Science & Technology

Everyone wants to chat: Scientists say two-way 'turn-taking' communication occurs across a wide range of species

BT.com
Wed, 06 Jun 2018 12:11 UTC

Two-way conversations – once thought of as uniquely human – are common across the animal kingdom, say scientists.

From elephants to frogs to fireflies, it seems everyone wants to chat.

Two-way conversations - once thought of as uniquely human - are common across the animal kingdom, say scientists.

The whistles of dolphins, low rumbling of elephants, soft chirps of naked mole rats and "rapping" of clawed frogs might be somewhat lost in translation.

But according to a new review of scientific evidence they all follow the turn-taking rules of human conversation.

Researchers from the UK and Germany found animal communication was still not well understood despite studies of birds dating back 50 years.

Comment:

MIT creates 'psychopath' AI named Norman

Chris Mahon
Outer Places
Tue, 05 Jun 2018 18:09 UTC

Between Boston Dynamics' headless, door-opening cyborg dogs, Omron Automation's empathy chips for robots, and MIT Media Lab's new 'psychopath' AI Norman (named for Norman Bates, the murderer from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho), it looks like we've got everything we need to cobble together a darker, more violent version of I, Robot, or at least another episode of Black Mirror Season 5.

Seriously, listen to this: A team of MIT employees took a normal image-captioning AI (designed to look at pictures and provide a written description of what it sees) and fed it a steady stream of images from an unnamed Reddit board where people exclusively post horrifying, morbid images of murder and death.

Afterward, the team showed this AI (now dubbed Norman) a series of Rorschach inkblots, which are used by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts to judge a patient's mental state.

The team then compared Norman's captions to a normal AI that had not been traumatized with images of death and found a disturbing pattern.

New study says that there is no evidence that sex with robots can be therapeutic

Stephen Fleischfresser
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 05 Jun 2018 03:33 UTC

© Jordi Perez Donat /Barcroft Images / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Repairing the relationship: two sexbots built by Spanish robotics developer Sergi Santos in 2017 undergo a tune-up.

Given onscreen depictions of robots designed for pleasure in Blade Runner and the recent Westworld series, and even artificial intelligence (AI) romance seen in Spike Jonze's Her, the world seems ready for 'sexbots'. But a new paper reveals that we have no idea what's coming - the world of machine intimacy is far more complex and poorly understood than imagined.

With an already established sex technology industry worth roughly US$30 billion and a quickly expanding Virtual Reality sex market, robots designed for sexual gratification are sure to have consumer appeal. There are plenty of 'robosexuals', as Futurama's Bender might say.

Already, four companies are manufacturing and selling "female" customisable sexbots to an overwhelmingly male market. Matched with AIs, they might provide ever more human interactions - making eye contact, speaking and responding to moods and needs of the individual user.

Much of the marketing for the technology hinges on health claims: sexbots will help make sex safer, play a therapeutic role for couples, the anxious and the lonely, and even potentially aid in curbing and treating dangerous sexual deviancy.

Chantal Cox-George of St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Susan Bewley from the Women's Health Academic Centre at King's College London, both in the UK, decided to see if there is any scientific evidence to back up these claims.

Thought to be seismically silent, East Antarctica is actually active

Phys.org
Mon, 04 Jun 2018 20:05 UTC

Because instruments were finally installed there, scientists can no longer say that East Antarctica is unusually seismically silent.

Since the first earthquake was detected in 1982, there have been just eight more seismic events recorded in East Antarctica. But after a team that included Amanda Lough, Ph.D. - then a student but now an assistant professor in Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences-set up the first winter-through-summer seismic array, 27 earthquakes were recorded in 2009 alone, tripling the total number of events recorded on East Antarctica's section of the Earth's crust.

So instead of being exceptionally stable, it appears East Antarctica just wasn't being watched closely enough.

Comment: Or perhaps the fault lines have only recently begun to wake up?

Comment: Whether activity in Antarctica is increasing remains to be seen, but with the uptick in activity around the world, they got there just in time:

BrambleBee: The robot that could help pollinate crops if we kill all the bees

Adele Peters
fastcompany.com
Fri, 25 May 2018 20:20 UTC

West Virginia University Interactive Robotics Laboratory

If the trajectory of our pollinator population continues, we might need the BrambleBee soon.

