Best of Last Week—retiree finds gold treasure, vulnerable Chrome extensions and an online test for Parkinson's disease
Bob Yirka
news contributor
It was a good week for human history as Norwegian retiree, Erlend Bore, using a newly purchased metal detector, found nine pendants, three rings and 10 gold pearls on the island of Rennesoey. The island lies just off the coast of Norway and the treasure, which Bore had to give to the government, was dated to A.D. 500. Also, a combined team from Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia found that the classic Georgia southern accent is fading fast, due to a variety of changes in demographics. And a team at Dartmouth found evidence suggesting that human shoulders and elbows evolved as they did because of the need for slowing down to prevent falling when coming down from trees.
In technology news, physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, suggested that new physics-based self-learning machines could replace current artificial neural networks in the near future—they suggest they would use far less energy. And a team of computer scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison warned that some Chrome extensions allow hackers to access private data.
Also, a team at Princeton University announced that they have developed an extraction technique that reduces the amount of land and time needed for lithium excavation. And a combined team of engineers from Princeton University and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, found that linking two types of solar technologies was a win-win for both efficiency and stability.
In other news, a combined team of medical researchers from the University of Lausanne and the Wyss Center, surprised the biological community by discovering a new kind of cell—one that is apparently essential for brain function.
Also, the AFP announced that a newly discovered comet, (by astronomer Hideo Nishimura) would very soon be visible in the night sky. Called Nishimura, after its discoverer, the comet is a rarity in modern astronomy; a comet that is seen so soon after its discovery. And finally, a team of computer scientists and medical researchers at the University of Rochester announced that they had made publicly available, an online AI-based test for Parkinson's disease—one that they claim has, thus far, shown promising results.
