Dogs Interact With Pointing PeopleBot in Experiment. Researchers say dogs may be a good tool for testing social robots. Gabriella Lakatos of the Hungarian Academy of Science and Eotvos Lorand University conducted a study that found dogs react sociably to robots that behave socially towards them, even if the devices look nothing like a human. Lakatos says in a release, "Roboticists who design interactive robots should look into the sociality and behavior of their designs, even if they do not embody human-like characteristics. " 41 dogs were tested in the study with a robot called PeopleBot. The robot is human-sized and has two arms and white four-fingered hands. One of the PeopleBot's arms is capable of grasping and making simple gestures, like pointing. The experiment consisted of an interactive phase followed by a pointing session. The robot was programmed to either perform socially enriched human-like conduct (such as calling a dog by its name) or to behave in an asocial machine-like manner.
Strange Movement Observed in Microscopic Horsetail Spores. NASA: Voyager 1 Officially Reaches Interstellar Space. NASA says Voyager 1 has officially reached interstellar space, the space between stars. The spacecraft was launched in 1977. Interstellar space is dominated by a plasma, or ionized gas, that is the result of the death of nearby giant stars from millions of years ago. The interstellar plasma is shown with an orange glow in the artist concept above.
Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object at more than 11.6 billion miles from the sun, which is about 125 astronomical units. The image below helps put solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is astronomical units with 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington, says, "Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors. Take a look: Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Health - Why does your voice sound different on a recording? No one likes listening to themselves, but why? It’s because when you speak you hear yourself in two different ways. What makes a recording of our voice sound so different... and awful? It’s because when you speak you hear your own voice in two different ways.
Greg Foot explains all. The first is through vibrating sound waves hitting your ear drum, the way other people hear your voice. The second way is through vibrations inside your skull set off by your vocal chords. Those vibrations travel up through your bony skull and again set the ear drum vibrating. Toshiba Announces Strategies for Its Semiconductor/storage Business. Sept 14, 2013 15:44Jyunichi Oshita, Nikkei BP Semiconductor Research Toshiba Corp had a press meeting to explain about the business of its Semiconductor & Storage Products Company Sept 11, 2013, in Tokyo. Yasuo Naruke, president of the Semiconductor & Storage Products Company, took the podium. Compared with fiscal 2008, when Toshiba's semiconductor business recorded a massive deficit, "the memory business came back, but the discrete semiconductor and system chip businesses are halfway to resurgence," Naruke said.
For the future, Toshiba plans to put all the energy into increasing sales of its discrete semiconductors and system chips, whose sales growth has been sluggish, while keeping the advantage of its money-making NAND flash memories. The company predicts that the annual growth rate of the semiconductor market during the period from fiscal 2012 to 2015 will be 3.6% on average. And it aims to increase its semiconductor sales at an average annual rate of 6.8%. (Continue to the next page) DP News. Florida is Home to Over 1,000 Rhesus Monkeys Infected With Herpes. André Gide Archives Sonores. Health - How and why do we snore? It’s one of the loudest noises a human can make, and the bane of sleepless partners’ lives. James May explains what causes snoring and how we can stop it. Unfortunately for those subjected to it, snoring is one of the loudest noises a human can make. Noise levels of up to 92 decibels have been recorded, and worse still it's an automatic version of the noise we use to infer derision or to imitate swine.
The physiology of snoring, what is happening is actually quite simple. Snoring occurs when the air passages in our nose or throat are slightly blocked. This causes vibration in the soft palate and the uvula which you can see dangling down the back of your throat (those aren't in fact your tonsils). A number of factors can cause air blockage: sleeping at the wrong angle, or taking too many relaxants prior to sleeping. DP News. Seismic data reveal 'hotspot' passed under United States.
