Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surroundings.[1] It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, but is more easily reversed than the state of hibernation or of being comatose. Mammalian sleep occurs in repeating periods, in which the body alternates between two highly distinct modes known as non-REM and REM sleep. REM stands for "rapid eye movement" but involves many other aspects including virtual paralysis of the body. During sleep, most systems in an animal are in an anabolic state, building up the immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems. Sleep in non-human animals is observed in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and, in some form, in insects and even in simpler animals such as nematodes. The internal circadian clock promotes sleep daily at night in diurnal species (such as humans) and in the day in nocturnal organisms (such as rodents). However, sleep patterns vary widely among animals and among different individual humans. Industrialization and artificial light have substantially altered human sleep habits in the last 100 years.[2] The diverse purposes and mechanisms of sleep are the subject of substantial ongoing research.[3] Sleep seems to assist animals with improvements in the body and mind. A well-known feature of sleep in humans is the dream, an experience typically recounted in narrative form, which resembles waking life while in progress, but which usually can later be distinguished as fantasy. Sleep is sometimes confused with unconsciousness, but is quite different in terms of thought process. Humans may suffer from a number of sleep disorders. These include dyssomnias (such as insomnia, hypersomnia, and sleep apnea), parasomnias (such as sleepwalking and REM behavior disorder), bruxism, and the circadian rhythm sleep disorders. In mammals and birds, sleep is divided into two broad types: rapid eye movement (REM sleep) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM or non-REM sleep). Each type has a distinct set of physiological and neurological features associated with it. REM sleep is associated with dreaming, desynchronized and faster brain waves, loss of muscle tone,[4] and suspension of homeostasis[citation needed]. REM and non-REM sleep are so different that physiologists classify them as distinct behavioral states. In this view, REM, non-REM, and waking represent the three major modes of consciousness, neural activity, and physiological regulation.[5]

This blog post is authored by T. J. Hazen, Principal Data Scientist at Microsoft, and Patrick Buehler, Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft. The Masai giraffe is facing a troubling future. Because of habitat loss, illegal hunting and disease, the population of wild giraffes in Africa has declined to only 80,000. Scientists from the Wild Nature Institute are studying where the giraffe population is doing well and where they are faring poorly. By studying and understanding the natural and human-caused factors that affect giraffe survival, reproduction and movements, scientists can determine which conservation actions best protect giraffe populations.

DUBAI – The teaching methods of Kazuya Takahashi, 35, using Lego blocks and speaking entirely in English, may not be the norm in the Japanese education system. But on a global level, the educator, who teaches at the Kogakuin junior high and high schools in Hachioji, western Tokyo, is considered ahead of the game and has won recognition for his efforts to promote global citizenship. His methods may provide clues as to where education should be heading in Japan, a nation often criticized for focusing more on cramming knowledge rather than encouraging critical thinking. At the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, which ran for two days from March 12, Takahashi gave a presentation as one of the 10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize, known in the industry as the Nobel Prize in education. The event was attended by around 1,600 people from 110 nations.

For many people in Zambia with health queries, sending a text message is the best way to get it answered. U-report, a free SMS-based service set up by UNICEF and run by volunteers, receives many thousands of questions a month, many specifically about HIV and AIDS. Also popular in Uganda, U-report has seen usage triple in the last three years, and about a thousand new users register every day. The volume of messages is growing so fast that the volunteers can't keep up, so UNICEF is testing software that reads and responds to many of the messages automatically. In Zambia, there are roughly 27,000 new HIV infections a year, according to UNICEF, and 40 per cent of these are in those aged 15 to 24.

If you're planning on working in artificial intelligence (AI), you have to have a certain amount of bravery. Not the creeper-smashing, rose-toting iron golem sort of bravery one may encounter in Minecraft, but bravery nevertheless. As Katja Hoffmann, a researcher in the Machine Intelligence and Perception group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, notes, being part of the machine intelligence field means you have to develop an understanding of how learning works – and a big part of that is finding out what doesn't work. In other words, it requires a certain kind of bravery to accept that failure is an important step in the learning process. I had a chance to sit down with Katja to ask her what motivates her to do what she does, and also what advice she'd give to girls considering a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths).

Facebook's F8 developer conference has only been going for a few hours, and already there's been some huge announcements. Gone are the days when F8 was just for announcing newsfeed redesigns - in the opening keynote speeches, we've heard about a brand new Messenger chatbot platform, a solar-powered WiFi plane, and all kinds of live video innovations. Here's some of the main things we learned at the F8 opening event. Zuckerberg straight away took a thinly-veiled swipe at the Republican presidential candidate while talking about Facebook's plan to'connect the world'. Speaking to the assembled crowd of developers, Zuckerberg said: "As I look around the world, I'm starting to see people and nations turning inwards, against the idea of a connected world and global community."

Cuphead, due later this year for Xbox One and PC, looks like Betty Boop meets a shoot'em up meets a miracle. Studio MDHR's game a 2D side-scroller where you do battle with giant paranormal carrots, boxing frogs, angry birds, queen bees, gambling contraptions and not-so-little mermaids. And all of that's hand-sketched, inked and painted to resemble a 1930s Max Fleischer cartoon--an interactive mashup no one's ever attempted before. Cuphead lead artist Chad Moldenhauer gave TIME an exclusive look behind the scenes of how the studio animates the game. TIME: I think it's accurate to say that Cuphead looks like nothing we've seen in video games before. Moldenhauer: We were worried when we first set out with this style that there wouldn't be a huge fan base, just that this had never been tried in games in the past. And there was no real love for cartoons, at least that you could see around people's blogs, or around the Internet, or just talking to our friends.

If robots are taking our jobs, they may also support our retirement. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that 47 per cent of US jobs and 33 per cent of UK jobs have the potential to be automated. But the technology that could fill those jobs – robotics and artificial intelligence – is both a threat to some workers and a potential area of growth for investors, notably pension funds, seeking to capitalise on the new wave of industrialisation. "It's the next generation," says Philippe Cerf, Europe, Middle East and Africa co-head of the technology, media and telecommunications group at investment bank Credit Suisse. "Machine-learning is applied to some extent across all tech these days."

ONLY a handful of South Africans are using artificial intelligence to help solve business and social problems, and to make money. The past year's devastating drought might have been mitigated if information about previous droughts had been used to predict it and to prepare, says Bhekisipho Twala, director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Johannesburg. Data scientists could also help Eskom predict the where and when of electricity use, easing its task of keeping the lights on when power supply is constrained. "The whole point of data mining or machine learning is finding hidden information that can make business (or other) decisions easier," says Obakeng Moepya, one of the three founders of Johannesburg-based Isazi Consulting, which uses advanced mathematics and statistics to solve difficult problems. Machine learning -- also known as artificial intelligence -- is a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Data mining is the analysis step in machine learning, with the goal of extracting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data.

Major players in the tech industry including Google and Microsoft have bet big money on the rise of internet bots as a form of communication between man and machine. While not the eerily humanoid robots in sci-fi movies (yet), the advancement and refinement of the bots' mechanical psyche parallel to the development of robotic parts is one step closer to merging the two. That is if it hasn't happened already. Isaac Asimov was a prolific sci-fi writer and Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University and is regarded by many as the father of robotics. "The Three Laws of Robotics 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law; The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."?