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Apr 2, 2018

Machines with Brains

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

What it means to be human in a world that’s increasingly filled with robots?

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Apr 2, 2018

Here’s What You Need to Know About NVIDIA’s New AI Supercomputer — and Why It Matters

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, supercomputing

The company is doubling down on the data center market.

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Apr 2, 2018

Storm hunter launched to International Space Station

Posted by in categories: space, transportation

ESA’s observatory to monitor electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere is on its way to the International Space Station. The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor is riding in the Dragon cargo vehicle that lifted off at 20:30 GMT (16:40 local time) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

A suite of instruments will search for high-altitude electrical discharges associated with stormy weather conditions. It is the first time that such a set of sensitive cameras, light sensors and X- and gamma-ray detectors are flying together to study the inner anatomy of luminous phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere and the link with bursts of high-energy radiation.

ASIM mounted on Columbus.

Continue reading “Storm hunter launched to International Space Station” »

Apr 2, 2018

First age-map of the heart of the Milky Way

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space

The first large-scale age-map of the Milky Way shows that a period of star formation lasting around 4 billion years created the complex structure at the heart of our galaxy. The results will be presented by Marina Rejkuba at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool on Tuesday, 3rd April.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a bulge at the centre, thousands of light years in diameter, that contains about a quarter of the total mass of . Previous studies have shown that the bulge hosts two components: a population of metal-poor stars that have a spherical distribution, and a population of metal-rich stars that form an elongated bar with a “waist”, like an x or a bi-lobed peanut. However, analyses of the ages of the stars to date have produced conflicting results. Now, an international team led by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have analysed the colour, brightness and spectral information on chemistry of individual stars to produce the age-map of the Milky Way.

The team have used simulated and observed data for millions of stars from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) infrared survey of the inner Milky Way and compared them with measurements of the metal content of around 6000 stars across the inner bulge from a spectroscopic survey carried out with the GIRAFFE/FLAMES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope (GIBS).

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Apr 2, 2018

The Importance of Constraints and Control in Biological Mechanisms: Insights from Cancer Research

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Research on diseases such as cancer reveals that primary mechanisms, which have been the focus of study by the new mechanists in philosophy of science, are often subject to control by other mechanisms. Cancer cells employ the same primary mechanisms as healthy cells, but control them differently. I use cancer research to highlight just how widespread control is in individual cells. To provide a framework for understanding control, I reconceptualize mechanisms as imposing constraints on flows of free energy, with control mechanisms operating on flexible constraints in primary mechanisms. Control mechanisms themselves often form complex, integrated networks.

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Apr 2, 2018

Finding order in disorder demonstrates a new state of matter

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

Physicists have identified a new state of matter whose structural order operates by rules more aligned with quantum mechanics than standard thermodynamic theory. In a classical material called artificial spin ice, which in certain phases appears disordered, the material is actually ordered, but in a “topological” form.

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Apr 2, 2018

The Atomic-Bomb Core That Escaped World War II

Posted by in category: futurism

Before two deadly nuclear mishaps, scientists used to risk “tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.” An Object Lesson.

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Apr 2, 2018

Beyond the Surface of Einstein’s Relativity Lay a Chimerical Geometry

Posted by in category: futurism

A hundred years after Einstein’s theory of general relativity was announced to the world, it’s a good time to remember Georg Riemann’s contributions as well.

Beyond the Surface of Einstein’s Relativity Lay a Chimerical Geometry

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Apr 2, 2018

Did Stephen Wolfram’s Knowledge Engine Just Become a Quantum Neural Blockchain AI?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, quantum physics, robotics/AI

Today’s leading buzzwords seem to describe very separate concepts, but it turns out that they have some amazing commonalities.

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Apr 2, 2018

Gene-Edited Foods Are Coming A Grocery Store Near You

Posted by in categories: food, genetics

The USDA has officially approved gene-edited foods.

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