Wednesday 19 June 2019

Captive beluga whales make epic journey from China to Iceland sanctuary

Two beluga whales from a Shanghai aquarium arrived in Iceland on Wednesday to live out their days in a unique marine sanctuary that conservationists hope will become a model for rehoming some 3,000 of the creatures currently in captivity.

* This article was originally published here

I, Chatbot: Getting your news from a talkative automaton

"Do you ever lie to your friends?," Jam asks, popping up in a private message box at the bottom of your screen.

* This article was originally published here

Scientists chart course toward a new world of synthetic biology

Genetically engineered trees that provide fire-resistant lumber for homes. Modified organs that won't be rejected. Synthetic microbes that monitor your gut to detect invading disease organisms and kill them before you get sick.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook to unveil new cryptocurrency

Facebook is set Tuesday to unveil a bid to bring cryptocurrency payments into the mainstream, reportedly with the endorsement of governments and financial giants.

* This article was originally published here

New platform flips traditional on-demand supply chain approach on its head

Imagine you are heading to the grocery store and receive a phone alert asking if you'd also be willing to bring your neighbor's groceries home. Or you are on your way to a concert and see you could fill the seats of your car—and your wallet—if you picked up a few other music fans along the way. As the supplier in these scenarios, you have the choice of which services you provide and when. This may very well be the way commerce is headed.

* This article was originally published here

Late-life diabetes status tied to new cognitive impairment

(HealthDay)—Having diabetes, poor glycemic control, and longer diabetes duration are associated with worse cognitive outcomes in older adults during a median follow-up of five years, according to a study recently published in Diabetes Care.

* This article was originally published here

Many asylum seekers suffer from depression and anxiety symptoms

Up to 40% of the adults who have sought asylum in Finland are told that they are suffering from major depression and anxiety symptoms. More than half of both the adults and children reported having experienced at least one shocking, possibly traumatic event, such as being subjected to violence.

* This article was originally published here

Scientists record singing by rare right whale for first time

Federal marine biologists have recorded singing by one of the rarest whales on the planet.

* This article was originally published here

How much work brings happiness? Not much, study shows

Having a job can be a boon to mental well-being, but for many of us, it only takes one day of work per week, a new study suggests.

* This article was originally published here

Plate tectonics may have driven Cambrian Explosion, study shows

The quest to discover what drove one of the most important evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth has taken a new, fascinating twist.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook's currency Libra faces financial, privacy pushback

Facebook is getting a taste of the regulatory pushback it will face as it creates a new digital currency with corporate partners.

* This article was originally published here

Your nose knows when it comes to stronger memories

Memories are stronger when the original experiences are accompanied by unpleasant odors, a team of researchers has found. The study broadens our understanding of what can drive Pavlovian responses and points to how negative experiences influence our ability to recall past events.

* This article was originally published here

How France is persuading its citizens to get vaccinated

In February this year, a holiday in paradise turned into a nightmare for one French family. Soon after their arrival in Costa Rica, their unvaccinated five-year-old son developed measles, the country's first case since 2014. The parents, also unvaccinated, tested positive for the virus too. They were believed to have brought it from France.

* This article was originally published here

Cannabis quality involves careful science and carefree highs

Canada's legal cannabis industry continues to make progress. Product shortages are decreasing. Store numbers are increasing. And edible cannabis regulations have just been finalized.

* This article was originally published here

The satellite with X-ray vision

In the early hours of October 23, 2011, ROSAT was engulfed in the waves of the Indian Ocean. This was the end of a success story that is unparalleled in German space exploration research. The satellite, developed and built by a team led by Joachim Trümper from the Garchingbased Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, not only found more than 150,000 new cosmic X-ray sources, it also revolutionized astronomy.

* This article was originally published here

Atrial fibrillation linked to increased risk of dementia, even in stroke-free patients

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is linked to an increased risk of dementia, even in people who have not suffered a stroke, according to the largest study to investigate the association in an elderly population.

* This article was originally published here

Is interval training the fountain of youth?

(HealthDay)—High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is an exercise technique done by alternating short bursts of all-out effort in an aerobic activity with periods done at a very slow pace.

* This article was originally published here

A new approach for unsupervised paraphrasing without translation

In recent years, researchers have been trying to develop methods for automatic paraphrasing, which essentially entails the automated abstraction of semantic content from text. So far, approaches that rely on machine translation (MT) techniques have proved particularly popular due to the lack of available labeled datasets of paraphrased pairs.

* This article was originally published here

Spintronic memory cells for neural networks

In recent years, researchers have proposed a wide variety of hardware implementations for feed-forward artificial neural networks. These implementations include three key components: a dot-product engine that can compute convolution and fully-connected layer operations, memory elements to store intermediate inter and intra-layer results, and other components that can compute non-linear activation functions.

* This article was originally published here

Wearable device reveals how seals prepare for diving

A wearable non-invasive device based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can be used to investigate blood volume and oxygenation patterns in freely diving marine mammals, according to a study publishing June 18 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by J. Chris McKnight of the University of St. Andrews, and colleagues. The results provide new insights into how voluntarily diving seals distribute blood and manage the oxygen supply to their brains and blubber, yielding important information about the basic physiological patterns associated with diving.

* This article was originally published here