Scientists have long known that migrating birds and homing pigeons navigate in part by sensing the Earth's magnetic fields, especially at night or in overcast conditions when visual landmarks or sunshine are in short supply. But exactly where this magneto-sensing occurs in the body—and the mechanism that enables it—remains a matter of intense debate. A new paper published in the journal Science suggests that homing pigeons have iron-rich immune cells in their livers that help them detect magnetic fields and transmit that information to the brain.

There are three primary hypotheses for how birds might sense Earth's geomagnetic field. One is a compass-like mechanism, whereby the Earth exerts a pull on magnetic particles in a bird's upper beak that relays directional information via a large nerve in the cranium. A second is that it happens biologically via cellular ion channels sensitive to voltage, enabling birds to sense changes in the magnetic field. And a third suggests that physical effects on retinal pigments enable birds to detect photons and send signals to the brain, although this mechanism is really only viable in the light.

None fully explain how animals can sense magnetic fields. However, “We had some clues that the liver and spleen have magnetic properties, because they break down red blood cells and so store much iron in the body,” said co-author Clivia Lisowski of the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn. This refers to a 2015 paper suggesting that red pulp macrophages in the spleens of mice and humans are intrinsically superparamagnetic and hence more sensitive to magnetic fields. But it wasn't clear if those properties were involved in any kind of magnetoreception.

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Most of the Steam Deck imitators on the market right now use AMD silicon, specifically the Ryzen Z-series chips. These are the same chips AMD makes for regular laptops, but with different power settings better suited to a compact handheld system. There are handhelds based on Intel silicon ( MSI’s Claw is the main one), but Intel hasn’t yet tried making silicon marketed specifically for that purpose.

Today, the company is throwing its hat in the ring with two Intel Arc G-series processors, which will allow gaming handhelds to leverage the company's genuinely quite good Arc B-series integrated GPUs. Intel says that several Arc G-series handhelds will arrive "starting in June 2026, with broader availability throughout the year." These systems will include a new MSI Claw model, a Predator Atlas 8 from Acer, and a device from OneXPlayer .

Intel normally uses its "Arc" branding for integrated and dedicated GPUs, but in this case, the "Arc" brand encompasses the entire chip, including the CPU, GPU, NPU, and other components.

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A few days after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a plan that would have given the federal government power to vet frontier AI models over fears that it might hobble innovation, Illinois lawmakers passed the nation's strongest AI safety law.

On Wednesday, the Illinois legislature passed SB 315 . If Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signs the bill into law, the largest AI firms would be required to submit public safety plans and annual reports summarizing the results of independent, third-party safety testing of their frontier models. They would also have to report any critical safety incidents to the state within 72 hours—or within 24 hours if there's potentially "an imminent risk of death or serious physical harm." And their employees will have a clear avenue for reporting emerging safety risks that companies may be tempted to downplay, with protections provided by the state's whistleblower laws.

On X, Pritzker confirmed his intent to sign, proclaiming that "Illinois is leading the nation in holding Big Tech accountable."

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Well, that was fast. Less than 24 hours after Valve announced renewed availability of the Steam Deck OLED (at a massively increased MSRP), the handheld is once again listed as "out of stock" in the US and Canada. Spot checks of other regional Steam stores on Thursday morning showed the hardware as still available across Europe and Australia for the time being, as well as in Asian countries through Valve's sales partner Komodo.

While it's hard to know from the outside just how many Steam Deck units sold at the new inflated price, those sales were enough to once again boost the hardware to the top of Steam's Top Sellers list . That list is based on total revenue over the last 24 hours , though, so the $789 Steam Deck could easily have sold many fewer distinct copies than the highest-ranked software on the current list, the $70 007 First Light .

Valve's Steam Deck store page notes that the handheld "may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages." But that warning first appeared on the store site back in February , and stock-tracking websites show there have only been exceedingly brief availability windows for Steam Deck purchases between then and now.

