Robot beats humans at rock-paper-scissors every time.
When the human player in the video above tries to change his shape at the last minute, it still can’t fool the robot at the game, which is called janken in Japan. Its timing is so precise that it never shows its hand too early, and it wins 100 per cent of the time.
Prime location for life in our solar system: Jupiter’s moon Europa. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Colorado
Read Life: Is it inevitable or just a fluke? by Nick Lane in New Scientist. Registration required.
So you won’t be hanging out with Vulcans and Romulans very soon. There may be simple life forms on other planets, but complex life, intelligent life, is not inevitable.
On the bright side, we probably don’t have competition out there. They’re not coming to wipe us out (Not that we can’t do that ourselves).
So we’re alone in the universe. More room for us! Let’s colonize some worlds!
Caffeine! The stimulant in your coffee. This is an electron micrograph of a 40-micron (40/1,000,000 meter) caffeine crystral group, one of the winners of the Wellcome Image Awards 2012.
Horse paintings at Tito Bustillo cave, Spain. Photo by Rodrigo de Balbin Behrmann from LiveScience.
Note: ‘Neandertal’ is the modern spelling of ‘Neanderthal’. Neandertals lived from about 130,000 – 28,000 years ago and were larger-boned and stockier than modern humans. The question of whether they should be considered Homo sapiens is unresolved.
Stupid joke: Ayyyy the Engineers were horses.
The basic questions about early European cave art—who made it and whether they developed artistic talent swiftly or slowly—were thought by many researchers to have been settled long ago: Modern humans made the paintings, crafting brilliant artworks almost as soon as they entered Europe from Africa. Now dating experts working in Spain, using a technique relatively new to archaeology, have pushed dates for the earliest cave art back some 4000 years to at least 41,000 years ago*, raising the possibility that the artists were Neandertals rather than modern humans. And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years.
Figuring out the age of cave art is fraught with difficulties. Radiocarbon dating has long been the method of choice, but it is restricted to organic materials such as bone and charcoal. When such materials are lying on a cave floor near art on the cave wall, archaeologists have to make many assumptions before concluding that they are contemporary. Questions have even arisen in cases like the superb renditions of horses, rhinos, and other animals in France’s Grotte Chauvet, the cave where researchers have directly radiocarbon dated artworks executed in charcoal to 37,000 years ago. Other archaeologists have argued that artists could have entered Chauvet much later and picked up charcoal that had been lying around for thousands of years…
Read Did Neandertals paint early cave art? in Science.
Horse painting at Lascaux cave, only about 20,000 years old. Photo by Ralph Morse for Life magazine.
This illustrates one reason tackling climate change at big international conferences has been so difficult. The countries that contribute to the problem reap rewards in the form of economic growth while the consequences are felt elsewhere. The Copenhagen conference might have been more productive if the United States, China, and Russia topped this list.
Read A List You Don’t Want To Be On in GOOD. Thanks to Butch for the alert.
So massive SUVs burn up more fuel, contributing to global warming and climate change disasters such as floods—one reason people cite for buying SUVs (Puedeng lumusong sa baha). Oy.
Climate Armaggedon: How the World’s Weather Could Quickly Run Amok
What are those on the floor of the truck? 2-year-old Philippine crocodiles, wrapped in soft netting. They were being transported by truck, raft and on foot to the lake in Dunoy where they were released back into the wild. Photo by Malu Francisco.
On May 19, Lacoste S.A. Chairman Michel Lacoste boarded a 6 x 6 truck in San Mariano, Isabela with a dozen 2-year-old crocodiles. The juvenile crocodiles belong to the severely endangered species Crocodylus mindorensis or Philippine crocodile (local name: bukarot). This small freshwater species found only in this country will become extinct in ten years if no conservation action is taken.
Read Crocs On A Truck in Emotional Weather Report, our column today in the Philippine Star.
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