(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Artificial intelligence (AI) still has a ways to go before it reigns supreme.
In October, a group of researchers at California’s NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) pitted a professional human drone racer, Ken Loo, against an AI-piloted drone. They set out to test two years of research into drone autonomy, which was funded by Google.
The researchers built three custom drones with algorithms that were outfitted with Google’s Tango, a ...read more
Gobble gobble! My poops look a lot like yours! Photo Credit: Michael Tatman/Shutterstock
In the U.S., it’s Thanksgiving, which means today is all about the Turkey. So here’s a fun fact you may not have heard to chew on as you masticate your meal: you can tell a turkey’s sex by it’s poop.
That’s right—male turkeys and female turkeys crap different turds. The toms’ feces are long and skinny, while the hens’ are coily little clumps.
A tale ...read more
Illustration of `Oumuamua, the first-known interstellar asteroid. Its unusual shape and color offer cryptic clues about the nature of objects from other solar systems. The challenge now is to find more of these messengers from the stars. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
It isn’t aliens. It’s never aliens.
That’s the only sensible answer whenever astronomers spot something truly weird in space. That unusual radio blip from the planet Ross 128b? Not aliens. Potential SETI signal SHG ...read more
By: Daniel McDonald
While you kick back and relax after your Thanksgiving dinner, your gut microbiota – the collection of beneficial microbes, mostly bacteria, that inhabit your lower intestine – will be hard at work breaking down the food you ate and carrying out all kinds of other essential functions. Research on the microbes that call your intestine home has shown they can affect your brain, treat a hospital-acquired condition called Clostridium difficile infectio ...read more
Turtles can’t head south for the winter, so they hibernate in rivers, lakes and ponds. (F_studio)
To breathe or not to breathe, that is the question.
What would happen if you were submerged in a pond where the water temperature hovered just above freezing and the surface was capped by a lid of ice for 100 days?
Well, obviously you’d die.
And that’s because you’re not as cool as a turtle. And by cool I don’t just mean amazing, I mean literally cool, as in cold. Plu ...read more
(Credit: Billion Photos/Shutterstock)
Whether it’s regulating a burst of anger or calming down a bout of anxiety, taking a deep breath can have a potent effect.
There are compelling hints that controlled breathing can improve overall physical wellbeing, but the neurophysiology — the link between our minds and bodies — of controlled breathing hasn’t been very extensively researched. A new study from researchers at Northwestern University and the Hofstra Northwell Sc ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
In the skies above Japan, scientists have detected lightning triggering nuclear reactions. These new findings are clear evidence that thunderstorms are a natural source of radioactive isotopes on Earth.
Thunderstorms are natural particle accelerators, capable of hurling electrons outward at nearly the speed of light. When these electrons strike atoms, they can generate gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.
Previous research suggested that gamma rays from lightnin ...read more
