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Speech-recognition software converts the sound waves in a person’s voice, captured by a microphone, into different vibration patterns. The software’s algorithms then use machine learning to train a device to identify those patterns as words and phrases. The more the algorithms catalogue spoken language, the better the software becomes at interpreting speech. Add in GPS, mapping software and data gathered by cameras, accelerometers and other sensors, and a voice assistant such as Alexa or Apple’s Siri begins to build context that helps it, for example, suggest a nearby restaurant and give driving directions to get you there....

Adapted from Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind, by Osagie K. Obasogie. Published by Stanford University Press © 2013 Osagie K. Obasogie. Excerpted with permission from the publisher. All Rights Reserved. Do blind people understand race? Given the vast and sprawling writings on race over the past several decades, it is surprising that scholars have not explored this question in any real depth. Race has played a profound and central role to human relationships....

What if plants could switch their genes on and off, depending on which traits were important in a certain climate? That’s what a team of researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies investigated in a series of studies on Arabidopsis thaliana, a common mustard weed across the Northern Hemisphere. Their work has led to a deeper understanding of a hidden layer of genetic diversity that could bring further advances in plant breeding and bioengineering....

IN THE SHOWTIME series United States of Tara, actress Toni Collette plays Tara Gregson, a Kansas mother who has dissociative identity disorder (DID), known formerly as multiple personality disorder. As with others with DID, Tara vacillates unpredictably between various personalities, often referred to as alters, over which she does not have control. One of these alters is a flirtatious and flamboyant teenager, another is a traditional 1950s housewife, and a third is a boisterous Vietnam War veteran....

China has successfully launched its Chang’e 4 spacecraft toward the moon, a daring mission to land on the lunar farside for the first time in history. The launch took place from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province on a Long March 3B rocket today, December 7, at 1:23 pm Eastern time (2:23 am local time in China). The spacecraft will now begin a three-day journey to the moon before remaining in polar lunar orbit until a landing attempt is made by the end of the year at the earliest....

Scientists in the United States have come up with a tool for automatically analysing digital photographs, making it possible to gauge the extent to which images have been altered or retouched. Advances in image-manipulation software have made it trivial to radically alter the appearance of models and celebrities in photos, notes Hany Farid, a computer scientist who studies digital forensics and image analysis at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Farid created the analysis tool with his colleague Eric Kee, also at Dartmouth College....

It was a tough day in US patent court for the University of California, Berkeley. On 6 December, lawyers for the university laid out its claim to the gene-editing tool called CRISPR–Cas9 during a hearing at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) — and drew intense, sometimes skeptical, questioning from the three judges who will decide the fate of patents that could be worth billions of dollars. Berkeley and its rival, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are each vying for the intellectual property underlying CRISPR–Cas9, which is adapted from a system that bacteria use to fend off viruses....

In a step that some of the nation’s leading scientists have long warned against and that has never before been accomplished, biologists in Oregon have edited the DNA of viable human embryos efficiently and apparently with few mistakes, according to a report in Technology Review. The experiment, using the revolutionary genome-editing technique CRISPR-Cas9, was led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University. It went beyond previous experiments using CRISPR to alter the DNA of human embryos, all of which were conducted in China, in that it edited the genomes of many more embryos and targeted a gene associated with a significant human disease....

A headline in the New York Times drew my eye this morning: “On a Battlefield of Civil Rights, Race Fades for Some Voters.” The story reported that “voters in an Alabama county that is more than 96 percent white chose a genial black man, James Fields, to represent them in the State House of Representatives.” Why, you might ask, is that front-page news more than 100 years after the Civil War?...

Developing cleaner power sources for transportation is perhaps the trickiest piece of the energy puzzle. The difficulty stems from two discouraging facts. First, the number of vehicles worldwide, now 750 million, is expected to triple by 2050, thanks largely to the expanding buying power of customers in China, India and other rapidly developing countries. And second, 97 percent of transportation fuel currently comes from crude oil. In the near term, improving fuel economy is the best way to slow the rise in oil use and greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks....