A plume of hot material rising from deep within the earth scarred the underside of the North American tectonic plate as it drifted westward millions of years ago, suggests research published today in Nature Geoscience1. The residual heat still affects seismic waves travelling through the continent, even though the mantle plume is now under the Atlantic Ocean. When such mantle plumes occur beneath thin oceanic crust, they often punch through and create volcanoes — the Hawaiian Islands are a prime example2. But older, colder and thicker continental crust is not so easily breached, says Risheng Chu, a geophysicist at the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics in Wuhan, China.
The only signs on land of ancient hotspot paths typically are kimberlites — volcanic and sometimes diamond-bearing rocks that mark the site of an ancient, deep-seated eruption. Graphene makes light work of optical signals. Thomas Mueller A new class of photodetectors senses light using graphene, single-atom-thick sheets of carbon. The devices gather the light using a silicon guide (blue) to enhance its absorption by a graphene sheet (grey), so that wires (yellow) can pick up an electrical signal.
Graphene is already revered for its remarkable strength and electrical conductivity — properties that have sent researchers scrambling to use it in applications from tennis rackets to flexible electronics. Now the one-atom-thick lattice of carbon has added another string to its bow. Three research groups have independently shown that graphene can efficiently convert infrared light into electrical signals, as part of devices known as photodetectors. As fast and accurate translators of optical data, graphene photodetectors could speed up computers and significantly cut their power consumption.
The devices, each with a slightly different architecture, are reported in Nature Photonics1–3. Scientist Finds 360 Million Year Old Scorpion Fossil. Dr Robert Gess (pictured above), from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits, discovered the 360 million year old fossilized scorpion from rocks of the Devonian Witteberg Group near Grahamstown in South Africa. Images of the fossil below show the sting and pincers of the scorpion. The ancient scorpion, named Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis, is the oldest known land-living animal from Gondwana. Godwana was the southern of two supercontinents that made up Pangea.
Dr. Gess says the process of terrestrialization - the movement of life onto land from the sea - began during the Silurian Period roughly 420 million years ago. Tibetan glaciers are shrinking at their summits. NASA Earth Observatory Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau — the world’s third-largest ice reservoir after those in Antarctica and Greenland — have been losing mass even at surprisingly high elevations. The Tibetan glaciers are shrinking. Most of the retreat is thought to be taking place at low elevations, but research now shows that the glaciers may also be losing ice at altitudes up to 6,000 metres. “The glaciers are virtually being decapitated from the top by a warming climate,” says Kang Shichang, a glaciologist at Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.
His team looks at signals left in ice by environmental incidents that changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Among those incidents are nuclear tests that were especially frequent between 1952 and 1963, releasing radioactive compounds such as tritium. Ice cores from extreme elevations are few and far between. “This might not be unique to the Tibetan plateau,” says Kang. NIH serves up wide menu for US brain-mapping initiative. PASIEKA/Science Photo Library/Corbis A multi-year government project aims to plumb the mysteries of the human brain. Attention neuroscientists: the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has just pitched a very big tent for you. The agency's hotly anticipated plan for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, released on 16 September, lays out a wide-ranging research programme that aims to please a broad audience.
“It’s good, but it’s not Earth-shaking,” says Partha Mitra, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “It’s written, perhaps, with critics in mind.” The report lists nine research priorities, including the need to better understand the cell types present in the brain, how they are connected and how they communicate. “We haven’t made the toughest decisions yet,” says Cori Bargmann, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York and co-chair of the NIH-appointed panel that authored the plan. 26 septembre 2013 – Journée européenne des langues. DP News. Meilenstein des Mitgefühls. Einzigartiges Multimedia-E-Book präsentiert Erfahrungsschatz von Wissenschaftlern, Praktikern und Therapeuten 16. September 2013 Auf Fragen nach dem Unterschied zwischen Empathie und Mitgefühl sowie nach der Trainierbarkeit von Mitgefühl gibt ein neu erschienenes E-Book erstmals Antworten. Herausgegeben von Tania Singer und Matthias Bolz vom Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, beschreibt das Buch auch, wie sich das Gehirn durch mentales Training verändert, und dass Mitgefühl schmerzhemmend wirken kann.
