WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERS RESTRICTING CHINESE RESEARCHERS OVER ESPIONAGE FEARS
The White House is discussing whether to limit the access of Chinese citizens to the United States, including restricting certain types of visas available to them and greatly expanding rules pertaining to Chinese researchers who work on projects with military or intelligence value at American companies and universities. The exact types of projects that would be subject to restrictions are unclear, but the measures could clamp down on collaboration in advanced materials, software and other technologies at the heart of Beijing’s plan to dominate cutting-edge technologies like advanced microchips, artificial intelligence and electric cars, known as Made in China 2025.
Read moreA RADICALLY CONSERVATIVE SOLUTION FOR COSMOLOGY’S BIGGEST MYSTERY
The conflicting measurements have vexed astrophysicists and inspired rampant speculation as to whether unknown physical processes might be causing the discrepancy. Maybe dark matter particles are interacting strongly with the regular matter of planets, stars and galaxies? Or perhaps an exotic particle not yet detected, such as the so-called sterile neutrino, might be playing a role. The possibilities are as boundless as the imaginations of theoretical physicists.
Read moreEARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD MAY NOT BE FLIPPING
Going back millions of years into Earth’s history, our planet’s magnetic field has frequently gone its own way. The magnetic north pole has not only wandered through the north, but it has changed places with the south magnetic pole, taking up residence in the Antarctic. Going back millions of years, there’s a regular pattern of pole exchange, with flips sometimes occurring in relatively rapid succession.
Read moreFINDING THE LONGEST STRAIGHT LINE YOU COULD SAIL WITHOUT HITTING LAND
Back in 2012, a curious debate emerged on the discussion website Reddit, specifically on a subreddit called /r/MapPorn. Here the user Kepleronlyknows posted a map of the world purporting to show the longest navigable straight-line path over water without hitting land. The route began in Pakistan and followed a great circle under Africa and South America until it hit eastern Russia.
Read morePARTICLE PHYSICS RESURRECTS ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL’S VOICE
In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell decided to go head-to-head with Thomas Edison. His goal: improving—and commercializing—the phonograph. Bell established the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., using prize money he’d received from the French government for his invention of the telephone. He hired his cousin, chemist Chichester Bell, and instrument maker Charles Sumner Tainter. Collectively known as the Volta Laboratory Associates, the three men spent the next five years researching the transmission and recording of sound.
Read moreDISNEY UNVEILS A PROTOTYPE VIRTUAL-REALITY JACKET
This special jacket is being developed by researchers at Disney to help take the VR experience to another level at a time when the adoption rate has been slow. Connected to computer software that controls a series of inflatable compartments, the jacket can reproduce a variety of sensations, adding new kinds of perception and depth to VR. In collaboration with researchers at MIT Media Lab and Carnegie Mellon University, Disney hopes the jacket can augment VR experiences typically limited to visual displays seen through a headset and simple hand vibrations felt through joysticks.
Read moreVOLKSWAGEN AND DIDI CHUXING HAVE TEAMED UP ON A NEW SELF-DRIVING VENTURE
By sharing data and technology, the two companies hope to produce autonomous cars. Although this is a lofty goal, Volkswagen has deep pockets. The world’s biggest automaker has 15 billion euros ($18.2 billion) dedicated for investments in ride-hailing, autonomous driving, digitalization, electric mobility, and other services in China by 2022. Source: fortune.com
WHY THE UTOPIAN VISION OF WILLIAM MORRIS IS NOW WITHIN REACH
Morris’s utopian society has no government nor a monetary system. Craftwork has made ‘wage slavery’ obsolete, and parliamentary democracy has given way to new forms of cooperation. The means of production are democratically controlled, and people find pleasure in sharing their interests, goals and resources. The central character and narrator, William Guest, finds himself in conversation with a young girl, a citizen of Morris’s utopian society:
Read moreCIVILIZATION IS BUILT ON CODE
The word “code” derives from the Latin codex, meaning “a system of laws.” Today “code” is used in various distinct contexts—computer code, genetic code, cryptologic code (such as Morse code), ethical code, building code, and so forth—each of which has a common feature: They all contain instructions that describe a process. Computer code requires the action of a compiler, energy, and (usually) inputs in order to become a useful program.
Read moreNETCHAIN: SCALE-FREE SUB-RTT COORDINATION
NetChain won a best paper award at NSDI 2018 earlier this month. By thinking outside of the box (in this case, the box is the chassis containing the server), Jin et al. have demonstrated how to build a coordination service (think Apache ZooKeeper) with incredibly low latency and high throughput. We’re talking 9.7 microseconds for both reads and writes, with scalability on the order of tens of billions of operations per second. Similarly to KV-Direct that we looked at last year, NetChain achieves this stunning performance by moving the system implementation into the network. Whereas KV-Direct used programmable NICs though, NetChain takes advantage of programmable switches, and can be incrementally deployed in existing datacenters.
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