45 articles from SATURDAY 15.2.2020

Energized by enzymes -- nature's catalysts

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are using a custom virtual reality app to design an artificial enzyme that converts carbon dioxide to formate, a kind of fuel. PNNL's Wendy Shaw and Aaron Appel organized a session at the 2020 #AAASmtg and invited colleagues from across the nation to share what they've learned.

Factories reimagined

Factories in the future will definitely look different than today. As the fourth industrial revolution transforms manufacturing from mass production to mass customization, factory workers will increasingly need to apply new ICT to work remotely, collaborate with robots or use AI-based assistants, to increase their performance while developing further their creative, innovative and improvisational...

In court, far-reaching psychology tests are unquestioned

Psychological tests are important instruments used in courts to aid legal decisions that profoundly affect people's lives. While increasingly used in courts, new research shows the tests are not all scientifically valid, and once introduced into a case they are rarely challenged, according to Tess Neal, an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University.

Journalism is an 'attack surface' for those who spread misinformation

For all the benefits in the expansion of the media landscape, we're still struggling with the spread of misinformation -- and the damage is especially worrisome when it comes to information about science and health. Dan Gillmor, co-founder of the News Co/Lab at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will discuss his work on improving media literacy...

The verdict is in: Courtrooms seldom overrule bad science

A new, multiyear study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI), a journal of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), finds that only 40% of the psychological assessment tools used in courts have been favorably rated by experts. Even so, lawyers rarely challenge their conclusions, and when they do, only one third of those challenges are successful.

Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been working to improve the state of global health through his nonprofit foundation for 20 years, and today he told the nation's premier scientific gathering that advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead. "We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial...

Astronomers to sweep entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life

Project is collaboration between privately-funded firm and New Mexico observatory Astronomers will sweep the entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life for the first time, using 28 giant radio telescopes in an unprecedented hunt for alien civilisations.The project is a collaboration between the privately-funded Seti Institute and the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico, one of the...

The Guardian view on looking for aliens: friends in the sky? | Editorial

Recent discoveries in space and Earth sciences have provided encouragement to searchers for distant civilisationsIs there anybody out there? For centuries human beings have wondered, although the ways in which we have gone about this have varied, encompassing spiritual and metaphysical questions as well as scientific ones. As we have gained greater understanding of the universe, however, our...

New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life

Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American...

To help wildlife move, researchers map both natural and legal boundaries

Researchers have developed a way to find the path of least resistance in creating wildlife corridors by mapping not only habitat but also the types of legal authority governing the landscape. They demonstrate this by mapping the streams in an entire county in northeastern Washington that stretches from the Rocky Mountain foothills to the Cascades.

Physically producing computer-generated artificial genomes to understand DNA

The molecular blueprint of life is stored in DNA within the genome. The digital revolution in biology, driven by DNA sequencing, enables scientists to read the genomes of the many microbes and multicellular organisms that populate our world. Today, DNA sequences of over 200,000 microbial genomes are deposited in digital genome databases and have exponentially increased the understanding of how DNA...