Culture
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- If you've ever played an online video game, you've likely competed with a bot -- an AI-driven program that plays on behalf of a human.
Many of these bots are created using deep reinforcement learning, which is the training of algorithms to learn how to achieve a complex goal through a reward system. But, according to researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, using game bots trained by deep reinforcement learning could allow attackers to use deception to easily defeat them.
Important strides have been made in recent years in uncovering children's knowledge about hierarchical social relationships. Much of these have focused on dominance, a hierarchy in which individuals defer to others out of fear or intimidation.
Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have published new findings in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics on critical cellular processes triggered when cells respond to environmental stress. Mark Marten, professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, led the research team, which identified three coordinated pathways involved in the response to cell wall stress in filamentous fungi. Cynthia Chelius, who recently earned her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at UMBC, is the first author on the paper.
British Columbia found that BC was better prepared for the pandemic and responded in a more coordinated and decisive manner, leading to far fewer deaths than in Ontario.
The article is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
As of September 10, 2020, Ontario had reported 5965 resident cases in LTC homes and 1817 resident deaths from COVID-19, compared with just 466 cases and 156 deaths in BC homes.
A study published in Nature shows that a segment of DNA that causes their carriers to have an up to three times higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals. The study was conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Homeless New Yorkers who menstruate face numerous challenges due to inadequate access to toilets, bathing spaces, and laundering services, as well as pervasive menstrual stigma. The study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy highlights the need for improved quality, supply, and accessibility of bathrooms for sheltered and street-dwelling homeless, and ease of access to bathing and laundering, particularly as the number of women in the city's shelter system is near record highs.
Outer ear infections, which affect millions of people each year, are typically caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Staphylococcus aureus. Repeatedly administering antibiotic drops, the standard treatment, can be a problem for some people, and the only single-use suspension currently available needs to be kept and handled cold. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering have developed a single-use treatment that doesn't require refrigeration.
A recent publication in the Journal of Neuroscience by a group of researchers at the University of Kentucky looks at Encoding the Odor of Cigarette Smoke. Tim McClintock, a physiology professor at UK, says their work lays a foundation for two things.
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
AI Can Detect COVID-19 in the Lungs Like a Virtual Physician, New Study Shows
The new UCF co-developed algorithm can accurately identify COVID-19 cases, as well as distinguish them from influenza.
ORLANDO, Sept. 30, 2020 - A University of Central Florida researcher is part of a new study showing that artificial intelligence can be nearly as accurate as a physician in diagnosing COVID-19 in the lungs.
A river's only consistent attribute is change. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus remarked, "No man ever steps in the same river twice." Although this dynamic nature is often out of sight and mind, forgetting about it has led to many a historical catastrophe.
University of Maryland entomologists discovered that a gene critical for survival in other insects is missing in mosquitos--the gene responsible for properly arranging the insects' segmented bodies. The researchers also found that a related gene evolved to take over the missing gene's job.
While dinosaurs ruled the land in the Mesozoic, the oceans were filled by predators such as crocodiles and giant lizards, but also entirely extinct groups such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.
Now for the first time, researchers at the University of Bristol have modelled the changing ecologies of these great sea dragons.
Mesozoic oceans were unique in hosting diverse groups of fossil reptiles, many of them over 10 metres long.
Background: Persistent poverty means that a county has had poverty rates of 20 percent or more in U.S. Census data from 1980, 1990, and 2000. These areas, representing about 10 percent of all U.S. counties, are primarily located in the rural South.
Cannabinoids, a class of prescription pills that contain synthetically-made chemicals found in marijuana, are associated with a 64 per cent increase in death among older adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to the first published data on the impact of cannabinoids on the respiratory health of individuals with the lung disease.
The findings, published Wednesday in Thorax, have significant clinical implications as more physicians prescribe cannabinoids to patients with COPD to treat chronic muscle pain, difficulty sleeping and breathlessness.
JUPITER, FL - Sept. 30, 2020 - Scripps Research chemist Matthew Disney, PhD, and colleagues have created drug-like compounds that, in human cell studies, bind and destroy the pandemic coronavirus' so-called "frameshifting element" to stop the virus from replicating. The frameshifter is a clutch-like device the virus needs to generate new copies of itself after infecting cells.
"Our concept was to develop lead medicines capable of breaking COVID-19's clutch," Disney says. "It doesn't allow the shifting of gears."