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A new, dire “warning to humanity” about the dangers to all of us has been written by 15,000 scientists from around the world.

The message updates an original warning sent from the Union of Concerned Scientists that was backed by 1,700 signatures 25 years ago. But the experts say the picture is far, far worse than it was in 1992, and that almost all of the problems identified then have simply been exacerbated.

Gaps in coverage leave interceptors less-equipped to defeat the threats of tomorrow.

No missile defense is better than the sensors that tell the interceptors where to go and what to kill. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, draws upon considerably more sensors for homeland defense than when operations began in 2004, but shortfalls remain. The North Korean and other missile threats are not diminishing, and it’s time to get this right.

In a forthcoming report, we recommend that the Defense Department and Missile Defense Agency take several steps to improve the sensor backbone of America’s homeland missile defenses, including fielding a space layer, filling radar gaps, adding omnidirectional focus, and improving command and control. Unfortunately, the budget for missile defense sensors has fallen considerably over the past decade, exactly the wrong trend for our changing security environment.

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Yes I agree.very good resource for this job!


In our efforts to understand the Universe, we’re getting greedy, making more observations than we know what to do with. Satellites beam down hundreds of terabytes of information each year, and one telescope under construction in Chile will produce 15 terabytes of pictures of space every night. It’s impossible for humans to sift through it all. As astronomer Carlo Enrico Petrillo told The Verge: “Looking at images of galaxies is the most romantic part of our job. The problem is staying focused.” That’s why Petrillo trained an AI program to do the looking for him. Petrillo and his colleagues…

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Globally, antimicrobial resistance or AMR is becoming a core political, social and economic problem. The implications could never be more real than in Asia where, if no immediate action is taken, by 2050 about five million people are projected to die every year of conditions linked to bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics. This figure will be more than estimated cancer fatalities.


Katinka De Balogh says governments, individuals and health care professionals must all act to curb misuse before antibiotic-resistant bacteria creates a public health calamity.

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Ahshok Goel has been employing a robot as one of his teaching assistants. But the thing is, the students never realized that they were talking to a robot.

IBM’s Watson platform has done a number of remarkable things since its inception. Robots in retail stores are now powered by Watson, as are virtual assistants, and (of course) intelligent chatbots. If you aren’t farmilar with it, Watson gives robots and virtual platforms the ability to understand, learn, sense, and experience.

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