Geopolitical rivalries, as well as practical considerations, are emerging as real hurdles in the race for a COVID treatment.
Last month, scientists at Oxford University began immunizing more than 1,000 volunteers with their vaccine candidate in a preliminary trial designed to test the shot’s safety. On Friday, the scientists announced they now aim to vaccinate 10,260 people across Britain, including older people and children.
“The clinical studies are progressing very well and we are now initiating studies to evaluate how well the vaccine induces immune responses in older adults and to test whether it can provide protection in the wider population,” said Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
British researchers testing an experimental vaccine against the new coronavirus are moving into advanced studies and aim to immunize more than 10,000 people to determine if the shot works.
Continue reading “Over 10,000 to receive potential COVID-19 vaccine in U.K. as tests expand” »
“This is our bear hut,” the short, vivacious woman shouted through a hand-held loudspeaker, her smile creasing her forehead with deep wrinkles. A blue hat was perched on her head and her short tunic, embroidered with pink geometric designs, was tied sharply at the waist. She pointed at a wooden structure made of round logs, raised high above the ground on stilts.
“We caught the bears as cubs and raised them as a member of the family. They shared our food and lived in our village. When the time came, we set one free back into nature and killed the other to eat.”
Having treated the bear well in life, her people believe the spirit of the sacred animal, which they worship as a deity, will ensure the continued good fortune of their community.
Ever wondered what AI could be used for in games? We sure have. A lot. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of possible use cases for machine learning and artificial intelligence in game development. Yet despite letting our imaginations run wild, we are still blown away by what a team of researchers from Nvidia have achieved today: a functioning AI that can replicate Pac-Man with nothing more than pixels and key presses.
The generative adversarial network (GAN) outlined in the research paper, nicknamed GameGAN, is capable of taking pixel and input data from a videogame and recreating a like-for-like carbon copy. It does so without an underlying engine—the AI actually generates a new frame for every on-screen event based on those before it, player action, and a hint of environmental randomness.
Continue reading “Researchers build AI that can clone Pac-Man without a single line of code” »
Tomorrow, May 20, watch as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) uncrewed HTV spacecraft lifts off from Japan, on a mission to carry cargo to the International Space Station. It’ll deliver more than four tons of supplies, water, spare parts and experiment hardware for the station crew. Live coverage begins at 1 p.m. EDT with liftoff scheduled for 1:31 p.m. EDT.
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How do you recycle the equivalent of 1,8 million single use plastic bags, and resolve South Africa’s pothole problem? Roll out plastic roads, of course!
That’s exactly what the Kouga Municipality in the Eastern Cape is in the process of doing – and the benefits to road users are manifold.
The concept of a plastic road isn’t a new one. Several years ago, companies in Scotland and the USA pioneered the idea of breaking down plastic waste, and adding it to asphalt. Now, there are thousands of kilometres of plastic roads all over the world, from Australia, the UK and New Zealand to India, Turkey, Slovenia and now South Africa.
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh takes us inside of an ICU in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where medical personnel are struggling to meet the needs of those infected with coronavirus.
Mazda yesterday began production of the all-new, all-electric Mazda MX-30 at its Ujina plant No. 1 in Hiroshima, Japan. The company is keeping its first pure EV moving forward to answer the demand for electric vehicles in Europe where stricter CO2 reductions are in place.
“I do believe there’s great potential to bring in artificial intelligence to provide early warning of future problems” such as disease outbreaks, Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. “Jack” Shanahan, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said in an interview.
Artificial intelligence could spot and track earlier outbreaks of disease around the world, the Pentagon’s AI chief says as he retires from service.
