Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and the University of Dayton has developed a way to bend light into a vortex ring using mirrors, lasers and lenses. In their study, published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group built on work done by other teams in which vortex rings were observed incidentally, and then mathematically designed a system that could generate them on demand.

In 2016, another team of researchers discovered that under the right circumstances, strong pulses of light swirling around a central pipe-shaped pulse, could sometimes form into a donut-shaped vortex. Intrigued by the finding, the researchers with this new effort began to wonder if it might be possible to create such vortex rings on demand.

They started by studying the properties and conditions that had led to the formations observed by the team in 2016 and applied mathematics to the problem. They found solutions that appeared to show how such rings could be made—solutions to Maxwell’s equations, in particular, they found, could be used to generate the kind of conformal mapping required.

Canadian agri-tech company Solinftec has announced that it will expand the launch of its new cutting-edge AgTech robotic platform, Solix Ag Robotics, into Canada in partnership with Stone Farms and the University of Saskatchewan. The new robot is state-of-art technology built to scan and monitor fields providing detailed real-time data.

Solinftec’s new technology aims to provide farmers and agronomists with a new level of information to increase yields, improve the usage of inputs, lower environmental impact, and support the global demand for food supply. The robot should be commercially available for use in wheat crops in time for next year’s growing season.

Solinftec’s Solix Ag Robot will autonomously move back and forth through farmers’ fields on four wheels. It will use onboard cameras and other sensors – along with AI-based software – to check the health of plants and assess their nutritional content. Solix Ag is integrated with the company’s artificial intelligence platform, ALICE A.I. Programmed with a neurological network featuring a complex detection algorithm, the new in-field robotic device has the ability not only to scan for crop health and nutrition, insects, and weeds but is built to monitor the entire field ecosystem and provide real-time insights.

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) capture the most important aspects of brain information processing. They are considered a promising approach for next-generation artificial intelligence. However, the biggest problem restricting the development of SNNs is the training algorithm.

To solve this problem, a research team led by Prof. Zeng Yi from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed backpropagation (BP) with biologically plausible spatiotemporal adjustment for training deep spiking neural networks.

The associated study was published in Patterns on June 2.

Marketing and the need for data rules

Legislators and decision-makers worldwide have also been active in regulating data although it’s almost impossible to keep pace with change in many places. The genuine exploitation of data requires rules and regulations, as growth always increases the potential for misuse. The task of technology companies is to build data pipelines that ensure the trust and security of AI and analytics.

Data is the new currency for businesses, and the overwhelming growth rate of it can be intimidating. The key challenge is to harness data in a way that benefits both marketers and consumers who produce it. And in doing this, manage the “big data” in an ethically correct and consumer-friendly way. Luckily, there are many great services for analyzing data, effective regulation to protect consumers’ rights and a never-ending supply of information at our hands to make better products and services. The key for businesses is to embrace these technologies so that they can avoid sinking in their own data.

Discovering and tracking asteroids is critical for planetary defense against killer asteroid impacts. The detailed astronomical data associated with it is also useful for providing new insights for astronomers. Helping with this task is a new algorithm called THOR, which has now proven to be capable of finding asteroids. It has been running on the Asteroid Institute’s cloud-based astrodynamics platform for identifying and tracking asteroids.

A novel algorithm developed by University of Washington researchers to discover asteroids in the solar system has proved its mettle. The first candidate asteroids identified by the algorithm — known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR — have been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

The Asteroid Institute, a program of B612 Foundation, has been running THOR on its cloud-based astrodynamics platform — Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping, or ADAM — to identify and track asteroids. With confirmation of these new asteroids by the Minor Planet Center and their addition to its registry, researchers using the Asteroid Institute’s resources can submit thousands of additional new discoveries.

Continue reading “UW-developed, cloud-based astrodynamics platform to discover and track asteroids” »

Astronomers have used a cloud-based technique pioneered at the University of Washington to identify and track asteroids in bunches of a hundred or more. Their achievement could dramatically accelerate the quest to find potentially threatening space rocks.

The technique makes use of a cloud-based, open-source analysis platform known as Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping, or ADAM; plus a recently developed algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR. The THOR algorithm was created by Joachim Moeyens, an Asteroid Institute Fellow at UW; and Mario Juric, director of UW’s DiRAC Institute.

Continue reading “Astronomers demonstrate how using the cloud can rev up the rate of discovery for asteroids” »

Andrew Lincoln, your boss?

Vanessa YelenaYour boss is deathist cringe. Let’s see if it stays that way when he’s getting old…

Continue reading “How I make beautiful GRAPHS and PLOTS using LaTeX” »

Recent technological advances, such as the development of increasingly sophisticated machine learning algorithms and robots, have sparked much debate about artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial consciousness. While many of the tools created to date have achieved remarkable results, there have been many discussions about what differentiates them from humans.

More specifically, computer scientists and neuroscientists have been pondering on the difference between intelligence and “consciousness,” wondering whether machines will ever be able to attain the latter. Amar Singh, Assistant Professor at Banaras Hindu University, recently published a paper in a special issue of Springer Link’s AI & Society that explores these concepts by drawing parallels with the fantasy film “Being John Malkovich.”

“Being John Malkovich” is a 1999 film directed by Spike Jonze and featuring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and other famous Hollywood stars. The film tells the story of a puppeteer who discovers a portal through which he can access the mind of the movie star John Malkovich, while also altering his being.