth Are Redefining Homebuilding

They look like cocoons, settled on the ground as if they had naturally grown there. No straight lines, no concrete, just earth, carefully layered by two robotic arms moving with the grace of a choreographed dance. In 200 hours—barely eight days—an entire house takes shape. Printed on site using only natural materials. Its name? TECLA. Its ...

What If Whales Could Speak? AI Is Listening In
SpotlightWhat If Whales Could Speak? AI Is Listening In

For decades, scientists believed whales sang only to navigate, attract mates or maintain social bond. But recent research by the SETI Institute and the University of California, Davis is challenging this view. Using AI, researchers have identified remarkably structured acoustic patterns and behaviors suggesting some cetaceans may be attempting to ...

ALMA Telescope Reveals Unprecedented Detail in Early Galaxies
ALMA Telescope Reveals Unprecedented Detail in Early Galaxies

Chile's ALMA observatory, which houses some of the world's most powerful telescopes, has captured its most detailed images to date of the building blocks of the early universe – primarily cold gases, dust, and stellar light in 39 galaxies. "We've never achieved so much detail and depth in galaxies from the early universe," Sergio Martin, head ...

When Students Stop Thinking: The Hidden Cost of AI-Written Essays
SpotlightWhen Students Stop Thinking: The Hidden Cost of AI-Written Essays

When Jocelyn Leitzinger had her university students write about times in their lives they had witnessed discrimination, she noticed that a woman named Sally was the victim in many of the stories. "It was very clear that ChatGPT had decided this is a common woman's name," said Leitzinger, who teaches an undergraduate class on business and society ...

Lebanon: A Laboratory for a Pharmaceutical Industry in Full Transformation
Lebanon: A Laboratory for a Pharmaceutical Industry in Full Transformation

Lebanon has always played a central role in the health field in the Middle East. A land of renowned hospitals, foreign-trained doctors, Gulf patients and proven pharmaceutical know-how, the 1990s saw the return in force of multinational drug companies, firmly established in a country relying on imports as a guarantee of quality in a liberal ...

Europe on High Alert as Surprise Early Heatwave Creeps North
Europe on High Alert as Surprise Early Heatwave Creeps North

Europe on high alert as surprise early heatwave creeps north Paris, France 01/07/2025 - 19:03 (UTC + 3)   Schools were partially shut in France, iconic monuments closed to tourists, and cities across Europe put on high alert as a record-breaking early summer heatwave spread across the continent Tuesday. Withering conditions that ...

AI is Learning to Lie, Scheme, and Threaten its Creators
AI is Learning to Lie, Scheme, and Threaten its Creators

The world's most advanced AI models are exhibiting troubling new behaviors - lying, scheming, and even threatening their creators to achieve their goals. In one particularly jarring example, under threat of being unplugged, Anthropic's latest creation Claude 4 lashed back by blackmailing an engineer and threatened to reveal an extramarital ...

CNRS 2025 Report: 24 out of 38 Lebanese Beaches Deemed Safe for Swimming
CNRS 2025 Report: 24 out of 38 Lebanese Beaches Deemed Safe for Swimming

Each year, as crowds head to the Mediterranean for relief from the heat, a dedicated team of researchers begins its work. This is the annual mission of the National Center for Marine Sciences, part of the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), which for years has surveyed the health of 38 public beaches from Tripoli to Tyre. Private ...

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Spotlight"Mirror Bacteria": Could Lab-Created Life Trigger the Next Pandemic?

What if a completely foreign form of life—built according to rules opposite to our own—were to emerge from a laboratory? Long confined to the realm of science fiction, the idea is gaining new relevance with recent advances in synthetic biology. At the heart of the concern is the possible creation of a “mirror bacterium,” an organism based ...

James Webb Telescope Discovers Its First Exoplanet
James Webb Telescope Discovers Its First Exoplanet

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its first exoplanet, astronomers said Wednesday, capturing rare direct images of the relatively small world in the Earth's galactic backyard. The telescope, which can see farther into the universe than anything before it, has turbocharged the search for planets beyond the Solar System since coming ...