A model of human psychology could help self-driving cars interact with human drivers on the road, according to a study. Gustav Markkula and colleagues combined several computational psychological models into one master-model to simulate pedestrians attempting to cross a busy road and the human drivers on that road. The goal of the model was to capture the underlying cognitive mechanisms responsible for observed behavior. Computational models of Bayesian perception, theory of mind, behavioral game theory, long-term valuation of ...

A recent study unveiled the doorway that SARS-CoV2 uses to slip inside cells undetected. SARS-CoV-2 uses the receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2, to infect human cells. However, this receptor alone does not paint a complete picture of how the virus enters cells. ACE2 is like a doorknob; when SARS-CoV-2 grabs it and maneuvers it precisely, this allows the virus to open a doorway to the cell’s interworking and step inside. However, the identity of the door eluded scientists. Scott Hansen, an associate ...

The 2023 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to scientist David J. Lipman for his visionary work in the conception, design, and implementation of computational tools, databases, and infrastructure that transformed the way biological information is analyzed and accessed freely and rapidly around the world.  The $500,000 award is bestowed by The Warren Alpert Foundation in recognition of work that has improved the understanding, prevention, treatment, or cure of human disease. The prize is administered by Harvard Medical School.  Lipman will be honored at a scientific symposium on Oct. 11, 2023, hosted by HMS. For further information, visit ...

Two papers published by Macquarie University researchers reveal that most of us ignore the meter when a moral choice is clear, but we use it when the choice is more morally ambiguous. And some of us, about ten per cent, will do anything to win. You are playing The Great Fire, a narrative computer game. It’s all about Frankie, an usher in a cinema in regional Australia in the 1940s, who is confronted by a murderous psychopath. Along the way, players have to make choices which affect the progress and outcome of the game. Some are simple black and white decisions, such as ...

Adults who live in walkable neighborhoods are more likely to interact with their neighbors and have a stronger sense of community than people who live in car-dependent communities, report researchers at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego. The findings of the study, published online in the journal Health & Place, support one of six foundational pillars suggested by United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of a national strategy to address a public health crisis caused by loneliness, ...

HOUSTON, SAN DIEGO and LONDON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Replay today announced that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a ‘safe to proceed’ for the Investigational New Drug (IND) application for NY-ESO-1 TCR/IL-15 NK, an engineered T cell receptor natural killer (TCR NK) cell therapy for advanced synovial sarcoma and myxoid/round cell liposarcoma. MD Anderson is the IND sponsor. NY-ESO-1 TCR/IL-15 NK is being developed by Syena, an oncology-focused product company launched by Replay and MD Anderson based upon the scientific discoveries of Katy Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Stem Cell ...

The analysis, which appears in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, also points to ways to improve assessments in order to achieve sustainable water use and food production in the future.  “Even though irrigation covers a small fraction of the earth, it has a significant impact on regional climate and environments—and is either already unsustainable, or verging on towards scarcity, in some parts of the world,” explains Sonali Shukla McDermid, an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Environmental Studies and the paper’s lead author. “But because irrigation supplies 40% of the world’s food, we need to understand ...

Quantum technology is expected to fundamentally change many key areas of society. Researchers are convinced that there are many more useful quantum properties and applications to explore than those we know today. A team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now developed open-source, freely available software that will pave the way for new discoveries in the field and accelerate quantum research significantly. Within a few decades, quantum technology is expected to become a key technology in areas such as health, communication, defence and energy. The ...

Digesting fish waste can allow circular fish and vegetable farms (aquaponics) to produce biogas that can be fed back into the energy system of these farms. This also generates excellent nutrition for plants, according to new research from the University of Gothenburg. There is increasing growth in circular, land-based, combined fish and vegetable farms- often referred to as aquaponics. Aquaponics makes use of nutrient-rich water produced by fish (aquaculture) which can be used to fertilise plants (hydroponics) ...

Every day, tens of thousands of songs are released. This constant stream of options makes it difficult for streaming services and radio stations to choose which songs to add to playlists. To find the ones that will resonate with a large audience, these services have used human listeners and artificial intelligence. This approach, however, lingering at a 50% accuracy rate, does not reliably predict if songs will become hits. Now, researchers in the US have used a comprehensive machine learning technique applied to brain responses and were able to predict ...

LOGAN, Utah, June 20, 2023 — A detailed, high-resolution map of the rusty patched bumble bee’s genome has been released by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) scientists, offering new possible approaches for bringing the native pollinator back from the danger of extinction. Putting together the rusty patched bumble bee genome is part of the Beenome 100 project, a first-of-its-kind effort to create a library of high-quality, ...

  The face of a 16-year-old woman buried near Cambridge (UK) in the 7th century with an incredibly rare gold and garnet cross (the ‘Trumpington Cross’) has been reconstructed following analysis of her skull. The striking image is going on public display for the first time on 21st June, with new scientific evidence showing that she moved to England from Central Europe as a young girl, leading to an intriguing change in her diet.   The image and artefacts from the mysterious woman’s ...

