China Shares Wipe Out 2015 Gains as Stocks Tumble 8.5%
August 24th, 2015Via: MarketWatch:
Chinese stocks plummeted Monday, erasing gains for the year, as fears about the deepening effects of a slowdown in the world’s No. 2 economy rattled investors world-wide.
Stock markets slid across Asia and a number of regional currencies fell to fresh multiyear lows. China’s main stock index, which closed 8.5% lower on Monday, has tipped into negative territory for the year after gaining as much as 60% through its June peak. Benchmarks in Japan and Australia both shed nearly 4%.
Afghanistan Has Cost the U.S. More Than the Marshall Plan
August 23rd, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. has now spent more on the reconstruction of Afghanistan than it spent on the Marshall Plan, which resuscitated Europe after World War II, according to a special inspector general.
The Marshall Plan delivered $103 billion in today’s dollars to 16 European countries between 1948 and 1952. That has now been topped by congressional appropriations for reconstruction in Afghanistan, which so far have come to $109 billion in today’s dollars. The difference: The Marshall Plan helped Europe get back on its feet, while Afghanistan is a chaotic mess.
The Marshall Plan comparison is the most striking fact in a depressing, 259-page quarterly report (pdf) to Congress issued July 30 by John Sopko, the congressionally appointed special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.
Asia Stocks Continue to Plummet
August 23rd, 2015Via: Reuters:
Asian stocks dived to 3-year lows on Monday as a rout in Chinese equities gathered pace, hastening an exodus from riskier assets as fears of a China-led global economic slowdown roiled world markets.
Safe-haven government bonds and the yen rallied on the widespread unrest in the financial markets, set in motion nearly two weeks ago when China sharply devalued the yuan and stoked concerns about the state of its economy.
Copper, seen as a barometer of global demand, tumbled to 6-1/2-year lows as the anxiety over China sapped investor confidence.
Bourses from Japan to Malaysia were hit hard as Chinese stocks plummeted immediately after the open on Monday, with investors failing to take heart from the formalization of rules over the weekend allowing pension funds to invest in the stock market.
Updates Back to Normal Tonight
August 22nd, 2015I’ve been down in the South Island visiting with friends for the weekend. I’m headed home now, so updates will be back to normal soon.
U.S. Government, Police Working on Counter-Drone System
August 20th, 2015Via: Reuters:
As concerns rise about a security menace posed by rogue drone flights, U.S. government agencies are working with state and local police forces to develop high-tech systems to protect vulnerable sites, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Although the research aimed at tracking and disabling drones is at an early stage, there has been at least one field test.
Last New Year’s Eve, New York police used a microwave-based system to try to track a commercially available drone at a packed Times Square and send it back to its operator, according to one source involved in the test.
The previously unreported test, which ran into difficulty because of interference from nearby media broadcasts, was part of the nationwide development effort that includes the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department, the source said.
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.
