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May 10, 2024

See stunning reconstruction of ancient Egyptian mummy that languished at an Australian high school for a century

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The forensic facial reconstruction is based on a precise 3D model of the skull created with medical scans.

May 10, 2024

Disturbances in metal levels may effect memory, study finds

Posted by in category: futurism

We discovered that certain metals binding within the matrix can alter its structure, forming complexes that serve as the fundamental units of memory,’ researchers wrote.

May 10, 2024

The frenemies running Microsoft’s and Google’s AI ops have some serious history

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

From childhood friends to two of the most important players in AI, the two Londoners have found themselves on opposite sides of an increasingly tense race between Big Tech’s oldest rivals.

Hassabis and Suleyman seem to view their relationship somewhat differently.

May 10, 2024

Mars Rover continues progress along Upper Gediz Vallis Ridge

Posted by in category: space

Curiosity continues to make progress along the margin of upper Gediz Vallis ridge, investigating the broken bedrock in our workspace and acquiring images of the ridge deposit as the rover drives south.

Today’s 2-sol plan focused on a DRT, contact science, and drive on the first sol, followed by untargeted remote sensing on the second sol. The team had to make some decisions at the start of planning about whether to drive on the first or second sol of this plan, and how that would affect the upcoming weekend activities.

As it turned out, the team was able to fit all of the desired contact science and remote sensing activities on the first sol, in addition to the drive on the first sol, which means we’ll be able to downlink more information about our end-of-drive location to better inform planning for the weekend. Weekend plans provide opportunities for a lot of great contact science, so it will be really helpful to have that additional data down for planning.

May 10, 2024

Microsoft’s AI app VASA-1 makes Photographs Talk and Sing with believable Facial Expressions

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

A team of AI researchers at Microsoft Research Asia has developed an AI application that converts a still image of a person and an audio track into an animation that accurately portrays the individual speaking or singing the audio track with appropriate facial expressions.

The team has published a paper describing how they created the app on the arXiv preprint server; video samples are available on the research project page.

The research team sought to animate still images talking and singing using any provided backing audio track, while also displaying believable facial expressions. They clearly succeeded with the development of VASA-1, an AI system that turns static images, whether captured by a camera, drawn, or painted, into what they describe as “exquisitely synchronized” animations.

May 10, 2024

‘I don’t see any evidence of aliens.’ SpaceX’s Elon Musk says Starlink satellites have never dodged UFOs

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, internet, satellites

SpaceX, with the Starlink constellation, has roughly 6,000 satellites, and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO.

May 10, 2024

Historical Perspective: The Dynamic Birth of the Modern Great Barrier Reef

Posted by in categories: climatology, computing, sustainability

“This study has given us an historical picture of how the emerging modern reef responded to huge environmental stress,” said Dr. Jody Webster.


What events caused the Great Barrier Reef to become what it is today, specifically over the course of the last six to eight thousand years, or just after the last Ice Age? This is what a recent study published in Quaternary Science Reviews hopes to address as a team of international researchers conducted an in-depth scientific analysis on various aspects of the Great Barrier Reef to ascertain the environmental factors that contributed to the Reef’s present conditions. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how reefs evolve over time and the environment’s role in their evolution.

For the study, the researchers drilled almost two dozen coral samples and analyzed them using a variety of methods, including computer tomography, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction to ascertain yearly growth patterns within the coral samples. In the end, they determined that environmental factors, including increased water temperatures, ocean turbulence, and rising sea levels, led to increased nutrients, which contributed to the growth of the Great Barrier Reef, and is consistent with previous studies.

Continue reading “Historical Perspective: The Dynamic Birth of the Modern Great Barrier Reef” »

May 10, 2024

SpaceX Reveals Spacesuit With Heads-Up Display Inside Helmet

Posted by in category: space travel

SpaceX has shown off a futuristic-looking new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit designed to allow space tourists to venture outside of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in orbit — and it’s decked out in the latest cutting-edge tech.

The suit will make its first appearance during this summer’s Polaris Dawn mission, which will see a crew of four space tourists stepping out of the capsule to go for a spacewalk.

The suit is astonishingly slim compared to the bulky suits we’ve become accustomed to that allow astronauts to venture outside spacecraft like the International Space Station.

May 10, 2024

General-purpose humanoid is faster on the uptake, works for longer

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The rapid progress of humanoid robot development is nothing short of astounding. Less than 12 months after introducing its 6th-gen general-purpose humanoid, Canada’s Sanctuary AI has pulled back the curtains on the next iteration of Phoenix.

Sanctuary has been working on a general-purpose humanoid robot for a few years now, with much of the development focus on building and training the upper torso to perform an array of tasks so we don’t have to – including putting labels on boxes, bagging groceries, moving packages, scanning products and soldering. However, it seems that most of the “Robots Doing Stuff” series of videos are actually showing the bots being teleoperated, which is how they’re taught to perform tasks.

Continue reading “General-purpose humanoid is faster on the uptake, works for longer” »

May 10, 2024

Wide Open: NVIDIA Accelerates Inference on Meta Llama 3

Posted by in category: computing

The latest open large language model from Meta — built with NVIDIA technology — is optimized to run on NVIDIA GPUs from the cloud and data center to the edge and the PC.

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