Scientists are coming to grips with the superior grasping ability of humans and other primates throughout history.
In a new study, a research team led by Yale University found that even the oldest known human ancestors may have had precision grip capabilities comparable to modern humans. This includes Australopithecus afarensis, which appears in the fossil record a million years before the first evidence of stone tools. (more…)
This year a series of events around the world will celebrate the work of Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, as the 100th anniversary of his birthday approaches on June 23. In a book chapter that will be published later this year, mathematician Robert Soare, the founding chairman of the University of Chicago’s computer science department, will propose that Turing’s achievement was artistic as well as scientific.
Soare, the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and Computer Sciences, has played a leading role in computability theory — the field that Turing founded and which is devoted to determining how effectively complex mathematical problems can be solved. In Mathematical Logic in the 20th Century, Gerald Sacks ranked a paper Soare published in the Annals of Mathematics as one of the century’s 31 most important papers in mathematical logic, including computability theory. (more…)
