"Hinton's new approach, known as capsule networks, is a twist on neural networks intended to make machines better able to understand the world through images or video. In one of the papers posted last week, Hinton's capsule networks matched the accuracy of the best previous techniques on a standard test of how well software can learn to recognize handwritten digits."
Links to papers:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09829https://openreview.net/forum?id=HJWLfGWRb¬eId=HJWLfGWRb
seems a very impressive guy :"Hinton formed his intuition that vision systems need such an inbuilt sense of geometry in 1979, when he was trying to figure out how humans use mental imagery. He first laid out a preliminary design for capsule networks in 2011. The fuller picture released last week was long anticipated by researchers in the field. "Everyone has been waiting for it and looking for the next great leap from Geoff," says Kyunghyun Cho, a professor"
At SRI International in Silicon Valley, researchers have developed perhaps the most impressive microbot army yet: the MicroFactory. It's an ant colony made robotic, with half-millimeter machines zipping around to construct truly impressive structures.
Loss of connectivity in the multisensory integration cortical areas after short term microgravity experience, which could explain astronauts decrease of performance in sensorimotor tasks and spatial working memory. However, the effect should wear off after a few days in microgravity and after adaptation to incongruent vestibular information. ISS experiment needed...
A new idea called the "information bottleneck" is helping to explain the puzzling success of today's artificial-intelligence algorithms - and might also explain how human brains learn.
A tiny self-organized mesh full of artificial synapses recalls its experiences and can solve simple problems. Its inventors hope it points the way to devices that match the brain's energy-efficient computing prowess.
One overview about a recent publication (10/06/2014 http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.236802) showing room temperature operation of a new type of laser 'discovered' in 2013, the polariton laser.
This new type of laser shows extremely low threshold current density - 2 orders of magnitude below Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSEL) - and it is believed to become one important component of nanophotonic integrated components.
"...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
Making a jumping spider eye with nanophotonics and computer vision: depth from defocus with an integrated mentalens sensor!
Some in the ACT might be familiar with the concept...