From sidelines to spreadsheets: UF doctoral students take AI coaching research from the court to Japan
Reports and Proceedings
This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 5-Nov-2025 13:11 ET (5-Nov-2025 18:11 GMT/UTC)
New study examines how coaches are using data and technology to maximize player performance and safety.
Researchers developed a new machine learning method that, given a relevant amino acid sequence, can automatically predict the location of a protein in any human cell line down to the single-cell level. This advance could help clinicians identify certain diseases, streamline the process of drug discovery, and give biologists new insights into the effects of protein mutations.
Hormone levels fluctuate like the tides, ebbing and flowing according to carefully orchestrated cycles. These hormones not only influence the body, but can cross into the brain and shape the behavior of our neurons and cognitive processes. Recently, researchers at UC Santa Barbara used modern laser microscopy techniques to observe how fluctuations in ovarian hormones shape both the structure and function of neurons in the mouse hippocampus, a brain region crucial for memory formation and spatial learning in mammals. They found that hormone fluctuations during the mouse estrous cycle, a 4-day cycle analogous to the 28-day human menstrual cycle, powerfully influence the shape and behavior of hippocampal neurons.
Butterflies’ flight trajectories often appear random or chaotic, but their hovering patterns can potentially provide critical design insights for developing micro aerial vehicles with flapping wings. Researchers studied how butterflies use aerodynamic force generation to achieve hovering, using high-speed cameras to observe wild-caught white cabbage butterflies and relying on a deep learning model to track the butterflies’ body features and specific wing points during their flight sequences. They found the primary factor contributing to butterflies’ hovering is their body pitch.
JMIR Mental Health invites submissions for a theme issue on AI-Powered Therapy Bots and Virtual Companions, with a focus on next-generation research that moves beyond proof of concept and addresses the real-world challenges, risks, and opportunities these technologies present in the context of digital psychiatry and mental health.
AI is advancing at such speed that speculative moral questions, once the province of science fiction, are suddenly real and pressing, says Finnish philosopher and psychology researcher Frank Martela. Martela’s latest study finds that generative AI meets all three of the philosophical conditions of free will — the ability to have goal-directed agency, make genuine choices and to have control over its actions. This development brings us to a critical point in human history, as we give AI more power and freedom, potentially in life or death situations.