How neural networks think

Artificial-intelligence research has been transformed by machine-learning systems called neural networks, which learn how to perform tasks by analyzing huge volumes of training data.

During training, a neural net continually readjusts thousands of internal parameters until it can reliably perform some task, such as identifying objects in digital images or translating text from one language to another. But on their own, the final values of those parameters say very little about how the neural net does what it does.

Airline industry could fly thousands of miles on biofuel from a new promising feedstock

A Boeing 747 burns one gallon of jet fuel each second. A recent analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois estimate that this aircraft could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on 54 acres of specially engineered sugarcane.

Rising CO2 Leading to Changes in Land Plant Photosynthesis

Researchers led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego have determined that major changes in plant behavior have occurred over the past 40 years, using measurements of subtle changes in the carbon dioxide (CO2) currently found in the atmosphere.

The two main isotopes, or atomic forms, of carbon are carbon-12 (12C) and carbon-13 (13C). As CO2 has risen since the late 19th century, the ratio of 13C to 12C in atmospheric CO2 has decreased. That’s in part because the CO2 produced by the combustion of fossil fuels has a low 13C/12C ratio. There are other factors in nature as well, however, that have influenced the rate of decrease in the isotopic ratio.  The measured rate of decrease in the isotopic ratio turns out to be different than what scientists previously expected.

Study Shows So-Called 'Healthy Obesity' is Harmful to Cardiovascular Health

Clinicians are being warned not to ignore the increased cardiovascular health risks of those who are classed as either ‘healthy obese’ or deemed to be ‘normal weight’ but have metabolic abnormalities such as diabetes.

NASA Gets Night-Time and Daytime Look at a Weaker Wide Irma

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured night-time look at Hurricane Irma as it weakened to a large tropical storm and the GOES East satellite provided a daytime view as the large storm continued moving north over Florida.

Desert locusts: new risks in the light of climate change

Desert locusts are a major pest on numerous crops and pastures throughout a vast area of almost 30 million km2 covering Africa north of the equator, the Near East, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Like other locusts, desert locusts can switch from a solitary phase with low population densities during recessions (periods of calm), to a gregarious phase with high population densities during invasions, when hopper bands and swarms can devastate agriculture.

Air pollution cuts three years off lifespans in northern China

There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion people around the world exposed to levels of particulate air pollution that are at least twice what the World Health Organization considers safe. Yet the impact of sustained exposure to pollution on a person’s life expectancy has largely remained a vexingly unanswered question—until now.

WHY YOUR ANCESTORS WOULD HAVE ACED THE LONG JUMP

A 52-million-year-old ankle fossil suggests our prehuman ancestors were high-flying acrobats.

These first primates spent most of their time in the trees rather than on the ground, but just how nimble they were as they moved around in the treetops has been a topic of dispute.

For years, scientists thought the ancestors of today’s humans, monkeys, lemurs and apes were relatively slow and deliberate animals, using their grasping hands and feet to creep along small twigs and branches to stalk insects or find flowers and fruits.

Ancient wetlands offer window into climate change

The work – led by the University of Adelaide, and involving scientists from the Queensland Government, and members of the local community – has uncovered what the researchers describe as a "treasure trove" of ancient wetlands on Queensland's North Stradbroke Island (known to Indigenous communities as Minjerribah), some dating as old as 200,000 years ago.

NASA Flights Map Summer Melt of Greenland Land Ice

Operation IceBridge is flying in Greenland to measure how much ice has melted over the course of the summer from the ice sheet. The flights, which began on Aug. 25 and will go on until Sept. 21, repeat paths flown this spring and aim to monitor seasonal changes in the elevation of the ice sheet.