Sci-Tech news

• New 'Vegebot' Highlights Why Robots Won't Replace Vegetable Pickers Anytime Soon

  11-07-2019 23:51 via feedproxy.google.com
  Cambridge researchers have a new lettuce-picking robot. Its success underlines the challenges of automating vegetable picking. (Credit: leungchopan/shutterstock)
  A skilled human can pick a head of lettuce every 10 seconds. Just reach down, slice a mature head off its stalk, bag it, toss it in the cart. Easy, right?Tell that to wannabe veggie-picking robots. For them, it’s actually quite a challenge.Earlier this week, a team from the University of Cambridge published their latest rob
  
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• The Latest: Trump says big tech can't be allowed to censor

  11-07-2019 22:59
  President Donald Trump says big tech companies must not be allowed to censor the voices of the American people on social media
  
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• The Latest: Twitter blames internal configuration for outage

  11-07-2019 22:19
  Twitter says "an internal configuration change" is responsible for an outage that lasted for about an hour.
  
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• Ford, VW to broaden global alliance

  11-07-2019 22:19
  Ford and Volkswagen plan to unveil abroader global alliance on Friday that will focus on developing autonomous technology and electric vehicles.
  
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• Renowned forensic scientist's testimony comes under question

  11-07-2019 22:01
  Renowned forensic scientist Henry Lee is defending work he did three decades ago
  
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• Condor chick confirmed at Zion National Park in Utah

  11-07-2019 21:37
  A sweeping red-rock cliff at Utah's Zion National Park is now the home of a new California condor chick as the species makes a comeback in the wild three decades after they were on the brink of extinction, biologists have confirmed.
  
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• Twitter appears to be back after outage

  11-07-2019 21:34
  Twitter was down for about an hour Thursday in an outage that appeared to affect users around the world.
  
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• GPM satellite provides a 3D look at Tropical Storm Barry

  11-07-2019 21:22
  The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided a couple of views of Tropical Storm Barry that showed its cloud heights and rainfall rates.
  
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• Moon-forming disk discovered around distant planet

  11-07-2019 21:21
  Using Earth's most powerful array of radio telescopes, astronomers have made the first observations of a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust like the one that is believed to have birthed the moons of Jupiter.
  
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• Human workers can listen to Google Assistant recordings

  11-07-2019 21:19
  Google said its contractors are able to listen to recordings of what people say to its artificial-intelligence system Google Assistant.
  
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• An AI Bot Just Beat Poker Pros In Six-Player Texas Hold’em

  11-07-2019 21:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  (Credit: LightField Studios/Shutterstock)The best poker players in the world can cash in on millions of dollars in a game. Played in casinos, poker clubs, private homes and on the internet, thegame demands skill and strategy. Now scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that can best even the top human players. And this new AI won at six-player poker. Bots were already dominant at two, or three-player poker, but six players is much harder. The feat represents a majo
  
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• Japanese Asteroid Mission Touches Down on Ryugu, Collects Sample

  11-07-2019 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hayabusa2 has successfully collected its second sample from the surface of asteroid Ryugu. (Credit: Illustration by Akihiro Ikeshita (C), JAXA)Hayabusa2’s encounters with asteroid Ryugu have been delightfully action-packed. In February, the Japanese spacecraft collected its first sample by swooping close and firing a bullet into the asteroid’s surface to stir up material it then snagged with a horn-shaped collector. Then, in April, it shot a much larger impactor into Ryugu, creating
  
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• How Did 5,500 Miles of Seaweed Spread Across the Atlantic? Researchers Still Aren't Sure

  11-07-2019 20:56 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sargassum covers a beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in April 2019.(Credit: Kamira/shutterstock)Marine scientist Mengqiu Wang is no stranger to questions about the forecast. The seaweed forecast, that is.Wang, a researcher at the University of South Florida, is one of the scientists who tracked the largest seaweed bloom in history – an expansive 5,500 mile cluster that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the shores of West Africa in 2018. It was documented in a report published in t
  
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• NASA selects UMD-led proposal to upgrade lunar instruments placed by Apollo missions

  11-07-2019 20:33
  In 1969, University of Maryland physicist Doug Currie helped design three still-in-use lunar instruments placed on the moon by Apollo 11, 14 and 15. Fifty years later, Currie is the lead scientist for a just-approved NASA project to place next-generation versions of these instruments on the Moon.
  
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• Harley-Davidson's electric Hog: 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds

  11-07-2019 20:32
  Harley-Davidson is releasing details about the electric motorcycle it's rolling out this year that it hopes will capture the imagination of a new generation of riders and put a charge into its diminishing sales.
  
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• Former astronaut helps break flight record over poles

  11-07-2019 20:32
  A former astronaut is back at NASA's Kennedy Space Center after helping to shatter a pair of records for a round-the-world airplane flight over the North and South poles.
  
