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.