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Genetic algorithms are a competitive alternative for training deep neural networks for reinforcement learning. For paper see: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.06567.pdf

Interesting pointers in this one! I would like to explore neuroevolution as well, although it seems extremely resource-demanding?

Not necessarily, I think it can be made to be much faster hybridizing it with backprop and Taylor maps. Its one ideas in the closet we still have not explored (Differential Intelligence: accelerating neuroevolution).

Its doing it again. Anyone wants to play the "explain this" game?

New debates on 'old' topic: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-alien-megastructure-dimming-mysterious-star.html? see blog posts in link for more info

An interesting project that can teach you something about AI training bias. While the system can generate marvelous portraits, it was trained on images displaying not a smiling expression, so it will most likely fail on smiling photos.

"...the European Commission announced in 2016 that it was investing one billion euros in a research effort known as the Quantum Technology Flagship. The goal for this project is to develop four technologies: quantum communication, quantum simulation, quantum computing, and quantum sensing. After almost two years, how is it going?" arxiv link to the actual report: http://arxiv.org/abs/1712.03773

I think there are a few difficulties when assuming that the macroscopic block of glass will accelerate instantaneously. Also, if I prevent the block from moving would it become perfectly reflective as no momentum can be transferred to it? One could say that the momentum is then transferred to the larger system that holds the glass. But surely I could make that system (or even the block of glass) so heavy that it would not move more than Planck's length during the passage of the photon - especially if the glass is very thin or the light is very red.

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

Bad news from this frontier: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking As the Americans are not going for it, it might be a good opportunity for Europeans to make a real difference in space.

Merkel seems anyway a bit short of ideas ...

Quote: "It's a little queasy sounding, but there's no place for that material to go, and it makes great radiation shielding"

Judging by the color it probably contains a lot of melanin. ;-)

"Her goal was to design and synthesise a super capacitor with increased energy density while maintaining power density and long cycle life. She designed, synthesised and characterised a novel core-shell nanorod electrode with hydrogemated TiO2(H-TiO2) core and polyaniline shell. H-TiO2 acts as the double layer electrostatic core. Good conductivity of H-TiO2 combined with the high pseudo capacitance of polyaniline results in significantly higher overall capacitance and energy density while retaining good power density and cycle life. This new electrode was fabricated into a flexible solid-state device to light an LED to test it in a practical application. Khare then evaluated the structural and electrochemical properties of the new electrode. It demonstrated high capacitance of 203.3 mF/cm2 (238.5 F/g) compared to the next best alternative super capacitor in previous research of 80 F/g, due to the design of the core-shell structure. This resulted in excellent energy density of 20.1 Wh/kg, comparable to batteries, while maintaining a high power density of 20540 W/kg. It also demonstrated a much higher cycle life compared to batteries, with a low 32.5% capacitance loss over 10,000 cycles at a high scan rate of 200 mV/s."

Amazing! :-D Makes you forget how hard it is to detect individual atoms at all.

While amazing indeed, it makes me wonder how much longer we will still have to wait until all this nanotechnology stuff will deliver something actually useful (say super-efficient/super-small transistors in my cell phone, camera, computer, etc.)? So far it seems to excel mostly in marketing...

It does not only give you superhuman abilities... it also makes you look hideous beyond human imagination :-P Nonetheless, it seems really interesting to bring all these separately existing technologies together in a single augmented reality device.

"chances are that if 700 passengers are flown annually, up to 10 of them might not survive the flight in the first years of the operations." most remarkable also the question who is to blame if a dead and burned space tourist corps comes crashing down from the sky into your car.

This calls for some we serious simulations by the Petkow code it seems to me ...

I still would need some serious input data...

The video says it all... made me laugh for a long time

"The researchers also discovered that the robot is very bad at juggling shoes and Coke bottles"... I wonder if that's the future work directions in their IEEE paper.

For all the fans - here is the directors cut version of this great piece of juggleability-research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZY6399hTY

"Cast your name into deep space in style!"

