This news release is available in German.
Tech
Are you a hipster, surfer or biker? What is your urban tribe? Your computer may soon be able to tell. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine to which of these groups, or urban tribes, you belong. So far, the algorithm is 48 percent accurate on average. That's better than chance--which gets answers right only nine percent of the time--but researchers would like the algorithm perform at least as well as humans would.
The increased global consumption of food means that there is an increasing yield gap between crop production and crop usage. To help tackle this issue, a team of scientists from the University of Southampton has used advanced mathematical modelling techniques to understand the precise role soil structure plays in water uptake.
Current approaches to curbing the global rise of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, are failing, according to University of Southampton researchers.
Writing in Nature, the group, led by the late Professor David Barker, say more needs to be done to support young girls and women to feel more in control of their lives and so better able to prioritise healthy eating.
They believe this will have significant benefits in improving the health of future generations and reducing mortality rates.
Research led by the University of Southampton has found that early humans were driven by a need for nutrient-rich food to select 'special places' in northern Europe as their main habitat. Evidence of their activity at these sites comes in the form of hundreds of stone tools, including handaxes.
A record of ancient rainfall teased from long-buried sediments in Mongolia is challenging the popular idea that the arid conditions prevalent in Central Asia today were caused by the ancient uplift of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau.
The fast Fourier transform, one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century, revolutionized signal processing. The algorithm allowed computers to quickly perform Fourier transforms — fundamental operations that separate signals into their individual frequencies — leading to developments in audio and video engineering and digital data compression.
But ever since its development in the 1960s, computer scientists have been searching for an algorithm to better it.
The future availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be pivotal in reaching ambitious climate targets, according to a new comprehensive study of future energy technologies from IIASA, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, and the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum.
Forensic experts have long used the shape of a person's skull to make positive identifications of human remains. But those findings may now be called into question, since a new study from North Carolina State University shows that there is not enough variation in skull shapes to make a positive ID.
Recent increasing police activities focused on people who inject drugs in Thailand have involved reported injustices that may lead to riskier behaviors in people who inject drugs (PWID), according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The results of the study, by Thomas Kerr and colleagues, from the University of British Columbia, Canada, found that urine drug testing, which has become widely available since around 2000, was identified as a key tool used by the police, with some police requesting PWID to provide urine samples in public places.
By relentlessly miniaturizing a pre-World War II computer technology, and combining this with a new and durable material, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have built nanoscale switches and logic gates that operate more energy-efficiently than those now used by the billions in computers, tablets and smart phones.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Like tiny construction workers, cells sculpt embryonic tissues and organs in 3D space. This task is complicated and requires constant communication between cells to coordinate their actions and generate the forces that will shape their environment into complex tissue morphologies.
EVANSTON, Ill. --- A friend posts a picture on Facebook that shows you picking food out of your teeth. Awkward!
Such Facebook faux pas are common. But depending on who you are and to whom you allow access to your Facebook page, such embarrassments can cause greater anguish, according to a new Northwestern University study.
NONPROLIFERATION – Tell-tale seals . . .
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — About 65 million years ago, an asteroid or comet crashed into a shallow sea near what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The resulting firestorm and global dust cloud caused the extinction of many land plants and large animals, including most of the dinosaurs. At this week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, MBARI researchers will present evidence that remnants from this devastating impact are exposed along the Campeche Escarpment—an immense underwater cliff in the southern Gulf of Mexico.