The Helper

Yes, in a bid to ensure your car seat really will stand the test of time, Ford has developed a Robutt that is designed to mimic a post-exercise sweaty butt.

Which sounds laughable, but actually makes a lot of sense.

The Robutt is a robotic butt that Ford uses to test the effectiveness of their car seats over time. A butt-shaped cushion is attached to an industrial robot arm, which is then repeatedly pressed onto the tester seat to re-create 10 years of wear and tear.

This new, moister version of the Robutt was designed to mimic those real-life sweaty situations. I believe most of us will admit to getting into our cars after a hard workout a little sweaty-bottomed… (I’m so sorry).

The sweat test takes three days to complete, and sees the new-and-improved sweaty Robutt sit in the test seat 7,500 times. The Robutt is based on the dimensions of a large man, heated to 36 degrees celsius and soaked with 450 millimetres of water.

Read more here (Techly)

Anyone who has ever put a small child to bed or drifted off in a gently swaying hammock will know that a rocking motion makes getting to sleep seem easier. Now, two new studies reported in Current Biology on January 24, one conducted in young adults and the other in mice, add to evidence for the broad benefits of a rocking motion during sleep. In fact, the studies in people show that rocking not only leads to better sleep, but it also boosts memory consolidation during sleep.

"Having a good night's sleep means falling asleep rapidly and then staying asleep during the whole night," says Laurence Bayer of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. "Our volunteers--even if they were all good sleepers--fell asleep more rapidly when rocked and had longer periods of deeper sleep associated with fewer arousals during the night. We thus show that rocking is good for sleep."

Bayer and their colleagues had earlier shown that continuous rocking during a 45-minute nap helped people to fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. In the new study, led by Laurence Bayer and Sophie Schwartz, University of Geneva, Switzerland, they wanted to explore the effects of rocking on sleep and its associated brain waves throughout the night.

The researchers enlisted 18 healthy young adults to undergo sleep monitoring in the lab. The first night was intended to get them used to sleeping there. They then stayed two more nights--one sleeping on a gently rocking bed and the other sleeping on an...

The Chinese authorities are holding scientist He Jiankui wholly responsible for creating the world’s first gene-edited babies.

He had announced their birth in November, after which the authorities announced an investigation into the matter.

A team of investigators told the official Xinhua news agency on Monday that a preliminary investigation had concluded that He had “organised a project team that included foreign staff, which intentionally avoided surveillance and used technology of uncertain safety and effectiveness to perform human embryo gene-editing activity with the purpose of reproduction, which is officially banned in the country”.

Between March 2017 and November 2018, He forged ethical review papers and recruited eight couples to participate in his experiment, resulting in two pregnancies.

Read more here (South China Morning Post)

What strategies do you use to push through a tough challenge, be it a run on a treadmill or a stressful phone call with your boss? Perhaps you remind yourself of what you have to gain from completing the task, or you use distraction, or you think about the bad things that will happen if you give in? For a paper in the European Journal of Personality, a team led by Marie Hennecke at the University of Zurich has conducted what they say is the first ever investigation of these strategies, and others, that people use spontaneously in their everyday lives to “regulate their persistence during aversive activities”.

The researchers’ main interest was to see whether people with strong self-control differ from flakier types by virtue of their use of more effective strategies. In fact, this was not the case – yes, some strategies were more effective than others (offering hope to those of us with weaker willpower that we might benefit from adopting such strategies), but greater use of effective strategies did not explain the persistence of the grittier types, thus suggesting, as the researchers put it, that “… trait self-control and self-regulatory strategies represent separate routes to good self-regulation”.

The researchers started with a pilot study in which they presented hundreds of participants with challenging scenarios (such as completing a treadmill run) and asked them to list any strategies they’d...

A new study “Mothers’ and fathers’ media parenting practices associated with young children’s screen-time” from University of Guelph and published in BMC Obesity says that children’s screen-time is directly related to their parents’ screen-time. And any efforts intended to reduce children’s screen-time should start at the root, with the parents’ screen-viewing habits.

The researchers hoped to better understand how media parenting practices affect children’s screen-viewing habits, which directly contribute to obesity. While other studies have explored how a parent’s media habits affect their children, past research has focused specifically on TV viewing habits of the mother. This recent study expands the scope, as it aimed to examine the use of more popular media devices today like the iPad, in addition to TV, and look at the effects of both the mother’s and father’s habits.

