Deaf studies scholar Naomi Caselli and a team of researchers found that American Sign Language (ASL) signs that are challenging to perceive -- those that are rare or have uncommon handshapes -- are made closer to the signer's face, where people often look during sign perception. By contrast, common ones, and those with more routine handshapes, are made further away from the face, in the perceiver's peripheral vision. Caselli, a Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development assistant professor, says the findings suggest that ASL has evolved to be easier for people to recognize signs. The results were published in Cognition. "Every time we use a word, it changes just a little bit," says Caselli, who's also codirector of the BU Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering's AI and Education Initiative.

video: Researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze thousands of videos from a database of American Sign Language—this clip shows the sign …

Artificial intelligence has been used to quickly and accurately model the 3D flow of light around arbitrarily shaped nanoparticles. Peter Wiecha and Otto Muskens at the University of Southampton in the UK demonstrated the modelling approach using a neural network that required just a single training procedure. Their technique could be used to design a wide range of optical devices that control the paths taken by light. When light interacts with nanostructures that are smaller in size than the wavelength of the light, the result can be very different from how light interacts with larger structures and continuous media. The field of nanophotonics seeks to exploit this by designing nanoparticles with particular shapes and compositions with the aim of manipulating light in specific ways.

The First Amendment may protect speech by strong Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this Article, we support this provocative claim by expanding on earlier work, addressing significant concerns and challenges, and suggesting potential paths forward. This is not a claim about the state of technology. Whether strong AI -- as-yet-hypothetical machines that can actually think -- will ever come to exist remains far from clear. It is instead a claim that discussing AI speech sheds light on key features of prevailing First Amendment doctrine and theory, including the surprising lack of humanness at its core.

IMAGE: This is a map of known and predicted bat hosts of filoviruses, showing hotspots in Southeast Asia. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.

A team of scientists has developed a model that can predict bat species most likely to transmit Ebola and other filoviruses. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.