Category: Biology Philosophy
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Walk. Just walk.
Researchers have developed an AI-powered, smart insole that instantly turns any shoe into a portable gait-analysis laboratory. (1) Walk. There is no point in analyzing your gait. For that would need you to stop walking. Walk. At the end you will reach the end. And at the end you will stop and die. (Like Olson…
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Touching with light…
In a lab at Columbia University, engineers have developed a strange yet clever way for robots to feel: Let’s call it the finger of light. It’s got a 3D-printed skeleton embedded with 32 photodiodes and 30 adjacent LEDs, over which is laid a squishy skin of reflective silicone, which keeps the device’s own light in…
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Brain. Skin. Thinking. Not being.
Brain activity has an unmistakable signature: the firing of neurons, as brain cells relay information to one another through the triggered release of chemical neurotransmitters, which are received by the long, branching dendrites of neighbouring cells. This microscopic ritual is distinctive, but it doesn’t belong only to neurons. Scientists have now found bursts of neuron-like…
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Ancestral asymmetries…
The left and right side of the brain are involved in different tasks. This functional lateralization and associated brain asymmetry are well documented in humans, but little is known about brain asymmetry in our closest living relatives, the great apes. Using endocasts (imprints of the brain on cranial bones), scientists now challenge the long-held notion…
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Algorithms. Jail. Peoples’ lives.
An algorithm takes decisions about peoples’ live and decides whether and how they will potentially go to jail again. The algorithm is one of many making decisions about people’s lives in the United States and Europe. Local authorities use so-called predictive algorithms to set police patrols, prison sentences and probation rules. In the Netherlands, an…
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