Wednesday 8 May 2019

Show your hands: Smartwatches sense hand activity

We've become accustomed to our smartwatches and smartphones sensing what our bodies are doing, be it walking, driving or sleeping. But what about our hands? It turns out that smartwatches, with a few tweaks, can detect a surprising number of things your hands are doing.

* This article was originally published here

Two-thirds of world's longest rivers throttled by mankind: study

Almost two in three of Earth's longest rivers have been severed by dams, reservoirs or other manmade constructions, severely damaging some of the most important ecosystems on the planet, researchers said Wednesday.

* This article was originally published here

Collision-detecting suitcase, wayfinding app help blind people navigate airports

Carnegie Mellon University researchers say a smart suitcase that warns blind users of impending collisions and a wayfinding smartphone app can help people with visual disabilities navigate airport terminals safely and independently.

* This article was originally published here

A multi-scale body-part mask guided attention network for person re-identification

Person re-identification entails the automated identification of the same person in multiple images from different cameras and with different backgrounds, angles or positions. Despite recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), person re-identification remains a highly challenging task, particularly due to the many variations in a person's pose, as well as other differences associated with lighting, occlusion, misalignment and background clutter.

* This article was originally published here

Study finds biomarker of CTE in some former athletes with multiple concussions

In a group of former professional athletes who experienced multiple concussions, a new study has found that approximately half the group had higher than normal levels of a protein called tau in their cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid surrounding the brain and spine. The study is published in the May 8, 2019, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

* This article was originally published here

New approach to drug discovery could lead to personalized treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders

Researchers have developed a method that could drastically accelerate the search for new drugs to treat mental health disorders such as schizophrenia.

* This article was originally published here

An approach for securing audio classification against adversarial attacks

Adversarial audio attacks are small perturbations that are not perceivable by humans and are intentionally added to audio signals to impair the performance of machine learning (ML) models. These attacks raise serious concerns about the security of ML models, as they can cause them to make mistakes and ultimately generate wrong predictions.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers make transformational AI seem 'unremarkable'

Physicians making life-and-death decisions about organ transplants, cancer treatments or heart surgeries typically don't give much thought to how artificial intelligence might help them. And that's how researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say clinical AI tools should be designed—so doctors don't need to think about them.

* This article was originally published here

Study: Some skin cancer doctors cut more

A new study shows that some surgeons cut away significantly more tissue than their peers when removing skin cancer lesions.

* This article was originally published here

'Good enough' parenting is good enough, new research says

What really matters in caring for babies may be different than commonly thought, says Lehigh University researcher Susan S. Woodhouse, an expert on infant attachment. In new research, she finds that caregivers need only "get it right" 50 percent of the time when responding to babies' need for attachment to have a positive impact on a baby. Securely attached infants are more likely to have better outcomes in childhood and adulthood, and based on Woodhouse's potentially paradigm-shifting work, there is more than one way to get there, particularly for low socioeconomic-status families.

* This article was originally published here

Microsoft to turn next chapter in raising talk to conversations

On Monday at Build 2019, Microsoft's annual conference for developers, the company showed off the technology for a conversational engine, to integrate with voice assistant Cortana.

* This article was originally published here

Graphite coating makes perovskite solar cells waterproof

A cheaper, cleaner and more sustainable way of making hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight is step closer thanks to new research from the University of Bath's Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies.

* This article was originally published here

"Classical ways of conserving nature are insufficient"

Earlier this week, the Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was been published by IPBES, the science-policy platform that serves under the flag of the United Nations. In the assessment major concerns are raised on the state and trends of biodiversity. The way currently deal with the loss of nature will not suffice in turning the tide, the researchers state. But what should be done? Wieteke Willemen, who is an associate professor at the ITC Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente, reflects on the global decline in biodiversity.

* This article was originally published here

Research clarifies role of posterior parietal cortex in decision-making

Researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have provided new insights into the functional role of the PPC in decision-making. They report compelling evidence showing that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an essential role in decision-making under critical conditions that were largely ignored in previous studies.

* This article was originally published here

Bots exploiting blockchains for profit

Blockchains have been hailed as fair and open, constructed so a single user can't falsify or alter records because they're all part of a transparent network.

* This article was originally published here

Design flaws create security vulnerabilities for 'smart home' internet-of-things devices

Researchers at North Carolina State University have identified design flaws in "smart home" Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that allow third parties to prevent devices from sharing information. The flaws can be used to prevent security systems from signaling that there has been a break-in or uploading video of intruders.

* This article was originally published here

New Zealand unveils plan to go carbon neutral by 2050

New Zealand introduced legislation Wednesday to make the South Pacific nation carbon neutral by 2050, although greenhouse gas emissions from the economically vital agricultural sector will not have to meet the commitment.

* This article was originally published here

Seed abortion and the role of RNA Pol IV in seed development

ASPB is pleased to announce the publication in The Plant Cell of important research that explores the cause of seed abortion and the role of the enzyme RNA Pol IV to understand how seed development works.

* This article was originally published here

Cancer risk tools underused in general practice, research shows

Potentially life-saving cancer risk assessment tools are being widely underused by general practices across the UK, according to new research.

* This article was originally published here

Box of Pain: A new tracer and fault injector for distributed systems

In computer science, distributed systems are systems with components located on different devices, which communicate with one another. While these systems have become increasingly common, they are typically filled with bugs.

* This article was originally published here