Weak policies and political ideologies risk jeopardising plans to tackle health and climate change, says Cambridge expert Efforts to tackle major issues facing the UK, including the nation’s health and climate change, are being hampered because politicians often ignore the existing evidence when setting policies, according to Dame Theresa Marteau, a public health expert at the University of Cambridge. Writing in the journal Science and Public Policy, Professor Marteau argues that this ‘evidence-neglect’ is a result of incentive structures that encourage politicians to set ambitious policy goals while simultaneously disincentivising ...

1. Low-dose aspirin use associated with 20% increased anemia risk in older adults Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0675 URL goes live when the embargo lifts An analysis of the ASPREE (ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly) trial found that the use of low-dose aspirin was associated with a 20 percent increased incidence of anemia and decline in ferritin, or blood iron levels, in otherwise healthy older adults. These findings suggest that periodic monitoring of hemoglobin should be considered in older patients taking aspirin. The analysis is published in Annals ...

FU Qiaomei, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), received the UNESCO–AI Fozan International Prize for the Promotion of Young Scientists in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) on June 19 in Paris, France, for her “seminal work on the history of early humans in Eurasia, based on genetic lineage studies, which provides new insights on the early human history of Eurasia and perspectives on the evolution of human health.” She was one of five young scientists from around the world to receive the prize, alongside researchers from Argentina, Cameroon, Egypt, and Serbia. The laureates were ...

Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the Sun. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry. Unlike earlier tests ...

A key challenge in neuroscience is to understand how the brain can adapt to a changing world, even with a relatively static anatomy. The way the brain’s areas are structurally and functionally related to each other – its connectivity – is a key component. In order to explain its dynamics and functions, we also need to add another piece to the puzzle: receptors. Now, a new mapping by Human Brain Project (HBP) researchers from the Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) and Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf (Germany), in collaboration with scientists from the University of Bristol (UK), ...

In the age of dinosaurs, many marine reptiles had extremely long necks compared to reptiles today. While it was clearly a successful evolutionary strategy, paleontologists have long suspected that their long-necked bodies made them vulnerable to predators. Now, after almost 200 years of continued research, direct fossil evidence confirms this scenario for the first time in the most graphic way imaginable. Researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 19 studied the unusual necks of two Triassic ...

Receptor patterns define key organisational principles in the brain, scientists have discovered.  An international team of researchers, studying macaque brains, have mapped out neurotransmitter receptors, revealing a potential role in distinguishing internal thoughts and emotions from those generated by external influences. The comprehensive dataset has been made publicly available, serving as a bridge linking different scales of neuroscience - from the microscopic to the whole brain. Lead author Sean Froudist-Walsh, ...

People who owned black-and-white television sets until the 1980s didn’t know what they were missing until they got a color TV. A similar switch could happen in the world of genomics as researchers at the Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) have developed a technique called Genome Architecture Mapping (“GAM”) to peer into the genome and see it in glorious technicolor. GAM reveals information about the genome’s spatial architecture that is invisible to scientists using solely Hi-C, a workhorse tool developed in 2009 to study DNA interactions, reports a new study in Nature Methods by the Pombo lab. “With ...

Scientists have long struggled to find the best way to present crucial facts about future sea level rise, but are getting better at communicating more clearly, according to an international group of climate scientists, including a leading Rutgers expert. The consequences of improving communications are enormous, the scientists said, as civic leaders actively incorporate climate scientists’ risk assessments into major planning efforts to counter some of the effects of rising seas. Writing in Nature Climate Change, the scientists ...

Ann Arbor, June 19, 2023 – De facto decriminalization of drug possession may be a good first step in addressing the disproportionate impact of an overburdened United States criminal justice system on the Black community. According to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, this strategy was associated with significant and sustained reductions in low-level arrests. These arrests too often prevent drug users from obtaining needed treatments and services. The findings also suggest that while these policies may effectively reduce the overall arrest toll, striking disparities persist in how police are applying the directives across racial ...

Embargoed until 8am Eastern Time on Monday, June, 19, 2023 DALLAS, June 19, 2023 — Constant or chronic stress can affect overall well-being and may even impact heart health. Chronic stress can lead to increased blood pressure, heart rate and inflammation, which can contribute to developing chronic diseases.[1] The American Heart Association, the leading global voluntary health organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke for all, today launches a new campaign to help the Hispanic/Latino community protect its overall well-being by addressing common stressors that ...

How do asset markets work? Which stocks behave similarly? Economists, physicists, and mathematicians work intensively to draw a picture but need to learn what is happening outside their discipline. A new paper now builds a bridge.   In a new study, researchers of the Complexity Science Hub highlight the connecting elements between traditional financial market research and econophysics. "We want to create an overview of the models that exist in financial economics and those that researchers in physics and mathematics have developed ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. –  Tummy aches are common among kids, with one in six parents in a new national poll saying their child experiences them at least once a month. But not all parents seek professional advice when belly pain becomes a regular occurrence and just one in three are sure they’d know when it might be a sign of a serious problem, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. “Tummy complaints are common among children. This type of pain may be a symptom for a range of health issues, but it can be difficult to know if it’s ...