Lifeboat Foundation

As China joins the US and Russia in pursuing more targeted nuclear weapons as a deterrent against potential threats, the looming arms race would in fact serve the opposite purpose by increasing the risk of a nuclear conflict, experts warn.

Chinese scientists are running simulated tests at a faster rate than America as world’s leading powers develop arsenal of ‘usable’ next-generation weapons.

BARCELONA: In a bid to take the 3D printing industry to an entirely new level, global printing and PC major HP Inc has announced that its 3D metal printing solutions are set to enter the market later this year, thus giving the $12 trillion global manufacturing opportunity a new push.

HP, which entered the Additive Manufacturing (AM) field in 2016, currently has industrial-grade Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D printing solutions that produce polymer (plastic)-based products.

“We will do an announcement on metal printing later this year and unveil to the world what kind of technology we will use. There are several metal technologies out there and we will share which we have zeroed in on to move forward and invest further,” Ramon Pastor, Vice President and General Manager of Multi Jet Fusion, HP, told IANS.

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The technology could be used at airport security instead of fingerprinting and eye-scanning. It can successfully verify an individual simply by analysing the footstep 3D and time-based data.

The AI system, developed by researchers at University of Manchester in the UK and University of Madrid in Spain, correctly identified an individual almost 100 percent of the time, with just a 0.7 error rate.

Physical biometrics, such as fingerprints, facial recognition and retinal scans, are currently more commonly used for security purposes. However, so-called behavioural biometrics, such as gait recognition, also capture unique signatures delivered by a person’s natural behavioural and movement patterns.

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Advances in Deep Neural Networks

The third and the most critical factor in AI research in the advancement in deep learning and artificial neural networks.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are replacing traditional Machine Learning models to evolve precise and accurate models. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) brings the power of deep learning to computer vision. Some of the recent advancements in computer vision such as Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) are revolutionizing image processing. For example, using some of these techniques, images and videos that are shot in low light and low resolution can be enhanced to HD quality. The ongoing research in computer vision will become the base for image processing in healthcare, defense, transportation and other domains.

Continue reading “Here Are Three Factors That Accelerate The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence” »

Throughout history, astronomers have used both optical and radio telescopes to see and hear the universe. Now, a new project will combine both kinds of telescopes to combine the two senses so that scientists can get a more complete look at the universe in real-time.

MeerLICHT — which is Dutch for “more light” — is a new, fully robotic telescope that uses a 65-centimeter main mirror and a 100-megapixel camera that was unveiled Friday near Sutherland, South Africa, which is a few hours northeast of Cape Town. What makes this telescope different is that it will be connected to MeerKAT, a radio telescope that consists of 64 dishes and located 125 miles away. Both telescopes will scan the Southern Sky in matching fields of view. The project will be the first of its kind and size to listen as well as see into space.

Physicists have invented a flux capacitor and, while it might not run a ‘Back to the Future’ inspired time machine, they say it will have important applications in communication technology and quantum computing.

The team from The University of Queensland, RMIT University and ETH Zurich have proposed a device which uses the quantum tunnelling of magnetic flux around a capacitor which they say can break time-reversal symmetry.

UQ Professor Tom Stace said the research proposed a new generation of electronic circulators – devices that control the direction in which microwave signals move.

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Scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences report the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to develop a variety of rice producing 25–31% more grain than traditional breeding methods.

The team, led by Jian-Kang Zhu, a distinguished professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue and director of the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made mutations to 13 genes associated with the plant hormone abscisic acid – known to play roles in plant stress tolerance and suppression of growth. Of several varieties created, one produced a plant that had little change in stress tolerance but produced 25% more grain in a field test in Shanghai, China, and 31% more in a field test conducted on China’s Hainan Island.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past year, you’ve likely come across at least one news story talking about facial recognition technology. As a form of biometrics, facial recognition promises to enhance society’s experience with industry as a whole, from retail to travel. At the same time, there have also been fears of mismanagement at the expense of peoples’ privacy.

While the debate over “right to privacy” continues raging on, post-privacy technology is pushing forward at an international scale with no end in sight.

Continue reading “Whether You Like It or Not, Facial Recognition is Here to Stay” »

“The ‘thrust’ is not coming from the EmDrive, but from some electromagnetic interaction,” the team reports in a proceeding for a recent conference on space propulsion.

The first independent tests of the EmDrive suggest there’s a mundane explanation for the wildly controversial device.