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Jul 17, 2021

America, China and the race to the Moon

Posted by in category: space travel

China is playing the long game. It plans to become the leading power in space sometime in the 2040s, through a mixture of its own perseverance and America’s decline.


The eagle and the rabbitHalf a century on, the race back to the Moon looks markedly different from the first.

Jul 17, 2021

China Wants a Chip Machine From the Dutch. The U.S. Said No

Posted by in categories: government, mobile phones, robotics/AI, security

The chip world’s most important machines are made near corn fields in the Netherlands. The U.S. is trying to block China from buying them.


The one-of-a-kind, 180-ton machines are used by companies including Intel Corp., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and leading Apple Inc. supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to make the chips in everything from cutting-edge smartphones and 5G cellular equipment to computers used for artificial intelligence.

China wants the $150-million machines for domestic chip makers, so smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co. and other Chinese tech companies can be less reliant on foreign suppliers. But ASML hasn’t sent a single one because the Netherlands—under pressure from the U.S.—is withholding an export license to China.

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Jul 17, 2021

US Marines testing high-tech drones flying low-tech military grenades

Posted by in categories: drones, military

The US Marine Corps are testing tiny drones capable of performing a range of duties – including striking remote enemy targets with military-grade grenades. The application adds another reason to react fast to any buzzing sounds swiftly approaching from above… See More.


US Marines test the Australian Drone40, a high-tech, multifunctional drone capable of delivering military grenade payloads above targets.

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Jul 17, 2021

Automated and Autonomous Experiments in Electron and Scanning Probe Microscopy

Posted by in categories: physics, robotics/AI, transportation

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) are rapidly becoming an indispensable part of physics research, with domain applications ranging from theory and materials prediction to high-throughput data analysis. In parallel, the recent successes in applying ML/AI methods for autonomous systems from robotics to self-driving cars to organic and inorganic synthesis are generating enthusiasm for the potential of these techniques to enable automated and autonomous experiments (AE) in imaging. Here, we aim to analyze the major pathways toward AE in imaging methods with sequential image formation mechanisms, focusing on scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ((S)TEM).

Jul 17, 2021

Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions

Posted by in categories: education, ethics, robotics/AI

A New Yorker review of “Roadrunner,” a documentary about the deceased celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, reveals that a peculiar method was used to create a voice over of an email written by Bourdain. In addition to using clips of Bourdain’s voice from various media appearances, the filmmaker says he had an “A.I. model” of Bourdain’s voice created in order to complete the effect of Bourdain ‘reading’ from his own email in the film. “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

On Twitter, some media observers decided to start the panel right away.

“This is unsettling,” tweeted Mark Berman, a reporter at the Washington Post, while ProPublica reporter and media manipulation expert Craig Silverman tweeted “this is not okay, especially if you don’t disclose to viewers when the AI is talking.” Indeed, “The ‘ethics panel’ is supposed to happen BEFORE they release the project,” tweeted David Friend, Entertainment reporter at The Canadian Press.

Jul 17, 2021

Researchers image an entire mouse brain for the first time

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Now just need to go to rat monkey human.


Researchers at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have imaged an entire mouse brain across five orders of magnitude of resolution, a step which researchers say will better connect existing imaging approaches and uncover new details about the structure of the brain.

The advance, which was published on June 9 in NeuroImage, will allow scientists to connect biomarkers at the microscopic and macroscopic level. It leveraged existing advanced X-ray microscopy techniques at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne, to bridge the gap between MRI and electron microscopy imaging, providing a viable pipeline for multiscale whole brain imaging within the same brain.

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Jul 17, 2021

Argonne National Laboratory

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Argonne researchers across the laboratory complex are using AI to design better materials and processes, safeguard the nation’s power grid, accelerate medical treatments, automate traditional research, and drive discovery.

Armed with some of the world’s brightest minds and best computing resources, Argonne is at the forefront of AI research, playing an integral role in applying innovative AI methods to solve problems and change lives.

Jul 17, 2021

The Greek Laser Weapon That Hits Drones Every 2–3 Seconds

Posted by in categories: business, drones, military, robotics/AI

The inventor of the first robot in Greece, Konstantinos Soukos, has pushed Greece into a new era by creating laser weapons that target drones.

When the inventor and businessman Konstantinos Soukos built the first robot in Greece in 1985, he did not imagine that 36 years later he would supply many military forces across the world.

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Jul 17, 2021

Facebook AI Releases ‘BlenderBot 2.0’: An Open Source Chatbot That Builds Long-Term Memory And Searches The Internet To Engage In Intelligent Conversations With Users

Posted by in categories: internet, robotics/AI

BlenderBot 2.0 is better at conducting more extended, more knowledgeable, and factually consistent conversations over multiple sessions than the existing state-of-the-art chatbot. BlenderBot’s improved conversational abilities have made it a serious contender for artificial intelligence research.

The AI model takes the information it gets from conversations and stores them in long-term memory. The knowledge is stored separately for each person they speak to, which ensures that new information learned in one conversation can’t be used against another.

This model can read and respond in real-time, making it an excellent tool for keeping up with current events. It can scan the internet for new information to have a more up-to-date conversation.

Jul 17, 2021

California’s ambitious fiber-Internet plan approved unanimously

Posted by in category: internet

CA to build middle-mile network open to all ISPs and give $2B in last-mile grants.