Bild vergrößern Tania Singer untersucht mit neurobiologischen Methoden, wie wir Mitgefühl und Empathie für andere Menschen empfinden. © Sven Döring Das E-Book Mitgefühl. Ein wesentlicher Teil des E-Books beschäftigt sich mit der Wissenschaft des Mitgefühls. Darüber hinaus werden wissenschaftlich untersuchte Mitgefühls-Trainingsprogramme zum Teil erstmalig vorgestellt und praktische Erfahrungen mit ihnen in Schulen, Therapie und Sterbebegleitung beschrieben. Delicate oxidation can transform greenhouse gas into useful chemicals. Sep 16, Chemistry/Materials Science Illustration of one methane molecule adsorbing on positively charged gold molecules ranging in size from 2 to 201 atoms. Credit: Mowbray, et al. ©2013 American Chemical Society (Phys.org) —Methane is the main component of natural gas, as well as a potent greenhouse gas whose levels in the atmosphere have been rising.
In a new study, scientists have investigated a way to transform methane into more valuable and useful chemicals by partially oxidizing methane in a "delicate" way—that is, at low temperatures, low pressures, and by controlled means. This ability requires understanding how the catalytic activity of nanoparticles can be controlled and manipulated, which is currently a major challenge in nanoscience. The researchers, led by Dr. "The partial oxidation of methane is important for a number of reasons," Mowbray told Phys.org. So far, only a few studies have investigated the interaction between methane and gold. More information: Duncan J. . [2] V. Pianisten können auf einem Klavier schneller schreiben als auf einer herkömmlichen Tastatur.
Pianisten schreiben auf ihrem Instrument so schnell wie erfahrene Schreibkräfte auf einer QWERTY-Tastatur 16. September 2013 Bei Pianisten wie dem chinesischen Klaviervirtuosen Lang Lang sieht es mühelos aus: Gekonnt gleiten die Finger in Windeseile bei Stücken von Mozart, Rachmaninow oder Tschaikowsky über die Tasten des Klaviers. Diese Fingerfertigkeit haben sich Saarbrücker Informatiker zum Vorbild genommen. Bild vergrößern Anna Feit (rechts) und ihre Kollegen haben die Tasten eines Klaviers mit Buchstaben hinterlegt, sodass auch...
Anna Feit (rechts) und ihre Kollegen haben die Tasten eines Klaviers mit Buchstaben hinterlegt, sodass auch Amateur-Pianisten auf dem Instrument so schnell schreiben können wie erfahrene Schreibkräfte auf einer gewöhnlichen Tastatur. . © Jörg Pütz Um ein Klavier in eine Schreibtastatur zu verwandeln, haben die Saarbrücker Informatiker zunächst Hunderte Musikstücke analysiert. Die Tastatur haben die Informatiker für die englische Sprache optimiert. 13-16 septembre 2013 – Colloque sur la défense de la langue française. Voilà une colloque qui parlera moins de pédagogie ou de didactique que de politique. L’Association « Comité pour une Nouvelle Résistance-CNR » organise à Nice les après-midi des 13/14/15 et 16 septembre un colloque sur la défense de la langue française à l’occasion des jeux internationaux de la francophonie qui se déroulent du 7 au 15 septembre à Nice.
Les conférenciers viendront exposer leur point de vue sur le constat et les conséquences négatives du « tout anglais » dans la vie quotidienne de nos concitoyens. Le colloque s’articulera autour des thèmes suivants : l’appauvrissement du français dans la vie quotidienne,l’hégémonie de l’anglais sur le français,les enjeux économiques du tout anglaisles relations internationales (suprématie de l’anglais). Parmi les intervenants on notera la participation d’universitaires, comme Philippe Loubière, Charles X. La conférence aura lieu au C.U.M. 65 promenade des… Anglais. Pour en savoir plus. Chaos etwa bei der Steuerung von Robotern lässt sich mit weniger Kontrolle schneller stabilisieren. Chaotische Systeme lassen sich durch eine neue Methode schneller stabilisieren. Der Trick: Die Kontrolle ab und zu aussetzen 16.
