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Apr 1, 2017
Killing Science and Culture Doesn’t Make the Nation Stronger
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: government, physics, science
Scientists throughout the country across a wide spectrum of fields, from biochemists to physicists, are bemoaning the potentially devastating impact on science and technology in the United States of President Trump’s proposed budget request to Congress.
Massive funding cuts in the president’s proposed budget could be more devastating than any threat posed by illegal immigrants.
- By Lawrence M. Krauss on March 21, 2017
Apr 1, 2017
Adobe’s experimental app copies one photo’s style to another
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: robotics/AI
Photo retouching and style matching (not to be confused with Prisma -like Instagram filters) is challenging work that requires a trained eye and hours of labor. At least, it was, until AI took that job, too. Researchers from Adobe and Cornell University have showed off an experimental app called “Deep Photo Style transfer” that can transform your image from drab to dramatic using someone else’s photo.
As shown above, using it is pretty simple — you just select a photo you want to change and one with the style you’re trying to emulate. The AI does the rest, applying the color, lighting and contrast of the example photo to the original. It can transform a lake photo snapped in the most boring light possible (above) into one that looks like it was taken at the golden hour on another planet. In another example it transforms a daylight city shot into a much more interesting nighttime scene.
The researchers built on the “Neural Style Transfer” work done by European researchers. They refined it so that the style transfer only happens to colors and doesn’t distort objects in the picture, like previous deep learning systems. In other words, it can pick out which part of the image is sky and which part is ground, so that the sky doesn’t “spill over” into the rest of the image, the team says.
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Mar 31, 2017
This Robotic Tentacle Works Just Like An Octopus
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: robotics/AI
Mar 31, 2017
Scientists Hack a Human Cell and Reprogram It Like a Computer
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, computing
New research shows that cells understand and execute directions correctly, and scientists may be able to take advantage.
By hijacking the DNA of a human cell, they showed it’s possible to program it like a simple computer.
Mar 31, 2017
Elon Musk has job openings for 473 people at SpaceX — here’s who it’s hiring
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
A visit to SpaceX’s careers page reveals a surprising growth plan for Musk’s 15-year-old rocket company.
Mar 31, 2017
Robots Are Delivering Domino’s Pizzas In Europe
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: robotics/AI
Mar 31, 2017
The World’s First Flying Taxis Will Take to the Skies in Five Months
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: government, robotics/AI, transportation
We’re a lot closer to flying cars that we think. In fact, Dubai has already begun testing a prototype of a self-driving hover-taxi with the hope of launching an aerial shuttle service by July.
“The autonomous aerial vehicle exhibited at the World Government Summit is not just a model. We have already experimented (with) the vehicle in a flight in (the) Dubai sky. RTA will spare no effort to launch the AAV in July 2017,” shares director general of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) Mattar Al-Tayer.
To avail of the taxi service, passengers will simply select a destination before they board the vehicle with the help of a ground control center. The EHang 184 quadcopter can travel on a programmed course at 100 km an hour (60 mph) at an altitude of 300 meters (1,000 feet), the authority said in a statement.
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