Friday 31 May 2019

Atlantic hurricane season begins after three years of big storms

The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season begins Saturday, and authorities are warning coastal residents to stock up on supplies and remain vigilant after a spate of intense storms in recent years.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers add 'time-travel' feature to drives to fight ransomware attacks

One of the latest cyber threats involves hackers encrypting user files and then charging "ransom" to get them back. In the paper, "Project Almanac: A Time-Traveling Solid State Drive," University of Illinois students Chance Coats and Xiaohao Wang and Assistant Professor Jian Huang from the Coordinated Science Laboratory look at how they can use the commodity storage devices already in a computer, to save the files without having to pay the ransom.

* This article was originally published here

Children who nap are happier, excel academically, and have fewer behavioral problems: study

Ask just about any parent whether napping has benefits and you'll likely hear a resounding "yes," particularly for the child's mood, energy levels, and school performance. New research from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Irvine, published in the journal Sleep backs up that parental insight.

* This article was originally published here

Climate change is already affecting global food production—unequally

The world's top 10 crops— barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat—supply a combined 83 percent of all calories produced on cropland. Yields have long been projected to decrease in future climate conditions. Now, new research shows climate change has already affected production of these key energy sources—and some regions and countries are faring far worse than others.

* This article was originally published here

Sensor-packed glove learns signatures of the human grasp

Wearing a sensor-packed glove while handling a variety of objects, MIT researchers have compiled a massive dataset that enables an AI system to recognize objects through touch alone. The information could be leveraged to help robots identify and manipulate objects, and may aid in prosthetics design.

* This article was originally published here

Only few hundred training samples bring human-sounding speech in Microsoft TTS feat

Microsoft Research Asia has been drawing applause for pulling off text to speech requiring little training—and showing "incredibly" realistic results.

* This article was originally published here

From viruses to social bots, researchers unearth the structure of attacked networks

The human body's mechanisms are marvelous, yet they haven't given up all their secrets. In order to truly conquer human disease, it is crucial to understand what happens at the most elementary level.

* This article was originally published here

Guidelines updated for radiotherapy after prostatectomy

(HealthDay)—Clinical guidelines on adjuvant and salvage radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy have been updated, according to the American Society for Radiation Oncology and the American Urological Association.

* This article was originally published here

Radio-wave therapy proves effective against liver cancer cells

A new targeted therapy using non-thermal radio waves has been shown to block the growth of liver cancer cells anywhere in the body without damaging healthy cells, according to a study conducted by scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.

* This article was originally published here

Research reveals role of fat storage cells in anti-obesity intervention

New research from a team at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine establishes a role of adipocyte Na/K-ATPase signaling in worsening obesity and its companion diseases, including neurodegeneration and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), that was enhanced by specific targeting of NaKtide, an antagonist of Na/K-ATPase signaling, to the adipocyte.

* This article was originally published here

Nailing digital fakes with AI-learned artifacts

We see the imaginative feats of photo fakery; now we have to figure out what to do about them. Being able to tell fake from real is the goal, but how to get there? Forensics is the key tool to hunt down fake photos and it does not appear to be an easy task in getting that tool to perform well.

* This article was originally published here

U.S. Postal Service mail, packages are headed to Dallas by self-driving truck

Before letters end up in your mailbox and packages land on your doorstep, many travel hundreds or thousands of miles in the back of a truck. Now, the United States Postal Service is testing what it would take to shuttle that cargo without a driver in the front seat.

* This article was originally published here

The magic behind the medals

When the Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen hung up her skis for the last time in April 2018, she was the winningest winter Olympian ever, with 8 Olympic gold medals, 18 world championship titles and 114 World Cup victories.

* This article was originally published here

REPLAB: A low-cost benchmark platform for robotic learning

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a reproducible, low-cost and compact benchmark platform to evaluate robotic learning approaches, which they called REPLAB. Their recent study, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, was supported by Berkeley DeepDrive, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Google, NVIDIA and Amazon.

* This article was originally published here

Ancient DNA is revealing the origins of livestock herding in Africa

Visitors to East Africa are often amazed by massive herds of cattle with a gorgeous array of horn, hump and coat patterns. Pastoralism—a way of life centered around herding—is a central part of many Africans' identity. It's also a key economic strategy that is now threatened by climate change, rising demands for meat, urban sprawl and land conflicts.

* This article was originally published here

Making structural changes to antibody has potential for reducing cancer tumours

Guided by "blueprints" produced at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, a group of scientists from academia and industry made structural changes to an antibody that is now showing a lot of potential for reducing cancer tumours.

* This article was originally published here

Amid fentanyl crackdown, Mexico risks 'balloon effect'

President Donald Trump says China's new ban on all fentanyl-related substances will be a "game-changer" in the deadly US opioid crisis, but experts warn it may just shift production elsewhere—particularly Mexico.

* This article was originally published here

Body parts respond to day and night independently from brain, studies show

Can your liver sense when you're staring at a television screen or cellphone late at night? Apparently so, and when such activity is detected, the organ can throw your circadian rhythms out of whack, leaving you more susceptible to health problems.

* This article was originally published here

PULP Dronet: A 27-gram nano-UAV inspired by insects

Researchers at ETH Zürich and the University of Bologna have recently created PULP Dronet, a 27-gram nano-size unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a deep learning-based visual navigation engine. Their mini-drone, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can run aboard an end-to-end, closed-loop visual pipeline for autonomous navigation powered by a state-of-the-art deep learning algorithm.

* This article was originally published here

A 'Noah's Ark' project for corals: Scientists race to save Florida Reef from killer disease

On a sunny afternoon in Dania Beach, a dozen scientists unloaded crates full of corals from a dive boat and onto a pickup truck. They gently removed each piece from large tanks on the deck and placed them inside smaller containers, which were slowly taken onshore.

* This article was originally published here

Amazon digital assistant Alexa gets new skill: amnesia

Amazon on Wednesday added the ability to tell its Alexa digital assistant to forget what it has heard in a move that could assuage concerns about Echo devices remembering conversations.

* This article was originally published here