Tuesday - May 23 2023, 10:45 UTC - 1 year ago

Researchers have developed an algorithm that uses LEO satellites signals to locate any point on Earth with unprecedented accuracy. The study was presented at the IEEE/ION Position Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS) 2023 conference in Monterey, California, and won the Best Student Paper Award. This study proposes utilizing signals from LEO satellites as an alternative to GNSS positioning, navigation and timing needs, as they reside about 20 times closer to Earth compared to GNSS satellites.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 08:44 UTC - 1 year ago

An extremely large long-necked dinosaur with 90 million-year-old fossils has been discovered by Argentinian paleontologists. The fossilized bones are so heavy they broke the road when being transported. The specimen is on the smaller end of titanosaurs, and the researchers gave it the scientific name of Chucarosaurus diripienda to represent its size. It is estimated to have weighed between 30 and 40 tons, and its long neck will allow it to feed at the top of the trees and its tail to be used as a weapon. They were first discovered in 2018 and is the first member of its genus.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 07:00 UTC - 1 year ago

AI regulation has become a hot topic recently, with many tech CEO's, US senators, and even G7 leaders advocating for standards and guardrails for AI development. We have analyzed six different international attempts to regulate artificial intelligence, set out their pros and cons, and given them a rough score indicating how influential we see them. These initiatives include the Council of Europe's convention on artificial intelligence, the OECD's AI principles, and the Paris Call originated by Juane Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 05:48 UTC - 1 year ago

Alpaca is an open-source language model developed by a team of researchers from Stanford University as an alternative to proprietary large language models (LLMs). Alpaca is composed of pre-trained language models from Meta's LLaMA 7B and data from OpenAI's text-davinci-003. The development of Alpaca includes obtaining a strong pre-trained language model and acquiring high-quality instruction data. However, the interactive demo of Alpaca had to be taken down due to the model generating unreliable responses, which underscores the complexity of developing language models that balance power, accuracy and responsible output.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 04:15 UTC - 1 year ago

Researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have recently introduced a new approach to improve the performance of deep learning algorithms used in visual place recognition (VPR) applications. The proposed method, Continuous Place-Descriptor Regression (CoPR), replaces the similarity-based image retrieval of VPR with more consistent descriptors, producing reliable pose estimates even when the weather or time of day changes. CoPR has been tested on various datasets, showing significantly better results than existing VPR algorithms.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 02:26 UTC - 1 year ago

A research group led by Yan Wang from WPI has recently unveiled a dry-print manufacturing technique for lithium-ion battery electrodes, circumventing the use of solvents and drying periods. This solvent-free method yields greener, quicker-charging electrodes and costs up to 15% less than conventional production methods.

Tuesday - May 23 2023, 00:41 UTC - 1 year ago

This article discusses the ephemerality of digital records and what tools we have in order to manage and preserve them for our lifetime, such as safeguards provided by tech companies and tools like The Email Scientists. It also asks the question if personal data should be deleted when we pass away.

Monday - May 22 2023, 23:29 UTC - 1 year ago

Helion Energy is a technology company with a focus on developing high-power, high-pulse-rate energy systems. Their seventh-generation prototype, Project Polaris, is expected to increase its pulse rate from one pulse every 10 minutes to one pulse per second. The eight prototype, Antares, is in its design stage with the goal to make Polaris work at 10 pulses per second. Their sixth system operates at 10 kEV with over 10,000 shots while the seventh system works at 20 kEV, expected to be operational by the end of 2023.

Monday - May 22 2023, 22:17 UTC - 1 year ago

Research led by Gaël Toubon from the Université Sorbonne Paris has shed light on the link between gut health, obesity, and children. The study analyzed data from 512 infants and found an association between the body mass index (BMI) of children age two to five and two types of gut bacteria: Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Additionally, three categories of bacteria posed a higher risk for obesity: the Eubacterium hallii group, Fusicatenibacter, and Eubacterium ventriosum group. Maintaining a healthy gut is essential, as disruptions in its development can lead to various conditions later on in life. This research highlights the significance of the gut microbiota in the development of obesity and the need for further research on the complex interactions between gut bacteria and the risk of obesity.

