(Credit: Cafe X)
A robo-rista is now optimizing customers’ coffee in the United States.
Café X, a robotic, coffee-brewing kiosk has just opened its windows on 4th Street in downtown San Francisco.
The “barista bots,” which are actually robotic-arms designed by Mitsubishi, are the first of their kind in the United States, joined only by their sisters-in-arms serving hot brew in kiosks in Hong Kong. They may not be chatty, but they definitely know how to make your f ...read more
ResearchGate-gate isn’t quite as catchy as other scandals, but it is something we might be hearing more about in the future.
A recent article published by Sarah Bond at Forbes encouraged researchers to remove all of their articles from the for-profit company, Academia.edu. This has led to a wave of account deletions at the site, and also at ResearchGate, two sites dueling with each other to become the “Facebook for academics.”
The issue Bond raises is this: Why should companie ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
How does one get stuck studying frog tongues? Our study into the sticky, slimy world of frogs all began with a humorous video of a real African bullfrog lunging at fake insects in a mobile game. This frog was clearly an expert at gaming; the speed and accuracy of its tongue could rival the thumbs of texting teenagers.
[embedded content]Further YouTube research yielded amazing videos of frogs eating mice, tarantulas and even other frogs.
The versatile frog tongue can grab ...read more
A hobbyist drone operated by Islamic State drops a bomb on an Iraqi military Abrams tank. Credit: Middle East Media Research Institute
Islamic State’s weaponization of consumer drones that anyone can buy off the shelf or on Amazon has reached new heights during the battle for Mosul that has been raging since October 2016. A recent propaganda video released by Islamic State showed off the militant group’s increased confidence in using small quadcopter drones to hover ...read more
The universe bristles with structure on all scales. But really, it is all just punctuated nothingness. (Image courtesy of Cryhavoc)
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about nothing. Not just because focusing on nothing is a helpful, meditative antidote to obsessing over the recent barrage of anxiety-inducing news, but also because nothing is the most common thing in nature. After all, the overwhelming majority of the universe is not stars and planets; it is empty space. But empty space is ...read more
The interior view of a Tesla Model S sedan that has an Autopilot system representative of advanced driver assist technologies. Credit: Tesla
When a 2015 Tesla Model S collided with a tractor trailer at highway intersection west of Williston, Florida, the resulting crash killed the Tesla driver. An investigation of the May 7, 2016 incident by federal investigators found that the Tesla car’s Autopilot driver-assist system was not at fault and showed that the driver had at least s ...read more
By Adam Reyer, Project Director for Global Fishing Watch
Hundreds of millions of people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods, and almost 3 billion rely on it as a protein source. But countless threats — overfishing, destructive fishing practices, bycatch, dishonest catch reporting, habitat destruction — threaten our oceans and the people who depend on them. It’s an economic problem, too: illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a universal problem that accounts ...read more
The Brains vs Artificial Intelligence competition at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. (Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)
Roughly a year ago, to the day, Google researchers announced their artificial intelligence, AlphaGo, had mastered the ancient game of Go. At the time, Discover wrote that there was still one game that gave computers fits: poker.
Not anymore.
Late Monday night, a computer program designed by two Carnegie Mellon University researchers beat four of the world’s top no-li ...read more
In the long view, modern history is the story of increasing rights of control over your body – for instance, in matters of reproduction, sex, where you live and whom you marry. Medical experimentation is supposed to be following the same historical trend – increasing rights of autonomy for those whose bodies are used for research.
Indeed, the Nuremberg Code, the founding document of modern medical research ethics developed after the Second World War in response to Nazi medical exper ...read more
Maybe you’re feeling like the animal you most identified with in previous years (panda bear in snow, puggle, Betty White) just isn’t adequate for 2017. If that’s the case, here are three creatures that would like to apply for the job. Only one is venomous.
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An adorbs hermit crab with candy-cane stripes
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Are you one of those people who wishes Christmas could be year round? Cute but a homebody? Friendly with creatures that others con ...read more
