Anyone Can Have A Digitally Enhanced Body Now
Click to view If you dislike the way you look on video, a new kind of image-manipulation software could make you feel better about yourself. Developed by Christian Theobalt of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, and colleagues, it allows professional and amateur movie-makers to dramatically alter how muscular, leggy or heavy…
A computer learns the hard way: By reading the Internet
At Carnegie-Mellon university, a massive computer system called NELL (Never Ending Language Learner) is systematically reading the internet and analyzing sentences for semantic categories and facts, teaching itself English and educating itself in human affairs. We spoke to NELL’s creators. NELL reads the Web 24 hours a day, seven days a week, learning language like…
First frictionless superfluid molecules created
Chill them enough and some atoms creep up walls or stay still while the bowl they sit in rotates, thanks to a quantum effect called superfluidity. Now molecules have got in on the act. Superfluidity is a bizarre consequence of quantum mechanics. Cool helium atoms close to absolute zero and they start behaving as a…