New initiative aims to lower high barrier to entry for resource-constrained organizations, increasing access to participate in forward-looking research.
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As the world continues to change and advance at a rapid pace, the need for continuous innovation has never been greater. DARPA’s open innovation model leverages the expertise and novel ideation found in large and small businesses, government organizations, and academic institutions. However, resource constraints across these organizations can limit their participation in cutting-edge research opportunities. Within the microelectronics arena in particular, skyrocketing costs for designing integrated circuits are stifling participation in the innovation process.
The arrival of government-operated autonomous police robots does not look like predictions in science fiction movies. An army of robots with gun arms is not kicking down your door to arrest you. Instead, a robot snitch that looks like a rolling trash can is programmed to decide whether a person looks suspicious —and then call the human police on them. Police robots may not be able to hurt people like armed predator drones used in combat— yet —but as history shows, calling the police on someone can prove equally deadly.
Long before the 1987 movie Robocop, even before Karel Čapek invented the word robot in 1920, police have been trying to find ways to be everywhere at once. Widespread security cameras are one solution—but even a blanket of CCTV cameras couldn’t follow a suspect into every nook of public space. Thus, the vision of a police robot continued as a dream, until now. Whether they look like Boston Dynamics’ robodogs or Knightscope’s rolling pickles, robots are coming to a street, shopping mall, or grocery store near you.
The Orwellian menace of snitch robots might not be immediately apparent. Robots are fun. They dance. You can take selfies with them. This is by design. Both police departments and the companies that sell these robots know that their greatest contributions aren’t just surveillance, but also goodwill. In one brochure Knightscope sent to University of California-Hastings, a law school in the center of San Francisco, the company advertises their robot’s activity in a Los Angeles shopping district called The Bloc. It’s unclear if the robot stopped any robberies, but it did garner over 100000 social media impressions and Knightscope claims the robot’s 193 million overall media impressions was worth over $5.8 million. The Bloc held a naming contest for the robot, and said it has a “cool factor” missing from traditional beat cops and security guards.
Scientists have figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to conduct a chemical reaction at the heart of many biological processes, which may lead to better ways to create biofuels from plants.
Scientists around the world have been trying for years to create biofuels and other bioproducts more cheaply; this study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that it is possible to do so.
“The process of converting sugar to alcohol has to be very efficient if you want to have the end product be competitive with fossil fuels,” said Venkat Gopalan, a senior author on the paper and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “The process of how to do that is well-established, but the cost makes it not competitive, even with significant government subsidies. This new development is likely to help lower the cost.”
U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, and AI Portfolio Manager, Office of Naval Research.
Brett Vaughan is the U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer and AI Portfolio Manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
Mr. Vaughan has 30 years of Defense Intelligence and Technology expertise with strengths in military support, strategic communications, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), Naval Intelligence and Navy R&D.
Frias-Martinez says CloudBank has allowed her to stretch her research dollars and, as a result, improve the quality and scope of her analyses. “For example, we started to do some experiments with an AWS database and the costs were much higher than we had expected,” she explains. “We submitted a ticket to their helpdesk and they quickly responded” with a full explanation of expenses and some money-saving alternatives.
Going the last mile
CloudBank was created to serve NSF grantees, starting with those funded by select CISE programs who have requested cloud computing. That pool is now tiny by design, but Norman expects demand to increase rapidly once NSF begins to make awards from this year’s program solicitations, the first that include CloudBank as an option. CloudBank could also serve as a template for a far larger, national cloud computing resource, part of a massive scale-up in cloud computing and artificial intelligence outlined in a law passed by Congress last week.
Venezuela’s government is planning to move to a fully digital economy as hyperinflation has made worthless bolivar notes practically disappear, and dollarization expands through the local financial system.
The U.S. dollar has operated as an escape valve for Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil revenues, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview with Telesur on Friday. He said 18.6% of all commercial transactions are in dollars, while 77.3% are carried out in bolivars with debit cards. Only 3.4% are paid with bolivar notes.
“They have a war against our physical currency. We are moving this year to a more profound digital economy, in expansion. I’ve set the goal of an economy that’s 100% digital,” Maduro said, adding that physical money will eventually disappear.
The Chinese government formed Comac in 2008 to design and build the single-aisle C919.
However, most of the parts are imported from foreign manufacturers, including the engine, avionics, control systems, communications and landing gear.
China’s government formed the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) in 2008 to design and construct the single-aisle C919 to reduce reliance on Europe’s Airbus and the United States’ Boeing.
