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There is this optical neuron that gets stimulated from motion. Mapping it is difficult in the lab: "The stumbling block is a lack of fine-grained anatomical detail about how the neurons in the retina are wired up to each other." So, use people deciphering from 2D images --> the 3D neuron structure using the human spatial reasoning to figure out what is part of a branching cell and what is just background noise in the images (yet incomparable to their best algorithms' performance) 120.000 users so far mapped 2% of the retina

Hitchhiking bot!

Only until he encounters his first Polish driver. Will be taken directly to a scrap metal merchant...

A hybrid image classification method was employed for this specific purpose by incorporating the advantages of both pixel-based and object-based image classification approaches. This was performed in two steps: firstly, a pixel-based image classification method, i.e., artificial neural network was applied to classify potential targets with similar spectral reflectance at pixel level; and then an object-based image classification method was used to further differentiate animal targets from the surrounding landscapes through the applications of expert knowledge. As a result, the large animals in two pilot study areas were successfully detected with an average count error of 8.2%, omission error of 6.6% and commission error of 13.7%. The results of the study show for the first time that it is feasible to perform automated detection and counting of large wild animals in open savannahs from space

And Paul, it includes neural networks!

I kept telling you guys but you just laughed and laughed :))

Responding to calls from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a working group of the American Statistical Association has developed a whitepaper detailing how statisticians and computer scientists can contribute to administration research initiatives and priorities. The whitepaper includes a lot of topics central to machine learning and data mining, so please take a look.

I guess Norvig is trumping Chomsky big time if this is the attitude of the NSF :)))

A British company has produced a "strange, alien" material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record. To stare at the "super black" coating made of carbon nanotubes - each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair - is an odd experience.

Finally! Nowadays blacks were always too bright for my taste...

"No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." I will keep waiting for my darkness-emitting diodes...

Their accuracy is orders of magnitude better than what is currently being used, however at the moment, it sounds like quite a large setup -> they're working on getting it down to 1m^3 :o, still any gravity mapping instruments could benefit from these in the future.

Actually GPS is much more accurate, but as it doesnt work under water, the only alternative (without building an underwater GPS equivalent using probes) is to use cumulative accelerometer data. But as this is prone to drifting over time, quantum systems like this can help improving the accuracy significantly.

Very true :). I was thinking though when you want to remove 'noise' from any gravity mapping experiment, highly accurate accelerometers are required, like those used in GOCE.

New technology demonstration of laser communication link to offer high-speed near real time delivery of data from space... Oh, that's us... :)

"As you read this, your neurons are firing - that brain activity can now be decoded to reveal the silent words in your head TALKING to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime. That's no longer the case - researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world." Or alternatively, a step towards snooping into individuals' privacy.

Soon we'll be able to see movies about our dreams!

Only if you are willing to have a chip implanted into/onto your brain though ^^

Let an AI develop your magic tricks! (The one with the smart phone is actually neat)

They published it in Frontiers of Psychology...?

For future reference... At the same time, a crowdsourced article: "We began the crowdsourcing by collecting a list of possible rules for the article via a git-controlled repository" SVN would be so 2000-ish...

New sensor to detect distances efficiently is based on the mixture chemistry, optics and physical principles.

No idea how it works, will need to digg into it.. Tom, shall we use Mixer?

Nine out of 10 workers perform better when listening to music, according to a new study that found 88pc of participants produced their most accurate test results and 81pc completed their fastest work when music was playing.

There's this website: https://www.focusatwill.com/ , which I used for some time. At some point I even subscribed for the paid version (more tracks, control over "intensity" of music). Unfortunately I realized I work the best in complete silence, which is tricky to get - occasionally I put on the white noise http://simplynoise.com/ which works quite well for me.

As Stevens says in the new article, researchers now know that increased nighttime light exposure tracks with increased rates of breast cancer, obesity and depression. Correlation isn't causation, of course, and it's easy to imagine all the ways researchers might mistake those findings. The easy availability of electric lighting almost certainly tracks with various disease-causing factors: bad diets, sedentary lifestyles, exposure to they array of chemicals that come along with modernity. Very difficult to prove causation I would think, but there are known relationships between hormone levels and light.

There is actually a windows program called flux, that changes the temperature on your screen to match normal light cycles. When the sun sets it switches to a "warmer" more reddish tint on your screen to promote sleepiness. The typically bright blue/neon white settings of most pc settings is quite "awakening" and keeps your brain running for longer. This impacts your sleeping patterns and all the consequences of that. Amazingly, this flux thing does have an effect. That being said, I wouldn't be too quick to blame it all on PC/artificial lighting time. Sedentary lifestyles, etc can very well place one in a position of long term pc/phone usage so it's quite hard to draw a causal link.

nice - also exists for MAC btw: https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/mac/

Cool scientific and technical feat in engineering a tractor beam. See the explanation video here http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151027/ncomms9661/extref/ncomms9661-s3.mov and the thing working in real time here http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151027/ncomms9661/extref/ncomms9661-s2.mov

Apparently it's time for retirement of the Le Grand K, if all goes well until the middle of next year...

"One method (...) involves counting the atoms in two silicon-28 spheres that each weigh the same as the reference kilogram." Sounds like a lengthy task, but someone must keep those physics PhD students busy, I guess...

Imaging of gas giant orbiting its central star (related to Jai's YGT proposal): With GPI, astronomers image the actual planet--a remarkable feat given that an orbiting world typically appears a million times fainter than its parent star. This is possible because GPI's adaptive optics sharpen the image of the target star by cancelling out the distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere; it then blocks the bright image of the star with a device called a coronagraph, revealing the exoplanet.

such a simple image, such an awesome feat of science and engineering!

"A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales. By studying individual chickens that were part of a long-term pedigree, the scientists led by Professor Greger Larson at Oxford University's Research Laboratory for Archaeology, found two mutations that had occurred in the mitochondrial genomes of the birds in only 50 years."

The blockchain technology behind bitcoin has been gaining traction. This article makes a good job of describing it, and the different (not-bitcoin) ways in which it's being adopted. Worth reading, even if only for the funny bit about self-driving self-owning cars who pay themselves for fuel, parking and repairs.

Nautral Light for Human Space Exploration

wow, that looks pretty real to me! I remember a presentation some time ago on difficulties with large scale LED lights for making directed light sources. I guess we can cross that off the list :)

Agata - have a look at this!

Ancient Babylonian astronomers developed many important concepts that are still in use, including the division of the sky into 360 degrees. They could also predict the positions of the planets using arithmetic. Ossendrijver translated several Babylonian cuneiform tablets from 350 to 50 BCE and found that they contain a sophisticated calculation of the position of Jupiter.