"To create Sketch-RNN, Google Brain researchers David Ha and Douglas Eck collected more than five million user-drawn sketches from the Google tool Quick, Draw! Each time a user drew something on the app, it recorded not only the final image, but also the order and direction of every pen stroke used to make it. The resulting data gives a more complete picture (ho, ho, ho) of how we really draw."
It's funny because this David Ha used to be a quant banker ha ha
Tufts University biologists have discovered the bioelectric mechanism by which a rare genetic disorder causes facial abnormalities, a finding that could lead to preventive measures and treatments for a host of disorders, from birth defects to cancer. For the study, published on Feb.
For the first time, researchers have shown that they can capture CO2 from the air, and convert it directly into methanol, which can then be used as an alternative fuel, as well as for hydrogen storage, in fuel cells, or as a building block for plastic.
Most self-respecting artists wouldn't agree to paint a portrait of a toilet in the middle of a field. Fortunately, advancements in artificial intelligence have given computers the ability to imagine just about any scenario, no matter how bizarre, and illustrate it. Take a look at this image.
Well, biased to the data it was trained on. Computing a net is pretty deterministic.
But not everything is perfectly correlated yet.
Still nice progress.
In 1655 the English mathematician John Wallis published a book in which he derived a formula for pi as the product of an infinite series of ratios. Now researchers from the University of Rochester, in a surprise discovery, have found the same formula in quantum mechanical calculations of the energy levels of a hydrogen atom.
We finally have an understanding of how Mars transformed from a once habitable, Earth-like planet, into the dry world we see today. NASA researchers have just announced that Mars' once rich atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds in the early days of the Solar System, causing the planet to dry out.
Parallel processing in computing --- Brainet
The team sent electrical pulses to all four rats and rewarded them when they synchronised their brain activity. After 10 training sessions, the rats were able to do this 61 per cent of the time. This synchronous brain activity can be put to work as a computer to perform tasks like information storage and pattern recognition, says Nicolelis. "We send a message to the brains, the brains incorporate that message, and we can retrieve the message later," he says.
Dividing the computing of a task between multiple brains is similar to sharing computations between multiple processors in modern computers,
"If you could collaboratively solve common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal."
Few news events can unleash more schadenfreude within the security community than watching a notorious firm of hackers-for-hire become a hack target themselves. In the case of the freshly disemboweled Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team, the company may also serve as a dark example of a global surveillance industry that often sells to any government willing to pay, with little regard for that regime's human rights record.
Scroll down for the commercial. :))
Funny that when I keep complaining about privacy and monitoring, people still point and laugh.
"The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet's interaction with its own ripples, which form what's known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles - including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured."
Pilot-wave theory reresurrected. Maybe something for the next "fundamental" :P physics RF?
With the aid of short infrared laser pulses, researchers have succeeded for the first time in making a ceramic superconducting at room temperature - albeit for only a few millionths of a microsecond.
Plastic may be with us a lot longer than we thought. In addition to clogging up landfills and becoming trapped in Arctic ice, some of it is turning into stone. Scientists say a new type of rock cobbled together from plastic, volcanic rock, beach sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii.
The Anthropocene might just be on its way
Some bacteria can influence the weather. Up high in the sky where clouds form, water droplets condense and ice crystal grow around tiny particles. Typically these particles are dust, pollen, or even soot from a wildfire. But recently scientists have begun to realize that some of these little particles are alive - they are bacteria evolved to create ice or water droplets around themselves.
old but might be worth a discussion