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Apr 9, 2019
Made In Space unveils small satellite interferometry tool
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: satellites
COLORADO SPRINGS – Made in Space unveiled a product April 8 to help customers conduct interferometry missions on small satellites.
Possible applications for the new product, Optimast-Structurally Connected Interferometer (Optimast-SCI) include space situational awareness and detection of near-Earth objects, Andrew Rush, Made In Space president and chief executive, told SpaceNews.
Traditional space-based interferometry missions bring along large deployable structures to separate their telescopes or other instruments. Hinges and mechanical systems on the deployable structures allow them to be folded in launch fairings and extended in orbit.
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Apr 9, 2019
Another new Chinese launch-related startup: TWR Engine, based in Shenzhen and established in October 2018
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: futurism
Apr 9, 2019
Facebook’s fake account crackdown: Our AI spots nudity, hate, terror before you do
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: robotics/AI
Apr 9, 2019
LIGO has spotted another gravitational wave just after turning back on
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: cosmology, physics
Apr 9, 2019
Watch Tesla use its electric semi prototype to deliver a Model X to customer
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: sustainability, transportation
Tesla has released a video showing the first delivery of a vehicle to a customer using a Tesla Semi electric truck prototype – showing a glimpse of a future with zero-emission electric vehicle deliveries.
Over the last few quarters since Model 3 production has been somewhat sustainable at high volume, Tesla has had issues delivering the high numbers of vehicles.
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Apr 9, 2019
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity
Posted by Amnon H. Eden in categories: finance, robotics/AI
New book calls Google, Facebook, Amazon, and six more tech giants “the new gods of A.I.” who are “short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain”.
A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head.
We like to think that we are in control of the future of “artificial” intelligence. The reality, though, is that we—the everyday people whose data powers AI—aren’t actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can’t see and have no input into—one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple—are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain.
One persistent illusion is that physical objects only interact with other objects they are close to. This is called the principle of locality. We can express this more precisely by the law that the strengths of forces between any two objects falls off quickly—at least by some power of the distance between them. This can be explained by positing that the bodies do not interact directly, but only through the mediation of a field, such as an electromagnetic field, which propagat…
The intuitive idea that objects influence each other because they’re in physical proximity is soon to become another of those beliefs that turn out to be wrong when we look deeper.
- By Lee Smolin on April 4, 2019
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Apr 9, 2019
Nutrients from food, not supplements, linked to lower risks of death, cancer
Posted by Xavier Rosseel in categories: biotech/medical, food, health, policy
For the association between nutrient intake and the risk of death, the researchers found:
Adequate intake of certain nutrients is associated with a reduction in all-cause mortality when the nutrient source is foods, but not supplements, according to a new study. There was no association between dietary supplement use and a lower risk of death.
In addition, excess calcium intake was linked to an increased risk of cancer death, which the researchers found was associated with supplemental doses of calcium exceeding 1,000 mg/day. The study was published on April 9 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
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Apr 9, 2019
Scientists build a machine to generate quantum superposition of possible futures
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: computing, information science, particle physics, quantum physics
In the 2018 movie Avengers: Infinity War, a scene featured Dr. Strange looking into 14 million possible futures to search for a single timeline in which the heroes would be victorious. Perhaps he would have had an easier time with help from a quantum computer. A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Griffith University in Australia have constructed a prototype quantum device that can generate all possible futures in a simultaneous quantum superposition.
“When we think about the future, we are confronted by a vast array of possibilities,” explains Assistant Professor Mile Gu of NTU Singapore, who led development of the quantum algorithm that underpins the prototype “These possibilities grow exponentially as we go deeper into the future. For instance, even if we have only two possibilities to choose from each minute, in less than half an hour there are 14 million possible futures. In less than a day, the number exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.” What he and his research group realised, however, was that a quantum computer can examine all possible futures by placing them in a quantum superposition – similar to Schrödinger’s famous cat, which is simultaneously alive and dead.
To realise this scheme, they joined forces with the experimental group led by Professor Geoff Pryde at Griffith University. Together, the team implemented a specially devised photonic quantum information processor in which the potential future outcomes of a decision process are represented by the locations of photons – quantum particles of light. They then demonstrated that the state of the quantum device was a superposition of multiple potential futures, weighted by their probability of occurrence.
