Artificial intelligence (AI) combined with a novel bio-inspired camera achieves 100times faster detection of pedestrians and obstacles than current automotive cameras. This important step for computer vision and AI and can greatly improve the safety of automotive systems and self-driving cars.

It’s every driver’s nightmare: a pedestrian stepping out in front of the car seemingly out of nowhere, leaving only a fraction of a second to brake or steer the wheel and avoid the worst. Some cars now have camera systems that can alert the driver or activate emergency braking. But these systems are not yet fast or reliable enough, and they will need to improve dramatically if they are to be used in autonomous vehicles where there is no human behind the wheel.

Quicker detection using less ...

An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of the two earliest and most distant galaxies ever seen, dating back to only 300 million years after the Big Bang. These results, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), mark a major milestone in the study of the early universe.

The discoveries were made by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) team. Daniel Eisenstein from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) is one of the team leaders of JADES and Principal Investigator of the observing program that revealed these galaxies...

Good health depends on a healthy diet and sufficient exercise and sleep. There are clear associations among these components; for example, good nutrition provides energy for exercise, and many people report that getting enough exercise is important to their ability to get enough sleep. So how might nutrition affect sleep?

A new study looks at the connection between fruit and vegetable intake and sleep duration. The research, by a team from Finland’s University of Helsinki, National Institute for Health and Welfare, and Turku University of Applied Sciences, is published in Frontiers in Nutrition.

Why sleep is important and how it works
Sleep gives our bodies the chance to rest and recover from wakeful activity...

Advances in electrochromic coatings may bring us closer to environmentally friendly ways to keep inside spaces cool. Like eyeglasses that darken to provide sun protection, the optical properties of these transparent films can be tuned with electricity to block out solar heat and light. Now, researchers in ACS Energy Letters report demonstrating a new electrochromic film design based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that quickly and reliably switch from transparent to glare-diminishing green to thermal-insulating red.

Hongbo Xu and colleagues used MOFs in their electrochromic film because of the crystalline substances’ abilities to form thin films with pore sizes that can be customize...