Saturday 18 May 2019

Making the best of sparse information

New findings reported by LMU researchers challenge a generally accepted model of echolocation in bats. They demonstrate that bats require far less spatial information than previously thought to navigate effectively.

* This article was originally published here

Dirty data: Firms count environmental costs of digital planet

Technology is often touted as a solution to the world's environmental challenges, but it is also part of the problem: industry executives are facing rising pressure to clean up their energy and resource-intensive business.

* This article was originally published here

Experimental brain-controlled hearing aid decodes, identifies who you want to hear

Our brains have a remarkable knack for picking out individual voices in a noisy environment, like a crowded coffee shop or a busy city street. This is something that even the most advanced hearing aids struggle to do. But now Columbia engineers are announcing an experimental technology that mimics the brain's natural aptitude for detecting and amplifying any one voice from many. Powered by artificial intelligence, this brain-controlled hearing aid acts as an automatic filter, monitoring wearers' brain waves and boosting the voice they want to focus on.

* This article was originally published here

Eyes in the sky project will show power plant pollution marks

Air pollution is responsible for millions of deaths every year, worldwide. According to a State of Global Air report, air pollution is the fifth greatest global mortality risk.

* This article was originally published here

Tester eyes unhackable claim on USB flash drive

When the unhackable turns hackable you know there will be lots of noise. Case in point: The eyeDisk USB flash drive. Passwords exposed in clear text were discovered.

* This article was originally published here

New machine learning algorithm can predict age and gender from just your Twitter profile

A new "demographic inference" tool developed by academics can make predictions based solely on the information in a person's social media profile (i.e. screen name, biography, profile photo, and name). The tool—which works in 32 languages—could pave the way for views expressed on social media to be factored in to popular survey methods.

* This article was originally published here

Button batteries can rapidly damage stomach lining before symptoms appear

Damage to the lining of the stomach can occur quickly when children swallow button batteries; therefore, clinicians should consider prompt endoscopic removal, even when the child is symptom free and the battery has passed safely through the narrow esophagus, according to research presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2019. The recommendations represent a change from current practice of watching and waiting.

* This article was originally published here

Quinn on Nutrition: Carbs—how low can we go?

"Fruit has carbs? I had no idea," a stunned patient told me recently.

* This article was originally published here

Study aims to improve capturing wind power for energy production

Scientists have released the first of several reports outlining major results that could help wind industry officials manage wind power facilities more efficiently and increase renewable energy production.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook breakup could boost China rivals: Sandberg

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said Friday a breakup of big US technology would not address "underlying issues" facing the sector and suggested that such a move could help rivals in China.

* This article was originally published here

Augmented reality affects people's behavior in the real world

As major technology firms race to roll out augmented reality products, Stanford researchers are learning how it affects people's behavior – in both the physical world and a digitally enhanced one.

* This article was originally published here

FDA approves venetoclax for chronic, small lymphocytic leukemia

(HealthDay)—Venetoclax (VENCLEXTA) has been approved to treat adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday.

* This article was originally published here

New AI sees like a human, filling in the blanks

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions. The team, led by professor Kristen Grauman, Ph.D. candidate Santhosh Ramakrishnan and former Ph.D. candidate Dinesh Jayaraman (now at the University of California, Berkeley) published their results today in the journal Science Robotics.

* This article was originally published here

HP Enterprise buying supercomputer star Cray

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on Friday announced a $1.3 billion deal to buy supercomputer maker Cray, part of a move to expand into data analysis from connected devices .

* This article was originally published here

Researchers imagine a cheaper, fairer marketplace for digital goods

E-commerce is sizzling. Last year, consumers spent more than $517 billion online with US merchants, up 15 percent from the year before, according to Internet Retailer.

* This article was originally published here

Sedimentary, dear Johnson: Is NASA looking at the wrong rocks for clues to Martian life?

In 2020, NASA and European-Russian missions will look for evidence of past life on Mars. But while volcanic, igneous rock predominates on the Red Planet, virtually the entire Earth fossil record comes from sedimentary rocks.

* This article was originally published here

Framework improves 'continual learning' for artificial intelligence

Researchers have developed a new framework for deep neural networks that allows artificial intelligence (AI) systems to better learn new tasks while "forgetting" less of what it has learned regarding previous tasks. The researchers have also demonstrated that using the framework to learn a new task can make the AI better at performing previous tasks, a phenomenon called backward transfer.

* This article was originally published here