Monthly Archives: January 2014

NORTHERN BEACHES – "Someday I Won’t Be Doing This" from BAST007: "Music for Dying in Bars" – Video

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NORTHERN BEACHES - "Someday I Won #39;t Be Doing This" from BAST007: "Music for Dying in Bars"
Track 7 from Northern Beaches #39; 2013 LP on Bastion Recordings. A desperate expression of modern humanity that smashes N.B. #39;s dub influences straight into thei...

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NORTHERN BEACHES - "Someday I Won't Be Doing This" from BAST007: "Music for Dying in Bars" - Video

UConn physics department hosts cosmic colloquium

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Published:Sunday, January 26, 2014

Updated:Sunday, January 26, 2014 23:01

JON KULAKOFSKY/The Daily Campus

Harvard professor Julia Lee addresses colloquium participants at the University of Connecticut on Friday. The topic of the colloquium was Experimental Astrophysics: From Black Hole Winds to Cosmic Dust.

In a spirited talk on Friday Jan. 24, professor Julia Lee, CFA, from Harvard University, gave a rundown of new exciting possibilities coming from the studies of cosmic dust and the answers they provide about the ways the universe works in her lecture Experimental Astrophysics: From Black Hole Winds to Cosmic Dust.

Black holes, the physicists beautiful nightmare, are enigmas not only because of their distance, but because their very natures make it impossible to study them directly. She said during her visit that to retrieve any information back from the edge of a gravity field that can consume even light is no small feat. However, new breakthroughs in X-ray spectroscopy have made it possible for new, cutting-edge research of astronomical significance.

She spoke of the near and long-term dusty future to be explored, closing with the statement that there is a lot of work to be done in the lab in order to further our understanding of interstellar space, black holes, and cosmic dust. She said she has helped to solve a 90-year-old mystery surrounding interstellar bands, and has been able to provide much cosmically interesting information.

When asked how she became involved at UConn, Lee said she knows a few UConn faculty members. She lauded UConns experimental expertise, particularly in reference to its laser facilities, and says she is open to prospects of future collaboration with the school.

Lee also expressed her excitement in anticipation of the Astro-H launch, from which there will be opportunity for much data gathering.

Astro-H is an orbiting observatory in development in Japan, to be launched in 2015. It will be equipped with a Soft X-ray Spectrometer, or SXS, an unparalleled, highly sensitive X-ray spectroscopic system, which was developed in part by NASA.

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UConn physics department hosts cosmic colloquium

Google acquires artificial intelligence company DeepMind

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Google has acquired DeepMind Technologies, an artificial intelligence company in London, reportedly for US$400 million.

A Google representative confirmed the deal Sunday via email, but said the companys isnt providing any additional information at this time.

News website Re/code said in a report on Sunday that Google was paying $400 million for the company, founded by games prodigy and neuroscientist Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.

The company claims on its website that it combines the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms. It said its first commercial applications are in simulations, e-commerce and games.

Google announced this month it was paying $3.2 billion in cash to acquire Nest, a maker of smart smoke alarms and thermostats, in what is seen as a bid to expand into the connected home market. It also acquired in January a security firm called Impermium, to boost its expertise in countering spam and abuse.

The Internet giant said on a research site that much of its work on language, speech, translation, and visual processing relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence. In all of those tasks and many others, we gather large volumes of direct or indirect evidence of relationships of interest, and we apply learning algorithms to generalize from that evidence to new cases of interest, it said.

In May, Google launched a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, hosted by NASAs Ames Research Center. The Universities Space Research Association was to invite researchers around the world to share time on the quantum computer from D-Wave Systems, to study how quantum computing can advance machine learning.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. More by John Ribeiro

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Google acquires artificial intelligence company DeepMind

Google buys British artificial intelligence firm DeepMind

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Technology news website Re/code, which first reported the deal, said the price was $400 million (242m), which would make it Google's largest European acquisition so far. Other reports suggest the acquisition price was closer to $500 million.

The company uses general-purpose learning algorithms for applications such as simulations, e-commerce and games, according to its website.

Major venture capitalist firms Horizons Ventures and Founders Fund are invested in the company. Skype and Kazaa developer Jaan Tallinn was also an early investor and an advisor to the company.

Google, which is working on projects including self-driving cars and robots, has become increasingly focused on artificial intelligence in recent years.

In 2012, the internet giant hired Ray Kurzweil, considered one of the leading minds in the field, and in May it announced a partnership with NASA and several universities to launch the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab.

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Google buys British artificial intelligence firm DeepMind