Tag Archives: Nature

Top Science Podcasts: AI Beats Humans At A Video Game, Arthropods In Decline (Nature)

Audio October 31, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Hear the latest science news, with Benjamin Thompson and Shamini Bundell. This week, a computer beats the best human players in StarCraft II, and a huge study of insects and other arthropods.

In this episode:

00:51 Learning to play

By studying and experimenting, an AI has reached Grandmaster level at the video game Starcraft II. Research Article: Vinyals et al.; News Article: Google AI beats experienced human players at real-time strategy game StarCraft II

10:08 Research Highlights

A record-breaking lightning bolt, and identifying our grey matter’s favourite tunes. Research Highlight: Here come the lightning ‘megaflashes’; Research Highlight: Why some songs delight the human brain

12:24 Arthropods in decline

Researchers have surveyed how land-use change has affected arthropod diversity. Research article: Seibold et al.

18:30 News Chat

Young Canadians file a lawsuit against their government, an Alzheimer’s drug gets a second chance, and South Korean efforts to curb a viral epidemic in pigs.

News, Science

Top Science Podcasts: Earthworm Study, Bias In Health Algorithms & “Dr. Space Junk” (ScienceMag)

Audio October 24, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

This week in Science, Helen Philips, a postdoctoral fellow at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Institute of Biology at Leipzig University, and colleagues published the results of their worldwide earthworm study, composed of data sets from many worm researchers around the globe.

Sarah also talks with Ziad Obermeyer, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, about dissecting out bias in an algorithm used by health care systems in the United States to recommend patients for additional health services.

Finally, in the monthly books segment, books host Kiki Sanford interviews author Alice Gorman about her book Dr. Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future. Listen to more book segments on the Science books blog: Books, et al.