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Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have recently developed a conditional variational autoencoder that can produce unique faces for advertisements. Their study is grounded on their previous work, which explored automated methods of better understanding advertisement.

“In our past project, we wanted to see whether machines could decode the complex visual rhetoric found in ads,” Christopher Thomas, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “Ads contain puns, metaphors, and other persuasive rhetorical devices that are hard for machines to understand. In this paper, we didn’t only want to understand ads, but we wanted to see whether such persuasive content could be automatically generated by computers.”

The primary mission of the advertising industry is to promote products or convey ideas using persuasive language and images. Faces, a key aspect of ads, are often portrayed differently depending on the product advertised and message communicated.

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The Volkswagen group confirmed that it might have to recall as many as 124,000 electric and hybrid cars from its VW, Audi and Porsche brands due to poisonous cadmium finding its way into a charger component.

Following a report from the German magazine Wirtschaftswoche, VW has confirmed that it is currently in discussions with Kraftfahrtbundesamt (KBA), the German road authority, over the potential recall.

A spokesperson for the German automaker said:

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Meteors could be a possible trigger of the nuclear war.

Data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a record of an object of unspecified size traveling at 24.4 kilometers per second (about 54,000 mph, or Mach 74) at 76.9 degrees north latitude, 69.0 degrees west longitude, on July 25 at 11:55 p.m. That latitude and longitude checks out as almost directly over Thule, Greenland.

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Autophagy is how our cells recycle their components. Most of the time it runs quietly in the background. But when cells are stressed (such as during fasting or in the presence of dysfunctional proteins) it is increased in order to protect us. Read on to learn about autophagy, its definition and how it works, autophagy regulation, and how to increase autophagy through things like fasting.

Discover the exact, genetic factors in your body that are affecting autophagy with SelfDecode, the most powerful genetic health analysis tool available.

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There is a 3-day conference in Brussels on November 8–10 for those of you in Europe interested in aging research.

The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) is an international event that provides a unique opportunity for researchers, government officials, biotech executives, entrepreneurs, and non-governmental institutions from around the world to meet, network, and forge new scientific collaborations.

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In addition to being a well-known cleaning product, ammonia is essential in the manufacture of fertilizers. The chemical process to synthesize ammonia has hardly changed in 100 years, and is still essential, although scientists do not know how to mitigate its negative consequences on the environment.

When, during the summer of 1909, the German chemist Fritz Haber achieved the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, little could he foresee the enormous significance of his innovation. Years later, his countryman Carl Bosch was able to produce it at industrial scale by using catalysts and high pressure reactors.

Haber and Bosch, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for their research, gave their names to the ammonia production process that been in use since then. In fact, the Haber-Bosch process is perhaps the most significant innovation of the 20th century.

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