A color-coded view from a self-driving car operated by Waymo. Credit: Waymo
Silicon Valley tech giants and Detroit automakers have to convince people to trust self-driving cars before they can sell the futuristic technology to customers. That may prove tricky considering the public’s lingering fears and concerns regarding self-driving cars. A recent AI-assisted analysis of more than one trillion social posts revealed that scared-face emoticons related to self-dri ...read more
American troops on Renault FT tanks going forward to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne. France, September 26, 1918. Credit: U.S. National Archives
New York City Memorial Day celebrations have featured parades of military hardware almost since the earliest commemorations following the U.S. Civil War. Barely 15 years after that war’s end, Union Army veterans from New Jersey marched alongside a battery of rapid-fire Gatling guns in a New York City parade described as being ...read more
Good looking, sociable people don’t make good scientists, according to popular stereotypes.
This is one of the findings of an interesting new study of how scientists are perceived, from British researchers Ana I. Gheorghiu and colleagues.
Gheorghiu et al. took 616 pictures of scientists, which they downloaded from the faculty pages at various universities. They gave the portraits to two sets of raters. The first group were asked to rate the attractiveness of the portraits and to say whethe ...read more
Photo: flickr/danox
Eating your own placenta: some people (many of them celebrities) claim that it is a miracle cure-all, helping a new mother overcome everything from postpartum depression to low milk production. But is there actually any proof to these claims? Not that pro-placentophagers (we just made that word up) will likely care, but according to this meta-analysis of the literature, there is little scientific proof for any of these health claims. More specifically, the authors conc ...read more
(Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran/Ernie Mastroianni)
The first results from Juno’s brush with Jupiter reveal swarms of cyclones, massive ammonia plumes and complex interactions between a turbulent magnetic field and powerful streams of electrons. The findings are published today in Science and Geophysical Research Letters.
The Juno team is still sifting through the massive piles of data the probe is sending back from the gas giant. Since arriv ...read more
This is going to hurt. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Cowpea seed beetle sex is complicated.
During copulation, the male seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, uses his sharp, spiky penis to damage females’ reproductive tract while depositing sperm. All the while, the female vigorously kicks at her suitor—it hurts! As studies have shown, males with longer, harmful penis spikes enjoy more reproductive success, to the detriment of their partner’s health.
But the process of evolution ha ...read more
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Globale frøhvelv)
Just nine years after its official opening, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is undergoing renovations to protect it from climate change.
The work was prompted by accidental flooding that took place last week, as melting permafrost seeped into the vault’s access corridor. While the seeds were in no danger, the flooding is nevertheless a worrying sign at a facility meant to en ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock/Daniel Prudek)
A trek to base camp at Mount Everest will leave you short of breath in a hurry.
A push to the summit begins in thin air, 17,000 feet above sea level — higher than any peak in the Rocky Mountains. Once you reach the “Death Zone,” above 26,000 feet, oxygen levels drop to a third of what they are at sea level. Few climbers reach the summit, which rises 29,029 feet above sea level, without bottled oxygen.
To acclimate their ...read more
Brain responses to emotion stimuli are highly variable even within the same individual, and this could be a problem for researchers who seek to use these responses as biomarkers to help diagnose and treat disorders such as depression.
That’s according to a new paper in Neuroimage, from University College London neuroscientists Camilla Nord and colleagues.
Nord et al. had 29 volunteers perform three tasks during fMRI scanning. All of the tasks involved pictures of emotional faces, which ar ...read more
