Technology

A Pew Research Center analysis of science-related pages on Facebook found that people are most likely to encounter "how-to" tips or advertisements rather than stories about scientific discoveries. The reason is simple. Facebook shows people what they want to see based on past behavior. So shocking IFLScience or Buzzfeed 'X Did Y and you'll never guess what happened next!' titles will get clicked on more than articles about nematodes, making the former more likely to show up in the future.  The Center analyzed a random sample of posts from 30 popular science-related Facebook pages over a…

If you have used voice-enabled speaker devices like the Amazon Echo, which for some reason goes by Alexa rather than Echo, you've noticed there are not a lot of great apps and most of them do very narrow things. They are more like public relations tools for brands. Google is no better but companies insist it is the future, that is why Apple is getting into the game with Homepod. They all suffer from the problem that Apple created yet which is the trend, because if puts hundreds of billions of dollars in their bank account: They tell you what you want on their devices, and that's all you are…

In 2018, you can guess the politics of many people by which newspapers they read, and you could also do that 100 years ago. Certainly some people, like me, read both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times but if someone defaults to MSNBC or Fox News, you can estimate their voting record with high levels of accuracy. But preferences don't mean much, it is getting people to act that counts, and that is much more difficult. It is fine if people say they are pro-vaccine in California or Washington or Oregon, for example, but if they are denying their children vaccines, surveys are…

How vision operates is a complex task thehuman brain (and now “computer brains” have to take on). We take much of whatour brains do for granted. For instance, there is depth perception, object tracking, differences in lighting, edge detection, and many other features that our brains keep track of. Scanning the environment and localizing where we are in space is an undertaking that our brain is constantly doing. In some point in the past, researchers may have never thought it possible to create systems that can perform similar tasks to that of our own brains. Yet, in the last 50 years, we…

This is a speech Stephen Hawking gave at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon on Monday. It’s actually an upbeat and optimistic speech, but one particular phrase from the speech is scaring many people. Stephen Hawking has a love of the dramatic, and he often way overstates things - it's what they call hyperbole, overstating things for emotional effect. I'm also surprised that amongst all the news articles running stories about it, I haven't found a single one that is skeptical of his beliefs or even suggests there could be other views on the matter.  As he stated it,  " As many…

#MeToo is a movement started by Alyssa Milano which is raising awareness of sexual harassment... but I stumbled on an unfortunate bit of collateral PR damage for an app named MeeToo.  This is like a sub plot from the cartoon BojackHorseman or something.  If you know that show you can see them doing an ep or two sending up the situation and some terrible hashtag totally ruins a carefully thought of to be hash-tag-able brand name.  As Homer Simpson would say think about the irony.   Now their brand is associated with a scandal where a big fat producer* chased women…

A vulnerability in the common WPA2 Wi-Fi security protocol means practically every device that connects to a router (which is just about all of them) can be exploited to reveal access to credit card information, passwords and more. The Key Reinstallation Attacks (Krack Attacks) allow anyone in physical proximity to gain access. A flavor of Linux and devices using Android 6.0 and up are especially vulnerable.  Changing the password won't do any good, the devices themselves need to be updated, so if you are using old technology you may be out of luck. The groups with most to lose will be…

The heads of more than 100 of the world’s top artificial intelligence companies are very alarmed about the development of “killer robots”. In an open letter to the UN, these business leaders – including Tesla’s Elon Musk and the founders of Google’s DeepMind AI firm – warned that autonomous weapon technology could be misused by terrorists and despots or hacked to perform in undesirable ways. But the real threat is much bigger – and not just from human misconduct but from the machines themselves. The research into complex systems shows how behavior can emerge that is much more unpredictable…

Ovaries constructed of 3-D printed scaffolds that house immature eggs were successful in boosting hormone production and restoring fertility by actually ovulating - and they produced healthy offspring which mothers also were able to nurse.  By removing a female mouse's ovary and replacing it with a bioprosthetic ovary, the mouse was able to not only ovulate but also give birth to healthy pups. The moms were even able to nurse their young.  The bioprosthetic ovaries are constructed of 3-D printed scaffolds that house immature eggs, and have been successful in boosting hormone…

Prosthetics may look better but they have not really changed much in the last 100 years. That could soon change. The next generation of hand prosthetics may be far more like a real hand - they could allow the wearer to reach for objects almost automatically, without really thinking, like real hands do now. Current prosthetic hands are controlled via myoelectric signals - that is electrical activity of the muscles recorded from the skin surface of the stump.In the US there are 500,000 upper limb amputees a year. A new bionic hand is fitted with a camera which instantaneously takes a picture…