Science & Tech News

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that the personal information of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, up from a previous news media estimate of more than 50 million. Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer shared the higher number as part of a corporate blog post about steps the company was taking to restrict the personal data available to third-party app developers. Most of the 87 million people were in the United States, Schroepfer wrote in the blog post.

The lowercase 'looptail g' is used in most novels and newspapers yet a new study from John Hopkins University in Baltimore shows a surprising number of adults don't know what it looks like. Many of those tested couldn't pick out a looptail 'g' from a lineup (pictured) and a shocking number were unaware that two forms of the letter - one usually handwritten, the other typeset - exist. According to the researchers, the phenomenon likely occurs because we don't learn to write the letter's looptail form at school, meaning few of us commit it to memory.

An international team of scientists led by the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, applied a range of sophisticated computer-based methods and simulations (bottom left image) to investigate the benefits of the Neanderthal skull (top left) shape. They revealed the feature helped Neanderthals (right image) to breathe in more air while they were running and hunting. The species' jutting craniums may have also helped them to adapt to the cold when they migrated to Eurasia from Africa around 500,000 years ago. Previously, researchers have suggested the species' skull shape evolved because Neanderthals made heavy use of their large front teeth, perhaps even employing them as tools.

The smash shocked local residents and regional officials who had gathered in the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude on Monday to watch the drone's maiden flight. The drone was sent to deliver a small package to a neighbouring village in the sparsely populated Buryatia region, more than 4,400km east of Moscow. Video footage showed the drone lifting off from a miniature launch pad bearing Russian Post's blue and white logo. The unmanned aerial vehicle buzzed through the air for several seconds before losing height and crashing into a three-storey residential building at top speed.

Ex-Nasa scientist Robert Simmon has taken 'angled' photos of some of Earth's fascinating vertical landscapes, from Shanghai's towering Pudong district (left image) to the two-mile-high (3.3km) mountain Monte Fitz Roy in Patagonia. The 'tilted' photographs reveal mesmerising vertical details rarely captured by orbiting cameras. Using an array of 13 satellites, Mr Simmon said the photos are 'like getting a view out the window of an aeroplane 450 kilometres [280 miles] high'. In one picture, Mr Simmon captured the Pearl-Qatar (top right), a man-made island that extends from the northern fringes of Doha into the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. In another snap, the satellite constellation photographed the bustling downtown area of Houston, Texas (bottom right). The group of sky-high buildings is surrounded by miles of low-rise structures and winding freeways, with Minute Maid Park - home to Major League Baseball team the Houston Astros - also visible in the photograph.

The European Space Agency has released an eerie photo that appears to show a dark, animalistic figure with glowing eyes stretching across the night sky. To some it appears the likeness of a fox, while others may see the shape of a cat. But, the bizarre shape is, in fact, a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The stunning new image comes from data collected by ESA’s Gaia satellite, which launched in 2013 and has since charted more than a billion stars.

The hip bone (inset) of the 4.4-million-year-old skeleton Ardi, uncovered in Ethiopia, suggests the early ancestor evolved an upright, human-like gait without losing her tree-climbing prowess. The study helps settle a long-standing debate about how quickly our ancestors began to amble like humans and shows that ancient hominins didn't have to sacrifice their nimble climbing skills to walk upright. 'Ardi' - the world's most complete early hominid skeleton - was a female member of the primate species Ardipithecus ramidus. Her unusual skeleton, which some have claimed to be the oldest member of the human family tree, has baffled scientists since it was discovered in Ethiopia in 1994. Short, hairy and with long arms, Ardi roamed the forests of Africa 4.4 million years ago, but scientists were unsure whether she was more closely related to humans than to apes.

Researchers at Harvard University made the startling discovery by studying what we already know about the masses of particles and how they interact. The demise of our ever-expanding universe is predicted in the Standard Model of particle physics, used by scientists to explain the basic building blocks of matter. Under it, a force called dark energy is driving accelerating expansion of the universe (pictured, left) which will continue until everything fades to a cold, featureless abyss. But a new study suggests the end will come with a bang, rather than a whimper, in around 10x139 years. This graphic (top right) represents how a Higgs boson could begin to collapse. Experts say the curvature of space-time surrounding a microscopic black hole could begin the collapse of the Higgs boson (bottom right).

China's out of control Tiangong 1 space station smashed into Earth at 17,000mph off the coast of Tahiti on Monday morning and mostly disintegrated as it hit the planet's atmosphere. The demise of the nine-ton space station had been the subject of scientific speculation for months amid fears large chunks of it could come down near population centres. Experts had been unable to predict where the installation, which is roughly the size of a school bus, would come down but in the end it re-entered the earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific. The craft re-entered the atmosphere around 8.15am Beijing time (0015GMT) and the 'vast majority' of it had burnt up upon re-entry, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said. Just minutes before, their best estimate predicted that it was expected to re-enter off the Brazilian coast in the South Atlantic near the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Tesla says 38-year-old Walter Huang, who was killed in the accident on March 23, did not have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the crash. But according to Huang's family, the Mountain View resident complained 'before' the accident about the car's autopilot feature.

According to Berlin-based chart-making website Datawrapper, Chinese and African cities are among the fastest growing. The chart, which uses UN data from between 2000 and 2016, shows some smaller Chinese cities such as Suqian in the north east and Putian in the east growing at around 6 per cent every year. This is six times faster than London's growth over the same period and 20 times than New York, which is growing at just 0.3 per cent per year. US cities of Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit (inset) are starting to see people leave. Percent growth corresponds with darker shades of teal, while orange shows negative growth over the time-frame.

The skeleton of Cro-Magnon 1, a male Homo sapiens dating back 28,000 years, was discovered in 1868 in the Eyzies cave in France's southwestern Dordogne region along with several other skeletons (bottom right). To mark 150 years since the discovery of the bones, a team of researchers including anthropologist Philippe Charlier reexamined the remains. At the end of their investigation, 'we proposed a new diagnosis: he had suffered from a type of neurofibromatosis,' Charlier said. Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disease which can cause benign tumours to develop in the nervous system, and also spots or areas of pigmentation on the skin.