Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics?
August 20th, 2015“Gill A. Pratt will be stepping down next month from his position as a Program Manager of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Arlington, Virginia…”
Via: American Economic Association (.pdf):
About half a billion years ago, life on earth experienced a short period of very rapid diversification called the “Cambrian Explosion.” Many theories have been proposed for the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, with one of the most provocative being the evolution of vision, which allowed animals to dramatically increase their ability to hunt and find mates (for discussion, see Parker 2003). Today, technological developments on several fronts are fomenting a similar explosion in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Many of the base hardware technologies on which robots depend—particularly computing, data storage, and communications—have been improving at exponential growth rates. Two newly blossoming technologies—“Cloud Robotics” and “Deep Learning”—could leverage these base technologies in a virtuous cycle of explosive growth. In Cloud Robotics— a term coined by James Kuffner (2010)—every robot learns from the experiences of all robots, which leads to rapid growth of robot competence, particularly as the number of robots grows. Deep Learning algorithms are a method for robots to learn and generalize their associations based on very large (and often cloud-based) “training sets” that typically include millions of examples. Interestingly, Li (2014) noted that one of the robotic capabilities recently enabled by these combined technologies is vision—the same capability that may have played a leading role in the Cambrian Explosion.
Carbon Nanofibres Made from CO2 in Air
August 20th, 2015Via: BBC:
Scientists in the US have found a way to take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and make carbon nanofibres, a valuable manufacturing material.
Their solar-powered system runs just a few volts of electricity through a vat full of a hot, molten salt; CO2 is absorbed and the nanofibres gradually assemble at one of the electrodes.
It currently produces 10g in an hour.
The team suggests it could be scaled up and make an impact on CO2 emissions, but other researchers are unsure.
Nonetheless, it could offer a cheaper way of making carbon nanofibres than existing methods.
“Until now, carbon nanofibres have been too expensive for many applications,” said Prof Stuart Licht of George Washington University. He was speaking at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
Carbon nanofibres are already used in high-end applications such as electronic components and batteries, and if costs came down they could be used more extensively – improving the strong, lightweight carbon composites used in aircraft and car components, for example.
The question is whether the “one-pot” reaction demonstrated by Prof Licht and his team could help to drop that cost.
The idea of turning CO2 from the air into useful products is a popular one, and the field is strewn with many more unfulfilled promises than success stories.
But Prof Licht is confident his design can succeed. “It scales up very easily – the entire process is quite low energy.”
IBM: Digital Rat Brain
August 19th, 2015Via: Quartz:
In August 2014, IBM announced that it had built a “brain-inspired” computer chip—essentially a computer that was wired like an organic brain, rather than a traditional computer. These chips are designed to work like neurons—the brain’s nerve cells. Wired reported on Aug. 17 that the team working on the brain chips recently hit a new milestone—a system has about 48 million digital neurons, which is roughly as many as found in the brain of a rodent.
Dharmendra Modha, the lead researcher on the project, recently told Quartz that he sees the future of computing being composed of two types of computers—traditional, logical computers, and synaptic brain computers—working together in a sort of left brain-right brain symbiosis to create systems that were previously unimaginable. “Existing computers as really fast calculators,” Modha said.
While current chips are excellent at analyzing information in sequential order, the new “neuromorphic” types of chips Modha’s team are working on are better suited to finding patterns in information—like the right side of the brain. The chips’s design, with digital neurons communicating over digital versions of synapses, result in more powerful chips that need less power to run. Traditional chips follow instructions, whereas IBM’s new chip manages “spikes”—rather like spikes in electrical activity in an organic brain. The spikes are like a single bit of information, passing between neurons. “Together, this creates this truly path-breaking architecture that can process sensory data in real time while consuming minimal energy in a mobile phone factor,” Modha said.
IBM held a bootcamp to explain to government agencies, researchers, and universities how its chips work, and how to build apps using them. As the chips aren’t wired like traditional computer chips, they needed their own programming language, which the team designed, and is now showing to the world. For these chips, “the old mindset would be a square peg round hole,” Modha said.
U.S. Crude Hits 6.5 Year Low on Surprise Stock Build
August 19th, 2015Down nearly 5% right now.
Via: Reuters:
Oil prices fell about 4 percent on Wednesday, with U.S. crude hitting 6-1/2 year lows and threatening to break below $40, after a huge unexpected stockpile build in the United States reinforced concerns about a growing global oil glut.
U.S. crude inventories rose by 2.6 million barrels last week to 456.21 million, the government’s Energy Information Administration said.
The figures stunned energy market analysts on Wall Street, as well as traders and investors who had been expecting a stockpile drawdown despite the peak U.S. summer driving season nearing its end and refinery problems cutting fuel processing capabilities.
First Almost Fully-Formed Human Brain Grown in Lab, “For Military Research”
August 19th, 2015Via: Guardian:
An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.
Though not conscious the miniature brain, which resembles that of a five-week-old foetus, could potentially be useful for scientists who want to study the progression of developmental diseases. It could also be used to test drugs for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, since the regions they affect are in place during an early stage of brain development.