In the U.S., women are going to college and majoring in science and engineering fields in increasing numbers, yet here and around the world they remain underrepresented in the workforce. Comparative figures are hard to come by, but a disparity shows up in the number of Ph.D.s awarded to women and men. The chart here, assembled from data collected by the National Science Foundation, traces the gender gap at the doctoral level for 56 nations....

The Russian attacks on Ukraine are having a devastating impact on civilians. But the health consequences extend far beyond the effects of bombing and shelling. Although it may not be the most urgent threat Ukrainians face, COVID remains a serious risk. Crowded trains, bomb shelters and refugee processing facilities provide ideal conditions for COVID transmission. In the country, Russian attacks have destroyed health care facilities and cut off humanitarian aid routes, and those hospitals that are still operating are running out of resources such as oxygen and vital medical supplies....

By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI (Reuters) - Wildlife officials on Friday will open a Florida nature preserve for the first time to a handful of alligator hunters who waited more than a decade to stalk the large reptiles in the Everglades. Eleven hunters, selected at random from 1,203 applicants, will each be allowed to take two alligators from the nearly 150,000-acre Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge between mid-August and early October. Animal rights activists plan to stage protests at the entry to the park on Friday night, when the hunters arrive....

Director Peter Jackson is always inventive — from creating fantastical imagery that portrays madness in “Heavenly Creatures” to pioneering artificial intelligence that animates swarms of computer-generated orcs in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. In “The Hobbit,” Jackson pushes technology further, with eye-popping 3D. He also uses “high frame rate” (HFR) video that flashes twice as fast as a standard film — 48 instead of 24 frames per second — to portray movement fluidly....

Labor Department officials on Thursday announced a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers, saying they face “grave danger” in the workplace from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The new standard would require employers to remove workers who have covid-19 from the workplace, notify workers of covid exposure at work and strengthen requirements for employers to report worker deaths or hospitalizations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “These are the workers who continue to go into work day in and day out to take care of us, to save our lives,” said Jim Frederick, acting assistant secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health....

If a theme emerged from the January issue, it was health and well-being, including the valuable insights gained by researchers who have resurrected the deadliest flu in history–a plague that is still less than a human lifetime in the past. Writes Laurence Garvie of McMinnville, Ore., “I was told that at the age of two I nearly died of the 1918 influenza. In the 86 years since then I have never had the flu....

LITTLE EVENTS sometimes have far-reaching consequences. For example, the reason I’m no longer driving a delightful but temperamental Alfa Romeo is because of a chocolate Easter bunny. I used to bring my car to a repair shop that employed a mechanic with whom I was most pleased. Then one day he phoned to inform me that he had resigned. “But why?” I asked him. “A new owner has taken over,” he replied....

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. (Inside Science) – Quantum mechanics governs the quirky, counterintuitive way the world works at the small scales of atoms and subatomic particles. It might also be important for helping animals understand their place in their surroundings. New research suggests that wood mice, commonly found in Europe, have a built-in compass that exploits quantum processes, the first seen in a wild mammal....

Editor’s Note (May 1, 2019): This article is being republished in light of an international sports court’s decision to bar women with high testosterone levels from competing in certain women’s track events. Four years ago Indian sprinter Dutee Chand seemed headed for greatness. She became her country’s 100-meter champion for women 18 and younger, and the Sports Authority of India called her a “sure shot Olympic medalist.” Yet soon afterward, the Athletics Federation of India banned her from competition because she had an elevated level of the hormone testosterone, the result of a natural condition called hyperandrogenism....

James Hansen, former NASA climate scientist, and three other prominent climate scientists are calling for an enlarged focus on nuclear energy in the ongoing Paris climate negotiations. “Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change,” Hansen said during a panel discussion yesterday. “The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won’t use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy....