New mail and messaging tools expected for iPhones, WWDC

New iPhones won't be out until the fall. But Monday, we'll get a sneak peek at what new features Apple has planned for us, not just for the next models but recent iPhones and iPads as well.

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Prescription drug costs steadily soar, yet price transparency is lacking

After reviewing tens of millions of insurance claims for the country's 49 most popular brand-name prescription drugs, a team from Scripps Research Translational Institute found that net prices rose by a median of 76 percent from January 2012 through December 2017—with most products going up once or twice per year.

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Image: Hubble sees a galaxy bucking the trend

This luminous orb is the galaxy NGC 4621, better known as Messier 59. As this latter moniker indicates, the galaxy is listed in the famous catalog of deep-sky objects compiled by French comet-hunter Charles Messier in the 18th century. However, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Koehler is credited with discovering the galaxy just days before Messier added it to his collection in 1779.

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An approach to enhance machine learning explanations

Researchers at IBM Research UK, the U.S. Military Academy and Cardiff University have recently proposed a new approach to improve the sensitivity of LIME (Local Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations), a technique for attaining a better understanding ofthe conclusions reached by machine learning algorithms. Their paper, published on SPIE digital library, could inform the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that provide exhaustive explanations of how they reached a particular outcome or conclusion.

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NASA plans to send equipment to Moon from 2020

For the first time since the 1970s, the United States is planning to send equipment to the surface of the Moon in 2020 and 2021, in anticipation of a crewed lunar mission in 2024, NASA said Friday.

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Societal values and perceptions shape energy production and use as much as new technology

Societal values and perceptions have shaped the energy landscape as much as the technologies that drive its production and consumption, a new paper from an Oregon State University researcher suggests.

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Research reveals role of fat storage cells in anti-obesity intervention

New research from a team at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine establishes a role of adipocyte Na/K-ATPase signaling in worsening obesity and its companion diseases, including neurodegeneration and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), that was enhanced by specific targeting of NaKtide, an antagonist of Na/K-ATPase signaling, to the adipocyte.

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Only few hundred training samples bring human-sounding speech in Microsoft TTS feat

Microsoft Research Asia has been drawing applause for pulling off text to speech requiring little training—and showing "incredibly" realistic results.

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Guidelines updated for radiotherapy after prostatectomy

(HealthDay)—Clinical guidelines on adjuvant and salvage radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy have been updated, according to the American Society for Radiation Oncology and the American Urological Association.

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A prosthetic foot that tackles tough terrain

Taking on a hiking trail or a cobblestone street with a prosthetic leg is a risky proposition—it's possible, but even in relatively easy terrain, people who use prostheses to walk are more likely to fall than others. Now, Stanford University mechanical engineers have developed a more stable prosthetic leg—and a better way of designing them—that could make challenging terrain more manageable for people who have lost a lower leg.

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Flexible generators turn movement into energy

Wearable devices that harvest energy from movement are not a new idea, but a material created at Rice University may make them more practical.

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Patent talk: Apple has foldables, durability on its mind

Fact of life: Consumers chase the new and shiny, at least enough of them to justify constant trade-ins and barely necessary purchases.

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Trees, the ancient Macedonians, and the world's first environmental disaster

It's a simple enough equation: good soil is the key to good food. And good soil starts with trees.

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PULP Dronet: A 27-gram nano-UAV inspired by insects

Researchers at ETH Zürich and the University of Bologna have recently created PULP Dronet, a 27-gram nano-size unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a deep learning-based visual navigation engine. Their mini-drone, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can run aboard an end-to-end, closed-loop visual pipeline for autonomous navigation powered by a state-of-the-art deep learning algorithm.

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Stanford Doggo: a highly agile quadruped robot

Researchers at Stanford University have recently created an open-source quadruped robot called Stanford Doggo. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be published by IEEE Explore, exceeds the performance of many state-of-the-art legged robots in vertical jumping agility.

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'Slothbot' takes a leisurely approach to environmental monitoring

For environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, infrastructure maintenance and certain security applications, slow and energy efficient can be better than fast and always needing a recharge. That's where "SlothBot" comes in.

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James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has successfully cleared another critical testing milestone, taking this ambitious observatory one step closer to its 2021 launch. The spacecraft has gone through its final thermal vacuum test meant to ensure that its hardware will function electronically in the vacuum of space, and withstand the extreme temperature variations it will encounter on its mission.

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Combination of three gene mutations results in deadly human heart disease

Congenital heart disease occurs in up to 1% of live births, and the infants who are affected may require multiple surgeries, life-long medication, or heart transplants. In many patients, the exact cause of congenital heart disease is unknown. While it is becoming increasingly clear that these heart defects can be caused by genetic mutations, it is not well understood which genes are involved and how they interact. Genetic mutations, also called genetic variants, can also cause poor heart function, but the type and severity of dysfunction varies widely even among those with the same mutation.

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REPLAB: A low-cost benchmark platform for robotic learning

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a reproducible, low-cost and compact benchmark platform to evaluate robotic learning approaches, which they called REPLAB. Their recent study, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, was supported by Berkeley DeepDrive, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Google, NVIDIA and Amazon.

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