Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at Bilkent University in Turkey have recently created a small quadruped robot called SQuad, which is made of soft structural materials. This unique robot, presented in a paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, is more flexible than existing miniature robots and is thus better at climbing or circumventing obstacles in its surroundings.

“We have been working on miniature robots for almost a decade now,” Onur Ozcan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “Even though miniature robots have many advantages, such as being cheap, as they require fewer materials, and the ability to access confined spaces, one of their major drawbacks is their lack of locomotion capabilities, especially on uneven terrain.”

Tiny robots tend to get stuck easily while moving in the surrounding environment, as their height does not allow them to climb or avoid obstacles. Ozcan and his colleagues tried to overcome this limitation by implementing a principle known as ‘body compliance.”

Israeli researchers uncovered a novel way that hackers could steal sensitive data from a highly secured computer: by tapping into the vibrations from a cooling system fan.

Lead cyber-security researcher Mordechai Guri at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev said data encoded by hackers into fan vibrations could be transmitted to a smartphone placed in the vicinity of the targeted computer.

Continue reading “Cyberattack can steal data via cooling fan vibrations” »

Nvidia CEO to unveil new tech on YouTube, and more from machine-learning world.

Originally published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, or AEI) in Hannover, Germany, on April 20, 2020.

The expectations of the gravitational-wave research community have been fulfilled: gravitational-wave discoveries are now part of their daily work as they have identified in the past observing run, O₃, new gravitational-wave candidates about once a week. But now, the researchers have published a remarkable signal unlike any of those seen before: GW190412 is the first observation of a binary black hole merger where the two black holes have distinctly different masses of about 8 and 30 times that of our sun. This not only has allowed more precise measurements of the system’s astrophysical properties, but it has also enabled the LIGO and Virgo scientists to verify a yet-untested prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Conway, who passed away on April 11, was known for his rapid computation, his playful approach, and solving problems with “his own bare hands.”

The main idea of artificial neural networks (ANN) is to build up representations for complicated functions using compositions of relatively simple functions called layers.

A deep neural network is one that has many layers, or many functions composed together.

Although layers are typically simple functions(e.g. relu(Wx + b)) in general they could be any differentiable functions.

In this article, I will demonstrate the use of Variational Inference to quantify the uncertainty in the weights of deep neural networks and make more informed predictions for a breast cancer classification dataset.

Preliminary results from a clinical trial of remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug being tested for coronavirus, could come in as little as one to two weeks, a top researcher said Sunday.

The final results aren’t expected until mid-to-late May, said Dr. Andre Kalil, a principal investigator for the trial. But he said “we can potentially have some early data in the next one or two weeks,” contingent on a preliminary analysis.

“In the next few weeks, we’re going to do the analysis, and we’re going to basically know if remdesivir is better or not than placebo,” he told CNN.

KIA and corporate cousin Hyundai build some efficient EVs that challenge industry leaders like Tesla. Yes, Elon an his minions are miles ahead in self-driving tech, but the Hyundai Kona EV and KIA Niro EV are world class cars that come close to meeting Elon’s plea to other manufacturers to build compelling electric cars.

The problem is, KIA and Hyundai don’t have a dedicated battery electric platform. Both the Kona and Niro share their underpinnings with hybrid and plug-in hybrid models. A pure battery electric car may be coming soon from KIA, however. Recently, Hyundai said it is planning to bring two new all electric models — the 45 Concept and the Prophesy Concept — to market this year and next. Both will be built on the company’s new Electric Global Modular Platform known internally as E-GMP.