Vladimir Putin’s forces “have abandoned” the village of Piatykhatky on the Zaporizhzhia front after it was reportedly recaptured by Kyiv, according to Russian military blogger War Gonzo. It is Ukraine’s first village gain for nearly a week and marks a significant escalation of Ukraine’s counter-offensive which was launched earlier this month. The military blogger suggested Ukraine has concentrated large reserves and “heavy armoured vehicles” in the area, which is the most direct route to Crimea. Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov claimed on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had taken the settlement of Piatykhatky and were entrenching themselves there while coming under fire from Russian artillery. However, he said heavy fighting continues in the area. The reports have not been independently verified. Russia claims it is inflicting heavy losses on Kyiv’s forces and president Putin said last week that Ukraine had “no chance” of success in the counter-offensive. Meanwhile, Ukraine said last week it had regained control of about 100 square km (38 square miles) of territory in just over a week, recapturing a string of villages in Donetsk region to the east. Read More Why Russia’s attempts to get round oil sanctions risk ecological disaster Ukrainians leaving UK because they cannot get housing, volunteer made MBE says Putin lectures African leaders seeking peace in Ukraine – as they tell him war must end

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Sperm can “defy the laws of physics”, according to new research. The laws of motion have helped us to comprehend the behaviours of the natural world for centuries, but sperm appears to go against one of the laws set down by Isaac Newton. Kenta Ishimoto and his fellow mathematical scientists from Kyoto University have revealed new research which suggests that sperm actually display qualities which don't follow Newton’s third law of motion. Science enthusiasts will know that the third law states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. However, sperm seems to go against this. According to their research, the tails of sperm known as “flagella” have an “odd elastic” quality which makes them able to travel through viscous fluids without losing much energy. While scientists would normally expect them to be slowed down by the viscous fluids, they’re able to propel themselves forward much easier than researchers would have predicted – and seemingly avoid coming into contact with an equal and opposite reaction. "From solvable simple models to biological flagellar waveforms for Chlamydomonas and sperm cells, we studied the odd-bending modulus to decipher the nonlocal, nonreciprocal inner interactions within the material,” the team behind the study said. "Odd elasticity is not a generic term for activity in solids, but rather a well-defined physical mechanism that generates active forces in solids or in other systems in which a generalized elasticity can be defined without using an elastic potential." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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