Xenobots, Google Searches, and 3D Face Reconstructions: Lux Recommends #224
Welcome to Lux Recommends #224, this week’s edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about. I hope everyone is doing the best they can in these tough and turbulent times (want to receive this by email? Sign up here).
Articles
Smartphone Videos Produce Highly Realistic 3D Face Reconstructions: “Carnegie Mellon Method Foregoes Expensive Scanners, Camera Setups, Studios” — Adam G
Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience — Peter
Google Searches Can Help Us Find Emerging Covid-19 Outbreaks: “They can also reveal symptoms that at first went undetected. I may have found a new one.” — Sam
New AI System Translates Human Brain Signals Into Text With Up to 97% Accuracy — Ian
Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life: “Computer scientists and biologists have teamed up to make a new class of living robotics that challenge the boundary between digital and biological.” — Lux Recommends reader Randy Castleman
Antarctic Fish Is a Blood Doping Champion: “To remain active in frigid environments, the bald notothen drastically adjusts oxygen in its blood” — Adam G
The Bronx Zoo Is Also Empty, but the Animals Don’t Mind: “The zoo is closed, but essential staff still arrive to care for the roughly 6,000 animals. They don’t seem too upset by the privacy.” — Lux friend Lboca
Incredible Images Show How Bacteria Set Up Tiny Colonies on Your Tongue — Adam G
They Were the Last Couple in Paradise. Now Their Resort Life Continues: “They were surrounded by a fleet of staff, who were stranded themselves, trapped in an eternal honeymoon in the Maldives. Their adventure continues.” — Adam K
The Worm is Back! NASA returns to its older logo from the 1970’s and 80's. — Sam
Understanding how the protein tau moves between neurons yields insight into possible treatments for neurodegenerative diseases — Adam G
Books
Shogun by James Clavell: “After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen — Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom.” — Adam G
Videos
A frequent issue for Shuttle launches was a natural one: birds impacts — Adam K
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