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A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented at this week’s American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting 2023 examines how 17 exoplanets could harbor interior oceans of liquid water, and possibly even geysers, much like two moons within our solar system, Europa and Enceladus. This study was conducted by a team of researchers across academia and multiple research institutions and holds the potential to help scientists better understand the prospects and conditions for finding life beyond our solar system, including the examination of how life could form outside of a star’s habitable zone (HZ).

Image of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, and its geysers taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in November 2010, which could mirror exoplanets with interior oceans and geysers. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

“Our analyses predict that these 17 worlds may have ice-covered surfaces but receive enough internal heating from the decay of radioactive elements and tidal forces from their host stars to maintain internal oceans,” said Dr. Lynnae Quick, who is a planetary geophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study. “Thanks to the amount of internal heating they experience, all planets in our study could also exhibit cryovolcanic eruptions in the form of geyser-like plumes.”

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By Chuck Brooks

Realizing the potential of Smart Cities will require public-private cooperation and security by design.

The idea of smart cities is starting to take shape as the digital era develops. A city that has developed a public-private infrastructure to support waste management, energy, transportation, water resources, smart building technology, sustainability, security operations and citizen services is referred to as a “smart city”. Realizing the potential of Smart Cities will require public-private cooperation and security by design.

A smart city functions as an applied innovation lab. Automation, robotics, enabling nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence (human/computer interface), printed electronics and photovoltaics, wearables (flexible electronics), and information technologies like real-time and predictive analytics, super-computing, 5G wireless networks, secure cloud computing, mobile devices, and virtualization are a few of the fascinating technological trends of the digital era that are influencing the development of smart cities.

Continue reading “The Emergence Of Smart Cities In The Digital Era” | >

A stroke happens when blood flow is lost to part of the brain. Your brain cells cannot get the oxygen and nutrients they need from blood, and they start to die in a few minutes. This can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or even death.

A stroke can occur when an obstruction such as a blood clot travels from another part of the body and lodges inside an artery in the brain.

When an arterial wall becomes damaged, various types of emboli, or obstructions, can form. Emboli can be made up of various substances such as platelets, elements in the blood that help it clot, blood clots that form elsewhere and pass to the damaged area, cholesterol, or a combination of things.

For example, an embolism is formed in the carotid artery and breaks loose, traveling towards the brain where it will eventually lodge, blocking the blood the brain needs. The blocked artery deprives the brain of oxygen, which cause damage to the surrounding tissue. The result is a stroke.

Continue reading “Stroke — Health Video: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia” | >

Moore’s Law predicts that computers get faster every two years because of the evolution of semiconductor chips.

Researchers at Tohoku University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have shown a proof-of-concept of energy-efficient computer compatible with current AI. It utilizes a stochastic behavior of nanoscale spintronics devices and is particularly suitable for probabilistic computation problems such as inference and sampling.

The team presented the results at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2023) on December 12, 2023.

With the slowing down of Moore’s Law, there has been an increasing demand for domain-specific hardware. A probabilistic computer with naturally stochastic building blocks (probabilistic bits, or p-bits) is a representative example due to its potential capability to efficiently address various computationally hard tasks in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Continue reading “Researchers develop spintronic probabilistic computers compatible with current AI” | >

In December 2022, NASA’s MAVEN mission observed a rare solar event causing the solar wind to “disappear.” This led to significant changes in Mars’ atmosphere and magnetosphere, including their expansion. Scientists, astounded by the data, formed a working group to study this phenomenon. Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

NASA ’s MAVEN detected a unique solar event that drastically affected Mars ’ atmosphere, offering vital insights into the planet’s interaction with solar phenomena.

In December 2022, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission observed the dramatic and unexpected “disappearance” of a stream of charged particles constantly emanating off the Sun, known as the solar wind. This was caused by a special type of solar event that was so powerful, it created a void in its wake as it traveled through the solar system.

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Our most advanced text-to-image diffusion technology, delivering high-quality, photorealistic outputs that are closely aligned and consistent with the user’s prompt.

Imagen 2 is our most advanced text-to-image diffusion technology, delivering high-quality, photorealistic outputs that are closely aligned and consistent with the user’s prompt. It can generate more lifelike images by using the natural distribution of its training data, instead of adopting a pre-programmed style.

Imagen 2’s powerful text-to-image technology is available for developers and Cloud customers via the Imagen API in Google Cloud Vertex AI.

The Google Arts and Culture team is also deploying our Imagen 2 technology in their Cultural Icons experiment, allowing users to explore, learn and test their cultural knowledge with the help of Google AI.

Continue reading “Imagen 2: Google DeepMind announced Imagen 2” | >

Tesla has released a demo of their Gen 2 Tesla Bot with impressive advancements in design and capabilities, sparking discussion about its potential impact on manufacturing and the company’s success.

Questions to inspire discussion.

What are the improvements in the Gen 2 Tesla Bot?
—The Gen 2 Tesla Bot has updated design, actuated neck, improved hand and finger control, and a new tactile sensing system.

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