Interesting approach, but with 99.9% probability they will miserably fail (at least in terms of their time schedule) simply because the technology is untested. I haven't read the refs (which miss by the way important works of E. Ahedo et al. on magnetic nozzle acceleration by ambipolar effects), but 1. using water means that you produce oxygen radicals which will erode chamber walls (ionisation efficiency is not 100% and experimental tests haven't been performed yet). 2. Electronic excitation (and radiation), rotational excitation, vibrational excitation, and dissociation are all processes which consume energy and reduce ionisation efficiency drastically. 3. It is a miniaturised Helicon thruster. Theoretical analysis probably does not consider near field effects. Far field models are probably not applicable due to the size of the thruster. I expect some surprises during thruster testing. In any case - good luck!

Apparently, there is only one qualification constraint regarding CubeSat propulsion which is related to volatile propellant. Since they use water as propellant and are also the owner of the CubeSat it is actually up to them how they qualify their thruster. Given that it is also possible to qualify the thruster within 18 months - since they define what "qualification" means.

Bacterial wires explain enigmatic electric currents in the seabed: Each one of these 'cable bacteria' contains a bundle of insulated wires that conduct an electric current from one end to the other. Cable bacteria explain electric currents in the seabed Electricity and seawater are usually a bad mix.

WOW!!!! don't want to even imagine what we do to these with the trailing fishing boats that sweep through sea beds with large masses .... "Our experiments showed that the electric connections in the seabed must be solid structures built by bacteria," says PhD student Christian Pfeffer, Aarhus University. He could interrupt the electric currents by pulling a thin wire horizontally through the seafloor. Just as when an excavator cuts our electric cables. In microscopes, scientists found a hitherto unknown type of long, multi-cellular bacteria that was always present when scientists measured the electric currents. "The incredible idea that these bacteria should be electric cables really fell into place when, inside the bacteria, we saw wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane," says Nils Risgaard-Petersen, Aarhus University. Kilometers of living cables The bacterium is one hundred times thinner than a hair and the whole bacterium functions as an electric cable with a number of insulated wires within it. Quite similar to the electric cables we know from our daily lives. "Such unique insulated biological wires seem simple but with incredible complexity at nanoscale," says PhD student Jie Song, Aarhus University, who used nanotools to map the electrical properties of the cable bacteria. In an undisturbed seabed more than tens of thousands kilometers cable bacteria live under a single square meter seabed. The ability to conduct an electric current gives cable bacteria such large benefits that it conquers much of the energy from decomposition processes in the seabed. Unlike all other known forms of life, cable bacteria maintain an efficient combustion down in the oxygen-free part of the seabed. It only requires that one end of the individual reaches the oxygen which the seawater provides to the top millimeters of the seabed. The combustion is a transfer of the electrons of the food to oxygen which the bacterial inner wires manage over centimeter-long distances. However, s

Toward Autonomous Humanoids check out our new video with the iCub in the IM-CLeVeR project

Admit it ... You have fallen in love ....

you dont' know how often we had to shoot that scene :) but it is an adorable baby robot (if it works :))

A nice read. IBM Watson wowed the tech industry with a 2011 win against two of television show Jeopardy greatest champions. Using something that seemed like a sort of tree search for me IBM DeepQA algorithm managed to ingest sparse data (clues), process it getting one answer, understand what that answer means and come up with the question that leads to that answer. Now, IBM tells us that the same system can tackle medical diagnosis and financial risk problems.

Now this would be really cool if it had a brain computer interface and could be controlled by a trained drummer's mind! Science and Technology Society and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have built a wearable robotic limb that allows drummers to play with three arms. The two-foot long "smart arm" can be attached to a musician's shoulder. It responds to human gestures and the music it hears.

"scientists at Harvard University say they've modified the CRISPR method so it can be used to effectively reverse mutations involving changes in one letter of the genetic code. That's important because two-thirds of genetic illness in humans involve mutations where there's a change in a single letter."

"Efficient introduction of specific homozygous and heterozygous mutations using CRISPR/Cas9" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17664.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160428&spMailingID=51249830&spUserID=MTEzODM0NjYzMzgS1&spJobID=903461217&spReportId=OTAzNDYxMjE3S0 As posted here previously, the number and importance of CRISPR is growing steadily, but still plenty of work to make it a reliable tool. Maybe, next work for the Molecular Engineering RF?

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