ScienceDaily: Your source for the latest research news. GSK's new R&D head bets on genetics with $300 mln 23andMe deal. News and media - SEI. Software Engineering Institute. How we'll earn money in a future without jobs. Why Do We Count? The abacus is a tool, just like the calculator is a tool.
Your smartphone’s calculator app — that’s a tool, too. But are numbers themselves a tool? That’s the case Caleb Everett makes in his new book, “Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures.” Everett, a professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, shows that numbers — or the words and symbols we use to represent specific quantities — emerged through a series of slow historical steps. Numbers may feel instinctual. 3-D Fractals Offer Clues to Complex Systems. If you came across an animal in the wild and wanted to learn more about it, there are a few things you might do: You might watch what it eats, poke it to see how it reacts, and even dissect it if you got the chance.
Mathematicians are not so different from naturalists. Rather than studying organisms, they study equations and shapes using their own techniques. The future of medicine. Tristan Harris: How better tech could protect us from distraction. TED Talks 2012: Donald Sadoway. Bellies full of microplastic rob baby fish of their basic instincts. Larval European perch that has ingested microplastic particles (light-colored spheres on bottom side).
Photo by Oona Lönnstedt When exposed to microplastics, baby fish stop eating natural food and prefer consuming the pollutant, according to a report from ecologists at Uppsala University in Sweden. The dietary switch derails the basic instincts of the fish, the researchers found, elevating the likelihood of being caught by predators. The findings may explain why populations of European perch (Perca fluviatilis) — the main species analyzed in the study — have declined in the Baltic Sea. Tony Fadell: The first secret of design is ... noticing. Science & Environment. NOVA - Official Website. Can Wind Turbines Make You Sick?
Residents living in the shadows of wind turbines say the sound is making them sick. But so far the science isn't there. From NOVA Next | Jun 27, 2018 Thirty Years Ago Today, Global Warming First Made Headline News On June 23, a NASA climate scientist, James Hansen, told a U.S. Recent Science News. PBS NewsHour. Wallpaper Camera Wraps Around Any Surface. What if you could wrap a camera around your car (or tank) for a 360-degree view or encircle a streetlight to boost security?
You might even use it as wallpaper to check out what’s happening in the room next door. This idea may have taken a step closer with a new thin flexible sheet camera design by researchers at Columbia University. While they are still working on prototypes, they say they have overcome several obstacles that have tripped up previous efforts and hope to have a real camera soon. 11 Bizarre Sources For Alternative Energy “We are exploring ways to capture visual information in unconventional ways,” said Shree Nayar, a professor of computer science at Columbia. Nayar also foresees a flexible sheet camera the size of a credit card, allowing you to take a photo on one side with an imaging display on the other side. Nonverbal Communication for Human-Robot Interaction: Henny Admoni. Robotics has already improved lives by taking over dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs, freeing people for safer, more skillful pursuits.
For instance, autonomous mechanical arms weld cars in factories, and autonomous vacuum cleaners keep floors clean in millions of homes. However, most currently deployed robotic devices operate primarily without human interaction, and are typically incapable of understanding natural human communication. As robotic hardware costs decrease and computational power increases, robotics research is moving from these autonomous but isolated systems to individualized personal robots. Robots at home can help elderly or disabled users with daily tasks, such as preparing a meal or getting dressed, which can increase independence and quality of life. Robots for manufacturing can act as intelligent third hands, improving efficiency and job safety for workers. FDA Committee Recommends Approving First Gene Therapy to Successfully Treat Cancer.
Anonymity in science - ScienceDirect. Industry sees new opportunities for space manufacturing. HOUSTON — Space manufacturing, a field whose promise has gone unrealized for decades, is now offering new opportunities thanks to the use of the International Space Station and reduced space access costs, some experts believe.
The best near-term opportunity to demonstrate the ability of space manufacturing to produce products of value on Earth, according to a panel at the SpaceCom Expo here Dec. 6, may come from experiments flying to the station in the next year to test the production of high-quality optical fibers. “The opportunities for in-space manufacturing have never been better,” said Lynn Harper of the Space Portal Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “Large-scale manufacturing could be tested and perfected on the ISS, and then implemented in the many commercial carriers that are starting to emerge.” Manufacturing in space, taking advantage of its microgravity or vacuum conditions, has long been proposed as a key space industry, but has failed to materialize.