Phys.org February 25, 2019 Since its inception in 1958, NASA has relied solely on radio communications to stay in contact with all of its missions beyond Earth. NASA is looking at X-ray communications (XCOM) through which more information could be sent with the same amount of transmission power, and less energy needed over long distances. X-rays can penetrate the hot plasma that builds up as spacecraft re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. NASA (Goddard Space Center) has created Modulated X-ray Source (MXS), which will be tested in the coming years. MXS will be controlled using the NavCube to send encoded […]
Superintelligence as a Service is Coming and It Can Be Safe AGI
Next Big Future February 25, 2019 According to a report by the Drexler and the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute in the UK, the concept of comprehensive AI services (CAIS) provides a model of flexible, general intelligence in which agents are a class of service-providing products, rather than a natural or necessary engine of progress in themselves. Responsible development of AI technologies can provide an increasingly comprehensive range of superintelligent-level (SI-level) AI services that can deliver the value of general-purpose AI while avoiding the risks associated with self-modifying AI agents. Tasks for advanced AI include: Modeling human concerns; Interpreting human […]
Signals from distant lightning could help secure electric substations
Science Daily February 26, 2019 To monitor the power grid substation activities researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a radio frequency-based distributed intrusion detection system (RFDIDS) that utilizes a radio receiver as a diagnostic tool to provide air-gapped, independent, and verifiable information about the radio emissions from substation components, particularly at low frequencies. The simulation and experimental results verified that four types of diagnostic information can be extracted from radio emissions of power system substation circuits: i) harmonic content of the circuit current, ii) fundamental frequency of the circuit current, iii) impulsive signals from rapid circuit current […]
Predicting the monsoon a year ahead
Science Daily February 22, 2019 Researchers at the City College of New York estimate the predictability horizon of monsoon precipitation amount by systematically comparing statistical forecasts made using information from different lead times before the monsoon start. Linear and nonlinear prediction methods are considered that use the leading modes of the global sea surface temperature field to forecast monsoon-season (June-September) total precipitation. Forecasts were found to outperform a climatology baseline up to at least 1 year ahead, with a nonlinear method (random forest) on average outperforming linear regression with group lasso, although with greater variability in skill across locations and […]
Material that shields beetle from being burned by its own weapons, holds promise
Science Daily February 25, 2019 The pygidial glands in Carabid beetles manufacture, store and propel toxic chemicals to ward off insect, amphibian and even small mammalian predators. A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, University of New Hampshire) found that the tissues in the glandular system transporting the defensive chemicals to be rich in soft, rubbery resilin, a compound found in many insects and other arthropods. Resilin is a compound that is likely to be used in future bioengineering and biomedical applications due to its unusual properties. It has many similarities with elastin, a protein found in […]
Magnetization reversal achieved at room temperature using only an electric field
Science Daily February 2, 2019 Researchers in Japan report direct observation of out-of-plane magnetization reversal at room temperature by magnetic force microscopy after electric polarization switching of cobalt-substituted bismuth ferrite thin film grown on GdScO3 substrate. A striped pattern of ferroelectric and weakly ferromagnetic domains was preserved after reversal of the out-of-plane electric polarization. The discovery of magnetic reversal using an electric field paves the way to low power-consumption, non-volatile magnetic memories, such as magnetoresistive random-access memories…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Machines whisper our secrets
UC Riverside News February 22, 2019 Any active machine emits a trace of some form: physical residue, electromagnetic radiation, acoustic noise, etc. A team of researchers in the US (UC Irvine, UC Riverside) set microphones similar to those in a smartphone in several spots near a DNA synthesizer. After filtering out background noise and running several adjustments to the recorded sound, the researchers found the differences were too subtle for humans to notice. But through a careful feature engineering and bespoke machine-learning algorithm they were able to pinpoint those differences. The researchers could easily distinguish each time the machine produced […]
New program picks out targets in a crowd quickly and efficiently
Phys. org February 22, 2019 Previous work on visual search has focused on searching for perfect matches of a target after extensive category-specific training. An international team of researchers (Singapore, USA – University of Minnesota) shows that humans can efficiently and invariantly search for natural objects in complex scenes. They developed a biologically inspired computational model that can locate targets without exhaustive sampling and generalize to novel objects. They trained the model to look for something that had similar features to the example image of a dog. This enabled the model to generalize from a single dog image, to the […]
Global Artificial Intelligence Patent Survey
Inside Big Data February 22, 2019 Corresponding to the rise of 4IR digital technologies, the number of international AI based patent filings has expanded rapidly over the last few years, mostly concentrated in the United States and Asia. According to a 2016 study, approximately 75% of all AI-related patent publications in the world come from three jurisdictions: China, Japan, and the United States. Although the majority of AI-related patents are filed in these countries, Europe is also seeing substantial increases in such patent filings…read more.
Entangling photons of different colors
Science Daily February 25, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (NIST, University of Maryland) created quantum-correlated pairs made up of one visible and one near-infrared photon. The visible-light partners can interact with trapped atoms, ions, or other systems that serve as quantum versions of computer memory while the near-infrared members of each couple are free to propagate over long distances through the optical fiber. The design methods can be easily applied to create many other visible-light/near-infrared pairs tailored to match specific systems of interest. In the future, by combining two of the entangled pairs with two quantum memories, […]