Smart News Ideas & Innovations

Speech2Face has its limitations, including a gender bias that led it to associate higher-pitched voices with women and lower-pitched ones with men

Artificial Intelligence Generates Humans’ Faces Based on Their Voices

In trials, the algorithm successfully pinpointed speakers’ gender, race and age

The Chinese giant salamander is the world's largest amphibian, weighing upwards of 140 pounds and growing to a length of more than 5.9 feet

Giant Salamander Goo Is Great at Gluing Gashes

Although slightly less durable than other surgical adhesives, a compound derived from the amphibian's skin secretions performs better overall

Trending Today

This Company Is Using Vintage Seaplanes in Their Quest to Become the First All-Electric Airline

Vancouver-based Harbour Air will soon outfit its classic seaplanes with battery-powered aviation motors

New Research

'Mona Lisa' Comes to Life in Computer-Generated 'Living Portrait'

A new artificial intelligence system can create realistic animations from a single static image

An artist's rendering of the recomposition facility

Washington Becomes First State to Allow 'Human Composting' as a Burial Method

The accelerated decomposition method transforms remains into soil and uses just an eighth of the energy required for cremation

Stereoscopic portraits of Queen Victoria. Dated 1854.

Two Unseen Photographs of Queen Victoria Released in Honor of Her 200th Birthday

Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, were early and eager adopters of new photographic technologies and commissioned many personal family portraits

The synthetic DNA contains 61 codons, as opposed to the 64 typically found in living organisms

Scientists Create E. Coli Bacteria With Completely Synthetic Genome

The synthetic organisms appear to function much like their natural counterparts

In trials, the app detected the presence of ear fluid with 85 percent accuracy

Researchers Develop App That Plays Chirping Sounds to Check for Ear Infections

Although EarHealth isn’t currently available for purchase, the team hopes to receive F.D.A. approval by the end of 2019

Illustration from woodblock-printed text on the life of Gautama Buddha

Library of Congress Digitizes Taiwanese Watercolors, Rare Chinese Texts

The library's rare Chinese book collection includes 5,300 titles, 2,000 of which will ultimately be included in the online portal

Fifth-grader Eric and fourth-grader Isa spent a year working to bring their idea to life

Massachusetts Elementary Students Led Campaign to Install ‘3-D’ Crosswalk in Front of School

The optical illusion uses shaded block of paint to make crossing stripes appear to float in the air

Cool Finds

New Legos Are Designed to Help Visually Impaired Children Learn Braille

The goal of the new toy is to increase literacy among the blind has fallen dramatically in the last 50 years

Lead author Tal Dvir says, "Maybe, in ten years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely"

Scientists Used Human Tissue to 3-D Print a Tiny Heart

The technique could eventually be adapted to create full-sized organs personalized to each patient

Beta Writer’s debut work consists of about 250 pages of compiled research, sorted into chapters based on subject matter.

Publisher Releases First Textbook Written Entirely by an Algorithm

“Beta Writer” isn't the next great American author, but its debut work shows promise for AI-assisted research

Swiss Miss sells more than 50 million boxes every year

Charles Sanna's Cocoa Packets Changed the Way We Drink Hot Chocolate

Sanna invented Swiss Miss, the first instant hot chocolate mix that could be made with hot water instead of milk

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts hired art therapist Stephen Legari in 2017

Art Meets Science

Quebec’s Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Sets Example in Arts-Based Wellness

The social prescribing movement involves the treatment of a wide range of ailments with therapeutic art- or hobby-based activities

"Super smeller" Joy Milne (left) poses alongside Perdita Barran, a co-author of the new study

New Research

How a Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson's Disease Helped Scientists Create a New Early Diagnosis Method

Joy Milne first noticed a “sort of woody, musky odor” emanating from her husband some 12 years before he was diagnosed with the degenerative disorder

Honey gathered from urban beehives offers a surprisingly accurate measure of surrounding communities’ air quality

How Urban Beehives Can Help Researchers Detect Air Pollution

Trace elements found in honey may be able to lead researchers straight to the source of environmental contamination

Compared to traditional open-heart surgery, TAVR is a relatively simple procedure that finds cardiologists using a catheter to insert a replacement valve

This Minimally Invasive Technique Could Reduce the Need for Open-Heart Surgery

Clinical trials suggest TAVR is just as beneficial as, or perhaps even better than, open-heart surgery for low- and high-risk patients alike

Georges Seurat's Pointillist "Study for 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'" exhibits high levels of entropy but low levels of complexity

Art Meets Science

Physicists Come Up With Intriguing Way to Measure Art's Evolution

By mapping the complexity and entropy of 140,000 paintings created between 1031 and 2016, the researchers demonstrated the interaction of art movements

Underdrawing as seen under X-ray (left) and underdrawing superimposed with elements of 1619 portrait (right)

Cool Finds

X-Ray Analysis Reveals Self-Portrait Hidden Under Artemisia Gentileschi Painting

The underpainting closely mirrors an earlier self-portrait depicting the Baroque artist as Saint Catherine

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