University of Basel

Robotic animals can help to improve the quality of life for people with dementia, according to new research. A study has found that interacting with a therapeutic robot companion made people with mid- to late-stage dementia less anxious and also had a positive influence on their quality of life. The pilot study, a collaboration led

Can machines think? That’s what renowned mathematician Alan Turing sought to understand back in the 1950s when he created an imitation game to find out if a human interrogator could tell a human from a machine based solely on conversation deprived of physical cues. The Turing test was introduced to determine a machine’s ability to

Image by Getty Images via Daylife After Fox News misrepresents a military robot’s dietary habits, the world muses over what ethical behavior means for intelligent programs and machines. Ever since news broke earlier this month about the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, or EATR, news outlets have been racing each other to weigh in on the

Tumblr went so far as to blackout their entire dashboard   With the hearings this morning (more on that later), there were also more statements publicly made against SOPA this morning. Two key ones are, unfortunately, behind Politico’s paywall, so I can’t link or quote too much. The first, by former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary

An international group of researchers has synthesized an extremely rare mineral and used it as a catalyst precursor to improve two reactions that are of great importance to the chemical industry. Using a technique called supercritical anti-solvent precipitation (SAS), the group produced large quantities of highly pure georgeite, a disordered copper-hydroxycarbonate that is found naturally

In-flight turbulence causes more injuries on an airplane than anything else A breakthrough piece of technology could help pilots avoid these pockets of unstable air and make for safer flights. Pilots report more than 70,000 instances of moderate to severe turbulence a year. According to the FAA, three-fourths of all weather-related accidents are caused by

Battery researchers at the Department of Energy Technology (IFE) have solved a challenge scientists worldwide are struggling with. It allows for far better batteries with higher capacity, without exceeding life. – You can say we have found the x factor we’ve been looking for. This has enormous potential and is something scientists around the world are trying

A telephone-delivered intervention, which included automated symptom monitoring, produced clinically meaningful improvements in chronic musculoskeletal pain compared to usual care, according to a study in the July 16 issue of JAMA. Pain is the most common symptom reported both in the general population and patients seen in primary care, the leading cause of work disability, and

A major new insight into how Hepatitis B virus works could pave the way for new drug treatments for the infection, which is the major cause of liver cancer worldwide. The team at the Universities of York and Leeds identified an “assembly code” in the genetic material of Hepatitis B virus that allows it to

Researchers at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT have developed a new search engine that outperforms current ones, and helps people to do searches more efficiently. The SciNet search engine is different because it changes internet searches into recognition tasks, by showing keywords related to the user’s search in topic radar. People using SciNet