Google’s self-driving cars are now cruising the streets of California

Google’s self-driving cars are now cruising the streets of California

And they look adorable.

 

Like hoverboards and jetpacks, self-driving cars are one of those 'too-good-to-be-true' technologies that could change everything for everyone living in a big city. Except unlike hoverboards and jetpacks - you’ve got a lot to prove, Lexus! - self-driving cars are an actual reality right now, and are starting to make real changes to how the residents of Mountain View in California get around.

As Mike Murphy points out at Quartz, these things look like adorable little pandas, and they’re getting Californians where they need to go, no driver’s license required.

Unfortunately though, Google’s self-driving cars still have their training wheels firmly attached - Quartz reports that they’re only travelling at 40 km/hour right now, and have a driver behind the wheel at all times in case of an emergency. As we reported back in May, a review found that one in 12 self-driving cars have been in accidents since September 2014, but humans were at fault for the collision, not the cars.

By getting them out on the public roads now, Google is aiming to increase the 1.6 million km of experience that their self-driving cars so far have under their very round belts. More driving means more data on what could possibly go wrong for these cars when they’re interacting with regular cars. While the crashes over the past 16 months weren't serious and caused no injuries (and no wonder - they were travelling at less than 16 km/hour at the time) researchers at Google are keen to figure out exactly what kinds of situations will put them in danger, and use that information to further improve their cars' AI.

And together with their own data, they’d like to gather information from people who have actually encountered one of their self-driving cars on the streets too. Chris Ziegler reports for The Verge that Google has launched a website where drivers can recount their experiences of having to interact with one of these sweet-looking bubble-mobiles, telling them if it went smoothly, if it required extra concentration to move around the car, or if it was just kinda weird sharing the streets with something not controlled by a human brain. 

"It'll probably help that some of the cars are going to become rolling works of art - how can you hate a cute car covered in an even cuter pattern?” says Ziegler. "Then again, the cars are capped at 'a neighbourhood-friendly 25 mph (40 km/h),' so if you've ever wanted to lay on your horn at an artificially intelligent vehicle that's going way too slow on a public street, this might be a wonderful opportunity."

Just everyone please be patient with these plucky little robots. They're trying their best to create a world where less and less of us are compelled to spend our valuable hours behind the wheel, let's hope they get us there. 

We’re all getting an extra second on June 30 this year

We’re all getting an extra second on June 30 this year

A leap second will be added on June 30, 2015, because the planet is out of sync with our atomic clocks.

 

This year will be one second longer than 2014. Scientists have announced that they’ll be adding an extra second, called a “leap second” to the UTC (coordinated universal time) clock on June 30 at 11:59:59.

That means the clock will read 11:59:60. This is because the Earth is moving a little slower than our super-accurate atomic clocks dictate, and it’s getting out of sync. In fact, while atomic time is constant, the Earth’s rotation is slowing down by around two thousandths of a second each day.

"The real simple explanation is the Earth is slowing down a little bit," Nick Stamatakos, the head of the Earth Orientate Parameters at the US Naval Observatory told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

"For that day there'll be 86,401 seconds, instead of 86,400 seconds,” he told The Telegraph.

The decision comes from scientists at the Paris-based International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, who take stock of how punctual our planet is.

It’s not a rare move - this is the 26th leap second that’s been added since 1972, and the last one was added in 2012. But it didn’t go entirely smoothly - lot of the software that supports websites couldn’t cope, and the leap second took out internet bigwigs Reddit, LinkedIn, Gizmodo and FourSquare.

This is because the Network Time Protocol that computers use to sync themselves up with the world’s atomic clocks. And when this protocol sees the same second being repeated on the clock, it assumes that something’s gone wrong and havoc ensues.

Google has come up with a technique to deal with the problem called a ‘leap smear’, but people are still worried about communication and banking disruptions. 

And there are also concerns that too many leap seconds could ruin Greenwich Mean Time forever, as The Telegraph reports:

“Experts also fear that once this link is broken it could never be restored because although the Earth's timekeeping systems are built to accommodate the occasional leap second, adding a leap minute or hour to global time would be virtually impossible.”

But while there are calls form the US government and other countries to get rid of leap seconds altogether due to disruptions, the rest of the world is keen to make sure that the Earth’s rotation and the atomic clock stay in sync. 

