Apate says its decoy AI victims have kept scammers talking for 17 years
Apate, an Australian startup, says its AI decoy victims have held 2.5 million scam conversations and wasted 17 years of scammers' time. Divided out, that is about 3.6 minutes a conversation, so customers are buying the details the agents extract.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption40
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
Macquarie and UNSW researchers report in PNAS that the 2 mm honey bee stinger is a double-piston micro-pump with continuous venom flow. The valve geometry would explain a detached stinger's delivery; the tests were in gel and a 3D-printed model.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence62
Honey bee stinger pumps venom with two collapsible pistons, high-speed video shows
Macquarie University researchers used high-speed video to show that a honey bee's 2-millimeter stinger pumps venom with two collapsible pistons. Each lancet carries a valve, and the pair pump in opposite directions to give a continuous flow.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence65
Macquarie University researchers sorted brolga feathers collected from 2009 to 2023 into two genetic clusters, Victorian and northern. Simulations of population bottlenecks put the southern group, fewer than 1,000 adults, at higher risk of losing genetic diversity.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−5
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence66
A vector tracing of one surviving photograph revives the case that Meretneith ruled as king
The mud stopper excavated at Saqqara in the 1940s is lost, and so is the glass plate. The reading now rests on a scan of the one surviving print, and on two of the four royal emblems in a single row of signs.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives72
- Confidence42
Macquarie charges $2,174 a unit for psychology now taught partly by a chatbot
Two mandatory psychology units lost their in-person classes this semester and kept their fee, which makes Macquarie an early read on whether students will pay the same money for teaching a machine now handles.
Reality
- Evidence54
- Adoption63
- Hype gap+16
- Incentives71
- Confidence58
Macquarie's echidna puggle turns nine captive animals into a monotreme research colony
Zoos have bred short-beaked echidnas before, but repeated attempts at a dedicated research colony failed. Oliver Griffith's group at Macquarie has now reared a pouch baby, which is the precondition for sampling monotreme reproduction on a schedule.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption24
- Hype gap+16
- Incentives58
- Confidence55
Direct measurements at the Beijing Meteorological Tower found trees supplied a tenth of VOC emissions but nearly half the reactivity that drives ozone, almost all of it isoprene.
Reality
- Evidence74
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives45
- Confidence66
Lead-free perovskite sensor reads ammonia at 1 ppm, and its makers say they now know why
A KIMS-led team reports an antimony perovskite that responds to ammonia in 13 seconds at 100 ppm, plus a mechanism that is intercalation rather than surface adsorption.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives72
- Confidence40