Monday - May 22 2023, 20:36 UTC - 1 year ago

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made a major breakthrough in the field of diagnosis by introducing a revolutionary new approach to detect neurodegenerative diseases. This method, called Nano-QuIC, is not only 10 times more sensitive but also has a detection time of 4 hours instead of 14 hours compared to conventional methods.

Monday - May 22 2023, 19:29 UTC - 1 year ago

A soft e-skin could allow prosthesis wearers to sense pressure and temperature, helping them to more easily interact with their surroundings. This innovation was successful recorded in rats and could be used to create robots that can feel human-like sensations. As the e-skin is entirely soft, it avoids being restricted by rigid external components making it an attractive prospect for prosthesis wearers.

Monday - May 22 2023, 17:52 UTC - 1 year ago

Geoffrey Hinton recently resigned from Google over fears of AI becoming too powerful. US psychologist Gary Marcus has argued that we should not treat AI models like people due to examples of over-attribution of human-like capabilities, as well as issues stemming from our tendency to anthropomorphise. Alan Turing and Daniel Dennett have contributed insights into AI behavior, and the intentional stance explains why we treat AI as a rational agent.

Monday - May 22 2023, 16:10 UTC - 1 year ago

T. rex population has been estimated at around 1.7 billion, relatively smaller than the 2.5 billion initially predicted by a 2021 study. The new study was led by evolutionary ecologist Eva Griebeler of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, and applied updated information suggesting the T. rex’s survival rate similar to modern birds and reptiles into the computer simulation model. Experts have recovered less than 1% of T. rex remains compared to its huge population size, suggesting that there is a lot to be learnt about this famous dinosaur species.

Monday - May 22 2023, 14:41 UTC - 1 year ago

SurgiBox, a startup collaborating with MIT’s D-Lab, has developed a portable surgery system to provide safe surgical access in areas without sterile operating rooms. The entire setup fits inside of a backpack and includes a bubble with armholes, a module that filters and controls airflow, and a battery. The company was founded by Debbie Teodorescu, a student at Harvard who got the idea for SurgiBox while lamenting how difficult it was to conduct surgery safely in so much of the world.

Monday - May 22 2023, 12:32 UTC - 1 year ago

A new study by University of Colorado and NASA scientists found that none of the known near-Earth asteroids pose a threat to Earth's future in the next thousand years. The team was able to make the forecasts by relying on close flybys of Earth that can be modeled further into the future. Despite the low chance of asteroid impact, NASA is still working to find potentially hazardous NEOs and asteroids in the still-undiscovered five percents.

Monday - May 22 2023, 10:51 UTC - 1 year ago

Scientists have unveiled an innovative and comprehensive strategy to effectively detect and track large-scale forest disturbances, using algorithms to detect deforestation and create more accurate land cover mapping. The tool is created the NLCD 1986-2019 forest disturbance product, using two and time-series change detection methods, and the ultimate goal is to automatically produce forest disturbance maps with high accuracy in near real-time.

Monday - May 22 2023, 09:30 UTC - 1 year ago

Scientists have successfully proposed lab-grown adipose tissue on a large scale, providing new hope for the production of cell-cultured meat. Researchers have mass-produced lab-grown fat tissue, exploring its texture, composition, and potential to combine with muscle cell structures. The process is relatively simple to perform and has considerable potential for commercial applications.

Monday - May 22 2023, 07:54 UTC - 1 year ago

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks recently voiced his opinion on the potential use of AI in entertainment industry regarding the preservation of an actor's legacy. As AI is already making its headway into the music industry, the implications of this practice in creative fields like these are too early to be predicted but definitely worth considering.

Monday - May 22 2023, 06:20 UTC - 1 year ago

Researchers at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden recently introduced a new multi-agent coordination method that integrates an auction-based task with behavior trees, mathematical models often used in computer science to execute plans. This method effectively organizes the actions of multiple robots who are working to achieve a common goal, allowing them to coordinate their efforts. The multi-agent coordination architecture proposed by this team of researchers could have notable advantages over other models proposed in the past that typically rely only on auction theory or behavior teams.