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Meet Salto-1P

almost cute!

Prediction-based method for encouraging reinforcement learning agents to explore their environments through curiosity (reward for unfamiliar states). Learns some games without any extrinsic reward!

Fun failure case: agent gets stuck in front of TV.

Not read this article but on a related note: Curiosity and various metrics for it have been explored for some time in robotics (outside of RL) as a framework for exploring (partially) unfamiliar environments. I came across some papers on this topic applied to UAVs when prep'ing for a PhD app. This one (http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~yogesh/publications/crv2014.pdf) comes to mind - which used a topic modelling approach.

I tried reading the abstract and my eyes glazed over at the buzzword density. Is this hot doo doo or a meaningful result?

wow, quantum, artificial life, biomimetic, quantum supremacy .... quantum machine learning, and quantum artificial intelligence and, wait for it ...... quantum complexity. All in one abstract is this the new champion?

I know you like these... [Edit] And by the way, this website contains also more practical stuff, like this

of course, "they" being Polish Wikipedia contributors who geo-tag like mad...

Have you had a look on Japan? It looks like they just geo-tagged all their train stations.

They are developing so-called "Avatar" technology which will allow people to control robots remotely, as in the movie "Avatar." With Avatar X, they hope to revolutionize space exploration, resource extraction, and other space-based activities. On the Avatar X website, it says, "AVATAR X aims to capitalize on the growing space-based economy by accelerating development of real-world Avatars that will enable humans to remotely build camps on the Moon, support long-term space missions and further explore space from afar."

first science results reported in Nature (as far as I know) from the Yutu-2 and Chang'e mission .... and they look very good!

Sure they are very useful! It will be even better if they manage to fIt the data to modeled circulation of the lunar magma ocean that was formed posterior to the "Theia" body collision wIth Earth. The collision was the cause of the magma ocean in the first place. The question now is how this circulation pattern of the lava-moon "froze" in time upon phase transItion to solid. Because, what crystallizes last in sequence, is more rich in "incompatible" wIth the crystal structure, elements, we might combine data+models to predict their location. Those incompatible tracers are mainly radioactively decaying elements that produce heat (google publications about lunar KREEP elements (potassium (K), rare earth elements(REE), and phosphorus(P)). By knowing where the KREEP is: - we know where to dig for them mining (if they are useful for something, eg. Phosphorus for plants to be grown on the Moon) - we avoid planning to build the future human colony on top of radioactives, of course. The hope is that the Moon, due to lack of plate tectonics, has preserved this "signature of the freezing sequence". Let's see.

thanks Nasia! very interesting comment

The race for the AI chips intensifies.

https://www.eetasia.com/news/article/18041006-ai-chip-market-competition-intensifies

Amazing engineering feat: 1 nm transistor. Besides we can argue Moore law is still OK, dennard scaling is gone and with it the performance boost, as alluded subtly. Link article: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/99.full

Cool hologram generating tabletop. Check the videos. Would be interesting if it could be scaled down..

"Publishing industry exerts too much influence over what scientists choose to study, which is ultimately bad for science itself"

On a related topic - a nice read written in 1939 from Abraham Flexner the founder of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, home of some great minds on the "Usefulness of Useless Knowledge". Enjoy https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf

This article is fantastic - starts already well with : "r it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women-old and young-detach them-selves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation ofbeauty, to the exten-sion ofknowledge, to the cure ofdisease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?" Could almost be written now

A new class of exotic materials could find its way into next-generation technologies that efficiently convert waste heat into electrical current according to new research. Both the exotic materials and the means by which they generate electricity rely on a hybrid of advanced concepts-including string theory combined with black holes combined with cutting-edge condensed matter physics.

Sounds spooky

Some locations on Mars are known to have water ice just below the surface, but how much has remained unclear. Dundas et al. used data from two orbiting spacecraft to examine eight locations where erosion has occurred. This revealed cliffs composed mostly of water ice, which is slowly sublimating as it is exposed to the atmosphere. The ice sheets extend from just below the surface to a depth of 100 meters or more and appear to contain distinct layers, which could preserve a record of Mars' past climate. They might even be a useful source of water for future human exploration of the red planet.

A NASA study which is concerned with the question whether we could detect lost industrial civilizations on earth by analyzing the climate fingerprints.

Apparently Atlas became a ninja and I missed it: https://youtu.be/fRj34o4hN4I

he looks way more elegant than most humans when running :D

I'll try not to take that personally...

lol, while ESA is sending around memos and its managers are spending time talking about validation and verification of AI methods ... US / DARPA is already 5-6 years ahead. Hopefully the ACT can contribute to this with our DA based approach ....

your call

Einstein's theory of gravity, General Relativity (GR), has been tested precisely within the Solar System. However, it has been difficult to test GR on the scale of an individual galaxy. Collett et al. exploited a nearby gravitational lens system, in which light from a distant galaxy (the source) is bent by a foreground galaxy (the lens). Mass distribution in the lens was compared with the curvature of space-time around the lens, independently determined from the distorted image of the source. The result supports GR and eliminates some alternative theories of gravity.

Blockchains, now with more buzzwords!

Time travel! Finally. Can we also use it for antigravity?

MEGA CONSTELLATION and AI ... China again :)

and we did not even propose it ...

Another entry by the Planetary Society for the Apollo 11 50th anniversary, this time a podcast series on its political background.

Is this for real ?

Very interesting, indeed! I wonder if it even can be beefed up. The devices produce a sustained voltage of around 0.5 volts across a 7-micrometre-thick film, with a current density of around 17 microamperes per square centimetre

You were a bit faster than me! On top is the corresponding paper.