With bodies that move and hands that wave, deepfakes just got a whole lot more realistic.
Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program successfully tested autonomous movement on a new, much larger fleet vehicle – a significant step in scaling up the adaptability and capability of the underlying RACER algorithms.
The RACER Heavy Platform (RHP) vehicles are 12-ton, 20-foot-long, skid-steer tracked vehicles – similar in size to forthcoming robotic and optionally manned combat/fighting vehicles. The RHPs complement the 2-ton, 11-foot-long, Ackermann-steered, wheeled RACER Fleet Vehicles (RFVs) already in use.
“Having two radically different types of vehicles helps us advance towards RACER’s goal of platform agnostic autonomy in complex, mission-relevant off-road environments that are significantly more unpredictable than on-road conditions,” said Stuart Young, RACER program manager.
Dr Carol Bernstein examines the role of increased bile acids in gastrointestinal cancers, including colon cancer.
How do you make a robot smarter?
Posted in robotics/AI
Teaching robots to ask for help is key to making them safer and more efficient.
Engineers at Princeton University and Google have come up with a new way to teach robots to know when they don’t know. The technique involves quantifying the fuzziness of human language and using that measurement to tell robots when to ask for further directions. Telling a robot to pick up a bowl from a table with only one bowl is fairly clear. But telling a robot to pick up a bowl when there are five bowls on the table generates a much higher degree of uncertainty — and triggers the robot to ask for clarification.
Because tasks are typically more complex than a simple “pick up a bowl” command, the engineers use large language models (LLMs) — the technology behind tools such as ChatGPT — to gauge uncertainty in complex environments. LLMs are bringing robots powerful capabilities to follow human language, but LLM outputs are still frequently unreliable, said Anirudha Majumdar, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and the senior author of a study outlining the new method.
Why is Facebook (Meta) harassing my account?
Decision on case of ex-Facebook moderator, who claims the work left him with PTSD, hailed as win for accountability of big tech in Africa.
Erwan Plantec, Joachin W.Pedersen, Milton L.Montero, Eleni Nisioti, Sebastian Risi ITU Copenhagen 2024 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.
OpenRead & Notes Taking.
The skin’s protective functions are compromised over time by both endogenous and exogenous aging. Senescence is well-documented in skin phenotypes, such as wrinkling and sagging, a consequence of the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) that involves the accumulation of senescent fibroblasts, chronic inflammation, and collagen remodeling. Although therapeutic approaches for eliminating senescent cells from the skin are available, their efficacy remains unclear. Accordingly, we aimed to examine the effects of dasatinib in combination with quercetin (D + Q) on senescent human skin fibroblasts and aging human skin. Senescence was induced in human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) using approaches such as long-term passaging, ionizing radiation, and doxorubicin treatment. The generated senescent cells were treated with D + Q or vehicle.
Researchers from Sinai Health and the University of Toronto have gleaned new insights into how thyroid cancer could be more effectively treated.
The study, which looked at thyroid tumor tissues and thyroid nodule biopsies from 620 patients at Mount Sinai Hospital from 2016 to 2022, examined whether differences in patients’ RAS genomic variants were reflected in the status of their tumors. It also investigated the presence of the variant BRAF V600E and TERT promoter variants in the patient’s samples.
Researchers ultimately concluded that differences in RAS in combination with BRAF V600E and TERT promoter variants could be used to arrive at more accurate cancer diagnoses in patients with indeterminate thyroid nodules.