Mars is a desert world, with sand dunes similar to those on Earth. But the processes that create them can be quite different from those on our planet, according to a new study from the University of Arizona. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sand-dunes-deserts-mars-earth-hirise-mro-university-of-arizona-space…
Tag: play
Melting small glaciers could add 10 inches to sea level by 2100
A new analysis of 200,000 glaciers worldwide paints a picture of a future planet with a lot less ice and a lot more water. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/melting-small-glaciers-sea-level-rise…
Apple Is Now the Privacy-As-A-Service Company
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple’s truly transforming into a privacy-as-a-service company, which shows in the way that it’s implementing both the new single sign-on account service, as well as its camera and location services updates in iOS 13. The SSO play is especially clever, because it includes a mechanism that will allow developers to still have the…
Gut bacteria may change the way many drugs work in the body
A new survey of interactions between microbes and medications suggests that gut bacteria play a crucial role in how the body processes drugs. Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gut-bacteria-may-change-way-many-drugs-work-body4…
John Romero Finally Releases Fifth Episode of ‘Doom’ For Free
John Romero has finally released Sigil, his unofficial fifth episode of Doom with nine new single-player levels and nine deathmatch levels. It’s available for free on Romero’s web site (though you’ll also need the original Doom to play it). Hot Hardware reports:
If you want to know what Sigil is about, Romero explains it best. He wrote, “After killing the Spiderdemon at…
Robot Boat Wins $4 Million Ocean Floor Mapping XPRIZE
“A robotic boat and submersible have won the XPRIZE to find the best new technologies to map the seafloor,” writes the BBC — taking home the grand prize of $4 million. dryriver shares their report:
The surface and underwater combo demonstrated their capabilities in a timed test in the Mediterranean, surveying depths down to 4km. [2.48 miles — slightly deeper than the…
Gut Bacteria May Contribute To Autism Symptoms, Mouse Study Finds
Suren Enfiajyan shared this story from Science magazine:
Genes are a powerful driver of risk for autism, but some researchers suspect another factor is also at play: the set of bacteria that inhabits the gut. That idea has been controversial, but a new study offers support for this gut-brain link. It reveals that mice develop autismlike behaviors when they are colonized by…
DeepMind’s AI Beats Humans At Quake III Arena
“A team of programmers at a British artificial intelligence company has designed automated ‘agents’ that taught themselves how to play the seminal first-person shooter Quake III Arena, and became so good they consistently beat human beings,” reports AFP: The work of the researchers from DeepMind, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, was described in a paper published in Science…
Did the Maya Really Sacrifice Their Ballgame Players?
How did the Maya, Aztec and other Mesoamerican cultures play the ballgame? And did they really sacrifice the game’s players? Source: https://www.livescience.com/65611-how-to-play-maya-ballgame.html
Penn’s Dr. Susan Davidson on Women in STEM and New Trajectories Into Computer Science
Over the past decade, computer science has gone from a topic for specialists to an essential tool for professionals in nearly every field. Dr. Susan Davidson of the University of Pennsylvania has been at the forefront of this sea change, including co-founding one of the first research centers for bioinformatics in the country. In this […]
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