Mark Cuban predicted the tech sector’s next big battle will be against AI tools like ChatGPT when they “start taking on a life of their own,” on Jon Stewart’s podcast.
Google has been the unquestionable king of search engines for a long, long time now. But could that change with the Microsoft Bing upgrade?
Last week, it was revealed that microplastics were found for the first time in fresh Antarctic snow. They were discovered high in the Alps, bottled water, and human blood.
They can be harmful to animals if ingested. But the growing menace is difficult to remove — considering their size — especially once they settle into nooks and crannies at the bottom of waterways.
Whether or not Blue Origin puts a lander on the Moon, it might play a key role in sustaining lunar operations. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company has revealed that it can produce solar cells and transmission wire using simulated Moon regolith. The firm’s Blue Alchemist technique uses molten electrolysis to separate the lunar soil’s aluminum, iron and silicon from bound oxygen to extract key materials. The process can build solar cells, cover glass and aluminum wire using only sunlight and the reactor’s silicon.
This approach would not only save explorers the trouble of importing material, but would be kinder to both the Moon and Earth. There are no carbon-based emissions, no chemicals and no need for water. The resulting solar cells can operate on the Moon for over a decade despite a “harsh” environment, Blue Origin claims.
As Ars Technica explains, Blue Origin is pitching this as a solution for NASA’s Artemis program and missions to Mars. The space agency could establish bases or other long-term installations while minimizing the environmental impact. While the concept of using regolith to build outposts isn’t new, earlier efforts have largely focused on habitats rather than the power supplying those off-world facilities.
Zhongli Pan is the recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Service Award by the Rice Technical Working Group, which will be presented at the 2023 RTWF Conference on February 20–23. The award recognizes individuals who have given distinguished long-term service to the rice industry in areas of research, education, international agriculture, administration and industry rice technology.
Post-harvest losses are common in the global food and agricultural industry. Research shows that storage grain pests can cause serious post-harvest losses, almost 9% in developed countries to 20% or more in developing countries. To address this problem, Zhongli Pan, an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, has developed a potential solution.
Pan’s recent project using an IoT (Internet of Things) based smart wireless technology to remotely detect early insect activity in storage, processing, handling and transportation may solve the insect infestation related challenges for the agricultural industry. The technology uses a novel device called SmartProbe – designed by Pan and his team using wireless sensors and cameras – and leverages cloud computing to monitor and predict insect occurrences. This could help control insect pest, reduce food loss and the fumigants used in agricultural products today. Ragab Gebreil, a project scientist in Pan’s lab, is the co-inventor of this technology.
The skies were clear as the VISTA X-62A — a one-of-a-kind training aircraft built by Lockheed Martin on an F-16 platform — soared over the Mojave Desert. The cockpit of the high-tech jet is littered with expensive and highly sensitive avionics that enable pilots to perform their missions. But the designers could have crammed in even more technology if it were not for the two pilot seats. Their wish might come true in the not-so-distant future. That’s because this was not your regular sortie.
The training jet was recently reported to have flown 17 hours entirely operated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system, which could open the floodgates for completely autonomous jet fighters and drones. This is the first time that an AI has flown a tactical aircraft for this long.
The VISTA X-62 is perhaps the most powerful and versatile training jet in the world. It’s essentially an upgraded F-16D with Block 40 avionics installed, but with a lot of room for installing and trying out different hardware quickly and easily, that mimics the flight controls of other aircraft, enabling the aircraft itself to act as its own ground simulator. Those who’ve flown the X-62 describe it as a Swiss army knife that they can use to attach lots of different things to the airplane.
The number of active fires recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in August-September 2022 was the highest since 2010, according to an article published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Besides the record number of fires (74,398), the researchers found they were due not to extreme drought, as in 2010, but to recent deforestation by humans.
“The idea of publishing our findings came up when we analyzed data provided free of charge by the Queimadas program,” said Guilherme Mataveli, first author of the article. ‘Queimadas’ in Portuguese means burnings, and he was referring to the forest fire monitoring service run by the National Space Research Institute (INPE). Mataveli is currently a postdoctoral researcher in INPE’s Earth Observation and Geoinformatics Division.
The number of fires typically rises every year in August and September, when the weather favors fire in about half of the Amazon. “But the surge in the number of fires in 2010 was due to an extreme drought event that occurred in a large part of the region, whereas nothing similar occurred in 2022, so other factors must have been to blame,” Mataveli said.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A newly confirmed layer of the Earth could give scientists a better understanding of plate tectonics and could help them better predict earthquakes, according to research published by the University of Texas.
The work, published in the scientific journal Nature Geosciences, was led by Junlin Hua, a post-doctoral student at UT Austin. Hua began his research while attending Brown University.
“Earthquakes (are) directly the cause of plate tectonics,” Hua said. Plate tectonics is the movement of the plates that make up the Earth’s crust. “It’s just kind of like a boat, like traveling on water.”
