The Weight Game: How Body-Size Bias Can Hold Back Health Science

In December 1994 then former U.S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop launched a national weight-loss campaign at a White House press conference, stating that obesity had become the country’s second-largest cause of death, “resulting in about 300,000 lives lost each year.” This marked the beginning of a long, influential life for the statistic. Pundits and … Read more

Robots: Watch a robotic arm play table tennis after just 90 minutes of training

By Chris Stokel-Walker A table tennis-playing robot can keep up a rally against humans, but like many amateur players, it struggles when attempting fancier shots. Yapeng Gao, Jonas Tebbe and Andreas Zell at the University of Tübingen in Germany began by designing a computer simulation in which a virtual robot arm equipped with a table tennis racket … Read more