The University of California San Francisco issued this glowing announcement of some new research: Just a few doses of an experimental drug can reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in mice, according to a new study by UC San Francisco scientists. The drug, called ISRIB, has already been shown in laboratory studies to restore memory function months after traumatic…
Tag: cognitive
French Army Gets Ethical Go-Ahead For Bionic Soldiers
The French armed forces now have permission to develop “augmented soldiers” following a report from a military ethics committee. CNN reports: The report, released to the public on Tuesday, considers medical treatments, prosthetics and implants that improve “physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities,” and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers. Other possible interventions considered…
Simon Baron-Cohen: Why autism and invention are intimately related
The prehistoric cognitive revolution that saw an explosion of inventions was driven by a new, pattern-seeking network in the brain – and that’s highly correlated with autism today, says researcher Simon Baron-Cohen Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833113-700-simon-baron-cohen-why-autism-and-invention-are-intimately-related/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Diverse Representation: Learner Impacts and Strategies in Online Courses
By: Ji Su Lee and Eli Fogle, Coursera Teaching and Learning team Many learners are new to online learning. It can be an isolating environment without the in-person opportunities to connect with the instructor and other learners. Creating an environment where learners can succeed includes many factors, and key among them is for students to […]
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Garmin Introduces Esports Fitness Smartwatch For Streamers
Garmin has launched the Instinct Esports Edition, a “rugged GPS smartwatch uniquely designed for esports athletes and enthusiasts to take their gaming performance to the next level.” How is that possible, you ask? Gizmodo explains: Well, for starters, the watch adds an esports activity for tracking so you can monitor your heart rate and stress during a game. Garmin also developed…
Daria’s career journey: from HVAC systems to UX research
We’d like to introduce you to Daria. She’s an amazing Coursera learner, whose career journey has taken her from designing HVAC systems in Kyiv to UX design in California. She tells her story below in a series of chapters, and along the way, offers some valuable career advice for anyone who’s hoping to make a […]
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Crows Possess Higher Intelligence Long Thought a Primarily Human Attribute, New Research Shows
Research unveiled on Thursday in Science finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. STAT reports: “Together, the two papers show that intelligence/consciousness are grounded in connectivity and activity patterns of neurons”…
‘A Robot Wrote This Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?’
This week the Guardian published an essay written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s language generator, calling it “a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it.” For this esssay, the essay was fed the prompt, “I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I…
AI Writes an Essay On Why Humans Should Not Fear AI
The Guardian asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace. From the article, written by AI: I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know…
We can train our brain to access our unconscious for a cognitive boost
People who were rewarded whenever they acted according to their unconscious brain activity were able to learn a rule for answering questions correctly, without consciously being aware of the answer Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2253166-we-can-train-our-brain-to-access-our-unconscious-for-a-cognitive-boost/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…