SCIENCELIVE

The first computers cost millions of dollars and were locked inside rooms equipped with special electrical circuits and air conditioning. The only people who could use them had been trained to write programs in that specific computer's language. Today, gesture-based interactions, using multitouch pads and touchscreens, and exploration of virtual 3D spaces allow us to interact with digital devices in ways very similar to how we interact with physical objects. This newly immersive world not only is open to more people to experience; it also allows almost anyone to exercise their own creativity and innovative tendencies. No longer are these capabilities dependent on being a math whiz or a coding expert: Mozilla's "A-Frame" is making the task of building complex virtual reality models much easier for programmers. And Google's "Tilt Brush" software allows people to build and edit 3D worlds without any programming skills at all. My own research hopes to deve

Yahoo last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information at the request of US intelligence officials, according to a report. The company complied with a classified US government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency (NSA) or FBI, two former employees and a third person who knew about the program told Reuters. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first known case of a US internet company agreeing to a spy agency’s demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources. Reuters was unable to determine what data Yahoo may have handed over, if a

Chelsea Clinton recently suggested that marijuana might be deadly when taken with other drugs. But is this really true? Although marijuana can interact with other drugs, there do not appear to be any reports of deaths that directly resulted from taking marijuana in combination with other drugs. While speaking in Ohio on Sept. 24, Clinton was asked whether her mother, Hillary Clinton, supports changing the way marijuana is categorized by the Drug Enforcement Administration so that it would be easier for researchers to conduct studies on the drug. Chelsea Clinton replied that her mother does support research on marijuana. Then, she added, "But we also have anecdotal evidence now from Colorado, where some of the people who were taking marijuana for those purposes, the coroner believes, after they died, there was drug interactions with other things they were taking." A spokesperson for Clinton later said Clinton "misspoke about marijuana's interaction with other drugs

Ever thought of how it would be without war, a world without clash of interest, a world filled with individuals, groups and states that never growled at each other?. Conflicts are essential part of human existence, but arguably not war, which is the apex of conflicts. Many theorists have tried to conjure an exact definition for this state of being. War isn't only a thing of physical occurrence as it is also a state of mind, this constitute a major problem as they try to come up with a true definition of the term 'war'. The following are the different views on what war is:   🎤War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. An absence of war is usually called "peace". Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate mili

With their treelike height, thin legs and awkward locomotion, giraffes are the epitome of the word "gangly." But do their sexual behaviors involve smoother actions than one would assume from their appearance? Like people, giraffes mate year-round, though there's some indication that breeding times correspond with periods of high food availability. The tall ungulates live in a so-called fission-fusion society, in which the size and the composition of herds continually shift — the social mammals use this ever-changing society to find mates. "The best way to describe it: Giraffes live in a permanent cocktail party," said Fred Bercovitch, a biologist at Kyoto University in Japan who has studied the reproductive and social behaviors of giraffes. "At a cocktail party, you'll see there are some people who are really social butterflies and spend a little bit of time mingling with a lot of people, and others who spend more time with fewer people." And th

Leprosy may conjure up images of lost limbs and isolated colonies, but the disease is actually much less extreme and completely treatable today. The modern name for leprosy is Hansen's disease; it's caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. The disease causes skin lesions and can permanently damage a person's nerves; however, it is a misconception that it causes people's body parts to fall off. Here are six strange facts about leprosy. 1. Leprosy cases still occur, even in the U.S. Although leprosy is often thought of as an ancient disease, people can still become infected with the bacteria that cause the disease. Indeed, a case of leprosy was reported in a California schoolchild in September 2016, and several cases pop up each year across the southern United States, including in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. In 2014, there were 175 cases of leprosy reported in the U.S., according to the National Hansen's Disease Program (NHDP). Typically, between 150 and

Smoking marijuana may increase the risk of experiencing an episode of psychosis, or a break with reality, in people who have already had such an episode, according to a new study. In the study, researchers looked at about 200 patients in England who had been diagnosed with psychosis at least two years before the start of the study, and asked them about their marijuana use. The researchers found that those who used marijuana during the two years after they experienced their first episode of psychosis had a 13 percent higher chance of experiencing another episode of psychosis during this time, compared with people who did not smoke marijuana during the first two years after being diagnosed. However, it is important to put these estimates into context, said study co-author Sagnik Bhattacharyya, a researcher who studies psychosis at King's College London. "Patients with psychosis already have a high risk of relapse even if they do not use cannabis," he said. The estimates p