© Michal Samuni-Blank

The Egyptian fruit bat is a highly social mammal that roosts (and argues) in crowded colonies

A machine learning algorithm helped decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they "speak" to one another as individuals

Plenty of animals communicate with one another, at least in a general way—wolves howl to each other, birds sing and dance to attract mates and big cats mark their territory with urine. But researchers at Tel Aviv University recently discovered that when at least one species communicates, it gets very specific. Egyptian fruit bats, it turns out, aren't just making high pitched squeals when they gather together in their roosts. They're communicating specific problems, reports Bob Yirka at Phys.org.

According to Ramin Skibba at Nature, neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognizing human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software. They then analyzed the corresponding video to see if they could match the calls to certain activities.

They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds. The research appears in the journal Scientific Reports.

Scientists, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have developed a transparent, self-healing, highly stretchable conductive material that can be electrically activated to power artificial muscles and could be used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.

The findings, which were published today in the journal Advanced Material, represent the first time scientists have created an ionic conductor, meaning materials that ions can flow through, that is transparent, mechanically stretchable, and self-healing.

The material has potential applications in a wide range of fields. It could give robots the ability to self-heal after mechanical failure; extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries used in electronics and electric cars; and improve biosensors used in the medical field and environmental monitoring.

"Creating a material with all these properties has been a puzzle for years," said Chao Wang, an adjunct assistant professor of chemistry who is one of the authors of the paper. "We did that and now are just beginning to explore the applications."

The role of a journalist is to report "the truth" based on available verifiable evidence of unfolding events and developments in this world. Because undisputable empirical facts confirm that the current crime cabal dominating this earth has chosen war over peace, exploitation and greed over cooperation and sharing, fake news and propaganda lies over honesty and truth, and death over life, as an alternative news journalist I've felt compelled to focus on exposing the existing crime cabal's latest evildoing, ensuring that a wealth of hyperlinked source documentation is included to back up my contentions. A global network of child sex slavery, horrific ritualistic abuse and trafficking amongst the most powerful elite in this world was recently exposed through #Pizzagate, Weiner's laptop and Podesta-Clinton emails, my journalistic focus has centered around that despicable evil this last month. But now the urgency of another overlooked, highly controversial subject that alludes 99% of alt-media seems newsworthy and pressing enough to at least cover.

As a reporter of what is now drawing intense internet speculation via a number of emerging YouTube videos, apparently based on measurable geophysical data, I will present the following information for your consideration. I leave it up to you the reader to decide whether to believe what's presented or not. Because some of it is clearly conjecture, I encourage you to follow up exploring the possibilities of its veracity (or not) based on the best available information, rather than take what's offered here at face value as irrefutable Gospel truth. I am neither a proponent nor a denier of what's presented here, and I concede the possibility that what is suggested may turn out to be pure hype, proving bogus like numerous past false alarms - the Y2K fiasco and the 2012 Mayan calendar panic come readily to mind. Indeed legions of fear mongers thriving on and off the internet extend far into our history erroneously predicting the end of the world or life as we know it. Indeed in these troubled times on a daily basis an increasing number of doomsday scenarios are constantly surfacing. But as both an observer and reporter, I feel it my incumbent responsibility and duty to at least cover what could speculatively prove to be prophetically accurate and true based on extrapolated past empirical, connect-the-dot patterns.

Aerial photographs of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian rain forest are yielding a sensational new look at a Neolithic way of life that has all but disappeared from the face of the Earth.

The high-resolution images, taken from a helicopter last week by Brazilian photographer Ricardo Stuckert, offer an unprecedented glimpse of a vibrant indigenous community living in complete isolation in the depths of the Amazon jungle. National Geographic obtained first-time rights from Stuckert to publish a selection.

"I felt like I was a painter in the last century," Stuckert said, describing his reaction to seeing the natives. "To think that in the 21st century, there are still people who have no contact with civilization, living like their ancestors did 20,000 years ago—it's a powerful emotion."

An ideological dispute is taking place in biology. And it's about a big topic that's central to everything: heredity. In his epoch-making book On the Origin of Species of 1859, Darwin wrote of the reigning ignorance about how differences between individuals come about. It was only with 'modern evolutionary synthesis' in the 1940s that people became convinced that heredity functions through genetics - in other words, that the characteristics of living creatures are passed on to the next generations through their genetic substance, DNA.

This perspective was helpful in providing a focus for research in the ensuing decades, which brought about extraordinary discoveries. As a result, many aspects of the form and function of living creatures can now be explained. But already in the 1950s, different observations called into question the seemingly exclusive control of the genes. For example, maize kernels can have different colors even if their DNA sequence is identical.

Automation through robots and other artificial intelligence could affect nearly half of all US jobs, a report from the Obama administration has found. Education and job-training programs could prevent the sea change from destroying the American economy.

Scientists and economic advisers within the executive branch studied the potential effects of artificial intelligence on the US workforce and economy over the next 20 years, as well as ways to prevent the technological advances from automation from potentially destroying job opportunities for Americans ‒ which they said it could, for up to 47 percent of jobs. Rather, the authors sought to guide the government's automation policy to create better economic opportunities for the country as a whole.

