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Powerful and smart people in the tech space join hands to found a new AI lab - one focused on making AI safe and beneficial to mankind.
Archaeologists believe they have found the he tomb of sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled over the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566, near the fortress of Szigetvar in southern Hungary.
While the windy and overcast weather of a stormy day isn't surprising on telluric planets, it's not something most of us readily associate with stars. But it does happen -- the best evidence for this is W1906+40, a distant dwarf star recently described in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
From its first try, a computer can now draw handwritten characters from an unfamiliar language just as well as humans can.
You know how the old saying goes, that "diamonds are forever," and giving your significant other a piece of diamond jewelry is considered to be a declaration of eternal love? Well, scientists working at the Borexino experiment in Italy may change the saying and send enamored young men scrambling for something that's really eternal to profess their love -- electrons.
There's a new player in the EV market -- one that might give Tesla a run for its money.
If we want to limit our emissions to an acceptable limit, then all aspects of human society have to come together – environmental, social, economic, and not least, technology. With this in mind, six projects were presented at COP21, highlighted as this year’s UN Momentum for Change ICT solutions winners. These are the winning projects: Fairphone […]
The future is now - researchers at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland have developed a camera that can see around corners and track movements in real time.
The Internet is a wonderful and wonderfully powerful place. Just think about it, you have access to almost all of human knowledge with just a few key strokes. But having this much information at your disposal seems to actually make us rely less on what we already know.
Competition between tech giants is more fierce than ever, and Google is out for blood - literally.
There is a long-lasting debate dividing the cancer researchers community over the point at which a skin lesion is considered a melanoma. A University of California-San Francisco team led by Hunter Shain might have found the answers to settle the debate once and for all; they have found a way to tell whether a lesion is harmless or growing into a melanoma.
Researchers run a problem on a quantum machine and found it performed 100 million times faster than a conventional processor.
A team of Argentinian astronomers, peering up in the night's sky from the Astronomical Observatory of Córdoba has found a new, young lithium-rich giant star that they designated KIC 9821622. And they can't explain where that lithium comes from.
The full extent of Japan's 2011 Fukushima meltdown is still being uncovered, with measured levels of contamination increasing in previously identified sites throughout the North American coast. While it's still too low to threaten human or ocean life, this confirms that the power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes researchers report.
All of the current Republican presidential candidates make a point of denying what scientists and the common folk have come to agree upon in much of the world, and of preserving the status quo in the energy sector. Why are these public figures, with aspirations of world leaders, basing so much of their policy on a fossil fuel-centric agenda that will only come back to bite us? In a revelation that shouldn't shock anyone who's even remotely aware of the concept of money, it's because they're being paid off.
The smallest member of the Raspberry Pi might actually be its largest: at the absurd price of £4 ($5 in the United States), it’s a full scale computer, and it could revolutionize electronic appliances. Wait, what’s a Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card–sized single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by […]
Researchers at Tufts alter the laws of robotics to teach robots to say "no".
Imagine a nugget of real, 20 carat gold floating merrily on the milk foam of your cup of warm cappuccino -- scientists from ETH Zurich have found a way to do it. It's not super-cappuccino, or diamond-strong foam -- scientists led by Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food and Soft Materials at ETH have produced a novel foam of gold, a three-dimensional material that is actually mostly...empty.
The ‘Most Used Words’ app has picked up steam more and more on our Facebook feeds, but as it’s often the case, this rings some major privacy alerts. So far, more than 17 million people have used the app to find out what they say most – but the recent uproar has begun when people […]
Agriculture is a big driver of climate change, with the meat industry standing out among the rest as a source of CO2 emissions and environmental damage; lowering demand for meat or ensuring that farms have as little environmental impact is possible, but costly. Would you be willing to eat less, if it was for the good of the planet? Pay more for your meat? A new study suggests that the idea isn't as controversial as you may believe on first glance.
Google’s Rachel Potvin took the stage @scale and hinted on just how many lines of code Google uses: a staggering 2 billion.
An University of Queensland study of mantis shrimp discovered a new form of light communication employed by the animals, the findings having potential applications in satellite remote sensing, biomedical imaging, cancer detection, and computer data storage.
Also known as the water bear, the tardigrade has a lot to be proud of -- this tiny organism is nigh-indestructible, known to have survived in extreme temperatures ( -272C to +151C / -457.6F to 303.8F) and to be the only animal that can brave the vacuum of space unprotected and live to tell the tale.
There’s a good chance that what you know about Crime Scene Investigation comes from movie – but there are actually quite many differences between the two. Many of the things you see in the series are not done at all in real life, and sometimes, real life science goes one step ahead of the movies. […]
While wind and solar are offering more energy than ever to global grids, there is still much work to be done if we want to properly integrate them; one question that always arise is that of energy storage. Sure, you can harvest a lot of sun during the day, but you need to store it for later usage, and that's quite a problem. Now, a Canadian start-up believe they may have found a solution for that, and it's just crazy enough to work: underwater balloons.
According to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine, human cellular development appears to depend on the actions of genetic material left over from ancient viral infections.
