Manganese dioxide can convert amino acids into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) without requiring methane, solving a long-standing puzzle about the origin of this key prebiotic molecule on early Earth, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. Although HCN is central to origin-of-life theories, recent evidence suggests early Earth's atmosphere didn’t contain sufficient methane needed for classic HCN-producing reactions. The newly found chemical pathway shows that HCN could instead have been continuously supplied from abundant amino acids.

A new machine-learning-based approach to mapping forests in high resolution and simulating their future growth, developed at Michigan State University and Virginia Tech, could help landowners figure out which trees to cut and which to leave standing to enhance pine profits.

“AI should be able to say ‘I’m Not Sure’ on its own.”

A new approach has been proposed to address the problem of “overconfidence”—one of the most critical risks of artificial intelligence (AI) in areas such as autonomous driving and medical diagnosis, where AI shows high confidence in incorrect predictions. A KAIST research team has developed a training method that enables AI to recognize situations involving unfamiliar or unseen knowledge, laying the foundation for reducing overconfidence and improving reliability.