Thursday 16 May 2019

Researchers create washable sensor that can be woven into materials

Forget the smart watch. Bring on the smart shirt.

* This article was originally published here

The insular cortex processes pain and drives learning from pain

Pain is a deterrent that trains organisms to avoid future harmful situations. This is called "threat learning," and helps animals and humans to survive. But which part of the brain actually warns other parts of the brain of painful events so that threat learning can occur?

* This article was originally published here

Precursors of a catastrophic collapse

On the morning of the 13th of March 1888, the inhabitants of the Finschhafen trading post on the east coast of New Guinea were awakened by a dull rumbling sound. An eyewitness later reported that the water in the port had receded at the same time. A short time later, several two- to three-metre high waves hit the coast. It was a tsunami on that fateful morning that devastated the surrounding coasts. Several thousand people probably died in New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago.

* This article was originally published here

Dabigatran doesn't beat aspirin for preventing recurrent stroke

(HealthDay)—Dabigatran is not superior to aspirin for preventing recurrent stroke in patients with recent history of embolic stroke of undetermined source, according to a study published in the May 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

* This article was originally published here

Mining 25 years of data uncovers a new predictor of age of onset for Huntington disease

Investigators at the University of British Columbia (UBC)/Centre for Molecular Medicine & Therapeutics (CMMT) and BC Children's Hospital have examined more than 25 years of data to reveal new insights into predicting the age of onset for Huntington disease.

* This article was originally published here

CosmoGAN: Training a neural network to study dark matter

As cosmologists and astrophysicists delve deeper into the darkest recesses of the universe, their need for increasingly powerful observational and computational tools has expanded exponentially. From facilities such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to supercomputers like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Cori system at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) facility, they are on a quest to collect, simulate, and analyze increasing amounts of data that can help explain the nature of things we can't see, as well as those we can.

* This article was originally published here

New laws of robotics needed to tackle AI: expert

Decades after Isaac Asimov first wrote his laws for robots, their ever-expanding role in our lives requires a radical new set of rules, legal and AI expert Frank Pasquale warned on Thursday.

* This article was originally published here

AI model uses serial imaging to predict lung cancer therapy response

(HealthDay)—For patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), deep-learning networks integrating computed tomography (CT) scans at multiple time points can improve clinical outcome predictions, according to a study published online April 22 in Clinical Cancer Research.

* This article was originally published here

Preventive measures can reduce foot parasite in children, study says

Tungiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by penetrated sand fleas which burrow into the skin of the feet. Public health policies such as sealing house and classroom floors and daily feet washing with soap could cut the number of tungiasis cases in school-aged children, researchers now report in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

* This article was originally published here

To win online debates, social networks worth a thousand words

Want to win an argument online? Bolstering your social network may be more helpful than rehearsing your rhetorical flourishes.

* This article was originally published here

Artificial intelligence shines light on the dark web

Beneath the surface web, the public form of the internet you use daily to check email or read news articles, exists a concealed "dark web." Host to anonymous, password-protected sites, the dark web is where criminal marketplaces thrive in the advertising and selling of weapons, drugs, and trafficked persons. Law enforcement agencies work continuously to stop these activities, but the challenges they face in investigating and prosecuting the real-world people behind the users who post on these sites are tremendous.

* This article was originally published here

Tracking the epigenetic evolution of a cancer, cell by cell

A powerful new set of scientific tools developed by Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center (NYGC) researchers enables them to track the molecular evolution of cancers. The tools should enable a better understanding of how cancers arise and spread in the body, and how they respond to different therapies.

* This article was originally published here

New security flaw in Intel chips could affect millions

Intel has revealed another hardware security flaw that could affects millions of machines around the world.

* This article was originally published here

Experimental brain-controlled hearing aid decodes, identifies who you want to hear

Our brains have a remarkable knack for picking out individual voices in a noisy environment, like a crowded coffee shop or a busy city street. This is something that even the most advanced hearing aids struggle to do. But now Columbia engineers are announcing an experimental technology that mimics the brain's natural aptitude for detecting and amplifying any one voice from many. Powered by artificial intelligence, this brain-controlled hearing aid acts as an automatic filter, monitoring wearers' brain waves and boosting the voice they want to focus on.

* This article was originally published here

Transfer of EU powers leads to silent erosion of UK pesticide regulation

New analysis by the UK Trade Policy Observatory is warning that what should have been the technical formality of transferring EU powers into national law when the UK leaves the European Union, could instead open the gates for the widespread use of outlawed carcinogenic pesticides that have been shown to alter human reproductive, neurological, and immune systems.

* This article was originally published here

Captive chimpanzees spontaneously use tools to excavate underground food

Chimpanzees in captivity can successfully work out how to use tools to excavate underground food, even if they've never been presented with an underground food scenario before, according to a study published May 15, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alba Motes-Rodrigo and colleagues and directed by Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar from the University of Oslo.

* This article was originally published here

Just like toothpaste: Fluoride radically improves the stability of perovskite solar cells

Solar cells made of perovskite hold much promise for the future of solar energy. The material is cheap, easy to produce and almost as efficient as silicon, the material traditionally used in solar cells. However, perovskite degrades quickly, severely limiting its efficiency and stability over time. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, energy research institute DIFFER, Peking University and University of Twente have discovered that adding a small amount of fluoride to the perovskite leaves a protective layer, increasing stability of the materials and the solar cells significantly. The solar cells retain 90 percent of their efficiency after 1000 hours operation at various extreme testing conditions. The findings are published today in the leading scientific journal Nature Energy.

* This article was originally published here

New AI sees like a human, filling in the blanks

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions. The team, led by professor Kristen Grauman, Ph.D. candidate Santhosh Ramakrishnan and former Ph.D. candidate Dinesh Jayaraman (now at the University of California, Berkeley) published their results today in the journal Science Robotics.

* This article was originally published here