Scientists have revealed they had found a way to combine the technology of brain scans and artificial intelligence to transcribe “the gist” of people’s thoughts. Alex Huth, an assistant professor of neuroscience and computing science at the University of Texas at Austin, and a co-author on the new study published in Nature Neuroscience, said that ‘this is a real leap forward.’ The study was led by Huth and Jerry Tang, a doctoral student in computer science. The main development from this study is that it’s non-invasive. This means that subjects do not require surgical implants. Instead, brain activity is measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In the study, individuals listened to hours of podcasts in the scanner. Then, given the participant’s consent to have their thoughts decoded, they listened to a new story and the machine-generated corresponding texts from brain activity. It’s not a word-for-word transcript. For example, when an individual heard the phrase ‘I don’t have my driver’s licence yet’, the model decoded the individual’s thoughts to read as ‘she has not even started to learn to drive yet.’ Even when participants thought up their own stories, the machine was able to decode their thoughts still. Tang acknowledged that the advancements made in the study had the potential for negative aftermath. Tang said, ‘we take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes and have worked to avoid that.’ They ran tests that highlighted that unless the machine had been trained on an individual’s particular brain activity, it could not decode its thoughts. An individual had to allow for the machine to train their brain activity over a long period of time inside a fMRI scanner for it to work. Researchers also found that it was easy to ‘sabotage’ the machine. Three participants were told to tell a different story in their mind, or count by seven, while listening to one of the podcasts. The study highlights even more development with artificial intelligence, after the popularity of OpenAI’s Chat GPT has sparked debate around the potential of AI. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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It’s no secret that different foods have an impact on the pungency of farts, but which foods make them smell the worst? Gas, scientifically known as flatus, is a normal part of everyday life for healthy human beings, but it is not all made equal. According to Dr Ali Rezaie, a gastroenterologist at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, particularly stinky farts occur when carbohydrates, especially those that are insoluble, reach the stomach and upper intestinal tract before being absorbed. This is because bacteria that live in our colon flourish on such unabsorbed sugars, with Rezaie describing them as “like high-octane fuel for them”. When these bacteria feast on and digest these carbs in the colon, they in turn produce gas that turns into farts. Although we produce about 30 to 91 cubic inches (500 to 1,500 millilitres) of flatus per day, regardless of our diet, thankfully 99 per cent of these gases are odourless. The sometimes potent smelling farts are down to gasses including hydrogen sulfide. But, one expert explained that simply eating foods with these compounds won’t necessarily determine how bad a person's wind is. Dr. Eric Goldstein, a gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said: “You can eat a ton of sulfur-containing compounds and have bacteria present that are making hydrogen sulfide... [but] your flatulence will not smell like hydrogen sulfide”. This is because there may be other bacteria present that counterbalance the hydrogen sulfide-producing ones. But, if consuming sulfur-rich foods such as lentils, beans and peas, and brassica vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, does make your gas stinky, it could actually be down to their insoluble carbs that bacteria are converting to smelling gas, rather than their sulfur content. It's not the first time farting has made headlines this year. This summer, farting during a pivotal moment of the film Oppenheimer became somewhat of a bizarre internet trend. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Microsoft is officially killing off WordPad, a basic text-editing app that seemed ripe for the