When is a rose not a rose? When it’s a transistorized electronic circuit, of course. Scientists at Sweden’s Linköping University have implanted a rose with conductive polymers and arranged the resulting circuitry into a real transistor system – complete with a digital switch. Here’s how materials scientist Magnus Berggren turned a rose into a piece […]
If you ever wanted to become a firefighter in an exotic location, now you have the perfect extra motivation: jetpacks. As if Dubai didn’t have enough hi-tech with all the awesome cars and helicopters and all, firefighters will receive jetpacks as part of the new year’s city budget – this is considered a “practical” solution […]
With robots taking up all the factory jobs and CEO's outsourcing each and any position they can to China, it's harder and harder for the common bloke to find a job these days. And it's only about to get worse as pigeons are now poised to take over the health industry positions for the price of bread crumbs.
Biologists have recently identified a new species of harvestman (daddy longlegs spider) near the town of Monjolos in Minas Gerais, southern Brazil, and gave the precious new discovery an accurate but tongue in cheek name: Iandumoema smeagol
A study of 986 Bolivian women found that on average, a lifetime infection with a type of roundworm named Ascarius lumbricoides led to an extra two children in the family. Their paper, published in the journal Science, suggests that the worm is altering the host's immune system, making it easier to become pregnant -- in effect, the parasite increases female fertility. The researchers hope this discovery will lead to "novel fertility enhancing drugs."
When Tumbles was born in Ohio with just two back legs, prospects didn’t seem that good for him, in a world where having just two legs is sadly, as good as a life sentence for most animals. Friends of the Shelter Dogs in Athens rescued and bottle-fed him, and not long after that, a family adopted […]
Every once in a while, someone creates something so incredible that it probably wouldn't even pass the Hollywood standard, being deemed to unrealistic.
Start-up company Deepfield Robotics has developed a field vehicle that can distinguish weeds from useful crops and eliminate them.
A University of Nevada team, led by anthropologist Peter Gray, tested several hypotheses about pets and contemporary courtship or dating rituals. Their study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Anthrozoös.
We all know that men like to impress the fairer members of our species, and this permeates into almost everything we do: we want to drive the shiniest car on the block, crack the funniest jokes 24/7 and write for ZMEScience so we can impress the ladies at parties. In essence, no matter how unlikely it is to actually impress, if a man has a choice between doing something and doing that something over the top so he can show off to women, you can bet your right arm he's gonna do the latter.
Ever wondered how Google Maps can predict traffic jams?
Florida Researchers have developed a new class of LEDs that may change the lighting and display industry of the future.
Cardiff University public health experts have discovered a powerful link between a pupil's breakfast quality and their performance at school. The study – the largest to date looking at how nutrition influences school performance -- recorded the breakfast habits of 5000 pupils aged 9 through 11, and their results in the Key Stage 2 Teacher Assessments 6-18 months later.
Cooling things with lasers? I'm down!
In a leap of innovation, Samsung unveiled the largest storage unit ever: a 15.36TB flash drive which uses 256GB NAND flash as the basis for the storage. The hard drive is 60% bigger than its closest competitor and all that storage is packed inside a tiny 2.5-inch SSD case. And yes, I prefer to still call it a hard drive even though there aren't any motors, pivots or arms. Deal with it.
Research at the Queen's University Belfast has produced a major (and mind-bending) breakthrough, in the form of the first synthesized porous liquid. The new material has the potential for a massive range of new technologies including carbon capture.
Ant colonies are incredibly complex systems -- the tightly knit, intensely cooperative colonies are closer to a single superorganism than to human societies. Researchers form the University of Bristol wanted to know how this single mind of the hive reacted to distress, and subjected colonies of migrating rock ants to differing forms of simulated predator attack to record their response.
Scientists at the Georgia State University, Georgia Regents University and Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center found that the brain uses sweet foods to form the memory of a meal. The paper shows how the neurons in the dorsal hippocampus -- a part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory -- are activated by consuming sweets.
Between reports of melting icecaps, starving polar bears and reports of food shortages, it's easy to become pessimistic about life. But it's not all bad, as a recently released report by the UN, published in The Lancet, shows how pregnancy-related deaths have fallen almost by half in the past 25 years.
3D printing has ignited our imagination and pushed us to think about things in new, different ways.
Microsoft released an app that can guess emotions based on an uploaded photo.
That the game of rugby has been so quick to embrace technological change is to its credit, and has definitely led to a reduction in controversial results; something which is, despite all the financial implications of each game and huge global audience, still a huge problem in football.
Women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) show elevated levels of testosterone and testosterone derivatives in their systems, as well as an increased risk of anxiety and depression. As the offspring of these women (both sons and daughters) show similar symptoms, it's been believed that PCOS can be transmitted through genetic code. However, a new idea comes to question this -- specifically, the fact that the fetuses of mothers with PCOS are gestating in high levels of testosterone is what causes these symptoms.
A new dwarf planet, designated V774104 has been identified and now takes the crown of most distant object in our solar system, being three times farther away than Pluto. The dwarf planet is estimated to be between 500 and 1000 kilometers across. Astronomers don't yet have enough data to estimate its orbit and estimate that about an year of observations is needed to gather enough data for a precise answer.
