Eurekalert June 28, 2018 Traditionally algorithms for optimization problems narrow down the search space for the best solution one step at a time. In contrast, the new algorithm developed by researchers at Harvard University samples a variety of directions in parallel. Based on that sample, the algorithm discards low-value directions from its search space and chooses the most valuable directions to progress towards a solution. Using a data set of two million taxi trips from the New York City taxi and limousine commission, the adaptive-sampling algorithm found solutions 6 times faster. One of the biggest challenges in machine learning is […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Innovations for the Week of June 29, 2018
01. Thermal camouflage disguises hot and cold 02. Spatial overlap leads to useful quantum entanglement, say physicists 03. Defense Against the Dark Arts: An overview of adversarial example security research and future research directions 04. Synthetic gene circuits for the detection, elimination and prevention of disease 05. Electrospun sodium titanate speeds up the purification of nuclear waste water 06. City-crippling ransomware, crypto hijackings, and more: our 2018 mid-year cybersecurity update 07. New carbon could signal step-change for the world’s most popular batteries 08. IBM to release world’s largest facial analytics dataset 09. Are Countries Prepared for the Increasing Threat of […]
35 Innovators Under 35 – 2018
MIT Technology Review June 27, 2018 MIT Technology Review has been presenting the list of innovators under 35 for 18 years, long enough to spot some trends. You won’t find a lot of artificial-intelligence innovation in the early days of the list, but AI now dominates. And the list has grown more gender equitable. It was once male-dominated, but this year, for the first time, it includes more women than men. We hope the list gives you a sense of what’s coming next, and what kinds of people are making it happen… read more.
Are Countries Prepared for the Increasing Threat of Engineered Bioweapons?
Harvard Business Review June 18, 2018 The low cost and do-it-yourself accessibility of genomic technologies makes it possible for weapons to be deployed by almost any aggressor. If a highly contagious agent were released in a major city, it could spread far and wide and kill thousands before it is even clear what is happening and we would likely have a window of only several weeks to prevent it from causing a global catastrophe. Responding effectively to such threats will require a paradigm shift towards approaches that are faster and more agile and decentralized approaches underpinned by new technologies are […]
City-crippling ransomware, crypto hijackings, and more: our 2018 mid-year cybersecurity update
MIT Technology Review June 25, 2018 In early January, Technology Review predicted some of the biggest cyberthreats the world would encounter in 2018. As predicted there have been more huge data breaches, bolder efforts to steal computer processing power for cryptocurrency mining, targeting more cryptocurrency exchanges and ransomware attacks are causing even more damage. There hasn’t yet been any concrete evidence of hackers weaponizing artificial intelligence… read more.
Defense Against the Dark Arts: An overview of adversarial example security research and future research directions
ArXiv June 11, 2018 This article presents a summary of a keynote lecture at the Deep Learning Security workshop at IEEE Security and Privacy 2018. This lecture summarizes the state of the art in defenses against adversarial examples and provides recommendations for future research directions on this topic… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Electrospun sodium titanate speeds up the purification of nuclear waste water
Eurekalert June 27, 2018 Electrospun ion exchange fibres provide highly efficient and sustainable material for separation of trace pollutants, such as radionuclides and heavy metals. Researchers in Finland developed a process for electrospinning sodium titanate fibres and tested its ion exchange kinetics measurements. They found that by exploiting electrospun inorganic sub-micron fibres the ion exchanger mass required for a given capacity can be decreased significantly. With the help of this new method, waste water can be treated faster than before, and the environmentally positive aspect is that the process leaves less solid radio-active waste… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Engineer creates new design for ultra-thin capacitive sensors
Science Daily June 26, 2018 Being able to move with the air is how sensors can tell when a sound is present and which direction it is coming from. Researchers at SUNY Binghamton have developed a new platform that provides a way to detect the motion of extremely thin fibers or films by sensing changes in an electric field without the use of a magnet. The sensor has a nearly constant potential energy but can also return to its equilibrium after large motions… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Graphene forms electrically charged crinkles
Science Daily June 27, 2018 Researcher at Brown University have discovered a new, curvature-localizing, subcritical buckling mode that produces shallow-kink corrugation in multi-layer graphene. Density functional theory analysis reveals the curvature that connects two regions of uniformly but oppositely sheared stacks of flat atomic sheets. The high polarization concentration, predicted by the model, can be controlled by macroscopic deformation and is expected to be useful in studies of selective graphene-surface functionalization for various applications… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
How prepared is the world for the next epidemic? This tool shows most countries are not.
Washington Post June 21, 2018 AA team of researchers at CDC has developed a tool that spotlights gaps in preparedness, and actions that countries and organizations can take to close them. The new website, PreventEpidemics.org gives an individual score to each country and uses color codes to rank the world by five levels of preparedness. More than 60 percent of countries, representing nearly 5 billion people, have not volunteered to conduct these epidemic preparedness evaluations, including most of Europe, Russia, China, India and virtually all South America…read more.