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Researchers have found a soft and squidgy water-rich gel is not only able to play the video game Pong, but gets better at it over time.

The findings come almost two years after brain cells in a dish were taught how to play the 1970s classic, a result the researchers involved said showed “something that resembles intelligence”.

The team behind the latest study said that while they were inspired by that work, they were not claiming their hydrogel was sentient.

“We are claiming that it has memory, and through that memory it can improve in performance by gaining experience,” said Dr Vincent Strong, the first author of the research, from the University of Reading.

Strong said the work could offer a simpler way to develop algorithms for neural networks – models that underpin AI systems including Chat GPT – noting that at present they are based on how biological structures work.……

www.theguardian.com

Scientists enable hydrogel to play and improve at Pong video game

Researchers say their creation has memory, which it can use to perform better by gaining experience
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Problems? With something from Boeing?
arstechnica.com

After months of mulling, NASA will decide on Starliner return this weekend

"The agency flight readiness review is where any formal dissents are presented and reconciled."
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Senior NASA leaders, including the agency's administrator, Bill Nelson, will meet Saturday in Houston to decide whether Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is safe enough to ferry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth from the International Space Station
 
CNN —
Human brain samples collected at autopsy in early 2024 contained more tiny shards of plasticthan samples collected eight years prior, according to a preprint posted online in May. A preprint is a study which has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a journal.

“The concentrations we saw in the brain tissue of normal individuals, who had an average age of around 45 or 50 years old, were 4,800 micrograms per gram, or 0.5% by weight,” said lead study author Matthew Campen, a regents’ professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

“Compared to autopsy brain samples from 2016, that’s about 50% higher,” Campen said. “That would mean that our brains today are 99.5% brain and the rest is plastic.”……

 
Optimus Prime said:
CNN —
Human brain samples collected at autopsy in early 2024 contained more tiny shards of plasticthan samples collected eight years prior, according to a preprint posted online in May. A preprint is a study which has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a journal.

“The concentrations we saw in the brain tissue of normal individuals, who had an average age of around 45 or 50 years old, were 4,800 micrograms per gram, or 0.5% by weight,” said lead study author Matthew Campen, a regents’ professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

“Compared to autopsy brain samples from 2016, that’s about 50% higher,” Campen said. “That would mean that our brains today are 99.5% brain and the rest is plastic.”……

Click to expand...
Some more plastic than others.
 
CNN) — Imagine: You and your sister are 66-year-old twins on Medicare who share the same family history of Alzheimer’s disease, making an early diagnosis critical for long-term planning and preventive health care.

Since Medicare provides coverage for a cognitive screening as part of each year’s wellness visit, you believe that diagnosis, if needed, will occur.

Let’s say you live in Hartford, Connecticut. Your sister is some 26 miles away in Springfield, Massachusetts — so close that you often share Sunday dinners.

Yet according to a new study, you are 18% more likely to obtain a diagnosis of dementia in Hartford than your sister in Springfield.

How could this be? According to Medicare data, the health care system in Connecticut may be doing a better job than Massachusetts of screening and diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias and referring patients to specialists, said lead study author Julie Bynum, a professor of internal medicine and geriatric and palliative medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.

Such disparities happen across the United States, Bynum said. In fact, depending on your ZIP code, you may be twice as likely to be diagnosed in some areas of the country as others.

Compared with the national average, people who live in ZIP codes with the lowest diagnostic intensity — a measure of how often doctors offer tests and treatments to patients — are 28% less likely to get a timely diagnosis, the study found.

Those who live in regions with the highest diagnostic intensity — where physicians may be more aggressive in their level of care — are 36% more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, according to the study…….,

 
A new version of the world’s first raspberry-picking robot, a four-armed machine powered by artificial intelligence and able to do the job at the speed and effectiveness of a human, is to be employed on farms in the UK, Australia and Portugal over the coming 12 months.

The developers claim that Fieldworker 1, nicknamed Robocrop, can detect more accurately than previous models whether a berry is ripe, and can pick fruit faster because its grippers have greater reach and flexibility.

Developed in less than a year by Fieldwork Robotics, a spinout from the University of Plymouth, the machine is being already being trialled at berry farms in England and Portugal; Australian tests will begin soon.


The British Berry Growers group has warned that two-fifths of growers of strawberries and raspberries could go out of business by the end of 2026 because of rising costs and supermarkets squeezing supplier prices. If problems are not tackled, the industry body has warned of “a future massive reduction in the supply of fresh British berries”.

The latest version of Robocrop will soon be going to Australia for further field testing at Costa Group, one of the country’s biggest fruit and vegetable growers. Raspberries are harvested in Australia almost the entire year, and farms are dealing with a rise in the national minimum wage.

Following further modifications, the final version of the robot is expected to be sold or leased to growers late next year, with plans to manufacture up to 24. Fieldwork Robotics is in talks to sell the machine to farms in the UK, Portugal, Australia and California…….

www.theguardian.com

Improved version of ‘Robocrop’ only picks ripe raspberries

Exclusive: Developers say the Fieldworker robot will soon be in use in the UK, Australia and Portugal
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 

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