Lifeboat Foundation

Oscar Wilde once said that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence. Perhaps that is due to how difficult it is to use and understand. Sarcasm is notoriously tricky to convey through text—even in person, it can be easily misinterpreted. The subtle changes in tone that convey sarcasm often confuse computer algorithms as well, limiting virtual assistants and content analysis tools.

Computer science researchers at the University of Central Florida have developed a sarcasm detector.

Social media has become a dominant form of communication for individuals, and for companies looking to market and sell their products and services. Properly understanding and responding to customer feedback on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms is critical for success, but it is incredibly labor intensive.

That’s where sentiment analysis comes in. The term refers to the automated process of identifying the emotion—either positive, negative or neutral—associated with text. While artificial intelligence refers to logical data analysis and response, sentiment analysis is akin to correctly identifying emotional communication. A UCF team developed a technique that accurately detects sarcasm in social media text.

Semiconductors are the foundation of all modern electronics. Now, researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a new method where organic semiconductors can become more conductive with the help of air as a dopant. The study, published in the journal Nature, is a significant step towards future cheap and sustainable organic semiconductors.

Disk-related back pain may one day meet its therapeutic match: Gene therapy delivered by naturally derived nanocarriers that, a new study shows, repairs damaged disks in the spine and lowers pain symptoms in mice.

Prof. Wang Qi’s research group from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has synthesized iron-and nitrogen-co-doped CoFeP-N nanowires for high-efficiency electrocatalytic water splitting.

To overcome these obstacles, the research team developed a novel pulse irradiation synthesis method that achieves both a low processing temperature and an ultra-short reaction time, surpassing the capabilities of conventional techniques.

With the new method for preparing metal sulfide thin films at low temperatures, these detectors can now achieve higher performance on suitable flexible substrates. This creates exciting possibilities for thermal imaging applications in security monitoring, fire detection, military surveillance, and other fields.

Additionally, the photothermoelectric effect allows for the conversion of invisible infrared light into electrical signals, paving the way for applications in high-speed communications and optical signal processing.

In plants and animals, the basic packaging units of DNA, which carry genetic information, are the so-called nucleosomes. A nucleosome consists of a segment of DNA wound around eight proteins known as histones.

In an important step toward more effective gene therapies for brain diseases, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have engineered a gene-delivery vehicle that uses a human protein to efficiently cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver a disease-relevant gene to the brain in mice expressing the human protein. Because the vehicle binds to a well-studied protein in the blood-brain barrier, the scientists say it has a good chance of working in patients.

Everything in the universe may be preordained, according to physics.

By Dan Falk

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