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AI-powered drone wingmen to aid Europe’s 6th-gen combat jets

AI will enable drone wingmen to make autonomous decisions without centralized command.

According to Airbus, FCAS will be centered around a core Next Generation Weapon System (NGWS). In this “system of systems,” piloted New Generation Fighters will work together with Unmanned Remote Carriers – all connected to other systems in space, in the air, on the ground, at sea and in cyberspace via a data cloud called the “Combat Cloud.”

The FCAS is one more step towards the goal of achieving full collaborative combat by 2040, which can replace military systems like Rafale and Eurofighter.

Airbus says that an incremental roll-out of FCAS capabilities is planned by implementing initial situational awareness across platform capabilities in the mid-2020s.

View a PDF of the paper titled Beyond Aesthetics: Cultural Competence in Text-to-Image Models, by Nithish Kannen and 7 other authors

Abstract: Text-to-Image (T2I) models are being increasingly adopted in diverse global communities where they create visual representations of their unique cultures. Current T2I benchmarks primarily focus on faithfulness, aesthetics, and realism of generated images, overlooking the critical dimension of cultural competence. In this work, we introduce a framework to evaluate cultural competence of T2I models along two crucial dimensions: cultural awareness and cultural diversity, and present a scalable approach using a combination of structured knowledge bases and large language models to build a large dataset of cultural artifacts to enable this evaluation. In particular, we apply this approach to build CUBE (CUltural BEnchmark for Text-to-Image models), a first-of-its-kind benchmark to evaluate cultural competence of T2I models. CUBE covers cultural artifacts associated with 8 countries across different geo-cultural regions and along 3 concepts: cuisine, landmarks, and art. CUBE consists of 1) CUBE-1K, a set of high-quality prompts that enable the evaluation of cultural awareness, and 2) CUBE-CSpace, a larger dataset of cultural artifacts that serves as grounding to evaluate cultural diversity. We also introduce cultural diversity as a novel T2I evaluation component, leveraging quality-weighted Vendi score. Our evaluations reveal significant gaps in the cultural awareness of existing models across countries and provide valuable insights into the cultural diversity of T2I outputs for under-specified prompts. Our methodology is extendable to other cultural regions and concepts, and can facilitate the development of T2I models that better cater to the global population.

From: Nithish Kannen [view email].

Digital archaeology: New LEP data now available to all

Unlike letters carved on the Rosetta stone, digital data is not written on a virtually immutable support. Just a few years after it is written, its format becomes obsolete, the readout analysis tools can’t run on computers and the visualization code no longer works. But data can still contain interesting scientific information that should remain available to future generations of scientists.

Physicists pool skills to better describe the unstable sigma meson particle

While nuclear physicists know the strong interaction is what holds together the particles at the heart of matter, we still have a lot to learn about this fundamental force. Results published earlier this year in Physical Review D by three researchers in the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility bring us closer to understanding an important piece of the strong interaction puzzle.

First health care device powered by body heat made possible by liquid based metals

In the age of technology everywhere, we are all too familiar with the inconvenience of a dead battery. But for those relying on a wearable health care device to monitor glucose, reduce tremors, or even track heart function, taking time to recharge can pose a big risk.

For the first time, researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have shown that a health care device can be powered using alone. By combining a pulse oximetry sensor with a flexible, stretchable, wearable thermoelectric energy generator composed of , semiconductors, and 3D printed rubber, the team has introduced a promising way to address battery life concerns.

“This is the first step towards battery-free wearable electronics,” said Mason Zadan, Ph.D. candidate and first author of the research published in Advanced Functional Materials.

Unlocking the Secrets of LUCA, Earth’s Earliest Life Form

A University of Bristol-led study found that life on Earth, stemming from a common ancestor called LUCA, flourished soon after the planet’s formation.

Through genetic analysis and evolutionary modeling, researchers pinpointed LUCA’s existence to about 4.2 billion years ago, revealing it as a complex organism with an early immune system integral to Earth’s earliest ecosystems.

Luca’s genetic blueprint and its descendants.

Revolutionizing H2O2 Production: Ultrathin Nanosheets Show Immense Promise

Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of ultrathin Bi4O5Br2 nanosheets with controlled oxygen vacancies in enhancing the piezocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), presenting a viable, environmentally friendly alternative to traditional methods.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) serves as a crucial chemical raw material with extensive applications in numerous industrial and everyday contexts. However, the industrial anthraquinone method of producing H2O2 is fraught with significant drawbacks, including high levels of pollution and energy consumption. An alternative approach involves harnessing ubiquitous mechanical energy for piezocatalytic H2O2 evolution, which offers a promising strategy. Despite its potential, this method faces challenges due to its unsatisfactory energy conversion efficiency.

Bi4O5Br2 is regarded as a highly attractive photocatalytic material due to its unique sandwich structure, excellent chemical stability, good visible light capture ability, and suitable band structure. Aspired by its non-centrosymmetric crystal structure, piezoelectric performance has begun to enter the vision of researchers recently. However, its potential as an efficient piezocatalyst is far from being exploited, especially since the impacts of defects on piezocatalysis and piezocatalytic H2O2 production over Bi4O5Br2 remains scanty. Thus, mechanical energy-driven piezocatalysis provides a promising method for H2O2 synthesis from pure water with great attraction.