Either way, the leap second is coming this year whether you like it or not.

WATCH: This creepy worm is trying to digest a person's hand

WATCH: This creepy worm is trying to digest a person's hand

NOPE.

Introducing the ribbon worm, a member of the Nemertea phylum of primitive invertebrates that happens to include one of the longest-known animals on Earth. While the species Lineus longissimus usually only grows to a mere 5 to 10 millimetres, in 1864, a specimen washed up on a Scottish beach after a severe storm, and was promptly measured as being more than 55 metres (180 ft) long. 

Like the demure little Nemertea in the video above, before it ended up dead and sized-up on a beach, this super-long worm would have had some powerful poisoning skills. All Nemertea worms are equipped with an elongated, tubular mouthpart called a proboscis, which curls up inside a specialised organ called the rhynchocoel just above its gut when the worm is at rest.

When the worm is hunting, however, that highly efficient, stretchy feeding tube will unfurl and emerge just above its mouth, to cover its prey in a thick, sticky, and slightly pungent mucus. All of which already sounds fairly unpleasant, but the worst part is that it contains a relatively strong neurotoxin that can paralyse small prey so they quit struggling. Which is exactly what the worm in the video above is trying to do to that man's hand. 

Results of 3-year clinical trial show the bionic eye safely restores vision

Results of 3-year clinical trial show the bionic eye safely restores vision

The device helped 89 percent of patients see again.

 

Three years after clinical trials in humans first began, researchers in the US have shown that their bionic eye device isn't only safe to use, it also reliably restores vision in those who suffer from the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa.

The results found that 89 percent of the subjects involved in the trial could see significantly better after using the device, which is known as Argus II, and 80 percent had their quality of life improved. It's an exciting result, as the device works in a similar way to the cochlear implant - or 'bionic ear' - which has helped restore hearing to hundreds of thousands of people.

"This study shows that the Argus II system is a viable treatment option for people profoundly blind due to retinitis pigmentosa," lead researcher Allen C. Ho from the Wills Eye Hospital in Pennsylvania, US, said in a press release. "One that can make a meaningful difference in their lives and provides a benefit that can last over time."

The device was created by medical company, Second Sight, and works through an electronic device that's implanted onto a patient's retina - the layer of light-sensing cells at the back of the eye.

To stimulate these cells, visual information is captured by a tiny camera attached to the patient's glasses and sent to a pocket-sized computer, where it's processed into electronic signals. These signals are beamed wirelessly to the patient's implant, which stimulates the retinal cells with painless electrical pulses. The result is that the patient sees patterns of light, that the brain can eventually learn to interpret as an image.

The Argus II received limited Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2013, but this clinical trial set out to show that the device could be used more broadly by testing it over three years. They worked with 30 patients aged between 28 and 77 who had little or no light perception in both eyes as a result of retinitis pigmentosa.

The team tested their visual function in the lab and in real-world conditions over the next three years. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with independent investigators finding that no subjects had been affected negatively by the bionic eye, and 80 percent had both their vision and quality of life significantly improved.

There were no device failures during the trial, the researchers report, and only 11 adverse events, most of which arose shortly after surgery and were successfully treated. Only one device had to be removed after it became damaged and began to erode.

The team now hopes that the results, which have been published in the journalOphthalmology, will allow them to begin testing the device in an even broader range of subjects, with the aim of eventually using the device to restore sight to more patients.

"I look forward to future studies with this technology which may make possible expansion of the intended use of the device, including treatment for other diseases and eye injuries," said Ho.

This new roof material stays colder than the air around it - even in summer

This new roof material stays colder than the air around it - even in summer

A smarter way to cool your house.

 

Researchers from the Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney (UTS Science) have created a material that can stay cooler than the ambient air temperature, even in the height of Australian summer. And it could help to greatly reduce cooling costs and the environmental impact of air-conditioning.

The roofing material is made from stacked polymers on top of a thin silver film, and only absorbs an incredible 3 percent of sunlight. Impressively, it also radiates heat out at specific infrared wavelengths that aren't absorbed by the atmosphere - allowing it to beam the heat directly into space.

