Technology

Google maps racist results target not only African Americans but Italians, Jewish, Polish, and Arab as well.

G oogle Maps searches for the words "Nigger House" will bring up a map pin pointing the white house and the underground railroad museum in Chicago.  Searches for racial and ethnic slurs on other groups produce MORE questionable results.   In fac ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - May 20 2015 - 11:59am

New Antibody Insecticide Targets Malaria Mosquito

Malaria is a disabling disease that targets victims of all ages, it kills one child every minute. DDT is quite effective, and insecticide-treated bed nets also, but the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is developing resistance to insecticides su ...

Article - News Staff - May 27 2015 - 8:53am

Facebook’s Instant Articles App May Mean The End Of The Media Paywall

Ubiquitous social media giant Facebook announced has launched a mobile app called Instant Articles. The app allows news stories provided by a number of partners to be read in their entirety by iPhone users. Those who download the app will spared the incon ...

Article - The Conversation - May 21 2015 - 4:45pm

Rotating Or Mixing? Science Determines The Best Way To Slow Herbicide-Resistant Weeds

Though the popular imagery of farming is a small family operation on a tiny patch of land, that isn't really the case. Over 90 percent of American farms are run by families but they are high-tech operations. Farmers want yields to go up and costs to ...

Article - News Staff - May 22 2015 - 9:15am

AI: Trial And Error Empowers Reinforced Learning In Robot

Researchers have developed algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error, using a process that more closely approximates the way humans learn. They demonstrated their technique, a type of reinforcement learning, by having a rob ...

Article - News Staff - May 22 2015 - 9:27am

Editorial Independence Or Extortion? Frontiers Sacks 31 Editors

Like organic food, open access publishing has shrouded itself in a cultural halo, but it's still a business. No one is pumping out 40,000 articles per year, most of them with just a few check boxes called 'editorial review', because the 40,0 ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 26 2015 - 4:38pm

Robot Tongue Identifies The Correct Beer Every Time

By Lisa Marie Potter (Inside Science)-- Machines mimicking a human's sense of taste are going on a beer-tasting binge. Despite being called electronic tongues, these devices aren't party robots, pouring beer onto wagging, mechanical tongues. &qu ...

Article - Lisa Marie Potter - May 25 2015 - 10:54am

Brain-Computer Interface Makes Communication For Kids With Cerebral Palsy Easier

The Augmented BNCI Communication projects has developed a new brain-computer interface system to enhance communication skills of people with cerebral palsys. Cerebral palsy is a chronic movement disability affects between 2 and 3 per 1,000 people. People w ...

Article - News Staff - May 26 2015 - 10:49am

Emotion-sensitive Assistance Systems: Technology That Will Make You Feel Good When Helping

A new assistance system wants to help users in a wide variety of situations and it will do so by measuring user brain activity to determine whether they are pleased or displeased with system-initiated help. NeuroLab is measuring brain activity as part of t ...

Article - News Staff - May 27 2015 - 10:47am

Orion Through The Camera — But Which Type?

Recently on Countryfile (BBC) we saw a presenter and a photographer together in the Pennines, the mountains that form the ‘backbone’ of England.  The photographer makes a living by taking spectacular scenes with a high-end camera and all different lenses, ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Jun 10 2015 - 11:42am