Thursday 20 June 2019

Why climate change means a rethink of coffee and cocoa production systems

Global demand for coffee and cocoa is on the rise. Yet across the equatorial belt where these two crops are produced, the future is not looking bright. Climate change in the tropics is pushing coffee and cocoa closer to the limits of physiological tolerance and constraining the places where they can grow in the future.

* This article was originally published here

Research details response of sagebrush to 2017 solar eclipse

The total solar eclipse's swath across Wyoming and the United States in August 2017 provided an opportunity for scientists to study a variety of celestial and earthly phenomena, from learning more about the sun's corona to the behavior of animals and plants.

* This article was originally published here

Spiders risk everything for love

University of Cincinnati biologist George Uetz long suspected the extravagant courtship dance of wolf spiders made them an easy mark for birds and other predators.

* This article was originally published here

Renault and Nissan end standoff over post-Ghosn governance

Renault announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement with its partner Nissan on the Japanese carmaker's governance overhaul, paving the way for the French company to back changes decided in the wake of the Carlos Ghosn scandal.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers use facial quirks to unmask 'deepfakes'

After watching hours of video footage of former President Barack Obama delivering his weekly address, Shruti Agarwal began to notice a few quirks about the way Obama speaks.

* This article was originally published here

Toward artificial intelligence that learns to write code

Learning to code involves recognizing how to structure a program, and how to fill in every last detail correctly. No wonder it can be so frustrating.

* This article was originally published here

Using game theory to model poisoning attack scenarios

Poisoning attacks are among the greatest security threats for machine learning (ML) models. In this type of attack, an adversary tries to control a fraction of the data used to train neural networks and injects malicious data points to hinder a model's performance.

* This article was originally published here

Looking for freshwater in all the snowy places

Snowflakes that cover mountains or linger under tree canopies are a vital freshwater resource for over a billion people around the world. To help determine how much freshwater is stored in snow, a team of NASA-funded researchers is creating a computer-based tool that simulates the best way to detect snow and measure its water content from space.

* This article was originally published here

New study maps how ocean currents connect the world's fisheries

A new study published in the journal Science finds that the world's marine fisheries form a single network, with over $10 billion worth of fish each year being caught in a country other than the one in which it spawned.

* This article was originally published here

First-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm without brain implants

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

* This article was originally published here

Electron-behaving nanoparticles rock current understanding of matter

It's not an electron. But it sure does act like one.

* This article was originally published here

How you lock your smartphone can reveal your age: study

Older smartphone users tend to rely more on their phones' auto lock feature compared to younger users, a new UBC study has found. They also prefer using PINs over fingerprints to unlock their phones.

* This article was originally published here

Using graphene and tiny droplets to detect stomach-cancer causing bacteria

Biosensors are currently used in healthcare to monitor blood glucose; however, they also have the potential to detect bacteria. Researchers at Osaka University have invented a new biosensor using graphene—a material consisting of a one-atom-thick layer of carbon—to detect bacteria such as those that attack the stomach lining and that have been linked to stomach cancer. When the bacteria interact with the biosensor, chemical reactions are triggered which are detected by the graphene. To enable detection of the chemical reaction products, the researchers used microfluidics to contain the bacteria in extremely tiny droplets close to the sensor surface.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers see around corners to detect object shapes

Computer vision researchers have demonstrated they can use special light sources and sensors to see around corners or through gauzy filters, enabling them to reconstruct the shapes of unseen objects.

* This article was originally published here

Scientists discover seemingly paradoxical mechanism for regulating oil synthesis

Scientists studying plant biochemistry at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently made a surprising discovery: They found that a protein that turns on oil synthesis also activates a protein that puts the brakes on the same process. In a paper just published in the journal Plant Physiology, they describe how this seemingly paradoxical system keeps oil precursors perfectly balanced to meet plants' needs.

* This article was originally published here

Waymo teams up with Renault, Nissan on robotaxis outside US

Self-driving car pioneer Waymo is teaming up with automakers Renault and Nissan to make its first journey outside the U.S. with a ride-hailing service that will dispatch a fleet of robotaxis in France and Japan.

* This article was originally published here

NVIDIA going full stack for ARM boosts supercomputing presence

NVIDIA and ARM make one power couple for supercomputing. NVIDIA has announced its chips will work with ARM processors. Outside observers got busy earlier this week assessing why this was a big deal to empower both companies and the effort to explain was not at all difficult.

* This article was originally published here