A free Al-based scholarly search engine to outdo Google? Semantic Scholar is expanding its corpus of papers to cover some 10 million research articles in computer science and neuroscience. Unlike Google Scholar tat searches by keywords, it aims to "sort and rank academic papers using a more sophisticated understanding of their content and context."
Breakthrough in quantum transfer of info between matter and light. The creation of a qubit in zinc selenide, a well-known semi-conductor material, made it possible to produce an interface between quantum physics that governs the behavior of matter on a nanometre scale and the transfer of information at the speed of light, thereby paving the way to producing quantum communications networks.
Fingertip camera helps to read without braille. A tiny camera called HandSight, originally developed for endoscopies, captures the line of text ad a nearby computer reads it out loud. Visually impaired people were able to read between 63 and 81 words per minute and only missed a few words in each passage.
Drone fireworks light up the night. Over a football field in Germany, some 500 LED-lit drones broke a world record with their pyrotechnics-free display, part of Intel Corporation’s fake fireworks program. Its stars were "Shooting Stars," small quadcopter drone outfitted with LED lights.
Ticklish rats help find "tickle center" in the brain. Turns out ticklishness is mood dependent — it doesn’t work when you’re anxious or tickled by a stranger. Also, when rats and people aren’t tickled when they are young, they tend not to enjoy it as adults.
Photo credit: Live Science
