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A newly discovered structure located deep in the heart of a thick cloud of gas and dust more than 450 light-years away is the signature of a pair of baby stars in the throes of formation.

A team of astronomers have identified a previously unseen bubble at the center of a stellar nursery called Barnard 18 in the Taurus molecular cloud complex, likely carved from the surrounding gas as two emerging stars therein formed and grew.

It’s only the second time astronomers have identified such a bubble with the ejection of material or ‘outflow’ associated with a growing star. The newly discovered structure could help scientists learn more about how stars affect their environment as they grow.

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Google is launching new updates for Maps that are part of its plan to make the navigation app more immersive and intuitive for users, the company announced today at its event in Paris.

Most notably, the company announced that Immersive View is rolling out starting today in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Immersive View, which Google first announced at I/O in May 2022, is designed to help you plan ahead and get a deeper understanding of a city before you visit it. The company plans to launch Immersive View in more cities, including Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence and Venice in the coming months.

The feature fuses billions of Street View and aerial images to create a digital model of the world. It also layers information on top of the digital model, such as details about the weather, traffic and how busy a location may be. For instance, say you’re planning to visit the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and want to get an idea of it before you go. You can use Immersive View to virtually soar over the building to get a better idea of what it looks like and where the entrances are located. You can also see what the area looks like at different times of the day and what the weather will be like. Immersive View can also show you nearby restaurants, and allows you look inside them to see if they would be an ideal spot for you.

“To create these true-to-life scenes, we use neural radiance fields (NeRF), an advanced AI technique, transforms ordinary pictures into 3D representations,” Google explained in a blog post. “With NeRF, we can accurately recreate the full context of a place including its lighting, the texture of materials and what’s in the background. All of this allows you to see if a bar’s moody lighting is the right vibe for a date night or if the views at a cafe make it the ideal spot for lunch with friends.”

The company also announced that a new feature called “glanceable directions” is rolling out globally on Android and iOS in the coming months. The feature lets you track your journey right from your route overview or lock screen. Users will see updated ETAs and where to make your next turn. If you decide to take another path, the app will update your trip automatically. Google notes that previously, this information was only visible by unlocking your phone, opening the app and using comprehensive navigation mode. Glanceable directions can be used whenever you’re using the app, whether you’re walking, biking or taking public transit.

Continue reading “Google Maps challenges Apple’s 3D mode with a new ‘immersive view’ for cities” | >

Researchers have crafted an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of deciphering fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. Dubbed the “Fragmentarium,” the algorithm holds the potential to piece together some of the oldest stories ever written by humans, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The work comes from a team at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany who have been attempting to digitize every surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet since 2018.

The problem with understanding Babylonian texts is that the narratives are written on clay tablets, which today exist only in countless fragments. The fragments are stored at facilities that are continents away from each other, such as the British Museum in London and the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

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Robotic systems have become increasingly sophisticated over the past decades, improving both in terms of precision and capabilities. This is gradually facilitating the partial automation of some surgical and medical procedures.

Researchers at Tsinghua University have recently developed a soft robotic tentacle that could potentially be used to improve the efficiency of some standard medical procedures. This tentacle, introduced in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, is controlled through their novel control algorithm, together with the so-called active cooling for , the actuating candidate for the robot.

“A neurosurgeon doctor one day came to our lab and asked about the possibility of developing a soft, controllable catheter for him to assist him in his neurosurgeries,” Huichan Zhao, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “He would like this soft catheter to be extremely safe to the surroundings and be able to bend to different directions by a . Starting from these requirements, we developed a soft robotic tentacle.”

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During a break from looking at planets around other stars, the European Space Agency’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.

The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?

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The fate of galaxies is determined by the initial mass distribution at the birth of a new population of stars in the diverse and vast Universe. This relationship is referred to as the Initial Mass Function (IMF

In the field of astronomy, initial mass function (IMF) is an empirical function that details the distribution of stellar masses in a newly formed population of stars.

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Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have discovered a connection between the risk of functional disability or death in older adults and the distance they are willing to walk or cycle to reach common destinations (such as a friend’s house or a supermarket).

As they age, physical or cognitive decline can make it difficult for some older adults to navigate their community, affecting their quality of life and becoming a burden on society. However, a recent study by researchers at the University of Tsukuba demonstrates that a willingness to travel longer distances by walking or cycling may help reduce the risk of early functional disability and mortality.

A recent study published in Health and Place presents a model linking death and functional disability rates in older adults to the distances they are willing to travel on foot or bicycle for common community trips. The research found that older adults who were only comfortable with short distances – such as 500 meters or less for walking, or 1 kilometer or less for cycling – faced higher risks of functional disability and death.

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Adhering to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a microchip has doubled annually since the 1960s, but this growth is expected to reach its limit as silicon, the foundation of modern transistors, loses its electrical properties when devices made from it dip below a certain size.

Enter 2D materials — delicate, two-dimensional sheets of perfect crystals that are as thin as a single atom.

An atom is the smallest component of an element. It is made up of protons and neutrons within the nucleus, and electrons circling the nucleus.

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