Lifeboat Foundation

Google announced a new HD version of its Maps service for cars with the Android Automotive operating system. The new HD maps will provide more detailed road markings, lane-level localization, road barriers and signs. The feature will debut on the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3 models and will benefit from the lidar, radar and camera sensors on vehicles to ensure a safer driving experience.

Volvo EX90 using Google HD maps.

Continue reading “Google announces new high-definition maps, Android Auto redesign rolling out” »

The study was conducted by inspecting 215,000 land-based glaciers worldwide.

Climate change is a primal environmental problem of our century, and it’s getting worse day by day. The melting of glaciers increases the temperatures on the Earth and causes extreme cold. According to new research, glaciers melt faster than we thought. Apparently, two-thirds of glaciers on track will be disappeared by 2100, researchers say.

As reported by Phys.

Continue reading “Two-thirds of the glaciers will be melted by 2100, study indicates” »

In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known as a data processing unit (DPU), for around $190 million. Today, Microsoft confirmed the acquisition but not the purchase price, saying that it plans to use Fungible’s tech and team to deliver “multiple DPU solutions, network innovation and hardware systems advancements.”

“Fungible’s technologies help enable high-performance, scalable, disaggregated, scaled-out data center infrastructure with reliability and security,” Girish Bablani, the CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core division, wrote in a blog post. “Today’s announcement further signals Microsoft’s commitment to long-term differentiated investments in our data center infrastructure, which enhances our broad range of technologies and offerings including offloading, improving latency, increasing data center server density, optimizing energy efficiency and reducing costs.”

A DPU is a dedicated piece of hardware designed to handle certain data processing tasks, including security and network routing for data traffic. The approach is intended to help reduce the load on CPUs and GPUs for core computing tasks related to a given workload.

A new algorithm is probably not efficient enough to crack current encryption keys — but that’s no reason for complacency, researchers say.

A new miniscule nitrogen dioxide sensor could help protect the environment from vehicle pollutants that cause lung disease and acid rain.

Researchers from TMOS, the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems have developed a sensor made from an array of nanowires, in a square one fifth of a millimeter per side, which means it could be easily incorporated into a silicon chip.

In research published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, Ph.D. scholar at the Center’s Australian National University team and lead author Shiyu Wei describes the sensor as requiring no power source, as it runs on its own solar powered generator.

For the first time, physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have come across a novel type of quantum entanglement, the extremely bizarre phenomenon that occurs when a pair of particles remain connected even when separated by galactic distances. Thanks to this effect, the researchers were also able to peer inside the atomic nuclei with unprecedented detail.

Quantum entanglement is a strange and fascinating phenomenon that has puzzled scientists for decades. It occurs when pairs of particles become so closely connected that one can no longer be described without the other, no matter how far apart they may be. Even more strange, changing one will instantly trigger a change in its partner, even if it was on the other side of the universe. In theory, this effect would enable faster-than-light communication if you encode the changes in these states with 1s and 0s.

This concept may sound impossible to us, as it goes against our classical understanding of physics, and it even unnerved Albert Einstein, who referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.” However, numerous experiments have consistently proven the existence of quantum entanglement by manipulating the properties of the entangled particles, such as their spin or polarization, and observing the effects on the other particle. Today, quantum entanglement forms the backbone of emerging technologies such as quantum computers and networks.

Quantum money underpinned by the mathematics of knots could be impossible to forge.

Since the discovery of genetics, people have dreamed of being able to correct diseases, select traits in children before birth, and build better human beings. Naturally, many serious technical and ethical questions surround this endeavor. Luckily, tonights’ guest is as good a guide as we could hope to have.

Dr. Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. He has done extensive research in the field of computational genomics, and is the founder of several startups.

#geneticengineering #intelligence

We’ve met with Mojo Vision for several CESes, watching the startup’s AR contact lenses develop, year by year. These sorts of things take a lot of time and money, of course — and these days it seems increasingly difficult to find either. Today, the California-based firm announced that it is “decelerating” work on the Mojo Lens, citing, “significant challenges in raising capital.”

In an announcement posted to it site, CEO Drew Perkins blames insurmountable headwinds, including the bad economy and the “yet-to-be proven market potential for advanced AR products” in its ability to raise the necessary funding required to keep the project afloat.

“Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality,” Perkins writes. “Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.”