It is a debate sure to ruffle feathers, but anything beyond the Watford Gap really should be classed as the north of England, a study suggests. This is the critical line at which high street bakery Greggs, the beacon of northernness, becomes more popular than the southerners' sandwich shop of choice, Pret A Manger, an academic study has worked out using artificial intelligence. If the national consumption of steak bakes versus houmous-filled wraps and smashed avocado on toast were not convincing enough, the researchers also looked at the distribution of Morrisons and Waitrose supermarkets across England. This too put the north-south divide within two miles of the Watford Gap. Both calculations agree that Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester are technically in the north of England. But bizarrely, the Pret and Greggs dividing line shows that Cornwall is northern.

Task-dependent controllers widely used in exoskeletons track predefined trajectories, which overly constrain the volitional motion of individuals with remnant voluntary mobility. Energy shaping, on the other hand, provides task-invariant assistance by altering the human body's dynamic characteristics in the closed loop. While human-exoskeleton systems are often modeled using Euler-Lagrange equations, in our previous work we modeled the system as a port-controlled-Hamiltonian system, and a task-invariant controller was designed for a knee-ankle exoskeleton using interconnection-damping assignment passivity-based control. In this paper, we extend this framework to design a controller for a backdrivable hip exoskeleton to assist multiple tasks. A set of basis functions that contains information of kinematics is selected and corresponding coefficients are optimized, which allows the controller to provide torque that fits normative human torque for different activities of daily life. Human-subject experiments with two able-bodied subjects demonstrated the controller's capability to reduce muscle effort across different tasks.

It's been a wild ride this year, but you can always rely on Assassin's Creed to lighten the mood. Let's see what those zany historians at Ubisoft have cooked up for us in the excitingly named Assassin's Creed Valhalla … Peterborough, is it? I have nothing against our beautiful cathedral cities, rolling plains and park-and-ride services, but after 12 months of Brexit, Covid-19 and forest fires, plus the cancellation of the Eurovision song contest, I was hoping for something a little less Tough Mudder from this giddy, quasi-historical, action-adventure series, which previously had us gallivanting around Atlantis. For the first few hours, you're thrown into the icy political drama of ninth-century Norway, where Viking warrior Eivor runs around snow-blasted islands having stern conversations about the future of her clan. I went with female Eivor.)

Researchers at the University of Utah Health have used machine learning to start making links between seemingly instinctive, random behaviors and the genetic factors that shape such behaviors. Using machine learning to study mice with differences in their genetics and age, the team found that these differences influenced the behavioral sequences the animals expressed while they foraged for food. The researchers believe the methodology could one day be applied to help understand the genomic elements that may shape complex behaviors in humans, including those that lead to disease or psychiatric disorders. Patterns of complex behavior, like searching for food, are composed of sequences that feel random, spontaneous and free. Using machine learning, we are finding discrete sequences that are reproduced more frequently than you would expect by chance and these sequences are rooted in biology." Gregg and colleagues are venturing into what has previously been considered a controversial new territory called behavioral sequencing. The aim is to understand the architecture of complex behavior and how genetics shape these patterns. The concerns surrounding behavioral genetics research are based on fears that it could lead to eugenic policies. Literally meaning "well-born," eugenics refers to the improvement of humanity using scientific methods such as selective breeding. As outlined by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the use of "negative eugenics" has led to some of the worst atrocities in recent history such as the segregation and sterilization of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and Europe. However, members of the council point out that contemporary research into the area is not necessarily pursuing eugenics-based goals and that the devastating events that have occurred in the past could be learned from to prevent such abuse in the future. The council acknowledges that there are certain concerns that need to be addressed if research into the field is going to be encouraged. Defining and measuring behaviors can be challenging and there is a risk of misinterpreting or misapplying statistical estimates of heritability. Other concerns include the lack of replicated findings and difficulties in predicting how behavior develops, given how complex the interaction between genes and the environment is. However, the council concludes that despite these concerns, identifying and investigating the genes that influence behavior is still practicable and worthwhile. "There are currently no practical applications of research in the genetics of behavior within the normal range.

A north Phoenix resident said he wants to warn others that these devices aren't as secure as you may think. Andy Gregg, a real-estate agent in north Phoenix, says a hacker spoke to him through his Nest security camera. Andy Gregg was in his back yard a few weeks ago when he heard a voice he didn't recognize inside his house. It was dark, and Gregg, who lives in the north Phoenix, said his first thought was somebody had broken into his home. The source of the voice surprised him: It was coming from a Nest Cam IQ security camera in his front window.

In today's smart home, a weekday routine might have the alarm clock going off at 7 a.m., the shades raising, the thermostat turning up the heat a few degrees, and the lights turning on in the bathroom. But these scheduled tasks aren't much help on a morning when you have to wake up an hour earlier to catch a flight, unless your hub has access to your calendar and is smart enough to trigger your wake-up sequence at 6 a.m. Here's the question: Should your hub be able to ask you first? One of the big questions with smart home technology is, "how much of this should be user-driven versus A.I.-driven?" said Mark Spates, Google's product lead for smart home, during his keynote talk at the 2018 Connections Conference in San Francisco on May 22. And, in order to get to the level where devices start to act like the user without any input, the reliability has to be 100 percent, something that's currently not happening, he said. How much of the smart home should be user-driven versus A.I. driven?

Fret no longer children of planet Earth, as new research from the University of California, Berkeley, has figured out the physics behind why shoelace knots fail and why some shoelaces are more prone to the mistake. No matter how tight you tug, it feels like some shoelaces are doomed to come untied. Fret no longer, as new research from the University of California, Berkeley, has figured out the physics behind why the knots fail and why some shoelaces are more prone to the mistake. While the poetic inevitability of the slipup may provide comfort to those afflicted by wayward shoelaces, the research published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A may also provide clues for building soft, lifelike robots. Mechanical engineer Oliver O'Reilly began looking into this telltale problem three years ago, after trying to teach his young daughter to tie her shoes.

MARLO, the 3D bipedal robot that belongs to electrical engineering professor Jessy Grizzle and his team of students, is starting to really figure out this walking thing. Here, robotics PhD student Ross Hartley watches as MARLO demonstrate's her ability to conquer tough terrain. Image credit: Evan Dougherty, Michigan EngineeringANN ARBOR--An unsupported bipedal robot at the University of Michigan can now walk down steep slopes, through a thin layer of snow, and over uneven and unstable ground. The robot's feedback control algorithms should be able to help other two-legged robots as well as powered prosthetic legs gain similar capabilities. "The robot has no feeling in her tiny feet, but she senses the angles of her joints--for instance, her knee angles, hip angles and the rotation angle of her torso," said Jessy Grizzle, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of mechanical engineering.