In light of the ongoing pandemic, researchers have stepped up efforts to identify new zoonotic threats—viruses that could make the leap from animals to humans and cause future epidemics. Studies aiming to identify such viruses often focus on a novel … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Category Archives: Computer sciences
To find zoonotic viruses, researchers seek genomic signatures of virus adaptations to hosts
Categories: Animal Behavior | Computer sciences | Genetics | Infectious disease | Journal Club | Medical Sciences | Microbiology
Tagged coronavirus, genome, machine learning, MERS, SARS, SARS-Cov-2, zoonosis
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An algorithm suggests a sidewalk-space redesign to make cities safer for pedestrians
A recent study in Communications Physics is among the first to systematically analyze whole city networks of spider-webbing roads and sidewalks. Examining 10 global cities, including Boston, Paris, and New York, researchers created an algorithm that could help planners choose … Continue reading
Categories: Computer sciences | Journal Club
Tagged city planning, COVID-19, cycling, pedestrian, sidewalk, social distance, urban planning
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Robot swarms communicate best when messages spread neighbor to neighbor
In the not-so-distant future, swarms of robots could help contain environmental disasters such as wildfires, by locating and dousing the most dangerous patches, even as flames move and spread. But how would these individual robots coordinate effectively to pull off … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Computer sciences | Journal Club
Tagged ants, fish, kilobot, majority rule, network connection, node, robot, robotics, schooling, social network, wildfire
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New technique builds animal brain–like spontaneity into AI
A woman walking to a bus stop realizes that she forgot her keys; she suddenly turns around and runs home. Such spontaneous activities are hallmarks of animal behavior. Eager to capture the essence of the human brain, roboticists have tried … Continue reading
Categories: Computer sciences | Journal Club
Tagged artificial intelligence, behavior switching, chaotic itinerancy, machine learning, robotics
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Journal Club: Model helps explain how social networks form
One person might befriend another because of a shared love of basket weaving. Or, a friendship may instead blossom because that new friend has divergent interests, and can teach the other new hobbies. These opposing factors—seeking similarities and differences in … Continue reading
Categories: Applied Mathematics | Computer sciences | Journal Club | Social Sciences
Tagged computational model, connections, finance, mathematical model, social network, society
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Journal Club: A new, twisted topological insulator
About a decade ago, physicists began identifying and probing materials that suffer something of an identity crisis. On the surface of these crystals, electrons flow and form currents, like in a conductor. But in the interior, electrons are pinned and … Continue reading
When to launch a cyber attack
The evolution of malicious software (“malware”) has proceeded so rapidly since the invention of the first computer virus three decades ago that the question is not whether but when a computer system will face a cyber attack. Such attacks were … Continue reading
Categories: Computer sciences | Political Science
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Discovering overlapping communities in real-world networks
Naturally-occurring networks are naturally modeled as being made up of many overlapping communities — for instance, our work and friends when it comes to social networks, or those describing different protein complexes in biology. Detecting such overlapping communities is an … Continue reading
Categories: Computer sciences
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