September 2013 Wenn Chaos droht, kommt es auf Schnelligkeit an. Etwa wenn ein Schrittmacher ein unregelmäßig schlagendes Herz zurück in den richtigen Takt bringen oder wenn ein Roboter die Informationen, die aus seiner Umwelt auf ihn einprasseln, einordnen und entsprechend reagieren soll. Bild vergrößern Mit neuen Ergebnissen der Göttinger Forscher ließe sich die Reaktionszeit des Roboters Amos deutlich reduzieren. © Poramate Manoonpong und Florentin Wörgötter, University of Göttingen and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen Wenn das Gelände, in dem sich Amos bewegt, plötzlich steiler wird, kann der insektenartige Roboter gekonnt reagieren: Nach kurzem Zögern wechselt er ganz von selbst die Gangart und wählt für seine sechs Beine ein anderes Bewegungsmuster, um die Schräge zu erklimmen.
Die neue Methode ist bis zu 1000 Mal schneller. Scientists Study Bar Customers to Develop Robot Bartender Named James. Whale earwax a time capsule for stress and toxins. Study revises estimate of methane leaks from US gas fields. Pig-manure fertilizer linked to human MRSA infections. Technology - Why Nasa is crash testing helicopters for science. Health - Can you mix antibiotics and alcohol? 22-28 septembre 2013 – Le passeport pour les langues. DP News. Dainippon Screen Introduces 3D Cell Scanner for Cancer Research.
Journée européenne des langues. Grass gets greener. ALMA strike stirs up Chilean labour unions. Frightened Cows Flee From SpaceX Rocket Test. 2-4 juillet 2014 – Interactions Multimodales Par Ecran. Technology - Military vision creates Israeli start-up boot camp. Seltsame Strukturen im Amazonas-Dschungel - Wissen. Secrets of fracking fluids pave way for cleaner recipe. Jeux vidéo, logiciels 3D et multimédia en classe de FLE. DP News. More cuts loom for US science. It is time to update US biomedical funding. New map of Universe may reconcile conflicting cosmological observations. Physics: Quantum quest. Taxonomy: The spy who loved frogs. Fossil Indicates Prognathodon Had a Shark-like Tail Fin. Seven days: 6–12 September 2013. Stem cells created in living mice.
Grey wolves left out in the cold. New Beetle Species Discovered in Metro Manila. New Bird Discovered in Philippines Described as Ventriloquist Bird. [Interview] SCE President Speaks of PS Vita TV. [Interview] Why Did SCE Replace OLED Panel of PS Vita With LCD Panel? Polaris Excavator Rover Digs a Ton of Dirt in Demonstration at NASA Glenn. Science & Environment - Understanding the Universe’s invisible elements. Schimpansenmütter fördern Sozialkompetenz ihres Nachwuchses. Ancient rivers cut migration routes through Sahara. DP News. Technology - Solar-power vehicles pushing boundaries of possibility.
Sodium-ion battery cathode has highest energy density to date. Engineered bacterium hunts down pathogens. Leaping Frog Captured in Photo During Launch of NASA LADEE Spacecraft. Une audiovidéothèque en littérature francophone. TVMONDE / FLE / Enseigner.TV: Attention au départ. The 2013 Ig Nobel Prizes. In der organotextilen Katalyse werden Stoffe mit organischen Katalysatoren funktionalisiert. Bodenbakterien geben gasförmige salpetrige Säure direkt an die Luft ab. Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space. Pdesperrier : @MikeTheCoolMan I agree :-)... Food-borne illnesses are not always home-grown. Insect leg cogs a first in animal kingdom. Immun gegen das Altern.