"These transformations will open up new opportunities for individuals, the economy, and society, but they have the potential to disrupt the current livelihoods of millions of Americans," the 55-page report said. "Whether AI leads to unemployment and increases in inequality over the long-run depends not only on the technology itself but also on the institutions and policies that are in place."

The authors compared use of AI to how the Industrial Revolution introduced mass production to the economy, which negatively affected the livelihoods of skilled craftsman, as well as to the rise of computers in the workplace, which benefited white-collar workers.

"Output per hour rose [in the 19th Century] while inequality declined, driving up average living standards, but the labor of some high-skill workers was no longer as valuable in the market," they wrote. "The advent of computers and the Internet raised the relative productivity of higher-skilled workers."

A solar storm will send extraordinary displays of colorful lights through the skies of northern countries, but may interfere with electrical equipment and power supplies.

Solar storms, also called geomagnetic storms, occur when plasma, the superheated matter that makes up the sun, is blown outward from our star to create a stream of supercharged particles, sometimes referred to as the solar wind. If the supercharged particles are pulled into Earth's magnetic field, the atoms react, causing a solar storm. This can cause interference in devices powered with electricity, and also create awe-inspiring atmospheric displays known as aurorae.

Aurorae are most frequently seen at Earth's magnetic poles, the Arctic and Antarctica, but a solar storm can greatly extend their reach. Space-weather forecasters say that Michigan, Maine, Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Scotland, and Northern England all stand a good chance of seeing aurorae in the night sky over the next two days.

For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years. An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it's expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms.

Gliese 710 is currently 64 light-years from Earth, but for all intents and purposes, it's heading straight for us. A new study published in the journal Astronomy and Physics projects the close encounter will happen about 1.35 million years from now, and that the star will come within 13,365 AU of our sun (where 1 AU is equal to the average distance of the Earth to the sun), or 1.2 trillion miles. At that distance, it would take light 77 days to reach the Earth.

That's obviously far, but not in cosmological terms. That distance is well within the Solar System's Oort Cloud—a large bubble of ice and rock that surrounds the sun to a distance as far as 50,000 to 200,000 AU. So while Gliese 710 is sure to avoid a direct hit with any object in the inner Solar System, it'll likely travel through the Oort Cloud. And with its tremendous gravitational influence (it's about 60 percent the size of our sun), it'll perturb the many large rocks currently sitting idle way out there in the outer reaches. This star is poised to send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, possibly causing a serious impact event with Earth.

Two out of three U.S. school districts buy infant simulators, but new research shows the automaton newborns simply don't work.

Fifteen-year-old Shaila Dominguez dreaded the thought of taking her baby out in public, but it was a rare day when she didn't have work or school or both, and Christmas was fast approaching. So on an overcast December afternoon in Rapid City, S.D., she strapped the baby into its animal-print car seat, swung by Taco John's to pick up her paycheck, and made her way to the nearest Walmart.

In the toy aisle, Shaila picked out a robotic turtle for her 4-year-old cousin, with whom she shares a room in their aunt's single-wide trailer. Seconds after she paid the cashier, the baby began to cry, so Shaila perched the car seat on a vacant checkout counter and swapped a green diaper for a yellow one. An elderly man with long white hair approached in a motorized wheelchair. Shaila had draped a blanket to shield the baby from view. Without asking, the man used his thumb and two forefingers to peel it back for a glimpse. "They still make 'em that small!" he said, laughing, and rolled away.

Shaila, who has a pretty, round face and big brown eyes that she makes look bigger with a catlike swoop of black liner, froze in a nervous half-smile. "I don't know if he thinks I'm weird because it's fake, or if he thinks it's real," she said. "I'm so confused. I don't know what to think!"

Sex with robots is "just around the corner", an expert told a global conference in London this week featuring interactive sex toys and discussions on the ethics of relationships with humanoids.

"Sexbots" are a staple of science fiction -- the idea of robots as sex partners is explored, for instance, in recent films and television series like Ex-Machina and Westworld.

But some specialists believe the first animated lovers made of metal, rubber and plastic, programmed to provide sexual bliss, will take a step into reality just months from now.

"Sex with robots is just around the corner, with the first sexbots coming... some time next year," artificial intelligence expert David Levy told the International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots at Goldsmiths, University of London.

US California-based company Abyss Creations next year will start marketing sex robots that are billed as life-like, with the ability to talk and move like humans.

Ultimately, Levy said, people should entertain the thought of marriage with robots as early as 2050.

The conference in London showcased some of the latest developments in robotic sex toys, such as gadgets which allow couples to kiss, no matter how far apart they are.

The "Kissenger", (derived from the word Kiss+Messenger) which attaches to your mobile phone, contains sensors to detect the pressure of a kiss and transmit it to your partner's device in real time. It has been under development for several years.

Now students at Tokyo's Keio University are developing the "Teletongue", aimed at providing "remote oral interaction" and designed to be "kinky", according to co-creator Dolhathai Kaewsermwong.

It allows couples to send licking sounds and sensations through cyberspace using a "lollipop", creating an "immersive experience", she explained.