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To efficiently navigate real-world environments, robots typically analyze images collected by imaging devices that are integrated within their body. To enhance the performance of robots, engineers have thus been trying to develop different types of highly performing cameras, sensors and artificial vision systems.

Many artificial systems developed so far draw inspiration from the eyes of humans, animals, insects and fish. These systems have different features and characteristics, depending on the in which they are designed to operate in.

Most existing sensors and cameras are designed to work either in on the ground (i.e., in terrestrial environments) or in (i.e., in ). Bio-inspired artificial vision systems that can operate in both terrestrial and aquatic environments, on the other hand, remain scarce.

One of the primary methods used by malware distributors to infect devices is by deceiving people into downloading and running malicious files, and to achieve this deception, malware authors are using a variety of tricks.

Some of these tricks include masquerading malware executables as legitimate applications, signing them with valid certificates, or compromising trustworthy sites to use them as distribution points.

According to VirusTotal, a security platform for scanning uploaded files for malware, some of these tricks are happening on a much larger scale than initially thought.

Quantum computing, though still in its early days, has the potential to dramatically increase processing power by harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales. Some research groups have already reported performing calculations that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of years. In the long term, quantum computers could provide unbreakable encryption and simulations of nature beyond today’s capabilities.

A UCLA-led interdisciplinary research team including collaborators at Harvard University has now developed a fundamentally new strategy for building these computers. While the current state of the art employs circuits, semiconductors and other tools of electrical engineering, the team has produced a game plan based in chemists’ ability to custom-design atomic building blocks that control the properties of larger molecular structures when they’re put together.

The findings, published last week in Nature Chemistry, could ultimately lead to a leap in quantum processing power.

Photoemisssion orbital tomography extended beyond pi orbitals.


Figure

Experimentally-generated map of copper surface using photoemission orbital tomography (top left) and the projected densities of states of σ and π orbitals (top right). The bianthracene investigated in the study (bottom left) and maps of its σ orbitals (bottom middle, right)

A technique developed for imaging π orbitals during surface chemical reactions – photoemission orbital tomography – can also image σ orbitals as well. The researchers, who tested their discovery by answering a hitherto open question about the product of a reaction, believe the method could unravel chemical mechanisms in fields such as catalysis.

Rob Barnett, a senior clean energy analyst for Bloomberg, forecasts a 30% increase in global PV deployment this year, and double-digit growth through 2025.


Demand is pushing solar growth across the world to new heights, as Bloomberg senior analyst Rob Barnett forecasts deployment to increase by 30% this year. Total global solar deployment is closing in on 1 TW installed – an impressive milestone for the energy transition.

“The global solar picture is just staggering at this point,” Barnett told Yahoo Finance. “We are on track to install something like 250 GW of solar capacity this year.”

China is contributing the largest share to capacity growth this year, with about 108 GW of new operational PV. This is a near-doubling of the roughly 55 GW installed by China last year. The country has the world’s largest exposure to renewable energy, with 323 GW of solar and 338 GW of wind energy. President Xi Jinping aims for 1,200 GW combined by 2030, and the nation is currently ahead of schedule on that goal, said Bloomberg.

Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Materials, working in collaboration with colleagues from Exeter and Munster, have developed an on-chip optical processor capable of detecting similarities in datasets up to 1,000 times faster than conventional machine learning algorithms running on electronic processors.

The new research published in Optica took its inspiration from Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning. In his experiments, Pavlov found that by providing another stimulus during feeding, such as the sound of a bell or metronome, his dogs began to link the two experiences and would salivate at the sound alone. The repeated associations of two unrelated events paired together could produce a learned response—a conditional reflex.

Co-first author Dr. James Tan You Sian, who did this work as part of his DPhil in the Department of Materials, University of Oxford, said, “Pavlovian associative learning is regarded as a basic form of learning that shapes the behavior of humans and animals—but adoption in AI systems is largely unheard of. Our research on Pavlovian learning in tandem with optical parallel processing demonstrates the exciting potential for a variety of AI tasks.”

What remains are mostly neutron stars or black holes. And now, Hubble seems to have documented the instant when a supernova blinked out — implying that it captured the moment a black hole took control.

While some supernova explosions, such as SN 1,054, are violent and leave clouds of debris for thousands of years (a.k.a. nebula), the star in question seems to have exploded and then had all its gas pulled back into the black hole at the core. This may occur if the star’s core collapse is very big. Rather than exploding, the gas falls into the star’s core.