How to Prepare for Alien Contact – DW – 06/13/2025
Also on Tomorrow Today:
Oxygen found in the earliest galaxy
Independent research groups have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. It challenges theories on the early universe.
Powerful concrete – turning walls into giant batteries
Researchers at MIT are developing concrete that can store energy. Used in walls, it could heat a room or charge a phone.
Biorobotics: How artificial muscles suppress tremors
Artificial muscles can help Parkinson's sufferers by suppressing tremors in real time. They're being developed with the help of a robotic arm.
AI in restaurants – efficient and sustainable
AI forecasting tools can boost sales and cut food waste. And when robots serve the food, waiting staff have more time for guests.
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DW
2 days ago
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Deep Time - 40 Days of Darkness – DW – 07/04/2025
14 volunteers live underground for 40 days. With no way to mark time, this is an extreme experiment. How do people adapt to these conditions? How do the body and brain react to the loss of a sense of time? A scientific adventure aims to find out. One day in March, seven women and seven men, led by explorer and researcher Christian Clot, enter the Lombrives cave in the French Pyrenees. They intend to spend 40 days there, without daylight - and with no other means of marking time. They begin the "Deep Time' experiment. It is a group experience with an interdisciplinary scientific approach that goes far beyond mere : The aim is to explore people's ability to adapt to extreme situations. The participants set up their base camp deep in the cave. They have to organize life in the camp and learn to function as a group under extreme conditions. The lack of daylight, cold and fatigue affect the rhythm of each individual in different ways. The deeptimers are equipped with sensors and high-tech devices to collect scientific data -- before, during and after their stay in the cave. This data is analyzed by experts in the fields of cognitive science, chronobiology, sociology, physiology, psychology, ethnology, social organization and genetics. The scientists report on their initial findings a few months after the end of the experiment. In the long term, their interdisciplinary analyses will contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms and limits of human adaptation. DW English TUE 15.07.2025 – 01:15 UTC TUE 15.07.2025 – 04:15 UTC WED 16.07.2025 – 09:15 UTC WED 16.07.2025 – 16:15 UTC WED 16.07.2025 – 21:15 UTC THU 17.07.2025 – 12:15 UTC SAT 19.07.2025 – 08:15 UTC SUN 20.07.2025 – 13:15 UTC Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 | Nairobi UTC +3 Delhi UTC +5,5 | Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8 London UTC +1 | Berlin UTC +2 | Moscow UTC +3 San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
Int'l Business Times
5 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
'Writing Is Thinking': Do Students Who Use ChatGPT Learn Less?
When Jocelyn Leitzinger had her university students write about times in their lives they had witnessed discrimination, she noticed that a woman named Sally was the victim in many of the stories. "It was very clear that ChatGPT had decided this is a common woman's name," said Leitzinger, who teaches an undergraduate class on business and society at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "They weren't even coming up with their own anecdotal stories about their own lives," she told AFP. Leitzinger estimated that around half of her 180 students used ChatGPT inappropriately at some point last semester -- including when writing about the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), which she called both "ironic" and "mind-boggling". So she was not surprised by recent research which suggested that students who use ChatGPT to write essays engage in less critical thinking. The preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was shared widely online and clearly struck a chord with some frustrated educators. The team of MIT researchers behind the paper have received more than 3,000 emails from teachers of all stripes since it was published online last month, lead author Nataliya Kosmyna told AFP. For the small study, 54 adult students from the greater Boston area were split into three groups. One group used ChatGPT to write 20-minute essays, one used a search engine, and the final group had to make do with only their brains. The researchers used EEG devices to measure the brain activity of the students, and two teachers marked the essays. The ChatGPT users scored significantly worse than the brain-only group on all levels. The EEG showed that different areas of their brains connected to each other less often. And more than 80 percent of the ChatGPT group could not quote anything from the essay they had just written, compared to around 10 percent of the other two groups. By the third session, the ChatGPT group appeared to be mostly focused on copying and pasting. The teachers said they could easily spot the "soulless" ChatGPT essays because they had good grammar and structure but lacked creativity, personality and insight. However Kosmyna pushed back against media reports claiming the paper showed that using ChatGPT made people lazier or more stupid. She pointed to the fourth session, when the brain-only group used ChatGPT to write their essay and displayed even higher levels of neural connectivity. Kosmyna emphasised it was too early to draw conclusions from the study's small sample size but called for more research into how AI tools could be used more carefully to help learning. Ashley Juavinett, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego who was not involved in the research, criticised some "offbase" headlines that wrongly extrapolated from the preprint. "This paper does not contain enough evidence nor the methodological rigour to make any claims about the neural impact of using LLMs (large language models such as ChatGPT) on our brains," she told AFP. Leitzinger said the research reflected how she had seen student essays change since ChatGPT was released in 2022, as both spelling errors and authentic insight became less common. Sometimes students do not even change the font when they copy and paste from ChatGPT, she said. But Leitzinger called for empathy for students, saying they can get confused when the use of AI is being encouraged by universities in some classes but is banned in others. The usefulness of new AI tools is sometimes compared to the introduction of calculators, which required educators to change their ways. But Leitzinger worried that students do not need to know anything about a subject before pasting their essay question into ChatGPT, skipping several important steps in the process of learning. A student at a British university in his early 20s who wanted to remain anonymous told AFP he found ChatGPT was a useful tool for compiling lecture notes, searching the internet and generating ideas. "I think that using ChatGPT to write your work for you is not right because it's not what you're supposed to be at university for," he said. The problem goes beyond high school and university students. Academic journals are struggling to cope with a massive influx of AI-generated scientific papers. Book publishing is also not immune, with one startup planning to pump out 8,000 AI-written books a year. "Writing is thinking, thinking is writing, and when we eliminate that process, what does that mean for thinking?" Leitzinger asked. A recent viral study suggested that students who use ChatGPT to write essays engage in less critical thinking AFP
DW
27-06-2025
- DW
Can't Feel Nothing - How the Internet Warps Our Emotions – DW – 06/27/2025
Is the internet making us emotionally numb? Online trolls and influencers expertly manipulate people's feelings, leading many to disconnect from their emotions. Scientists explain how the internet influences what we feel — and whether we feel at all. A man lies in bed, illuminated by the blue-white light of his smartphone screen. As he scrolls through endless social media feeds, he sees adorable pets, outraged opinion pieces, and haunting images from conflict zones - but he feels absolutely nothing. With curiosity and humor, director David Borenstein travels to Europe, Asia, the U.S., and Russia to investigate how bad things really are. Who is pulling the strings when the internet makes us angry, sad, horny or just plain indifferent? Is there any way to reclaim our emotions? Borenstein portrays a range of perspectives, including an American internet troll, a burnt-out star from the Asian influencer industry, a Russian state propagandist, and an online dominatrix. Scientific research into human emotions sheds light on how our emotional responses are being manipulated. The result is an alarming diagnosis of our digital era — paired with a bold attempt to search for solutions. DW English FRI 27.06.2025 – 01:15 UTC FRI 27.06.2025 – 04:15 UTC SAT 28.06.2025 – 13:15 UTC SUN 29.06.2025 – 19:15 UTC MON 30.06.2025 – 09:15 UTC MON 30.06.2025 – 16:15 UTC MON 30.06.2025 – 21:15 UTC WED 02.07.2025 – 12:15 UTC Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 | Nairobi UTC +3 Delhi UTC +5,5 | Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8 London UTC +1 | Berlin UTC +2 | Moscow UTC +3 San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