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An experimental gene-editing therapy that aims to lower bad cholesterol for the long-term after a single infusion is off to a positive start in an early clinical trial.

Researchers running a Phase I safety trial for the drug, dubbed VERVE-102, published interim results from just 35 patients this week in the New England Journal of Medicine . Though the numbers are small and the analysis is preliminary, VERVE-102 appeared safe, with no serious adverse events reported from the treatment, even at the largest doses. The most significant finding was a temporary, mild increase of a liver enzyme that suggested minor injury in the liver, where the drug works.

The small amount of data also hints that the drug is effective. The subgroup of participants who received the largest dose have seen their bad cholesterol—that is, their low-density lipoprotein or LDL—drop 62 percent, to a mean of 78 mg per deciliter. For people with high cholesterol—like the participants in the trial—a reduction of this magnitude could cut the risk of cardiovascular disease from plaque buildup in arteries by an estimated 50 percent if it's sustained for over 20 years. The trial only has up to 18 months of follow-up data so far, but from that, the positive effects of VERVE-102 seem to be holding up. The LDL reductions have been sustained in all the subgroups.

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Forecasters are calling for below-average activity this hurricane season, which begins Monday, June 1.

The National Weather Service is predicting eight to 14 named storms, including three to six hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes of category 3, 4, or 5 strength, packing winds of 111 mph or greater. By comparison, a typical season is characterized by 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. The season ends November 30.

“It just takes one,” said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service. “Now is the time to start thinking about your hurricane preparedness.”

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Over four years after a California agency sued Tesla over an alleged pattern of racial discrimination, a judge has dismissed Tesla's motion to throw out the lawsuit.

The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) said today that the Alameda County Superior Court order clears a path for the case to go to trial, which is currently scheduled for July 20. Tesla "employment practices remain rooted in some of the ugliest relics of the past," CRD Director Kevin Kish said. "Black workers are paid less for their work. They are subjected to racist slurs. They face threats of being fired for speaking out... We look forward to having our day in court to hold Tesla accountable and to protect the rights of workers in our state.”

The lawsuit alleges widespread discrimination, especially at Tesla's Fremont factory, and seeks financial damages and injunctive relief. At trial, the case may include claims of discrimination going back to June 2018. The judge partially granted Tesla's request to block claims under the statute of limitations, but only for incidents that happened before June 18, 2018.

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Over the decades, there has been no shortage of sites using clever techniques to covertly track visitors’ browsing histories , device fingerprints , and log keystrokes and mouse movements in real time. Even Meta and Yandex were recently caught joining in the privacy-invasive free-for-all .

Now sites have a new way to spy on their visitors: measuring subtle interactions with their solid-state drives. The technique, named FROST (fingerprinting remotely using OPFS-based SSD timing), allows sites to monitor other sites a visitor is viewing and what apps are open on their devices.

A side channel based on contention

The technique, laid out in a research paper , exploits a side channel , a form of leak resulting from physical manifestations such as electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or the time required to complete a task. By measuring the manifestations, attackers can decrypt encrypted traffic and infer other confidential data.

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NASA satellites designed to observe cyclone wind speeds and collapsing ice sheets have also proven capable of identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers. That could help monitor high-risk areas for aircraft and ships navigating the growing prevalence of GPS interference worldwide.

Two different NASA satellite systems showed how they could locate a known but mysterious GPS jammer within several kilometers of its position in Iran, according to an experiment by Sean Gorman , CEO and cofounder of the location-based technology company Zephr.xyz that was detailed in the magazine GPS World . Such jammers use strong signals to overpower the weaker radio signals coming from US-operated GPS satellites and other global navigation satellite systems.

Such NASA satellites cannot perform “near-real time monitoring” or pinpoint the exact location of GPS jammers, said Clara Chew , principal scientist and lead of the GNSS systems and data team at the California-based satellite manufacturer Muon Space, who was not involved in the study. But Chew told Ars that identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers “could potentially be helpful for flight planning” or for “indicating high risk areas for maritime shipping.”

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