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• Expect another huge blob of algae on Lake Erie this summer

  11-07-2019 20:32
  Heavy rains that inundated the Great Lakes region this spring will fuel another massive algae bloom across parts of western Lake Erie later this summer, researchers said Thursday.
  
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• Through smoke and fire, NASA searches for answers

  11-07-2019 20:30
  NASA satellites reveal a world marked by fire: a global patchwork of flame and smoke driven by the seasons and people. Summer wildfires rage across the western United States and Canada, Australia and Europe. In early spring, agricultural fires blanket the breadbasket regions of Southeast Asia as they do throughout the dry season in central and southern Africa and Brazil.
  
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• Online calculator shows how trees can improve air quality and cut health costs

  11-07-2019 20:29
  A new interactive online tool is set to encourage tree planting initiatives across the UK. It calculates how much pollution would be removed by planting trees in local areas, as well as the corresponding public health cost savings.
  
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• What happens when you explode a chemical bond?

  11-07-2019 20:27
  On bright summer days, the sunlight all around us is breaking bad by breaking bonds. Chemical bonds.
  
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• Premera Blue Cross pays states $10 million over data breach

  11-07-2019 20:26
  Premera Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in the Pacific Northwest, has agreed to pay $10 million to 30 states following an investigation into a data breach that exposed confidential information on more than 10 million people across the country.
  
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• Feds: Truck driver likely caused self-driving shuttle crash

  11-07-2019 20:26
  A collision between an experimental self-driving shuttle and a semi in downtown Las Vegas was probably the truck driver's fault, but the shuttle operator didn't have quick access to a controller that could have honked the horn or moved the autonomous vehicle, contributing to the accident, federal investigators have determined.
  
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• 'Robot umpires' debut in independent Atlantic League

  11-07-2019 20:24
  "Robot umpires" have arrived.
  
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• Amazon, seeking more skilled workers, will do the training

  11-07-2019 20:22
  Amazon to spend more than $700M on training for about a third of its US workforce
  
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• Concerned about climate change? Plant a Victory Garden

  11-07-2019 20:17
  Catherine McDonnell-Forney has been growing food at her Minneapolis home for the entire decade that she's lived there. But now she tends a registered Climate Victory Garden.
  
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• With no 737 MAX exposure, Delta reports banner quarter

  11-07-2019 20:16
  Delta Air Lines rode strong consumer travel demand to banner earnings last quarter, benefiting from the company's lack of exposure to Boeing's grounded 737 MAX planes.
  
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• Skopje zoo's chimp returns after recovering from depression

  11-07-2019 20:16
  Koko the chimpanzee, once a star in Skopje's zoo, has returned home after spending 10 years in the Netherlands recovering from depression, the zoo says.
  
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• Sheaths drive powerful new artificial muscles

  11-07-2019 20:00
  Over the last 15 years, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and their international colleagues have invented several types of strong, powerful artificial muscles using materials ranging from high-tech carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to ordinary fishing line.
  
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• Patterns in DNA reveal hundreds of unknown protein pairings

  11-07-2019 20:00
  Sequencing a genome is getting cheaper, but making sense of the resulting data remains hard. Researchers have now found a new way to extract useful information out of sequenced DNA.
  
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• New CRISPR platform expands RNA editing capabilities

  11-07-2019 20:00
  CRISPR-based tools have revolutionized our ability to target disease-linked genetic mutations. CRISPR technology comprises a growing family of tools that can manipulate genes and their expression, including by targeting DNA with the enzymes Cas9 and Cas12 and targeting RNA with the enzyme Cas13. This collection offers different strategies for tackling mutations. Targeting disease-linked mutations in RNA, which is relatively short-lived, would avoid making permanent changes to the genome. In addi
  
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• Mathematical model explores daily rhythms in pain sensitivity

  11-07-2019 20:00
  A new computational model successfully predicts how daily pain sensitivity rhythms affect pain processing, both in healthy adults and in people with neuropathic pain. Jennifer Crodelle of New York University and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology.
  
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• Ancient genomics pinpoint origin and rapid turnover of cattle in the Fertile Crescent

  11-07-2019 20:00
  The keeping of livestock began in the Ancient Near East and underpinned the emergence of complex economies and then cities. Subsequently, it is there that the world's first empires rose and fell. Now, ancient DNA has revealed how the prehistory of the region's largest domestic animal, the cow, chimes with these events.
  
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• Amazon plans to retrain 100,000 employees

  11-07-2019 19:44 via rss.cnn.com
  Amazon announced it will spend $700 million over the next six years to help retrain a third of its US workforce to adapt to an economy increasingly disrupted by automation and new technology.
  
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• Amazon is developing a 'Lord of the Rings' MMO video game

  11-07-2019 19:44 via rss.cnn.com
  Amazon Game Studios, a division of Amazon, is producing a free-to-play massively multiplayer online (MMO) game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."
  
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• A feud between Japan and South Korea is threatening global supplies of memory chips

  11-07-2019 19:44 via rss.cnn.com
  South Korea has warned that an escalating trade dispute with Japan could hurt the global tech industry.
  
