Lifeboat Foundation

The long-awaited $355 million development of Little Island New York has finally been made reality, offering the Big Apple a unique new space.

Although it’s unlikely travel to the US will be on the cards for Aussies anytime soon, it’s good to keep track of the developments that await us when we eventually graduate from tiny travel bubbles to full-scale international adventure once again. The latest development: the ambitious new US$260 million (AU$335 million) Little Island New York, an offshore public park in the Hudson River that has been one of the city’s most anticipated openings for a couple of years now.

Located at Pier 55 the fascinating public park has been designed to resemble a supersized leaf drifting on the Hudson, buoyed by a base of 280 concrete piles and precast columns driven down as far as 60 metres below water, as well as 132 tulip-shaped concrete pots positioned at various elevations from 4 metres to 18 metres above water, designed specifically by Heatherwick Studio, and developed by engineering firm Arup, to hold the soil, overlooks, and trees. This support base allows for the two-acre park to stay securely afloat so its 687-seat amphitheatre, smaller stage, and plaza don’t suddenly drop to the depths of the Hudson.

Continue reading “New York City Opens A $335 Million Park Island On Hudson River” »

CERN Courier

Jennifer Ngadiuba and Maurizio Pierini describe how ‘unsupervised’ machine learning could keep watch for signs of new physics at the LHC that have not yet been dreamt up by physicists.

In the 1970s, the robust mathematical framework of the Standard Model ℠ replaced data observation as the dominant starting point for scientific inquiry in particle physics. Decades-long physics programmes were put together based on its predictions. Physicists built complex and highly successful experiments at particle colliders, culminating in the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012.

Continue reading “Hunting anomalies with an AI trigger” »

Reasoning is an ability that is unique to human cognition. However, despite our advances in neuroimaging techniques, we cannot clearly map the neural regions involved in human reasoning. In a new study, researchers from Korea came up with a new approach to understand the foundations of both inductive and deductive reasoning and identify the major brain areas responsible, paving the way for uncovering the mechanisms of various other cognitive processes.

One of the factors that make us uniquely “human” is our ability to reason, i.e., to cognitively analyze situations, predict possible outcomes, and make decisions accordingly. Broadly speaking, human reasoning can be classified as “inductive,” which involves making predictions based on existing knowledge, and “deductive,” in which definitive conclusions are reached from given premises. However, despite the cutting-edge technology we have at our disposal, neuroscientists are yet to pinpoint where this ability stems from.

Scientists typically use a global approach called “meta-analysis,” a statistical method combining results of previous studies to derive conclusions. However, meta-analyses in this field have not adequately accounted for the complex folded geometry of the cortical surface (the surface of the two brain hemispheres).

Designed to fly multiple daily missions, Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II introduces a concept of true sustainability to the space race.

A three-qubit entangled state has been realized in a fully controllable array of spin qubits in silicon.

An all-RIKEN team has increased the number of silicon-based spin qubits that can be entangled from two to three, highlighting the potential of spin qubits for realizing multi-qubit quantum algorithms.

Quantum computers have the potential to leave conventional computers in the dust when performing certain types of calculations. They are based on quantum bits, or qubits, the quantum equivalent of the bits that conventional computers use.

Cuba on Monday became the first country in the world to vaccinate children from the age of two against Covid-19, using home-grown jabs not recognised by the World Health Organization. The communist island of 11.2 million people aims to inoculate all its children before reopening schools that have been closed for the most part since March 2020. The new school year started on Monday, but from home via television programmes, as most Cuban homes do not have internet access.

Cuba is vaccinating children from the age of two using home-grown jabs not recognised by the World Health Organization.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is the most widely used machine learning algorithm, besides supervised and unsupervised learning and the less common self-supervised and semi-supervised learning. RL focuses on the controlled learning process, where a machine learning algorithm is provided with a set of actions, parameters, and end values. It teaches the machine trial and error.

From a data efficiency perspective, several methods have been proposed, including online setting, reply buffer, storing experience in a transition memory, etc. In recent years, off-policy actor-critic algorithms have been gaining prominence, where RL algorithms can learn from limited data sets entirely without interaction (offline RL).

Should we be searching for post-biological aliens?

Most integrated circuits (ICs) and electronic components developed to date are based on silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. As silicon (Si) is known to have a narrow bandgap, however, in recent years engineers have been trying to develop ICs using other materials with a wider bandgap, such as gallium nitrite (GaN).

ICs made of GaN could have notable advantages over conventional ICs based on silicon, particularly for the development of power electronics, radiofrequency power amplifiers and devices designed to operate in harsh environments. However, so far developing GaN CMOS logic circuits has proved to be highly challenging, due to the intrinsically low mobility of holes in the material and the lack of a suitable strategy for integrating n-channel and p-channel field-effect transistors (n-FETs and p-FETs) on a single substrate.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have recently realized a series of GaN-based complementary logic ICs. Their paper, published in Nature Electronics, could have important implications for the development of new types of electronics.