CHINA IS BUILDING A RAIN-MAKING SYSTEM THREE TIMES AS BIG AS SPAIN
China is testing cutting-edge defence technology to develop a powerful yet relatively low-cost weather modification system to bring substantially more rain to the Tibetan plateau, Asia’s biggest freshwater reserve. Source: scmp.com
GALAXY SEEMS TO LACK DARK MATTER, STUMPING ASTRONOMERS
Dark matter and galaxies normally go hand in hand. Dark matter seems to be needed to draw in sufficient material to form the galaxy and its stars, and halos of dark matter keep galaxies from spinning apart as they rotate. So scientists were more than a bit surprised to find a galaxy that has little to no dark matter at all. Confusing things further, the galaxy appears extremely similar to others that are nearly entirely composed of dark matter.
Read moreASTRONOMERS CAN’T EXPLAIN WHY THIS NEW GALAXY HAS HARDLY ANY DARK MATTER
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Cosmologists haven’t directly observed the stuff, but based on measurements of baryonic matter—the type we can see—it is thought that about 27 percent of the universe is made up of dark matter. Source: vice.com
FCC SAYS IT WILL BLOCK CHINESE TECHNOLOGY TO PROTECT NATIONAL SECURITY
Chinese technology vendors Huawei and ZTE could soon be prevented from selling products to US companies and organizations that receive broadband funding from the Federal Communications Commission. Source: arstechnica.com
THESE GEOMETRIC SHAPES WERE MADE BY A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN CIVILIZATION
Now, a team of archaeologists and satellite imagery specialists have discovered the remains of a previously unknown civilization that flourished around 1250 to 1500 AD, just before the European colonization of the Americas. The find, which includes captivating images of geometric earthworks, is described in a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications, led by University of Exeter archaeologist Jonas Gregorio de Souza.
Read moreARIZONA GOVERNOR AND UBER KEPT SELF-DRIVING PROGRAM SECRET, EMAILS REVEAL
Arizona’s Republican governor repeatedly encouraged Uber’s controversial experiment with autonomous cars in the state, enabling a secret testing program for self-driving vehicles with limited oversight from experts, according to hundreds of emails obtained by the Guardian. Source: theguardian.com
THE INTERSTITIUM, THE LARGEST ORGAN WE NEVER KNEW WE HAD
The new organ, he explained, was a thin layer of dense connective tissue throughout the body, sandwiched just under our skin and within the middle layer of every visceral organ. The organ also made up all the fascia, or the thin mesh of tissue separating every muscle and all the tissue around every vein and artery, from largest to smallest. What initially seemed to be a solid, dense, connective tissue layer was actually a complex network of fluid-filled cavities that are strong and flexible, yet so tiny and undiscerning that they escaped the attention of the brightest scientific minds for generations.
Read moreBAIDU SHOWS OFF ITS INSTANT POCKET TRANSLATOR
The Chinese Internet giant has made significant strides improving machine language translation since 2015, using an advanced form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, said Hua Wu, the company’s chief scientist focused on natural-language processing. On stage, the Internet-connected device was able to almost instantly translate a short conversation between Wu and senior editor Will Knight. It easily rendered Knight’s questions including ’Where can I buy this device?’
Read moreEXPRESSIVE SPEECH SYNTHESIS WITH TACOTRON
At Google, we’re excited about the recent rapid progress of neural network-based text-to-speech (TTS) research. In particular, end-to-end architectures, such as the Tacotron systems we announced last year, can both simplify voice building pipelines and produce natural-sounding speech. This will help us build better human-computer interfaces, like conversational assistants, audiobook narration, news readers, or voice design software. To deliver a truly human-like voice, however, a TTS system must learn to model prosody, the collection of expressive factors of speech, such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Most current end-to-end systems, including Tacotron, don’t explicitly model prosody, meaning they can’t control exactly how the generated speech should sound. This may lead to monotonous-sounding speech, even when models are trained on very expressive datasets like audiobooks, which often contain character voices with significant variation.
Read moreCHINA WILL PUBLICLY SHAME JAYWALKERS USING FACIAL-RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY
The AI company behind the billboards, Intellifusion, is in talks with mobile phone networks and local social media platforms to enforce the new system. Source: co.uk