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Submission + - Mario Lives! Mario becomes self aware and plays the game himself. (theverge.com)

Submitted by braindrainbahrain
braindrainbahrain writes: Many Slashdotters are familiar with the Infinite Mario game (developed by none other than Markus Persson aka Notch of Minecraft fame) and the game's close relative Infinite Adaptive Mario. Now, researchers at the University of Tübingen, Germany, have developed an AI Mario, capable of playing the infinite game unaided by human hands. The AI Mario learns about his virtual world, has emotional states and includes speech synthesis to communicate with human observers.

Submission + - Falcon Heavy To Be Reusable: Animation

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: Despite SpaceX's recent epic fail, aka Elon's RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event, or depending on how you look at it, their most recent almost-success, Falcon Heavy is slated to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it flies, and will also attempt to return it’s core stage and boosters for rapid refurbishment and reuse, as this animation demonstrates. SpaceX is confident its accuracy will be sufficient to park the booster elements on land near the process and re-launch site.

Now with bonus Infographic: SpaceX's Huge Falcon Heavy Rocket: How It Works

Submission + - Thirteen Wikipedia editors sanctioned in mammoth GamerGate arbitration case (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case. One editor has been site-banned, while another twelve are subject to remedies ranging from admonishments to broad topic bans and suspended sitebans. Arbitrator Roger Davies told the Signpost that the case was complicated by its size and complexity, including 27 named parties and 41 editors presenting roughly 34,000 words worth of on-wiki evidence—a total that does not include email correspondence.

Submission + - A "comet storm" is in our future, and it isn't pretty

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: Out beyond the orbit of Neptune, hundreds of thousands of large, icy bodies stably orbit our Sun, held very tenuously by our Solar System's gravity at such great distances. For the most part, these objects leave us alone, but every once in a while, a star passes close enough to our Solar System to perturb them, sending a great number into the inner Solar System and causing a (potentially life-threatening) comet storm. There's a candidate for a huge one a few hundred thousand years from now, and a certain one coming in about 1.4 million years. Comet defense, anyone?

Submission + - Telomere-Lengthening Procedure Turns Clock Back Years in Human Cells (gizmag.com) 2

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new procedure to increase the length of human telomeres. This increases the number of times cells are able to divide, essentially making the cells many years younger. This not only has useful applications for laboratory work, but may point the way to treating various age-related disorders – or even muscular dystrophy.

Submission + - Polar Challenge: 2000km under the polar ice-caps. (wcrp-climate.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:

The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) is organizing a Polar Challenge competition, which would reward the first team able to send an autonomous underwater vehicle for a 2000km continuous mission under-ice in the Arctic or Antarctic. This challenge will be at least three-fold, in terms of under-ice navigation, endurance and environmental monitoring. A Prize money award would cover at least partially the recipientís investment and operating cost related to the challenge.

Submission + - Finding your longitude on Earth with Jupiter's moons 1

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: If you want to know where you are on Earth, you typically use a GPS or, barring that, other terrestrial landmarks to help determine your location. If you didn't have access to that sort of technology or knowledge, you could still use some well-known objects in the sky to determine your latitude. Longitude, however, is trickier, since it's arbitrarily defined. Perhaps surprisingly, for centuries, the best way to determine it was by using the moons of Jupiter, and watching when they enter/exit the shadow of the giant planet.

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