Faster and more accurate than some alternatives, this approach could be useful for robots that interact with humans or work in tight spaces. Before a robot can grab dishes off a shelf to set the table, it must ensure its gripper and arm won’t crash into anything and potentially shatter the fine china. As part...
Over half of the 60 countries holding national elections this year are experiencing a democratic decline, risking the integrity of the electoral process, as reported in the latest Democracy Report from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. The worsening election quality is concerning, given the pivotal role elections play in either reinforcing or...
The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao), whose beans (cocoa) are used to make products including chocolate, liquor and cocoa butter, may have spread from the Amazon basin to the other regions of South and Central America at least 5,000 years ago via trade routes, suggests a paper published in Scientific Reports. These findings, based on residues in...
When the Supreme Court ruled on March 4, 2024, that former President Donald Trump could appear on state presidential ballots for the 2024 election, it did not address an idea that seemed simple and compelling when Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised it during the Feb. 8, 2024, oral arguments in the case: “What about the idea...
Score another one for artificial intelligence. In a recent study, 151 human participants were pitted against ChatGPT-4 in three tests designed to measure divergent thinking, which is considered to be an indicator of creative thought. Divergent thinking is characterized by the ability to generate a unique solution to a question that does not have one...
Suppose two speakers of the same language are playing a guessing game where each has the same color swatches, and Player 1 tries to get Player 2 to guess a hue by naming the color. If the second player consistently guesses correctly as often as possible, that indicates their language has an efficient color naming...
More than 40 percent of Americans know someone who has died of a drug overdose and about one-third of those individuals say their lives were disrupted by the death, according to a new RAND study. Analyzing a national representative survey of American adults, researchers found that the lifetime exposure to an overdose death is more common...
The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge centuries of Western music theory and encourage greater experimentation with instruments from different cultures. According to the Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, ‘consonance’ – a pleasant-sounding combination of notes – is produced by special relationships...
Closer proximity to and a higher number of ready-to-eat food outlets — particularly pubs, bars and fast-food restaurants — may be associated with a greater risk of developing heart failure, according to a study of half a million adults in the UK Biobank. The association between food environments and increased heart failure risk was stronger...
Are museums, theaters, and opera houses truly walking the talk when it comes to social and environmental sustainability? The University of Lausanne (UNIL) delved into this pressing question, conducting an international survey with over 200 major cultural organizations. The verdict? While there’s significant room for improvement across the spectrum, Anglophone countries lead the charge. Cultural...