"We demonstrate for the first time how to make a roof colder than the air temperature around it, even under the most intense summer conditions," one of the lead researchers, Geoff Smith, told the press. "Roofs heat up by absorbing sunlight, so darker roofs can get very hot. Even white roofs still absorb enough sunlight to warm up by 9 degrees Celsius to 12 degrees Celsius."

Scientists have been working for years to create increasingly more heat-repellant materials to cover our houses with, but they've struggled to find anything that approaches 100 percent solar reflectance. 

"This new surface, however, stayed 11 degrees or more colder than an existing state-of-the-art white roof nearby," Smith added. 

Infrared image of the new material (purple) on top of a regular white roof. Credit: UTS Science

Even better, the materials used to create the demo-roof are already commercially available, and so far seem to be suited to creating basic roofing, which means they could easily be integrated by the construction industry.

The team has tested the roof on the top of the UTS Science building in Sydney, which is on a busy road and has no cover from the hot summer sun. Despite the conditions, they showed that the roof was able to stay significantly colder than the air around it, even in direct summer sunlight and when it became covered with traffic-produced dirt and grime. The results have been published open access inAdvanced Science.

And while its energy-saving abilities overall haven't been tested as yet, Smith believes that it could substantially help to reduce the environmental costs of cooling.

"Cool roofing reduces the severity of the urban heat island problem in towns and cities and helps eliminate peak power demand problems from the operation of many air conditioners," he said. "The added feedback benefits from cool roofs are not yet widely appreciated, but recent reports have shown they are substantial. Examples include ventilation with cooler air and higher performance of rooftop air-conditioning installations." 

We're pretty excited about a world where our homes are kept cool by their roofs, rather than electricity-guzzling air-conditioners. Someone get the technology commercialised, ASAP.

Watching cat videos lowers stress and makes you happy, study suggests

Watching cat videos lowers stress and makes you happy, study suggests

Grumpy Cat does not approve. 

SCIENCEALERT STAFF

20 JUN 2015

This article was originally written by Sasha Petrova for The Conversation.

Watching cute cat videos and looking at their online pictures may not be a waste of time. A new study has found doing so could boost energy levels and increase feelings of happiness. Published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, the study even suggests that watching internet cats could be used as a form of digital pet therapy or stress relief.

Internet data shows two million cat videos were posted on YouTube as of 2014, totalling nearly 26 billion views. Celebrity cats - such as Grumpy Cat and and Lil BUB - have also sprung up on social media, garnering mass followings. This pop culture phenomenon "compelled" Assistant Professor Jessica Gall Myrick from Indiana University Media School to explore the motivations behind the surging love of online felines.

She set out to find the characteristics present in the types of users who engaged in procrastinatory online cat viewing and the potential effects of this activity on their emotional states. "Some people may think watching online cat videos isn’t a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it’s one of the most popular uses of the internet today," Myrick said. "If we want to better understand the effects the internet may have on us as individuals and on society, then researchers can’t ignore internet cats anymore."

The researcher collected data using a questionnaire distributed by a 'snowball' technique, through Facebook users sharing the questionnaire. The method garnered nearly 7,000 participants largely with the help of it being shared on celebrity cat Lil BUB’s Facebook page.

The 10-minute survey asked participants to supply details including that of past and present pet ownership, describe whether they were cat or dog people and rate their level of shyness - a necessary exploration based on prior research that linked introversion to more frequent internet use. About 36 percent participants described themselves as a 'cat person', while about 60 percent said they liked both cats and dogs.

Drawing on some well-known research that showed spending time with pets improved people’s moods and sense of well-being, the study found negative emotions were lower and positive emotions higher after viewing internet cats. UNSW psychology lecturer Lisa Williams said that what may initially seem like "fluffy" research had a "lot more teeth" than what some might think. "It’s very clever research. I think that the researcher is using some well-known theories to back up why she’s investigating the emotional outcomes of watching cat videos."

Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at Flinders University, Owen Churches, said it was an important and timely study. "Cats on the internet are part of the world that we have created for ourselves and that we now occupy and I think it’s limiting of psychologists to not study phenomena that are manifestly part of our psychological world," he said. "The author’s suggestion that this is potentially a digital pet therapy is quite accurate and quite a sensible link to make."

