‘This is Your Brain on Music’: How human mind and body respond to the beat
Music and dance are so deeply embedded in the human experience that we almost take them for granted. They’re distinct from one another, but intimately related: Music — arrangements of sound over time — causes us to move our bodies in space. Without knowing it, we track pulse, tempo and...
Like it or not, Trump’s election attacks end December 14
Despite the Trump campaign’s fight to overturn the election, the wheels of American democracy keep turning. In the weeks since his loss to Joe Biden, President Donald Trump and his re-election campaign have attempted to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election and filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits in...
Crop irrigation: How dirty water is making us sick
William Whitt suffered violent diarrhea for days. But once he began vomiting blood, he knew it was time to rush to the hospital. His body swelled up so much that his wife thought he looked like the Michelin Man, and on the inside, his intestines were inflamed and bleeding. For...
Milwaukee Bucks signs guard Jaylen Adams and forward Mamadi Diakite
Jaylen Adams spent the majority of the 2019-20 season with the Bucks’ G League affiliate, the Wisconsin Herd, where he was the NBA G League MVP runner up and an All-NBA G League First Team selection after averaging 21.5 points, 5.7 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 1.8 steals over 33 games....
Release of ISIS terrorist by Feds after grand jury indictment raises questions
An ISIS terrorist indicted by a federal grand jury for providing material support to the militant Islamist group has been released by federal authorities in Oregon. Even for the famously liberal west coast it may seem unbelievable, especially since a Republican appointee heads the Department of Justice, the agency that...
Coronavirus recasts attention on public health
Public health — the science of protecting and improving the health of a population — includes everything from setting pollution limits to urging women to get mammograms. It’s investigating salmonella outbreaks, tracking Lyme disease, defining drink-driving, fighting climate change, tackling systemic racism, inspecting restaurants, distributing condoms and every other activity...
‘Technology that identifies people remotely can be used to criminalise them’
To get a wider sense of academic views on facial-recognition ethics, Nature this year surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science.On some questions, respondents showed a clear preference.When asked for their opinions on studies that apply facial-recognition methods to recognise or...
Ethical questions that dog facial-recognition research
In September 2019, four researchers wrote to publisher Wiley to “respectfully ask” that it immediately retract a scientific paper. The study, published in 2018, had trained algorithms to distinguish faces of Uyghur people, a predominantly Muslim minority ethnic group in China, from those of Korean and Tibetan ethnicity.China had already...
As Kenya mulls facial recognition technology, resistance builds up in Europe, US
In Belgrade’s Republic Square, dome-shaped cameras hang prominently on wall fixtures, silently scanning people walking across the central plaza.It is one of 800 locations in the city that Serbia’s government said last year it would monitor using cameras equipped with facial-recognition software, purchased from electronics firm Huawei in Shenzhen, China.The...
Puzzle of Kenya’s ‘mysteriously low Covid death toll’
One of the first large SARS‑CoV-2 antibody studies in Africa suggests that by mid-2020, the virus had infected four per cent of people in Kenya — a surprisingly high figure in view of Kenya’s small number of Covid-19 deaths.The presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 indicates a history of infection with...
