Lifeboat Foundation

Ilaria Pretelli and Sheina Lew-Levy from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Erik Ringen from Emory University report evidence to support a theory that the reason human beings have such a long developmental period is that it takes a long time to learn complex foraging skills. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Scientists have long puzzled over the reason for the long human developmental period—it can take nearly two decades for humans to fully mature. Some researchers have suggested it is merely a byproduct of a long lifespan, while others have suggested it is more likely due to the steep learning curve involved in becoming proficient at foraging. In this new effort, the researchers suspected it was the latter and sought supporting evidence in past studies that focused on modern groups of people that still rely on foraging.

The groups studied by the researchers included Inuit, Cree, the Hadza and Martu. As part of their study, they first categorized the degree of difficulty in foraging based on the type of foraging done by the groups under study. It takes little time to learn how to identify and pick berries, for example, while many years are needed to learn how to hunt with a bow and arrow. They also noted that the types of foraging have different physical requirements. Digging for tubers, for example, requires a lot more effort than pulling fruit from a tree, though the latter may also require more height.

Neuroscience is contributing to an understanding of the biological bases of human intelligence differences. This work is principally being conducted along two empirical fronts: genetics—quantitative and molecular—and brain imaging. Quantitative genetic studies have established that there are additive genetic contributions to different aspects of cognitive ability—especially general intelligence—and how they change through the lifespan. Molecular genetic studies have yet to identify reliably reproducible contributions from individual genes. Structural and functional brain-imaging studies have identified differences in brain pathways, especially parieto-frontal pathways, that contribute to intelligence differences. There is also evidence that brain efficiency correlates positively with intelligence.

When Apple built crash detection into the iPhone 14, the company touted it as a life-saving feature. However, it’s causing some headaches for law enforcement, paramedics, and dispatchers who receive emergency calls informing them of a severe crash that never occurred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqqraWbJWjA

According to The Wall Street Journal, a spate of these false positives have hit the Warren County Communications Center in Ohio since mid-September. In one such case, a King’s Island amusement park patron, 39-year-old Sarah White, rode the Mystic Timbers rollercoaster with her days-old iPhone 14 in her pocket. After the ride was over, her phone was flooded with notifications, missed calls, and voicemails from emergency services.

Continue reading “Your iPhone 14 May Call the Cops If You Ride a Rollercoaster” »

Your Face is the Future of Targeted Marketing. Here’s Why Businesses Should Use Facial Recognition.

Facial recognition technology compliant with global data privacy laws can open new doors for targeted marketing campaigns.

The microscopic world is filled with as much terror and delight as the one visible to our pedestrian eyes. And for 47 years, Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition has celebrated the tiny by showcasing some of the most memorable images taken under an optical microscope using a variety of different methods. Their latest annual selections were released this week.

The top winner is an incredibly detailed hand of a Madagascar giant day gecko in its embryonic stage of life—a feat that took many hundreds of photos to accomplish. Other images include the beginnings of a heart cell, a grotesquely beautiful slime mold, and an artfully posed daddy long legs.

Here are some of the top entries, along with honorable mentions.

On May 12, at nine simultaneous press conferences around the world, astrophysicists revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. At first, awesome though it was, the painstakingly produced image of the ring of light around our galaxy’s central pit of darkness seemed to merely prove what experts already expected: The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole exists, it is spinning, and it obeys Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

And yet, on closer inspection, things don’t quite stack up.

Materials known as metal-organic frameworks hold promise for advances in healthcare, energy and other areas, researchers say.

Nvidia’s software restriction to limit Ethereum mining over the RTX 3,000 graphics cards is officially dead because it’s now irrelevant.

On Friday, an Nvidia spokesperson confirmed that the company had removed the “Lite Hash Rate” limiter after users began reporting (Opens in a new window) the absence of the mining restriction in the latest Nvidia drivers releases for Windows and Linux.

“We don’t believe it’s necessary in the current environment,” the Nvidia spokesperson told PCMag without elaborating.

Nanotechnology is already impacting our everyday lives, but it is set to deliver much greater benefits.