To reach these important findings, researchers looked into secondary data regarding 62 children, who fell between 18 months and 5 years of age, and their parents, which included 39 mothers and 25 fathers (64 parents total). To assess the children’s screen-viewing habits, the parent’s screen-viewing habits, and the correlation between the two, the parents were asked general questions like:

• How they control their kids’ screen-time
• When they allow their kids to engage in screen-time
• Whether or not they...

Today, California-based company Impossible Foods unveiled the “Impossible Burger 2.0” at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas—the first food product to be featured at the annual technology conference. Since its launch in 2016, Impossible Foods gathered intel from 1,500 consumers about its Impossible Burger and adjusted the formulation to be “tastier, juicier, and beefier than ever.”

Starting tomorrow, White Castle—which added the vegan-friendly Impossible Slider to all of its 377 locations nationwide last year—will become the first fast-food chain to offer the new version of the patty. On February 4, the reformulated patty will be available to all of the company’s restaurant partners—which collectively serve the burger at more than 5,000 locations nationwide.

Impossible Foods reformulated its flagship product in preparation for its retail launch this year, making the burger (which was initially designed to cook on restaurant flat-top grills) more user-friendly for the average home cook. In response to consumer feedback, Impossible Foods replaced wheat in the burger patty with soy protein to make it...

Newswise — Just two years ago, the U.S. Embassy in Havana was bustling with U.S. personnel sent by the Obama Administration to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Today it is nearly empty. In late 2016, diplomats started hearing a loud, piercing noise. Two dozen of them reported symptoms such as ear pain and dizziness, and were diagnosed with injuries consistent with a concussion. Suspicions of politically motivated “sonic attacks” soon followed. The U.S. State Department recalled most personnel from Cubaand reduced its embassy staff in Havana to a skeleton crew. Cooperative measures between the two governments stalled amidst conspiracy theories of high-tech attack. Despite ongoing investigations by American and Cuban government agencies, and extensive coverage of the study by major news outlets, the source of the strange noise...

The IGDA (International Game Developers Association) on December 31, 2018, pushed new details regarding CVAA (21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act 2010). The high level CVAA will require any communications functionality and any UI used to be compliant and suitable for those with a wide range of conditions. Failure to comply will allow complaints to be made to the FCC and possible fines.

The CVAA covers accessibility for all advanced communications services, Here’s the explanation from the IGDA. “The CVAA (21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act 2010) is general purpose legislation requiring accessibility of all advanced communications services (specifically voice chat, text chat, and video chat), including those in game software, gameplay & distribution networks, and consoles.” The IGDA states that the games industry has had a series of waivers with the last being for game software but expired on December 31.

Starting from January 1, 2019, games launched in the US must ensure they are accessible to people with disabilities in regards to communications. Here is some more information taken from the IGDA website regarding how games are affected based on their development progress.

• Games that enter development after this date must be fully compliant.
• Games already in development after this date but released after it must be as compliant as possible, how far...

A Chinese spacecraft could shortly become the first ever to land on the “far side” of the moon, in a milestone for human space exploration. The ChinaNational Space Administration (CNSA) is aiming to land the craft in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest, oldest, deepest, crater on the moon’s surface.

Early reports of a successful landing by the robotic probe, Chang’e 4, ended in confusion after state-run media China Daily and CGTN deleted tweets celebrating a successful mission. China Daily’s tweet said: '“China’s Chang’e 4 landed on the moon’s far side, inaugurating a new chapter in mankind’s lunar exploration history.”

At the weekend, the probe entered an elliptical path around the moon, drawing as close as 15km (9 miles) from the surface. China’s mission control has not confirmed a time for the touchdown attempt but reports in state-run media suggested it would be early Thursday morning UK time.

Spacecraft have taken pictures of the moon’s far side before, but no lander has ever touched down there. If successful, Chang’e will mark a step towards China’s ambition to become a leading power in space exploration alongside the US and Russia.

One technological hurdle in targeting the side of the moon that constantly faces away from Earth is that direct communication with the spacecraft is not possible. Instead messages to and...