The Obtain: AI headphone translation, and the hyperlink between microbes and our conduct

What’s new: Think about going for dinner with a gaggle of associates who change out and in of various languages you don’t communicate, however nonetheless having the ability to perceive what they’re saying. This state of affairs is the inspiration for a brand new AI headphone system that interprets the speech of a number of audio system concurrently, in actual time.

The way it works: The system tracks the route and vocal traits of every speaker, serving to the particular person carrying the headphones to establish who’s saying what in a gaggle setting. Learn the total story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Your intestine microbes may encourage felony conduct

Just a few years in the past, a Belgian man in his 30s drove right into a lamppost. Twice. Native authorities discovered that his blood alcohol degree was 4 instances the authorized restrict. Over the house of some years, the person was apprehended for drunk driving thrice. And on all three events, he insisted he hadn’t been ingesting.

He was telling the reality. A physician later identified auto-brewery syndrome—a uncommon situation wherein the physique makes its personal alcohol. Microbes dwelling inside the person’s physique had been fermenting the carbohydrates in his weight-reduction plan to create ethanol. Final yr, he was acquitted of drunk driving.

His case, together with a number of different scientific research, raises an interesting query for microbiology, neuroscience, and the legislation: How a lot of our conduct can we blame on our microbes? Learn the total story.

—Jessica Hamzelou