The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, is engineered from adult human skin cells and is the most complete human brain model yet developed, claimed Rene Anand of Ohio State University, Columbus, who presented the work today at the Military Health System Research Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
…
For now, the team say they are focusing on using the brain for military research, to understand the effect of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.
Even When Told Not To, Windows 10 Won’t Stop Talking to Microsoft
August 18th, 2015Via: ArsTechnica:
For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.
Some of the traffic is obviously harmless. On connecting to a new network, Windows machines try to request two URLs (www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt and ipv6.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt, the former over IPv4, the latter over IPv6) to ascertain whether a given network is routed to the Internet and if there is a captive portal in the way (NCSI stands for “Network Connection Status Indicator”). These requests are very bare, with no machine IDs or other data sent. If you want to turn even these off there is a way to do so, but the privacy impact is minimal.
Some of the traffic looks harmless but feels like it shouldn’t be happening. For example, even with no Live tiles pinned to Start (and hence no obvious need to poll for new tile data), Windows 10 seems to download new tile info from MSN’s network from time to time, using unencrypted HTTP to do so. While again the requests contain no identifying information, it’s not clear why they’re occurring at all, given that they have no corresponding tile.
Other traffic looks a little more troublesome. Windows 10 will periodically send data to a Microsoft server named ssw.live.com. This server seems to be used for OneDrive and some other Microsoft services. Windows 10 seems to transmit information to the server even when OneDrive is disabled and logins are using a local account that isn’t connected to a Microsoft Account. The exact nature of the information being sent isn’t clear—it appears to be referencing telemetry settings—and again, it’s not clear why any data is being sent at all.
Long Range Strike Bomber Already a Snowballing Disaster
August 18th, 2015Via: Fiscal Times:
The price on the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation bomber was just raised. Again.
Last year, Air Force officials told Congress that the cost for the 10-year research and development phase for the Long-Range Strike Bomber would be $33.1 billion between fiscal years 2015 through 2025. But this year the price skyrocketed. The Air Force said the cost for fiscal 2016 to 2026 would be $58.4 billion, a 19 percent increase.
The service explained the discrepancy, first reported by Bloomberg, by saying both figures were wrong and that the actual cost is really 14 percent more.
“The correct 10-year cost entry for both … reports is $41.7 billion as the program costs have remained stable,” Air Force spokesperson Ed Gulick said in a statement.
The service “is working through the appropriate processes to ensure” the report, requested by lawmakers is “corrected, and that our reports in subsequent years are accurate,” he added. The Air Force has estimated it would cost $55 billion to build as many as 100 new bombers, or around $550 million per aircraft.
Northrop Grumman and a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture are competing to build the new stealth bomber. The service could award the contract sometime in September or October, which is already a slip from a previous timetable of a June or July announcement.
If you think you’ve heard it all before, you have. The embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is estimated to cost well over $1.5 trillion, has so many technical problems that it as of March this year it couldn’t pass basic requirements needed to fly in combat. Even so, the project has soared $170 billion over budget to date.
Pentagon Planning Sharp Increase in Drone Flights by 2019
August 17th, 2015Via: Reuters:
The Pentagon is planning a sharp increase in daily drone flights over conflict zones around the globe in the next four years as it tries to meet the reconnaissance and air strike needs of combatant commanders, a spokesman said on Monday.
Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Defense Department spokesman, said the number of unmanned drone flights, known as combat air patrols, would be increased by about 50 percent by 2019 – from between 60 and 65 a day to about 90.
“We’ve seen a steady demand signal from all of our geographic combatant commanders to have more of this capability,” Davis told reporters at the Pentagon.
The planes are used in the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, in the conflict in Afghanistan, against extremist groups like al Shabab in Somalia and to gather intelligence in the Pacific.
The plan to expand flights of drones like the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper comes despite recent warnings from a senior Air Force commander that the drone fleet and its operators were being stretched to the breaking point.
Long Term Data Storage in DNA
August 17th, 2015Via: Independent:
DNA has the advantage over hard drives in that it is an extremely dense form of data storage with the potential to survive for long periods of time. An external hard drive for instance is about the size of a paperback book, can store about five terabytes of data and might last 50 years.
In contrast, an ounce (28 grams) of DNA could fit on a penny, store 300,000 terabytes of memory and palaeontologists have shown the information stored in DNA recovered from fossils can survive for up to a million years.
One of the remaining problems, other than the currently exorbitant cost of making DNA for digital storage, is to be able to retrieve the information quickly and easily, which is why Dr Grass is working on a method of labelling specific places on the DNA molecule to make it easier to search.
Two Women Make History by Passing Army’s Elite Ranger School
August 17th, 2015Via: NBC:
For the first time ever, two women have successfully completed the Army’s elite Ranger school, one of the toughest combat training courses in the world, the Army said Monday.
The female soldiers weren’t identified beyond being described as West Point-trained officers. They were among 96 soldiers who will graduate Friday at Fort Benning, Georgia, with the coveted Ranger tab, the Army said.
The 96 soldiers were winnowed from 400 — 19 of them women — who started the course on April 20. Over the following weeks, more than three-quarters of the trainees fell short of making it through grueling training marked by limited meals, sleep deprivation and physical tests in harsh conditions — all while hauling a 60-pound rucksack.
