Sunday - August 6 2023, 03:17 UTC - 1 year ago

A research team has demonstrated that reinforcement learning allows robots to identify and track marine objects and animals. This work was done by using range acoustic techniques and artificial intelligence which allows the robot to identify the best points to reach the goal. Neural networks were trained with the powerful supercomputer located at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to adjust the parameters of different algorithms much faster.

Saturday - August 5 2023, 22:30 UTC - 1 year ago

Iris Alexander's attempt to replicate LK99, a material often used for superconduction, proved successful and her discovery of the role of Copper Sulphide in the process puts a new era of possibilities into play.

Saturday - August 5 2023, 18:12 UTC - 1 year ago

Google DeepMind's robotic transformer model RT-2 is able to almost double the success rate of robots performing unfamiliar tasks. The model uses text and image data from the internet as well as PowerAI Vision and PowerAI Language (PaLI-X and PaLM-E) models to learn new skills. Robot actions are represented as tokens, which are natural language text used in machine learning to quickly process tasks assigned to them.

Saturday - August 5 2023, 13:35 UTC - 1 year ago

UPS and Teamsters recently announced a new labor agreement that sets a new standard in the labor movement, raised the bar for all workers, and further reinforces the strong bargaining position of unions in the logistics sector. If a strike had occurred, it would have cost the US economy an estimated $7.1 billion and caused disruptions of availability of spare parts, wholesale medical supplies, and retail replenishment. Voting for the contract is expected to conclude on Aug. 22, and many are expecting a positive result.

Saturday - August 5 2023, 08:57 UTC - 1 year ago

Robotaxi and Robotrucking could be the most revolutionary change in the vehicle industry to date. Autopilot and Full Self Driving are already being used on cars with massive success, and the Robotrucking industry could revolutionize supply chain transport with a potential of $150 billion in profits a year.

Saturday - August 5 2023, 04:15 UTC - 1 year ago

ANDI is an AI-powered robot designed to mimic humans to measure the impact of extreme heat on the body. It is equipped with temperature sensors and cooling channels, as well as a companion called MaRTy that take in data about the environment around ANDI. The bot and its companion are being tested in heat-vulnerable environments in Arizona in the hopes of finding new ways to help people live comfortably in hot climates.

Friday - August 4 2023, 23:19 UTC - 1 year ago

Tesla's FSD, Robotaxi and RoboTrucking will change the industry, potentially replacing drivers, increasing production and reducing costs. Their AI can be trained with Youtube videos, and the existing fleet can be rapidly converted to remove the driver for a 4-12 month return on investment.

Friday - August 4 2023, 18:26 UTC - 1 year ago

The world’s largest shipping companies are beginning to shift to greener fleets as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) proposes a strategy to reduce international shippings’ greenhouse gas emissions. Ship owners and operators have already build and placed orders for container ships with alternative fuel use such as methanol or liquefied natural gas, and the industry must now address creating an operational fuel supply network for these alternative fuels. Maersk’s new dual-fueled methanol vessel is a prototype for larger alternative-fuel containerships currently in the pipeline.

Friday - August 4 2023, 13:23 UTC - 1 year ago

Inside even perfectly air conditioned buildings, the mean radiant temperature and operative temperature are often too hot for comfort. Poor modern insulation increases the likelihood of the occupants' heat stroke, and this is especially true for smaller buildings like small houses, mobile homes, tiny homes and more.

Friday - August 4 2023, 08:55 UTC - 1 year ago

China's digital yuan was seemingly born out of a desire to centralize a payment system dominated by the tech companies Alibaba and Tencent. According to its central bank, the digital currency, also known as the e-CNY, is both a risk-free alternative to these commercial platforms and a replacement for physical cash, which is becoming obsolete. If it’s successful, it could challenge the US dollar’s position as the world’s dominant reserve currency—and in the process shake up the global geopolitical order.

Friday - August 4 2023, 04:16 UTC - 1 year ago

Southeast University of Nangjing China have recently reported room-temperature superconductivity in the compound Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O using solid-phase synthesis. Zero resistance, which is important evidence for superconductivity, was observed above 100°K under ambient pressure in their experiment, indicating that this compound is a possible candidate for searching high-temperature superconductors. However, more evidence is needed to confirm the superconductivity and to determine which components are in charge for the zero resistance.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 23:11 UTC - 1 year ago

Windpark Fryslân, the largest freshwater wind farm in the world, is a leading-edge wind energy installation in the Netherlands that is capable of generating sufficient electricity to power approximately half a million homes. The installation has an annual capacity to generate 1.5 terawatt-hours of electricity, and is surrounded by 25 hectares of shallow water that serve as a fish habitat. This October, Windpark Fryslân will host the Windmill Cup, a sailing race that navigates through the turbines.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 19:06 UTC - 1 year ago

Israel’s Aleph Farms has applied for regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in Europe, primarily Switzerland. The company has collaborated with Switzerland’s Migros and is looking to roll out cultured meat in Singapore by 2025. Consumers seem interested in cultivated meat for its sustainability and promotion of animal welfare. Aleph Farms produces meat by acquiring and banking stem cells from an animal and then cultivating them in a temperature-controlled vessel. The switch to plant-based diets is increasing across developed economies and could help reduce carbon footprints and promote health.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 14:07 UTC - 1 year ago

The Machine Biology Group (MBG) at the University of Pennsylvania has used AI to explore the molecular diversity of extinct species in order to find novel drug therapies. MBG has found promising antimicrobial peptides from modern and ancient proteins. This breakthrough has led to the discovery of antibiotics from extinct species of humans, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. While this field has exciting potential, it also brings up ethical considerations.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 09:40 UTC - 1 year ago

C2PA is a freely available protocol to securelly label content with information from where it came from, based on an opt-in approach. The protocol is estimated to be released before the US election season of 2023 to help stop machine-generated muck and misinformation. Companies like Truepic, Revel AI, and Adobe are founding members of this project.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 05:15 UTC - 1 year ago

Brian May, the British rock star, and Dante Lauretta, the chief scientist of NASA's Bennu asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission, partnered up to collaborate on their book Bennu: 3-D Anatomy of an Asteroid. May used his imaging skills to carefully select and align 2D images of OSIRIS-REx, which allowed the team to spot two craters suitable for the mission.

Thursday - August 3 2023, 00:19 UTC - 1 year ago

A recent study from UVA Health suggests that increased sensitivity to light might be a contributor to "sundowning" and sleep disruptions in Alzheimer's Disease, which could lead to treatments and management of symptoms. There could also be implications for preventing the disease. The researchers studied mouse models and found that the mice reacted differently to light, with the Alzheimer’s mice adapting to a six-hour time change significantly more quickly than the control mice.

Wednesday - August 2 2023, 19:38 UTC - 1 year ago

A paper published in Nature Electronics introduced a new spintronic compute-in-memory macro that could enhance the security of AI edge devices. The nvCIM macro developed by the researchers enables good protection against malicious attacks, along with rapid response times, and high energy efficiency, and it can be integrated with existing semiconductor technology. The CMOS-integrated spintronic nvCIM macro could help to improve the security of AI-powered edge computing devices, protecting the sensitive data store on these devices.

Wednesday - August 2 2023, 14:49 UTC - 1 year ago

In this newsletter, I want to highlight the difficulty in understanding the exact scale of mpox in China due to the limited public health information shared by the government, the aggregation of data from different sources, and the politically sensitive status of Taiwan. This makes it hard to follow the impact of public health measures and to get an accurate picture of the situation there.