Archive for the ‘futurism’ category: Page 229
Nov 24, 2023
10 New Species of Trilobite Fossil Rise From Volcanic Ash
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: futurism
Nov 24, 2023
Foster + Partners unveils Saudi Arabia pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka
Posted by Kelvin Dafiaghor in category: futurism
British architecture studio Foster + Partners has released visuals of its design for the Saudi Arabia pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, which will be modelled on the kingdom’s traditional villages.
It will be among the national pavilions at the upcoming World Expo, for which Sou Fujimoto Architects is developing the masterplan on the artificial island Yumeshima in Osaka Bay, Japan.
Foster + Partners said its aim for the pavilion is to offer visitors “a spatial experience that echoes the exploration of Saudi Arabian towns and cities”
Nov 24, 2023
How Eye-to-Eye Contact Guides Our Social Behavior
Posted by Arthur Brown in category: futurism
When speaking to one another, much of the communication occurs nonverbally – through body posture, hand gestures, and the eyes. Our eye gaze during conversations therefore reveals a wealth of information about our attention, intention, or psychological states. But, there remains little scientific knowledge about the information that human eyes convey in interactions – is looking at others’ faces enough, or does our communication require eye-to-eye contact?
Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) have studied the prevalence of eye contact by recording the eye gazing behavior in face-to-face dyadic interactions and found that although eye-to-eye contact occurred rarely, it communicated important messages which are vital for subsequent successful social behavior.
The study participants, who did not know each other beforehand, were paired and presented with an imaginary survival scenario which required the pairs to rank a list of items in order of their usefulness for survival, all while wearing mobile eye-tracking glasses. The researchers analyzed how often the participants looked at each other’s eye and mouth regions. The researchers also tested each participant individually for gaze following and linked the prevalence of different types of mutual looks during the interaction (i.e., eye-to-eye vs. eye-to-mouth) with the tendency to follow their partner’s gaze.
Nov 24, 2023
Sam Altman says successful people ‘believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion’—that’s frightening, says expert
Posted by Kelvin Dafiaghor in category: futurism
Ex-OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in 2019 that “almost too much self-belief” was a key to success. That presents problems, says a UC Berkeley leadership expert.
Nov 24, 2023
NASA Sends Software Update Over 12 Billion Miles to Voyager 2
Posted by Chima Wisdom in category: futurism
Last year, Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) started sending random data back to Earth, and it took NASA engineers months to figure out why. It turns out the AACS had entered an incorrect mode, but it’s unclear why the mode switch happened in the first place. This software patch is meant to stop the same thing happening to Voyager 2 (and to Voyager 1 again).
Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, explains “this patch is like an insurance policy that will protect us in the future and help us keep these probes going as long as possible … These are the only spacecraft to ever operate in interstellar space, so the data they’re sending back is uniquely valuable to our understanding of our local universe.”
As Voyager 2 is over 12 billion miles away, it took over 18 hours to send the software patch to the probe on Friday. There is a risk the patch could overwrite essential code or have unintended consequences, so a readout of AACS memory is being carried out to make sure it’s in the right place. If no anomalies are found, the update will be triggered on Oct. 28.
Nov 23, 2023
‘Electrocaloric’ heat pump could transform air conditioning
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: futurism
Heat pumps are ubiquitous in the form of air conditioners. Scientists just invented one that avoids harmful refrigerant gases.
Nov 23, 2023
Study finds bacteria’s unique ability to store and transfer ‘memories’
Posted by Gemechu Taye in category: futurism
The study found that bacterial cells store memory in the guise of cellular iron levels.
Artur Plawgo/iStock.
While humans accumulate countless memories over the years, bacterial memories are limited to certain factors, such as iron levels. This aids the bacteria’s adaptation to their surroundings.
Nov 23, 2023
VTT and Lockheed Martin team up for global defense signal intelligence
Posted by Gemechu Taye in category: futurism
The three-year project aims to advance radar and communication capabilities in modern battlefields.
Lockheed Marting.
Commencing on November 21, 2023, this ambitious three-year project aims to advance and revolutionize methods for detecting and classifying elusive radar and telecommunications signals, marking a transformative leap in Finland’s defense technology capabilities.
Nov 23, 2023
AI is at an inflection point, Fei-Fei Li says
Posted by Kelvin Dafiaghor in categories: futurism, robotics/AI
Li is one of the tech leaders we interviewed for the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, dedicated to the biggest questions and hardest problems facing the world. We asked big thinkers in their fields to weigh in on the underserved issues at the intersection of technology and society. Read what other tech luminaries and AI heavyweights, such as Bill Gates, Yoshua Bengio, Andrew Ng, Joelle Pineau, Emily Bender, and Meredith Broussard, had to say here.
In her newly published memoir, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, Li recounts how she went from an immigrant living in poverty to the AI heavyweight she is today. It’s a touching look into the sacrifices immigrants have to make to achieve their dreams, and an insider’s telling of how artificial-intelligence research rose to prominence.
When we spoke, Li told me she has her eyes set firmly on the future of AI and the hard problems that lie ahead for the field.