The final round of DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trial is complete, and once again, the winning AI pilot celebrated its victory against a field of virtual contenders by going on to defeat a human F-16 pilot. An AI pilot developed by Heron Systems won the shootout, defeating a fellow AI from Lockheed.
Continue reading… “Heron Systems’ AI pilot just beat a human in a simulated dogfight”
Two U.S. Army research projects at the University of Chicago advance quantum networking, which will play a key role in future battlefield operations.
Quantum networks will potentially deliver multiple novel capabilities not achievable with classical networks, one of which is secure quantum communication. In quantum communication protocols, information is typically sent through entangled photon particles. It is nearly impossible to eavesdrop on quantum communication, and those who try leave evidence of their tampering; however, sending quantum information via photons over traditional channels, such as fiber-optic lines, is difficult – the photons carrying the information are often corrupted or lost, making the signals weak or incoherent.
In the first project, the University of Chicago research team, funded and managed by the U.S. Army’s Combat Capability Development’s Army Research Laboratory’s Center for Distributed Quantum Information, demonstrated a new quantum communication technique that bypasses those traditional channels. The research linked two communication nodes with a channel and sent information quantum-mechanically between the nodes—without ever occupying the linking channel.
“This result is particularly exciting not only because of the high transfer efficiency the team achieved, but also because the system they developed will enable further exploration of quantum protocols in the presence of variable signal loss,” said Dr. Sara Gamble, program manager at the lab’s Army Research Office and co-manager of the Center for Distributed Quantum Information. “Overcoming loss is a key obstacle in realizing robust quantum communication and quantum networks.”
Continue reading… “New research advances U.S. Army’s quest for ultra-secure quantum networking”
Sales exploded in every region in the country, led by the Northeast and West
The coronavirus pandemic helped shape the housing market by influencing everything from the direction of mortgage rates to the inventory of homes on the market to the types of homes in demand and the desired locations.
SILVER SPRING, Md. — U.S. home sales rose an unprecedented 24.7% in July as extraordinarily low mortgage rates, and a desire for more space in the pandemic, fuel demand.
A June rebound has stretched to July after the coronavirus pandemic all but froze the housing market in the spring, usually a time when house hunters are most active.
National Association of Realtors said Friday that sales of existing homes jumped last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.86 million. With consecutive months of record-breaking gains, purchases are up 8.7% from a year ago. Home sales rose 20.7% in June, a record that lasted one month.
The housing market has been one of the more resilient sectors of the economy during the pandemic, but market activity continues to hinge on supply, which was limited even before the coronavirus outbreak.
Continue reading… “U.S. home sales spike an unprecedented 24.7% in July”
As tech firms scramble to keep up with reality of coronavirus, some experts say users must change
It is an increasingly common modern annoyance: arriving at the front of the queue to pay in a shop, pulling out a smartphone for a hygienic contact-free payment, and staring down at an error message because your phone fails to recognise your masked face.
As more and more nations mandate masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, technology companies are scrambling to keep up with the changing world. But some experts are warning that the change may have to start with users themselves.
Apple’s Face ID is the most well-known example of a consumer facial verification system. The technology, which uses a grid of infrared dots to measure the physical shape of a user’s face, secures access to the company’s iPhones and iPads, as well as other features such as Apple Pay.
Continue reading… “Face masks give facial recognition software an identity crisis”
The Thammasat University Rooftop Farm measures roughly 236,800 sq ft (22,000 sq m), making it the largest organic rooftop farm in Asia
The Thammasat University Rooftop Farm (or TURF), by Landprocess, puts an abandoned rooftop area belonging to Thammasat University’s Rangsit Campus to fine use as an organic farm. The project incorporates solar power and rainwater collection, and is used to teach sustainable farming techniques.
Continue reading… “Unused rooftop space transformed into stunning sustainable farm”
Starting this week, 120 Germans will receive a form of universal basic income every month for three years.
The volunteers will get monthly payments of €1,200, or about $1,400, as part of a study testing a universal basic income.
The study will compare the experiences of the 120 volunteers with 1,380 people who do not receive the payments. About 140,000 people have helped fund the study through donations. The concept of universal basic income has gained traction in recent years, and Finland tested a form of it in 2017.
Supporters say it would reduce inequality and improve well-being, while opponents argue it would be too expensive and discourage work.
Respiration is a fundamental process of all living things, allowing them to produce energy, stay healthy, and survive. In cells, respiration involves what are known as “respiratory proteins,” e.g. hemoglobin in the blood and myoglobin in muscles.
