It might look like Wilson the volleyball, but in reality, it’s something far more advanced. (Credit: IBM) If you’ve been fantasizing about a real-life Hal or R2-D2, then your dreams are about to come true. Or at least, partly. The German Aerospace Center commissioned aircraft manufacturer Airbus and artificial intelligence designers at IBM to create CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion), the first AI-based astronaut assistant. CIMON, who is 11 pou ...read more

Plink! (Credit: Lipskiy/Shutterstock) Utilizing modern high-speed video and audio capture techniques, researchers from the University of Cambridge are confident they have found the culprit behind one of the more aggravating household sounds — the dripping tap. Exactly what causes the recognizable ‘plink’ of dripping water when it lands into a liquid surface is revealed in a study recently released in Nature. Right in the Middle of the Pi ...read more

(Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock) What would it be like to live forever? The thought has likely crossed your mind. But you soon sober up — it ain’t going to happen. Nevertheless, the idea of living longer than your parents and grandparents is not farfetched. Better lifestyles (such as exercising regularly and not smoking) and better medical care have helped increase longevity in developed countries. People who otherwise would have died in their 60s from ...read more

(Credit: Sarah Jelbert) There’s no denying crows are smart. They can remember where food has been hidden, recognize faces and craft tools. And, according to a new paper in Scientific Reports, some crows can even make those tools from memory. This skill may point to these clever corvids having a sort of culture of their own. Brainy Birds Researchers, led by Sarah Jelbert at the University of Cambridge, worked specifically with New Caledonian crows. These birds, native to the ...read more

(Credit: Arthur-studio10/Shutterstock) Good news for anyone who enjoys singing, or being sarcastic — or really, just talking in general. Scientists have precisely mapped, and now better understand, the part of the brain that allows you to do what you do: change the pitch of your voice to hit notes or emphasize certain words. The work, by a team of neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco, appears today in the journal Cell, and specifically looked at how ...read more

The dog has walked beside humans longer than any other animal, but science has only recently begun to understand how domestication occurred. (Credit: G. Tarlach) Who’s a good dog? The very first dogs, apparently, as a new genetic study reveals the sequence of events, begun thousands of years ago, that morphed wild wolves into (eventually) couchwarmers and ball catchers. If you wrote a book about animal domestication, the story of turning wolves into dogs would arguably deser ...read more

A science traverse in 2007 to 2009 crossed the East Antarctic Plateau in late summer. The coldest conditions on Earth occur in this region few months later, in July and August, during the polar night. (Photo: Ted Scambos, NSIDC.) We’ve now got new insight into just how extreme conditions on our planet can get — at opposite ends of the thermometer. In a new study, a team of researchers has found that some sites in Antarctica get as cold as minus 98 degrees C ...read more

A new study suggests GMO opposition dropped in Vermont following a mandatory GMO labeling law. (Sally McCay, University of Vermont) Scientists and food companies have long worried that GMO labels on food will be viewed like the warnings on cigarettes and alcohol — an admission that the product is unhealthy. Many anti-GMO advocates — beyond pushing for transparency — thought labels might hurt sales and force corporations to back off genet ...read more

An animation of GOES-16 weather satellite images shows thick plumes of smoke billowing from wildfires in California on June 24 and 25, 2018. (Note: When you click on the image, you will be taken to another website to watch the animation. It may take a little time load properly. Source: RAMMB/CIRA) As I’m writing this Wednesday, June 27, 51 large, active wildfires are burning on more than 450,000 acres in the United States, most of them in western states and Alaska. That ...read more

Saturn’s moon Enceladus. (Credit: NASA) A new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft indicates the presence of large organic molecules on Enceladus, something not found on the moon before. Using two instruments aboard the now-perished orbiter, an international team of researchers looked at molecules erupting with plumes of water vapor streaming from beneath Enceladus’ surface. Though similar experiments have been performed in th ...read more