Poor value of long-delayed biomass project leads Tory peer to say ‘the Government is backing a dead horse’ in sustainability drive.
The thing is, it could be—and a University of Michigan physicist is using quantum computing and machine learning to better understand the idea, called holographic duality.
A new shape-shifting material out of Virginia Tech can be used to give robots the power to transform smoothly between different shapes — like going from a drivable robot to a flying drone.
The challenge: Most of today’s robots are really good at one function — drones are designed to fly, but they can’t swim, and wheeled bots can drive, but they can’t fly.
The few exceptions typically use complex systems of motors, gears, and hinges to reconfigure themselves into different shapes suited for different tasks, but every extra part is a new potential point of failure.
Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based company that uses CGI, AI and natural language processing to create lifelike digital people who can interact with humans in real time, has raised $70 million in a Series B1 round, bringing its total funding to $135 million. The startup will put the funds toward enhancing its Digital Brain technology, which uses a technique called “cognitive modeling” to recreate things like the human brain’s emotional response system in order to construct autonomous animated characters.
The funding was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with additional participation from Cleveland Avenue, Liberty City Ventures and Solasta Ventures. Existing investors Temasek, Salesforce Ventures and Horizons Ventures also participated in the round.
While Soul Machines does envision its tech will be used for entertainment purposes, it’s mainly pursuing a B2B play that creates emotionally engaging brand and customer experiences. The basic problem the startup is trying to solve is how to create personal brand experiences in an increasingly digital world, especially when the main interaction most companies have with their customers is via apps and websites.
Researchers studying a protein that is strongly linked to the psychiatric disorder are the first to determine the protein’s function, tracing it to a structure in the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus.
In the process of solving a decades-long mystery about a particular protein, scientists have identified a specific location in the brain where schizophrenia may originate.
The news: Despite the identification of many genes that show some link to schizophrenia, identifying a part of the brain that is likely responsible for the disorder with a high level of certainty has proven to be extremely difficult — until now.
The DeLorean is returning in 2022 as an electric vehicle, reviving the brand made famous by Back to the Future.
A rocket set to slam into the moon next month, initially identified as belonging to SpaceX, has now been identified as a Chinese rocket.
Last month.
The first private spacewalk!
The Polaris program could push SpaceX’s private crew missions to new heights. In the missions’ reveal, the company hints at a Starship crewed orbital flight and more.
While some of the criticism of late about billionaires going to space is valid — Virgin Galactic CEO’s 10 seconds of BARELY sub orbital jaunt, and Bezo’s midlife crisis flight and jacket photo-op — Musk is getting things DONE. I love the idea of billionaires funding entire missions, not for their own self gratification, but to Get. Things. Done. (with a touch of personal gratification, but it’s being in SPACE, who can blame them for a small bit of joy when it comes with so much benefit to all? That’s what separates Musk from his lesser peers.)
Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he will make another private spaceflight launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, alongside two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force fighter pilot.
Koalas are now endangered
Posted in government, habitats, satellites
When the koala fur trade began during the late 19th century, as many as 10 million koalas are thought to have existed in Australia. Since then, they have declined to a fraction of their historic range and numbers. Between 2000 and 2016, the states of Queensland and New South Wales bulldozed at least 885,000 hectares of forest and bushland that provided habitat for koalas, based on analyses of vegetation loss derived from satellite imagery.
Having previously classified the animal as “Least Concern” on its Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uplisted the koala to “Vulnerable” in 2016. A report by the WWF in 2017 found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland and a 26% decline in New South Wales.
Estimates of their exact numbers vary considerably, but the Australian government has just published a new detailed analysis, showing the rapid and ongoing decline of koala populations in Eastern Australia. Following the disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020, they have now dipped below 100,000 to approximately 92,000 and are projected to fall by another third in this region during the next decade, possibly reaching 63,000 by 2032.