Lifeboat Foundation

“Scientists found that a caterpillar called the tomato fruit worm not only chomps on tomatoes and their leaves, but also deposits enzyme-laden saliva on the plant, interfering with its ability to cry for help. If it all sounds a bit improbable, starting with the concept of plants crying for help, scientists also scoffed at that idea when it was first proposed a few decades ago. But it has been shown time and time again that when under attack, plants can emit chemical distress signals, causing their peers to mount some sort of defense. A classic example is the smell of a freshly mown lawn, which prompts the release of protective compounds in nearby blades of grass that have yet to be cut. In some cases, plant distress signals can even summon help from other species. That’s what happens with the tomato. When caterpillars nibble on the plant’s leaves, the leaf pores release volatile chemicals that are detected by a type of parasite: a wasp that lays eggs inside caterpillars. (Not to overwork the horror-movie analogy, but as with the hapless astronauts in the “Aliens” franchise, it doesn’t end well for the caterpillar.)”

While there’s a famous horror-movie spoof about killer tomatoes, no one seems to have made one about caterpillars—the insect pests that eat the juicy red fruits of summer.

Over the past few years, computer scientists have created numerous computational techniques that can automatically generate texts, images and other types of data. These models are highly advantageous, particularly for creating data or creative works that are demanding and time-consuming for humans to produce manually.

Like.

By Amir Ebrahimi — Principal Software Engineer · ‎Unity Technologies

What opened quantum computing up for me was realizing that it’s even more connected to our physical universe than classical computing is.

Continue reading “I’ve Worked in Game Development My Whole Career — Here’s Why I’m Learning Quantum Computing” »

With cinemas badly hit by Covid-19 restrictions they are looking for new revenue streams. 🎮

If the original clip scared moviegoers, this one would’ve blown their minds.

According to a new study, the mood of background music in a movie scene affects a person’s empathy toward the main character and their interpretation of the plot, environment, and character’s personality traits. The findings were published in Frontiers in Psychology.

While researchers have long studied the impact of music on human behavior, fewer studies have explored how music can affect a person’s interpretation of film. Study authors Alessandro Ansani and team aimed to explore this by experimentally manipulating the soundtrack of an ambiguous movie scene.

“I’ve always been interested in music and cinema, since I was a baby; my mother told me she used to put me in front of our stereo to calm me down when I was crying, for some reason,” said Ansani, a PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome and research assistant at the CoSMIC Lab.

JetPlay has launched Ludo, a game creation platform that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the creative process.

The Seattle-based JetPlay has launched the open beta of Ludo, following a successful closed beta with participation from independent studios around the world. It will be a big test about whether automation can be useful in the domain of creativity, where humans have dominated so far.

Ludo is a game ideation platform that helps teams come up with ideas for games as well as images that can help them generate concept art. To me, this could go either way depending on the quality of the results. If it doesn’t work well, it could be a terrible idea, spitting out clones of popular games or otherwise leading creators astray. If it works well, however, it could accelerate creative moments and put your imagination on turbocharge, giving you a place to start your creative work.

Brink Bionics completed a very successful [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/impulse-neuro-controller-for-pc-gaming#/) crowdfunding campaign in 2020 and gained the confidence to [take part in the CES](

CES booths are looking a bit different this year…#CES2021 #CES #ShelterInPlace pic.twitter.com/dcTSWLTxio— Brink Bionics (@BrinkBionics) January 13, 2021

Continue reading “Impulse neuro controller reduces PC gaming reaction times” »

George Will, a political commentator for nearly half a century at The Washington Post, is known to also enjoy weighing in on sports on occasion, most notably baseball. He is fond of repeating the simple but critical observation that these games are a matter of “seconds and inches.”

In digital games, the same maxim applies, but even more so. Fractions of inches matter when targeting the enemy. And critical time is not measured in seconds but in thousandths of seconds.

With that in mind, developers at Canadian startup Brink Bionics have developed a device that promises to boost gamer proficiency by slashing the delay time between an intent to act and execution of the actual action.