The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much to computers — which made them ten times more error-prone than humans. Humans expected that computer understanding of language would lead to artificially intelligent machines, inevitably and quickly. But the mispredicted words of speech recognition have rewritten that narrative. We just haven’t recognised it yet
Mammoths had more than woolly coats to protect them from the frigid conditions of their sub-zero stomping grounds, scientists have discovered. The extinct beasts had a form of antifreeze blood that kept their bodies supplied with oxygen in the sub-zero temperatures, according to a study of DNA extracted from 43,000-year-old mammoth remains
The Library of Congress is to archive every single public tweet ever made. Twitter says since they started in 2006, billions of tweets have been created and 55m are sent every day. The digital archive will include tweets from President Barack Obama on the day he was elected as well as the first tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey
On Saturday, John McAllister sat down at a friend’s house near Portland, Oregon to play a game of Asteroids. By Monday, he was still playing. At 10.18pm Pacific, he scored 41,338,740 points, a new all-time high score. In doing so, he beat a record that has stood for over 27 years. The official Asteroids high score of 41,336,440 is the longest-standing record in gaming history, having been set on 14 November 1982 by 15-year-old Scott Safran. He stayed awake for three days to accomplish this feat
The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843. The highly stylised rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland
Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave. The extinct hominin
(human-like creature) lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago. An international team has sequenced genetic material from the fossil showing that it is distinct from that of Neanderthals and modern humans
Are we alone in the universe? That’s the big question the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) seeks to answer, and so far the answer appears to be yes. In the half-century since Frank Drake first used a radio telescope to begin searching for alien radio signals, there has been no message from ET — indeed no artificial radio traffic of any description
The internet celebrates a landmark event on the 15 March — the 25th birthday of the day the first dotcom name was registered
Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa. The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade. Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say these are unlikely
Archaeologists say they may have found proof of the oldest and most southerly human habitation in the world at the site of a major road project in Tasmania. Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart. Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in the world. It is believed up to 3,000,000 artefacts could be buried there
A Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Britain has been put up for sale on online auction site eBay, and by Monday bidders had pushed the price up to £19,300 (€21,500, US$29,000). A rare opportunity to acquire a piece of Cold War history,
read the sale advert on the web site. Set in a stunning location with glorious views. Your own nuclear bunker within a plot of land and much original equipment.
After being advertised at a starting price of £500 late Thursday, a bidding war saw the price of the underground shelter rocket. Early Monday the price stood at £19,300 after 39 bids
A colossal red granite head of one of Egypt’s most famous pharaohs has been unearthed in the southern city of Luxor, officials said. The 3,000-year-old head of Amenhotep III — grandfather of Tutankhamun — was dug out of the ruins of the pharaoh’s mortuary temple. Experts say it is the best preserved example of the king’s face ever found
Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realise, came courtesy of the US government
The fossilised remains of a gigantic 10m-long predatory shark have been unearthed in Kansas, US. Scientists dug up a gigantic jawbone, teeth and scales belonging to the shark which lived 89 million years ago. The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams. Palaeontologists already knew about the shark, but the new specimen suggests it was far bigger than previously thought
Small dogs may all originate from the Middle East, according to research from the University of California. A study published in the journal BioMed Central found a gene found in small dogs, IGF1, is closely related to one found in Middle Eastern wolves. Archaeologists have found the remains of small dogs dating back 12,000 years in the region. In Europe, older remains have been uncovered, dating from 31,000 years ago, but these are from larger dogs
Aurochs were immortalised in prehistoric cave paintings and admired for their brute strength and elephantine
size by Julius Caesar. But despite their having gone the way of the dodo and the woolly mammoth, there are plans to bring the giant animals back to life. The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years. Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder. Breeds of large cattle which most closely resemble Bos primigenius, such as Highland cattle and the white Maremma breed from Italy, are being bred with each other in a technique known as back-breeding
. At the same time, scientists say they have for the first time created a map of the auroch’s genome, so that they know precisely what type of animal they are trying to replicate
A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s tomb in Baltimore, Maryland, has missed his rendezvous for the first time in 61 years, the Poe Society said. He did not show up this morning,
Jeffrey Savoye, secretary and treasurer of the 380 member society, said
Alligators and birds share a breathing mechanism which may have helped their ancestors dominate Earth more than 200 million years ago. Research published in the journal Science found that like birds, in alligators air flows in one direction. Birds’ lung structure allows them to breathe when flying in low oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions. This breathing may have helped a common ancestor of birds and alligators thrive in the hypoxic period of the Triassic
Every day, 7,000 times a day, Stanford Hospital staff turn to pneumatic tubes, cutting-edge technology in the 19th century, for a transport network that the Internet and all the latest Silicon Valley wizardry can’t match: A tubular system to transport a lab sample across the medical center in the blink of an eye. In four miles of tubing laced behind walls from basement to rooftop, the pneumatic tube system shuttles foot-long containers carrying everything from blood to medication. In a hospital the size of Stanford, where a quarter-mile’s distance might separate a tissue specimen from its destination lab, making good time means better medicine
As Google launches its Nexus One phone, one call that the company hasn’t made is to the family members of science-fiction author Philip K Dick, who complain the device’s name infringes on one of Mr Dick’s most famous novels. We feel this is a clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights,
said Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author’s works
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