[embedded content] A robot ‘chef’ has been trained to taste food at different stages of the chewing process to assess whether it’s sufficiently seasoned. If robots are to be used for certain aspects of food preparation, it’s important that they are able to ‘taste’ what they’re cooking Grzegorz Sochacki Working in collaboration with domestic appliances […]

When exploring a new environment, mice make use of a unique long-distance connection in the brain that prompts them to pay attention to the most salient features of the environment, according to new research from UC San Francisco. The link, originating in the prefrontal cortex and stretching to the hippocampus, provides evidence of how the […]

An alternative way to make dark chocolate has been created that is faster and more controllable than the conventional fermentation method. Chocolate made this way smells and tastes similar so could replace the usual process. In the traditional chocolate-making process cocoa beans are harvested, covered in banana leaves and left to ferment for a few […]

Tweaks to our diets could be one of the most effective ways of preventing disease in Europe’s ageing population. In 2021, more than one fifth of the EU population was aged 65 and over. Current demographic trends suggest there will be 130 million Europeans over the age of 65 by 2050. By 2040, according to […]

The European commission must improve some of its regulations around the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors (ECA). In particular, it should update its system for calculating fees and strengthen IP rights enforcement. IP rights ensure that businesses and designers profit from their creations. […]

The major problem with the big names, big ideas, big books version of the history of science is that it very often oversees many highly influential figures in the development of a science discipline. A classic example of this is the physician and botanist Luca Ghini (1490–1556). Ghini published almost nothing in his entire career but […]

Humans observe the world through a combination of different modalities, like vision, hearing, and our understanding of language. Machines, on the other hand, interpret the world through data that algorithms can process. So, when a machine “sees” a photo, it must encode that photo into data it can use to perform a task like image […]

From search engines to voice assistants, computers are getting better at understanding what we mean. That’s thanks to language-processing programs that make sense of a staggering number of words, without ever being told explicitly what those words mean. Such programs infer meaning instead through statistics — and a new study reveals that this computational approach […]

The most recent United Nations climate change report indicates that without significant action to mitigate global warming, the extent and magnitude of climate impacts — from floods to droughts to the spread of disease — could outpace the world’s ability to adapt to them. The latest effort to introduce meaningful climate legislation in the United […]

The mRNA vaccines for COVID are doubly flawed. One problem in particular must have been known to the biochemists and the other to the leadership who choose to rely on these vaccines. The first problem is that the dose is uncontrolled; different people produce vastly different amounts of the spike protein from the same injection. […]