news 2024

The emotional tone of written language, as assessed by people or ChatGPT, can predict changes in depressive symptoms three weeks later. A person's choice of words can be predictive of worsening symptoms of major depressive disorder, a new Yale study finds. Using both human evaluators and the large language model ChatGPT, researchers demonstrated that written responses to open-ended questions could be used to predict who would experience worse symptoms of depression weeks later.

A Western study could help farmers get out of a potential jam by using artificial intelligence (AI) and passive camera monitoring to enhance strawberry cultivation. In a paper published in the international journal Foods , Western engineers describe a new machine-learning approach that yields the highest-ever precision and accuracy rates for ripeness and disease detection in strawberries of any previous attempts.

The University of Waterloo has long been renowned for entrepreneurship and innovation and for providing co-operative education (co-op) and work-integrated learning at scale with impact. Dr. Margaret Dalziel and Nada Basir, both professors at the Conrad School of Business and Entrepreneurship, conducted a study into the mechanisms behind this success, revealing that co-op plays a pivotal role in shaping the ventures of student entrepreneurs.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have designed an energy-efficient device that produces drinking water from seawater using an evaporation process driven largely by the sun. Desalination is critical for many coastal and island nations to provide access to fresh water, given water scarcity concerns due to rapid population growth and increasing global water consumption.

A new technology that uses light waves to measure activity in babies' brains has provided the most complete picture to date of functions like hearing, vision and cognitive processing outside a conventional brain scanner, in a new study led by researchers at UCL and Birkbeck.

University of Queensland researchers are developing new ways to monitor mine waste using drones and ground sensors to improve safety and land rehabilitation across mine sites. Lead investigator Dr Thierry Bore from the School of Civil Engineering said safe management and rehabilitation of mine waste was one of the biggest challenges facing the industry.

An international team of researchers led by Maximilian Weißflog, with the participation of researchers from Jena, Canberra and with support from Darmstadt, has made a significant advance in quantum optics. In their latest publication in the renowned journal "Nature", the team presents a novel method for generating entangled photon pairs using two-dimensional (2D) materials.

Using 3D printing technology and ultrasonic joining technique, researchers at TU Graz succeeded in attaining an extremely strong joining of the renewable raw material wood with metal and polymer composite. The renewable raw material wood is climate-neutral and at the same time light and strong, making it fundamentally attractive for use in vehicle manufacturing.

An external study of Twitter in 2022 estimated that between a third and two thirds of accounts on the social media site were bots. And many of these automatons flooding social media are dispatched to sow political polarization, hate, misinformation, propaganda and scams. The ability to sift them out of the online crowds is vital for a safer, more humane (or at least more human) internet.

Whether it's folk music, a theater festival or game design: culture thrives on encounters between people, their works and their activities. Technology has always played an important role in this. But what are the current interdependencies between digital possibilities and cultural creation? A three-part TA-SWISS project is taking a close look at the opportunities and risks of digitalization in the cultural sector.

Toniebox, Tiptoi, and Tamagotchi are smart toys, offering interactive play through software and internet access. However, many of these toys raise privacy concerns, and some even collect extensive behavioral data about children, report researchers at the University of Basel. The Toniebox and the figurines it comes with are especially popular with small children.

In an analysis of smartphones of ten manufacturers, researchers at TU Graz have found that the Android kernels used are vulnerable to known attacks - so-called one-day exploits - despite existing protection mechanisms. Smartphones are a constant companion and important work tool for many people. In addition to contacts, appointments and emails, the devices are increasingly being used for sensitive tasks such as online banking or official matters.

Imagine a coat that captures solar energy to keep you cozy on a chilly winter walk, or a shirt that can monitor your heart rate and temperature. Picture clothing athletes can wear to track their performance without the need for bulky battery packs. University of Waterloo researchers have developed a smart fabric with these remarkable capabilities.

In the USA, the world's most extensive neutrino experiment, DUNE, is being built at Fermilab. The University of Bern is playing a key role in this by developing the "ND-LAr" detector, which features new technology and an innovative design to observe neutrinos. The prototype of the "ND-LAr" has now been successfully tested and has detected its first neutrinos.

For symptoms like a runny nose and a cough, some might think it's a common cold. It doesn't warrant a doctor's visit, so they turn to Google and WebMD for additional reassurance. Now, with advancements in AI, some might be tempted to switch from "Dr. Google" to "Dr. ChatGPT," but can OpenAI's AI-powered chatbot provide accurate medical advice? Researchers from Western University set out to answer that question and explore whether ChatGPT is capable of becoming a reliable resource in health care and medical education.

The new device, which can be implanted under the skin, rapidly releases naloxone when an overdose is detected. In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but a first responder or bystander can't always reach the person who has overdosed in time.

Imperial has received a donation from high performance and adaptive computing company AMD to support research into machine learning. made the donation in recognition of the excellent research of Professor George Constantinides and Dr Aaron Zhao in Imperial's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Large language models like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity. ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity, according to new research from the University of Bath and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.

Farm saved seed is seed that comes from farmers' own harvests, which they then sow in their fields the following crop year. This practice, which is common for certain field crops, sometimes involves royalty payments to finance seed research. A team from INRAE studied existing systems in Europe and Australia and showed that royalties on farm saved seed generally increases profits for all the economic players involved, from farmers to breeders of protected varieties.

Extreme heatwaves are on the rise. When do they become critical for forest trees? In the hot summer of 2023, a research team led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) investigated this in Switzerland, southern France and Spain.