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• France adopts pioneering tax on tech giants after US threat

  11-07-2019 19:22
  France has adopted a pioneering tax on internet giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook despite threats from the U.S.
  
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• How DVR is changing the world of TV advertising

  11-07-2019 19:20
  As digital advertising takes over the world of marketing, with popular focus on everything from social media ads to search engine ads, it can be easy to forget about television. In recent years, though, the TV landscape has changed significantly. For example, half of TV drama viewers now watch through digital video recorders (DVR).
  
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• What will it take to live on the moon?

  11-07-2019 19:10
  With NASA planning to revisit the lunar surface by 2024 and send multiple expeditions by 2028, Rutgers University's Haym Benaroya is optimistic that people will someday live on the moon.
  
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• Career differences main driver of wage inequality

  11-07-2019 19:00
  Why does a 55-year-old worker earn on average around 40 percent more than a 25-year-old? Is there a link between average wage growth and rising wage inequality? Many answers to these fundamental questions have so far remained largely unanswered. The economists Prof. Moritz Kuhn and Prof. Christian Bayer from the University of Bonn have now evaluated wage data for the period from 2006 to 2016. They find that different progress on the career ladder is the most important driver of both wage growth
  
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• VR app gives students a new way to see inner workings of cells

  11-07-2019 18:50
  An educational app created at the University of Alberta is giving cell biology students a brand new perspective on their subject and may also offer a glimpse into the not-so-distant future of post-secondary education.
  
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• New virtual laboratory for merging neutron stars

  11-07-2019 18:40
  For the first time, a high-performance computer will make it possible to simulate gravitational waves, magnetic fields and neutrino physics of neutron stars simultaneously.
  
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• Commercial supersonic aircraft could return to the skies

  11-07-2019 18:40
  Flying faster than the speed of sound still sounds futuristic for regular people, more than 15 years after the last commercial supersonic flights ended. The planes that made those journeys, the 14 aircraft collectively known as the Concorde, flew from 1976 to 2003. It traveled three times faster than regular passenger aircraft, but the airlines that flew it couldn't make a profit on its trips.
  
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• Democrats Driving Agenda 21/Smart Growth Legislation

  11-07-2019 17:57 via technocracy.news
  The Complete Streets Act being promoted in the Senate and House is straight out of the UN’s playbook for implementing Sustainable Development. Complete Streets is an initiative of Smart Grown America
  Note: The UN Agenda 21 has been heavily promoted by both Democrats and Republicans since 1992. Note Nancy Pelosi’s 1993 speech on the House floor.. ⁃ TN EditorU.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-MA, and Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN, introduced the Complete Streets Act Wednesday in Congress,
  
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• Want to be YouTube famous? Time to make a TikTok.

  11-07-2019 17:23 via nbcnews.com
  “It’s much easier on TikTok to get known and get your name out there than on YouTube,” Isaiah Perysian, 17, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok, said.
  
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• Mission Impossible: Getting Rid Of Chinese Security Cameras

  11-07-2019 17:16 via technocracy.news
  Even the most sensitive Government offices are blanketed with security cameras made in China, and the task of removing them is next to impossible. China’s Technocracy is comparable to the Borg race in the Star Trek series: “We will assimilate!” ⁃ TN EditorU.S. federal agencies have five weeks to rip out Chinese-made surveillance cameras in order to comply with a ban imposed by Congress last year in an effort to thwart the threat of spying from Beijing
  
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• Here's a fact: We went to the moon in 1969

  11-07-2019 17:09
  Even 50 years after Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, some people still think it was faked. Here are their most common claims and why they don't hold up.
  
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• Long-Toed Bird Preserved In Amber For 99 Million Years

  11-07-2019 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  A long-toed bird preserved in amber from Myanmar is the first of its kind. (Credit: Lida Xing)Smaller than a sparrow, a bird that lived 99 million years ago in what's now Southeast Asia had legs unlike any other avian. The bird's hindlimb features one toe longer than its entire lower leg bone.Lucky for paleontologists, a piece of amber has preserved the animal's odd anatomy.Found in Burmese amber and identified as new species, Elektorornis chenguangi is known only from one hindl
  
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• NASA Persists In False Claim That 97% Of Climate Scientists Agree On Global Warming

  11-07-2019 16:20 via technocracy.news
  Scientific corruption at NASA is blatant, producing propaganda designed to further its own Technocrat existence. NASA has persistently refused to remove false assertions about climate studies.  ⁃ TN EditorOn Tuesday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) sent NASA a formal complaint, asking the agency to withdraw the false claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming and climate change. The 2013 study purporting to dem
  
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• France slaps digital tax on Google, Amazon, and other tech giants

  11-07-2019 14:56 via nbcnews.com
  “France is sovereign, and France decides its own tax rules,” said France’s Finance Minister.
  
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• Correction: Britain-Porn Block story

  11-07-2019 14:49
  Correction: Britain-Porn Block story
  
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