Inside a greenhouse at West Virginia University, a robot is rolling down aisles of blackberry plants learning to act like a bee. Computer vision algorithms are being developed to help the robot locate flowers, and its robotic arm, topped with a set of soft brush tips-designed to act like a bee's hairs-will gently reach out to each flower and pollinate it. At the moment, the arm is practicing its technique on QR codes placed inside the blackberry bushes.

"From a robotics point of view, we're always trying to find solutions to the urgent problems in the world," says Yu Gu, an engineering professor at the university who is working on the design of the robot, called the BrambleBee. Around three-quarters of food plants rely at least in part on pollinators, and pollinators are struggling.

Bursts of brain activity linked to memory reactivation during sleep

Hilary Hurd Anyaso
Northwestern Now
Sun, 03 Jun 2018 19:07 UTC

Leading theories propose that sleep presents an opportune time for important, new memories to become stabilized. And it's long been known which brain waves are produced during sleep. But in a new study, researchers set out to better understand the brain mechanisms that secure memory storage.

The team from Northwestern and Princeton universities set out to find more direct and precisely timed evidence for the involvement of one particular sleep wave - known as the "sleep spindle."

Depression accelerates brain aging

Science Daily
Sun, 03 Jun 2018 18:49 UTC

Psychologists have found a link between depression and an acceleration of the rate at which the brain ages.

Psychologists at the University of Sussex have found a link between depression and an acceleration of the rate at which the brain ages. Although scientists have previously reported that people with depression or anxiety have an increased risk of dementia in later life, this is the first study that provides comprehensive evidence for the effect of depression on decline in overall cognitive function (also referred to as cognitive state), in a general population.

For the study, published today, Thursday 24 May 2018, in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers conducted a robust systematic review of 34 longitudinal studies, with the focus on the link between depression or anxiety and decline in cognitive function over time. Evidence from more than 71,000 participants was combined and reviewed. Including people who presented with symptoms of depression as well as those that were diagnosed as clinically depressed, the study looked at the rate of decline of overall cognitive state -- encompassing memory loss, executive function (such as decision making) and information processing speed -- in older adults.

Comment:

Report: World saw 'worst year ever' for data breaches & cyberattacks in 2017

RT
Sun, 03 Jun 2018 16:01 UTC

Ransomware attacks and cyber business interruptions in 2017 were worse than ever, with claims for losses surpassing the previous four years combined, research by insurance group AIG has found.

According to its report, over a quarter of cyber claims (26 percent) received in 2017 had ransomware as the primary cause of loss - a significant leap from 16 percent of claims in the years 2013-2016.

Scientists develop material that could regenerate dental enamel and bone

Phys Org
Sat, 02 Jun 2018 18:13 UTC

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have developed a new way to grow mineralised materials which could regenerate hard tissues such as dental enamel and bone.

Enamel, located on the outer part of our teeth, is the hardest tissue in the body and enables our teeth to function for a large part of our lifetime despite biting forces, exposure to acidic foods and drinks and extreme temperatures. This remarkable performance results from its highly organised structure.

Comment:

Rewilding fail: Rare Iberian lynx released in Portugal then spotted in Barcelona to be recaptured

Hannah Strange
Telegraph
Fri, 01 Jun 2018 21:58 UTC

A rare Iberian lynx named Lithium has appeared in Barcelona after journeying more than 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) from southern Portugal, where it was released two years ago.

The young male lynx was last seen in the Guadiana Valley in the Algarve in 2016, just days after his release into the wild as part of a project to save the endangered species. The GPS signal from a device on his collar then disappeared, and for two years, his whereabouts were unknown.

He has now become the first Iberian lynx seen in Catalonia for more than a hundred years, after conservation officials tracked him down to a wooded area in Barcelona following reports of sightings.

Comment: What is it with scientists trying to play god? Granted humans have driven many species to extinction and the intent behind many conservation efforts are admirable, but judging by the repeated problems scientists are encountering, clearly they don't know what's best for these endangered species:

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Science & Technology

Everyone wants to chat: Scientists say two-way 'turn-taking' communication occurs across a wide range of species

MIT creates 'psychopath' AI named Norman

New study says that there is no evidence that sex with robots can be therapeutic

Thought to be seismically silent, East Antarctica is actually active

BrambleBee: The robot that could help pollinate crops if we kill all the bees

Bursts of brain activity linked to memory reactivation during sleep

Depression accelerates brain aging

Report: World saw 'worst year ever' for data breaches & cyberattacks in 2017

Scientists develop material that could regenerate dental enamel and bone

Rewilding fail: Rare Iberian lynx released in Portugal then spotted in Barcelona to be recaptured

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