The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence, according to researcher Paola Villa at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Neanderthals thrived in a large swath of Europe and Asia between about 350,000 and 40,000 years ago. They disappeared after our ancestors,… read more
Volvo Car Group’s “Drive Me” project — featuring 100 self-driving Volvos on public roads in everyday driving conditions — is moving forward rapidly, with the first test cars now driving around the Swedish city of Gothenburg.
“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves,” says Erik Coelingh, Technical Specialist at Volvo Car Group.
“This is an important step… read more
“Dismissing the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction,” as portrayed in current movies, would be a mistake, and “potentially our worst mistake in history,” write leading scientists Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek, in The Independent.
AI research is now progressing rapidly, and “will probably pale against what the coming decades will bring, the scientists suggest. “Success in creating AI would be… read more
“Can a computer with access to large bodies of information like Wikipedia extract relevant information, digest and reason on that information and understand the context … and present it in natural language, with no human intervention?”
That’s how John Kelly III, Senior Vice President and Director, IBM Research, introduced a new feature of Watson called “The Debater” (starts at 45:25 in video below) at an April 30, 2014… read more
Laser shields, such as those protecting spaceships in the Star Wars film series, are scientifically feasible, three University of Leicester physics students have shown.
Here’s how: a plasma can refract (bend) a beam of radiation. In fact, that’s already done in principle; by refracting radio signals, the ionosphere around our planet enables shortwave radio programs from Europe, for example, to be heard in the U.S.… read more
MIT researchers have developed a technique that allows them to precisely track neural communication in the brain over time, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) along with a specialized molecular MRI contrast agent.
This is the first time anyone has been able to map neural signals with high precision over large brain regions in living animals, offering a new window on brain function, says Alan Jasanoff, an… read more
With 233,431 votes, the “Technology” option has won NASA’s Z-2 Spacesuit design challenge with just over 63% of the total vote. This design now will be incorporated into the final version of the suit, which is expected to be ready for testing by November 2014.
Each new version of the Z-series will advance new technologies that one day will be used in a suit worn by the first astronauts… read more
A new method of producing industrial quantities of high-quality graphene has been developed by Trinity College Dublin researchers on the AMBER materials-science research team at CRANN.
The researchers say the discovery will “change the way many consumer and industrial products are manufactured.” Potential applications they cite include advanced food packaging, high-strength plastics, super-protective coatings for wind turbines and ships, and batteries with dramatically higher capacity… read more
Antimicrobial resistance (including antibiotic resistance — when bacteria change so antibiotics no longer work) is a serious threat and has gone global, warns the World Health Organization (WHO) in a report, “Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance.”
“Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades… read more
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have found graphene oxide nanoparticles are very mobile in lakes or streams and likely to cause negative environmental impacts if released.
Graphene oxide* nanoparticles are an oxidized form of graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms prized for its strength, conductivity and flexibility. Applications for graphene include everything from cell phones and tablet computers… read more
Australian scientists have invented a simple and cheap way of making a high-powered lens that can transform a smart phone into a high-resolution microscope.
Costing less than a cent, the lenses promise a revolution in science and medicine in developing countries and remote areas.
Self-forming liquid drops
The lens fabrication technique was invented by Steve Lee from The Australian National University (ANU) Research School of… read more
Resveratrol has been much in the news as the component of grapes and red wine associated with reducing “bad cholesterol,” heart disease and some types of cancer. Also found in blueberries, cranberries, mulberries, peanuts and pistachios, resveratrol is associated with beneficial health effects in aging, inflammation and metabolism.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified one of the molecular pathways that… read more
MIT and Harvard University researchers have found a two-dimensional material whose properties are very similar to graphene*, but with some distinct advantages — including the fact that this material naturally has a usable bandgap, which is essential for making devices such as computer chips and solar cells.
The new material, is a combination of nickel and an organic compound called HITP. Its constituents also naturally… read more
Google has shifted the focus of its self-driving car project onto mastering city-street driving, according to the Google Official Blog.
“Since the last update, we’ve logged thousands of miles on the streets of our hometown of Mountain View, Calif. A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of… read more
Caltech astronomers have taken unprecedented 3D images of the intergalactic medium (IGM) — the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe, proving that the speculated “dim matter” of the universe exists.
Theoreticians have predicted since the 1980s that primordial gas from the Big Bang is not spread uniformly throughout space, but is instead distributed in channels that span galaxies and flow between them. This “cosmic web” —… read more