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You can teach your computer poetry and slang, but you haven’t finished its education until you’ve taught it how to listen to music. Artificial intelligence researchers have teamed up with musicians on an unlikely project: a digital conductor of improvised avant-garde performances. But WHY? Researcher Selmer Bringsjord says, "A conductor that could guide such performances must be capable of “high-level reasoning. “Is there a way to render in formal logic and reasoning what Leonard Bernstein does? We will need to capture what the musicians are doing in a musical calculus.read more

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This time of year, we’re all indoors more often, meaning we often don’t get enough of the sunshine vitamin (D). A recent study found that low AND high vitamin D levels were associated with an increased likelihood of frailty in older women. Women with vitamin D levels in the normal range were at the lowest risk. And different races react physically in different ways. For instance, low levels of vitamin D, the essential nutrient obtained from milk, fortified cereals and exposure to sunlight, doubles the risk of stroke in whites, but not in blacks. And stroke is the nation’s third leading cause of death, killing more than 140,000 Americans annually and temporarily or permanently disabling over half a million when there is a loss of blood flow to the brain.
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