Respiratory proteins work by binding and releasing small molecules like oxygen, carbon monoxide etc., called ligands. They do this through their “active center,” which in many respiratory proteins is a chemical structure called heme porphyrin.
Continue reading… “Unraveling the initial molecular events of respiration”
Asteroid mining sounds fantastically futuristic, but it is almost feasible with existing technology.
We have already landed spacecraft on asteroids and taken samples.
Now all of that “simply” needs to be done at a much larger scale mining a well-scouted space rock.
The payoff for humanity will be astronomical.
Continue reading… “Here’s how asteroid mining will transform the world”
Mark Zuckerberg is not a man used to failure. He has built a $600-billion empire, buying up or crushing most would-be competitors and brushing regulators aside. When, in 2015, he personally headed up an effort – first called internet.org, then “Free Basics” – to help 3.5 billion people worldwide who don’t have access to the internet get connected, he might have expected praise for what he framed as philanthropy. The service would offer free unlimited access to a selection of hand-picked websites to people in India and countries across Asia, South America and Africa – getting more people online while, incidentally, making Facebook the controllers of the front page of the internet for these new users.
The praise did not come. Facebook was accused of “digital colonialism”, and of creating “poor internet for poor people”. There were even street protests against Free Basics in India, the country Zuckerberg had visited to promote the initiative. As political pressure mounted, in 2016 Free Basics was effectively outlawed by Indian regulators. The debacle was for a time described as “Facebook’s biggest setback”. If you only look at the headlines, Free Basics – and Facebook’s mission to connect the world – all but disappeared after that. But the reality of what happened next is very different.
“The project kept expanding – albeit much more discreetly,” explains Dr Toussaint Nothias, director of research at the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab. “At the end of 2015, Facebook reported that Free Basics was available in 30 countries. Today, they say it’s available in ‘more than 55 countries’. In Africa [alone], I found that it’s available in 29 countries.”
Working far more quietly than before, Facebook has spearheaded efforts across the globe to connect people to the internet – working on technology, software, business models and more. The company refined Free Basics to give it less control over which sites users could access, and in May 2020 launched a successor, Discover, which allows users a daily allowance of data they can use to access any website.
Continue reading… “Inside Facebook’s new power grab”
We all know that economic inequality has increased in recent decades, but just who has won and who has lost are harder questions to answer. A new study suggests that, even before the coronavirus pandemic, much of the increase in inequality was generational. People born earlier in the post-World War II decades experienced faster income growth than people born later.
The study, published by the Brookings Institution, compared people in two 15-year stretches — 1967-1981 and 2002-2016 — when they were generally in their prime working years. The oldest members of the first group are mostly baby boomers. They achieved a 27 percent gain in their median incomes during the 15-year span, adjusted for inflation. By contrast, the oldest members of the second group were mostly millennials. Their inflation-adjusted gain was only 8 percent.
Just what has caused this skewing of incomes is a controversial subject, but the report’s findings generally agree with many other studies. College graduates do relatively well, and labor markets have become more turbulent. In the second 15-year period, 12 percent of people suffered at least one 25 percent drop of income. In the earlier period, the comparable figure was 4 percent.
Continue reading… “The rise of the upper middle class”
In March, everything changed in an instant. And now, for the past six months, we’ve been living in a remarkably different kind of world.
Our living rooms became boardrooms; our business lunches became Zoom chats and the supply chain was, for a time, crippled. The global pandemic changed the way we lived and the way we worked. While some of us thought the change was only temporary, maybe for a few weeks, we were actually experiencing the dramatic onset of the theoretical topic we all called “the future of work.”
Tokyo transparent bathroom
At first, it’s hard to fathom how a public restroom with transparent walls could possibly help ease toilet anxiety — but a counterintuitive design by one of Japan’s most innovative architects aims to do just that.
Around the world, public toilets get a foul rap. Even in Japan, where restrooms have a higher standard of hygiene than in much of the rest of the world, residents harbor a fear that public toilets are dark, dirty, smelly and scary.
To cure the public’s phobia, the non-profit Nippon Foundation launched “The Tokyo Toilet Project,” tasking 16 well-known architects to renovate 17 public toilets located in the public parks of Shibuya, one of the busiest commercial areas of Tokyo.
Continue reading… “Why Tokyo’s new transparent public restrooms are a stroke of genius”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.