Ever thought two books felt nearly identical? Researchers from University of Vermont mapped the sentimental fluctuations of over 1,700 books. By tracing the emotional changes in the stories, they noticed an overall arc for each novel. Each novel can have its unique complex plots and structures, but the emotional journey slots specific stories into these categories, the researchers indicate. This is easy to see: Typically, most superheroes will fall in the "Man in a hole" category while villains will follow the opposite trajectory, much like the "Icarus" scenario, regardless of their plots.

Some 385 to 360 million years ago, fish came out of the water and began to colonize the land. But how could an aquatic animal, accustomed to swimming, learn to walk on land? To help answer that question, some scientists have turned to a living fish that can do just that: the mudskipper. And it turns out, those strange fish use their tails to navigate difficult terrain, according to new research published Thursday in the journal Science. The mudskipper "captures some of the potential early aspects of the terrestrial locomotors," says Daniel Goldman, a biomechanical physicist at Georgia Institute of Technology and an author on the new paper, in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

The most sophisticated, widely adopted, and important tool for looking at living brain activity actually does no such thing. Called functional magnetic resonance imaging, what it really does is scan for the magnetic signatures of oxygen-rich blood. Blood indicates that the brain is doing something, but it's not a direct measure of brain activity. Which is to say, there's room for error. That's why neuroscientists use special statistics to filter out noise in their fMRIs, verifying that the shaded blobs they see pulsing across their computer screens actually relate to blood flowing through the brain.

A long-standing gender stereotype has been that men are better than women at computer games. Dr Cuihua Shen, from the University of California, and Dr Rabindra Ratan, from Michigan State University, conducted a study to understand whether men pick up video games more quickly than women. The pair explained the results of their study in an article for The Conversation. Although women now make up almost half of all video game players, the gaming community remains, in some ways, hostile toward women. There's also the long-held stereotype that men are simply better gamers than women The researchers set out to examine whether men really make better gamers than women and what drove the gender performance gap.

The idea of having sex with a robot might seem more like something out of a science fiction film, but one in five of us are now open to the idea, according to new research. A recent survey found 21 per cent of British people would have sex with a droid, and one in third would go on a date. It comes as a leading expert on future technology claims human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex by 2050. The survey was done VoucherCodesPro who asked 2,816 sexually active Brits aged 18 to describe which activities they would then carry out with a cyborg. Researchers asked those participants who said they would have sex with a robot why they would do it.

There is general agreement that AI is already having a huge impact on our work and leisure lives, as well as society as a whole -- and the effects are escalating rapidly. More open to debate is exactly what to expect and when. Long-term projections for many economists and robotics designers go only as far as the next five, or maybe 20 years, when driverless cars, elder-case assistants and automated factories will be the norm. Robin Hanson takes another tack. The associate professor of economics at George Mason University is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University.

In an effort to apply data-driven insights to one of the most fundamental aspects of running a health care system, UPMC announced today that it has formed Pensiamo, an independent company that aims to help hospitals improve supply chain performance through a comprehensive source-to-pay offering, including cognitive analytics with IBM Watson Health technologies. IBM (NYSE:IBM) is a minority owner of Pensiamo. Supply chain costs are the second-largest and fastest-growing expense behind labor costs for health care providers [1]. The Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly one-third of health care spending is waste [2]. In today's dynamic environment, providers face mounting pressure to improve the effectiveness of patient care while controlling costs.

The White House wound up a nationwide series of workshops on artificial intelligence today on a cautionary note: Yes, AI promises to ease many of humanity's ills, but humanity needs to make sure that flesh-and-blood policymakers are firmly in charge. Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard's Institute of Quantitative Social Science, said AI programs should be made to reflect the norms agreed upon by human society. "I want the people we elect controlling those norms, not the technology itself. Those norms should include supporting social equity and diversity, said Alicia Glen, New York City's deputy mayor for housing and urban development. "At its best, artificial intelligence can be a tool to promote equity, and it obviously can create huge economic opportunity for a lot of people," she said. "But it can also have discriminatory effects, whether they're intended or unintended.

This is a relatively small (read: exclusive) workshop (less than 30 attendees), fostering close interaction and collaboration between attendees. The workshop is based on a challenge-response format where a series of (shorter than typical) presentations outline important challenges (rather than results), which are then collaboratively addressed by several small teams which subsequently present their results to the whole group. Presentations are 25-minutes long, followed by 45-minute teamwork. Results of teamwork is subsequently presented to the whole group in a 45-minute session. The workshop concludes on the third day (optional) with a half-day trip (9:00 - 14:00) to the Icelandic countryside (depending on sufficient sign-up).