Strange & Offbeat: Education & Learning News -- ScienceDaily

Neuroscientists are developing methods to map the brain systems that allow us to recognize and get around our world.

The world of quantum physics is experiencing a second revolution, which will drive an exponential leap in the progress of computing, the internet, telecommunications, cybersecurity and biomedicine. Quantum technologies are attracting more and more students who want to learn about concepts from the subatomic world -- such as quantum entanglement or quantum superposition -- to explore the innovativ…

Researchers have derived a formula for viral behavior in the Wild Cards, a science fiction series written by a collection of authors about an alien virus called the Wild Card that mutates human DNA. The formula he derived is a Lagrangian formulation, which considers the different ways a system can evolve. It's also a fundamental physics principle, which also makes the fictional example a powerful…

Do speakers of different languages build sentence structure in the same way? In a neuroimaging study, scientists recorded the brain activity of participants listening to Dutch stories. In contrast to English, sentence processing in Dutch was based on a strategy for predicting what comes next rather than a 'wait-and-see' approach, showing that strategies may differ across languages.

Explaining a theoretical science concept to high school students requires a new way of thinking altogether, which is precisely what researchers did when they orchestrated a dance with high school students at Orange Glen High School in Escondido as a way to explain topological insulators.

Parents seeking help in encouraging toddlers to be physically active may soon need to look no further than an inexpensive robotic buddy for their kids, a new study suggests.

'Future You' is a generative AI tool that enables users to have a simulated conversation with a potential version of their future selves. The chatbot is meant to reduce users' anxiety, improve positive emotions, and guide them toward making better everyday choices.

A university professor has found a way to help students -- and himself -- power through long lecture classes: exercise breaks. A new study showed that five-minute exercise sessions during lectures were feasible and that students reported positive impacts on their attention and motivation, engagement with their peers and course enjoyment.

Sprinting 'like a jet plane taking off' will help produce Premier League star strikers of tomorrow, new research has revealed. A new study of Tottenham Hotspur's academy has shown that just a few words can instantly boost sprinting speed by 3 per cent over 20 meters. It would normally take weeks of targeted training to achieve such a large increase.

A teacher's gender and comfort with technology factor into whether artificial intelligence is adopted in the classroom, as shown in a new report.

A research team announced they have identified the principle by which musical instincts emerge from the human brain without special learning using an artificial neural network model.

The sound a disc makes while soaring through the air is full of information about how fast the disc is flying and how quickly it spins. This inspired Kyle S. Dalton of Penn State University to combine disc golf and acoustics into an interactive acoustic signal processing lesson. He set three microphones in a line and connected them to equipment that converts each microphone's signal to a data poi…

Researchers in the field of human-technology interaction have demonstrated how a custom-built 'data-to-music' algorithms can help to better understand complex data. The transformation of digital data into sounds could be a game-changer in the growing world of data interpretation.

The artificial intelligence language model GPT-3 performed as well as college students in solving certain logic problems like those that appear on standardized tests. The researchers who conducted the experiment write that the results prompt the question of whether the technology is mimicking human reasoning or using a new type of cognitive process. Solving that question would require access to t…

Numerous visual illusions are caused by limits in the way our eyes and visual neurones work -- rather than more complex psychological processes, new research shows.

By embracing a broader definition of learning that includes any behavioral adaption developed in response to regular features of an environment, researchers could better collaborate across the fields of psychology, computer science, sociology, and genetics, according to a new Perspectives on Psychological Science article.

Researchers have uncovered how signals from a group of neurons in the brain's frontal lobe simultaneously give humans the flexibility to learn new tasks -- and the focus to develop highly specific skills.

A physics professor has developed an innovative activity that poses the question: Is Usain Bolt faster than a 900-pound dinosaur?