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 Artificial Intelligence Beats 'Most Complex Game Devised by Humans' An artificial intelligence system has defeated a professional Go player, cracking one of the longstanding grand challenges in the field. What's more, the new system, called AlphaGo, defeated the human player by learning the game from scratch using an approach known as "deep learning," the researchers involved say. Ever since IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in their iconic chess match in 1997, AI researchers have been quietly crafting robots that can master more and more human pastimes. Read More »Go figure! Game victory seen as artificial intelligence milestone Read More » Challenger accident shapes new wave of passenger spaceships Read More » How to Tell If Conspiracy Theories Are Real: Here's the Math Read More » Ice-Age Mammoth Bones Found Under Oregon Football Field Read More » Addiction Changes Brain Biology in 3 Stages, Experts Say Experts who research addiction have long argued that it is a disease of the brain. Now, in a new paper, they present a model of addiction, broken down into three key stages, to illustrate how the condition changes human neurobiology. Understanding what's going on in the brain of someone with an addiction is essential for medical professionals to better treat people with this disease, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the lead author of the new review. Read More »'Schizophrenia Gene' Discovery Sheds Light on Possible Cause Researchers have identified a gene that increases the risk of schizophrenia, and they say they have a plausible theory as to how this gene may cause the devastating mental illness. After conducting studies in both humans and mice, the researchers said this new schizophrenia risk gene, called C4, appears to be involved in eliminating the connections between neurons — a process called "synaptic pruning," which, in humans, happens naturally in the teen years. It's possible that excessive or inappropriate "pruning" of neural connections could lead to the development of schizophrenia, the researchers speculated. Read More »Young Women's Cancer Risk Linked to Tanning Beds Young women who use tanning beds or booths have up to a sixfold increase in their likelihood of developing melanoma, a new study found. The study also suggests that indoor tanning has likely played a role in the rise in melanoma rates among young U.S. women in recent years. The findings indicate that the "melanoma epidemic … seems likely to continue unabated, especially among young women, unless exposure to indoor tanning is further restricted and reduced," the researchers, from the University of Minnesota, wrote in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal JAMA Dermatology. Read More » | ||||
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Thursday, January 28, 2016
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Wednesday, January 27, 2016
FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
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| Doomsday Clock stays unchanged at three minutes to midnight The Iran nuclear deal and movement on climate change prompted the scientists who maintain the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic countdown to global catastrophe, to keep it unchanged on Tuesday at three minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Clock, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is widely recognized as an indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe. The Doomsday Clock's hands "are the closest they've been to catastrophe since the early days of above-ground hydrogen bomb testing" in the 1950s. Read More »All US Adults Should Be Screened for Depression, Panel Recommends All adults in the U.S., including pregnant and postpartum women, should be screened for depression when they visit the doctor, according to new recommendations released by a government-appointed panel. This recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is largely consistent with the group's previous recommendation, which was issued in 2009, said Karina Davidson, a member of the task force and a professor at Columbia University Medical Center. The USPSTF makes recommendations regarding the effectiveness of preventive health services, and also considers whether the benefits of treatments outweigh the potential risks. Read More »Can Your BMI Predict How Long You'll Live? Body mass index (BMI) is a common measure of body fat, but new research shows that having a BMI in the "normal weight" range is not always the healthiest for every person. In fact, for many people, having a BMI in the overweight range may be linked with the lowest risk of dying over a 13-year period, the research suggests. Usually, a BMI below 18.5 is considered underweight, from 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal weight, from 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, and 30 and over is considered obese. Read More »1-in-a-Million Odds Link Global Warming and Record Heat For 2014 alone, there's a one-in-a-million chance that the monster heat record occurred only from natural climate variability. "The risk of heat extremes has been multiplied due to human greenhouse-gas emissions, as our data analysis shows," study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf said in a statement. "The anomalous warmth has led to unprecedented local heat waves across the world, sadly resulting in loss of life and aggravating droughts and wildfires," said Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Read More »New Foldable Battery Takes Cue from Chinese Calligraphy Read More » | ||||
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Tuesday, January 26, 2016
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| Sex life of sleeping sickness parasite may lead to its downfall By Alex Whiting LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An unusual sex life may spell the extinction of the deadly African sleeping sickness parasite, which threatens millions of people in West and Central Africa, an international team of scientists said on Tuesday. The parasite, called T.b. "We've discovered that the parasite causing African sleeping sickness has existed for thousands of years without having sex and is now suffering the consequences of this strategy," said Willie Weir, bioinformatician at the University of Glasgow. Read More »Oslo trash incinerator starts experiment to slow climate change Read More » Sexy Signal? Frill and Horns May Have Helped Dinosaur Communicate
Scientists to announce "Doomsday Clock" time Read More » 5 Causes Account for Nearly Half of Child and Teen Deaths Five causes of death account for nearly half of all deaths in children and adolescents worldwide, a new report finds. Globally, there were 7.7 million deaths among children and adolescents in 2013, according to the report. The vast majority of these deaths — 6.3 million — were in children under age 5. There were about 480,000 deaths among children ages 5 to 9, and 970,000 in children ages 10 to 19. Read More »Medical Marijuana May Reduce Frequency of Migraines Medical marijuana might help migraine sufferers reduce the frequency of their headaches, a new study suggests. In the study of 121 people with migraines, 103 said they had fewer migraines after they began using marijuana, the researchers found. Among the people who noticed improvement, the frequency of their migraine headaches decreased from 10.4 headaches per month to 4.6 headaches per month, on average, the researchers found. Read More »Color-Morphing Clams Could Inspire New Smartphone & TV Screens Read More » Artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky dead at 88 Marvin Minsky, the artificial intelligence pioneer who helped make machines think, leading to computers that understand spoken commands and beat grandmasters at chess, has died at the age of 88, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. Minsky had "a monster brain," MIT colleague Patrick Winston, a professor of artificial intelligence and computer science, said in a 2012 interview. Minsky's greatest contribution to computers and artificial intelligence was the notion that neither human nor machine intelligence is a single process. Read More »Explorer's Death Highlights Dangers of Antarctica Read More » Deadly Math: Venus Flytraps Calculate When Killing Prey Unlike proactive predators in the animal kingdom, carnivorous plants like the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) must wait for their insect prey to literally step inside their "jaws" before they can catch the victims. The first tap from an insect tells a Venus flytrap, "Pay attention, but don't respond just yet," the new study said. Read More »Enormous Canyon May Be Hidden Beneath Antarctic Ice Read More » Fig-Dwelling Worm Is a Mighty Mouth-Morpher Read More » | ||||
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