The study showed people who were current or past cat owners were more frequent viewers of internet cats. It also showed that people who were rated as shy and agreeable spent more time looking at cats online. Participants who were measured as having emotional stability spent less time consuming internet cat content. However, there was no significant association with extroversion, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, or well-being.

Professor Myrick also explored the interrelationship between feelings of guilt and enjoyment related to obsessively watching cats online; testing a conceptual model that links procrastination, guilt, happiness, and enjoyment. "Even if they are watching cat videos on YouTube to procrastinate or while they should be working, the emotional pay-off may actually help people take on tough tasks afterwards," Myrick said.

Limitations noted in the study were that the sample used was not random and consisted mainly of women and those who had an affinity for cats.

Williams pointed out that while cat videos may be a useful tool for people who liked cats, those predisposed to porcupines might find more pleasure watching porcupine videos than cat videos.

Sasha Petrova is Editor at The Conversation.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Watching cat videos lowers stress and makes you happy, study suggests

Watching cat videos lowers stress and makes you happy, study suggests

Grumpy Cat does not approve. 

 

This article was originally written by Sasha Petrova for The Conversation.

Watching cute cat videos and looking at their online pictures may not be a waste of time. A new study has found doing so could boost energy levels and increase feelings of happiness. Published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, the study even suggests that watching internet cats could be used as a form of digital pet therapy or stress relief.

Internet data shows two million cat videos were posted on YouTube as of 2014, totalling nearly 26 billion views. Celebrity cats - such as Grumpy Cat and and Lil BUB - have also sprung up on social media, garnering mass followings. This pop culture phenomenon "compelled" Assistant Professor Jessica Gall Myrick from Indiana University Media School to explore the motivations behind the surging love of online felines.

She set out to find the characteristics present in the types of users who engaged in procrastinatory online cat viewing and the potential effects of this activity on their emotional states. "Some people may think watching online cat videos isn’t a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it’s one of the most popular uses of the internet today," Myrick said. "If we want to better understand the effects the internet may have on us as individuals and on society, then researchers can’t ignore internet cats anymore."

The researcher collected data using a questionnaire distributed by a 'snowball' technique, through Facebook users sharing the questionnaire. The method garnered nearly 7,000 participants largely with the help of it being shared on celebrity cat Lil BUB’s Facebook page.

The 10-minute survey asked participants to supply details including that of past and present pet ownership, describe whether they were cat or dog people and rate their level of shyness - a necessary exploration based on prior research that linked introversion to more frequent internet use. About 36 percent participants described themselves as a 'cat person', while about 60 percent said they liked both cats and dogs.

Drawing on some well-known research that showed spending time with pets improved people’s moods and sense of well-being, the study found negative emotions were lower and positive emotions higher after viewing internet cats. UNSW psychology lecturer Lisa Williams said that what may initially seem like "fluffy" research had a "lot more teeth" than what some might think. "It’s very clever research. I think that the researcher is using some well-known theories to back up why she’s investigating the emotional outcomes of watching cat videos."

Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at Flinders University, Owen Churches, said it was an important and timely study. "Cats on the internet are part of the world that we have created for ourselves and that we now occupy and I think it’s limiting of psychologists to not study phenomena that are manifestly part of our psychological world," he said. "The author’s suggestion that this is potentially a digital pet therapy is quite accurate and quite a sensible link to make."

The study showed people who were current or past cat owners were more frequent viewers of internet cats. It also showed that people who were rated as shy and agreeable spent more time looking at cats online. Participants who were measured as having emotional stability spent less time consuming internet cat content. However, there was no significant association with extroversion, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, or well-being.

Professor Myrick also explored the interrelationship between feelings of guilt and enjoyment related to obsessively watching cats online; testing a conceptual model that links procrastination, guilt, happiness, and enjoyment. "Even if they are watching cat videos on YouTube to procrastinate or while they should be working, the emotional pay-off may actually help people take on tough tasks afterwards," Myrick said.

Limitations noted in the study were that the sample used was not random and consisted mainly of women and those who had an affinity for cats.

Williams pointed out that while cat videos may be a useful tool for people who liked cats, those predisposed to porcupines might find more pleasure watching porcupine videos than cat videos.

Sasha Petrova is Editor at The Conversation.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.