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 robot complete various tasks -- putting a clothes hanger on a rack, assembling a toy plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more -- without pre-programmed details about its surroundings. 

 Karin Heineman, Inside Science –  Predicting and analyzing weather is a highly sophisticated scientific endeavor these days. But, it is also peppered with a good deal of lore.

We're here to debunk some popular weather myths.

Myth #1: Heat lightning, or the distant flashes of lightning you see in the sky (without hearing the clap of thunder) during the hot summer months, only occur because it is hot out.

Wrong. The truth is you're actually seeing lightning from a storm that's really far away. Since most severe thunderstorms often happen during hot summer months – the name "heat" lightning stuck.

Myth #2: The Earth is farthest from the sun in January.

Many of the people who visit me in my therapy practice spend time talking about work. How much work there is, how they never seem to be able to get it all done, how many hours they spend at work, how tired they are all the time and how fearful they are about losing their jobs. They’ve read articles telling them how they can improve their work/life balance. They’ve delegated and relegated, meditated and ruminated.

More than half of all Medicaid enrollees use hospital emergency departments to receive care for conditions that could be treated at a primary care clinic. Why? Some of it may be urgency, and it may be cheaper for them, since they won't miss work. But it isn't cheaper for the rest of society and as the Affordable Care Act ballooned the use of Medicaid, the costs have gone up as well.

"From a patient's perspective, having all imaging and laboratory studies done in one place is likely more cost effective than going to a [primary care provider] clinic and having gone elsewhere to get further testing," writes Roberta Capp, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus in the journal Medical Care.

Scientists have made an important step towards understanding how volcanic eruptions happen, after identifying a previously unrecognised potential trigger.

An international team of researchers from the University of Liverpool, Monash University and the University of Newcastle (Australia) think their findings could lead to new ways of interpreting signs of volcanic unrest measured by satellites and surface observations.

Dr Janine Kavanagh, from the University of Liverpool's School of Environmental Sciences and lead author of the research paper, said: "Understanding the triggers for volcanic eruptions is vital for forecasting efforts, hazard assessment and risk mitigation.

NaSt1, about 3,000 light years away, was discovered a few decades ago and identified as a Wolf-Rayet star, a rapidly evolving star that is much more massive than our Sun.

Wolf-Rayet stars lose their hydrogen-filled outer layers quickly, exposing a super-hot and extremely bright core where helium is fusing into heavier elements. Typically, Wolf-Rayet stars have two outward flowing lobes of material, but in this case, the Hubble observations revealed a pancake-shaped disk of gas encircling the star. This vast disk is more than 3 billion billion kilometers wide. It seems to have formed in the last few thousand years from an unseen companion star that snacked on its outer atmosphere.

The star is so weird that astronomers have nicknamed it “Nasty 1”.

When you mention rich ecosystems that are vital for life on Earth, people tend to think of rainforests, but ocean plankton are actually just as crucial. The microscopic beings that drift on the upper layer of the oceans are globally referred to as "plankton"; together they produce half of our oxygen, act as carbon sinks, influence our weather, and serve as the base of the ocean food web that sustains the larger fish and marine mammals that we depend upon or draw delight from.

"Beyond the cutting-edge science that was developed thanks to our collaborative work with the Tara Expéditions Foundation, this adventure is also about showing people all over the world how important the ocean is for our own well-being," says Eric Karsenti, director of Tara Oceans, from EMBL and CNRS.

If you want cheap medicine, Canadian taxpayers make it possible to get a great deal, but when it comes to new medicines, Canada is behind similar countries, according to a new report which ranks it 16th out of 18 comparable OECD countries. 

Only 23% of 141 Health Canada-approved new medicines were included in public plans, ranking Canada 17 out of 18 there. Public drug plans in Canada make new medicines available only on a conditional, case-by-case basis, resulting in more administration, longer wait times for patients before beginning treatment, increased paperwork for physicians and no guarantee that patients will receive coverage.

The report further notes that:

A remote galaxy shining with infrared light equal to more than 300,000,000,000,000 suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE. The galaxy, belongs to a new class of objects nicknamed extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.

The galaxy, known as WISE J224607.57-052635.0, may have a behemoth black hole at its belly, gorging itself on gas, but is certainly the most luminous discovered to-date.

Supermassive black holes grow by drawing gas and matter into a disk around them. The disk heats up to beyond-sizzling temperatures of millions of degrees, blasting out high-energy, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The light is blocked by surrounding cocoons of dust. As the dust heats up, it radiates infrared light.