Another Side Of BelizeLook Beyond The Beaches To The Cayo District – Video

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Another Side Of BelizeLook Beyond The Beaches To The Cayo District
http://internationalliving.com/countries/belize/ Jason Holland, International Living correspondent, offers a narrated video tour of Belize #39;s pastoral Cayo District, and its main town, San Ignacio....

By: International Living

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Another Side Of BelizeLook Beyond The Beaches To The Cayo District - Video

Drones set to revolutionise surf lifesaving

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Drones set to revolutionise surf lifesaving

The way Australia rescues stranded swimmers off beaches is about to change.

Two Wollongong University students have won an innovation award for coming up with a drone that will bring help to a distressed swimmer very fast.

Nicolas Roach and Leo Stevens have developed a drone which carries a floating device above the sea using magnets, which is then released via a remote control to a swimmer in distress.

[In] rough conditions where it is very difficult for a very strong swimmer to make [their] way out through the surf. Having this to be able to fly over and deliver the tube straight away gives you the time to perform the rescue as you want.

Professor Geoffery Spinks said the drone is a brilliant invention bringing technologies together to potentially to save lives.

The beach patrolling drone was awarded top prize at the Australian Institute of Innovation at Wollongong University Campus and has already caught the attention of Surf Lifesaving Australia.

The boys are hoping this state of the art drone will be dropping life saving floatation devices on Australian beaches this summer.

If it gets there on the coming months ,that would be fantastic, but certainly sometime in the future these drone technologies will make their way into every day life.

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Drones set to revolutionise surf lifesaving

Astronomy – Ch. 2: Understanding the Night Sky (6 of 20) Motion of Stars, Earth, Sun, Moon – Video

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Astronomy - Ch. 2: Understanding the Night Sky (6 of 20) Motion of Stars, Earth, Sun, Moon
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will discuss the motions that hinder our abilities to find objects in the...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy - Ch. 2: Understanding the Night Sky (6 of 20) Motion of Stars, Earth, Sun, Moon - Video

Highlights of the Night Sky – September 2014 | Astronomy Space Science Video – Video

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Highlights of the Night Sky - September 2014 | Astronomy Space Science Video
More space news and info at: http://www.coconutsciencelab.com - what to look for in the night sky during September 2014. Please rate and comment, thanks! Credits: STScI.

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Highlights of the Night Sky - September 2014 | Astronomy Space Science Video - Video

Nearby Star 'Alpha Centauri A' May Harbor Rocky Planets; 'Find' Heralds Planet-Hunting Shortcut

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NASAs Kepler mission may have made planet-hunting seem easy, but the hard truth is that most of the time looking for planets around other sun-like stars is painstakingly slow. And most of the extrasolar planetary search grunt work is still done on the ground using tried and true methods first put into place some two decades ago.

Enter Ivan Ramirez, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues, using the Magellan Clay Telescope in Chile, have taken high-resolution stellar spectra from 88 solar twins that lie within 326 light years of Earth. The hope is that they can prove their hypothesis that these spectra contain signatures of depleted metals caused by the presence of rocky planets. In fact, Ramirez says

In a forthcoming paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics, lead author Ramirez and colleagues note that their idea is that they would actually see less metals in a star that has planets. Ramirez notes that our own Sun has a slightly lower metallicity which Ramirez ascribes to a depletion of certain elements that like to stick together to form rocks.

This artistic image depicts the view from a hypothetical planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B is clearly seen in the background, as the dimmer star. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Thats how this work started, said Ramirez. We saw this effect first in the Sun and we are extending it to these solar twin stars. Our idea is that these missing rocky elements are in the planets.

Today, says Ramirez, its only possible to measure chemical composition with that kind of precision for stellar solar twins that are roughly the same age, mass and chemical makeup of our sun.

So, instead of calculating how many atoms of titanium are in the target star, said Ramirez, we only care about how much more or less there is compared to the Sun. We look for a depletion of rocky elements relative to non-rocky elements.

Which elements would be missing?

Elements that cover a range of the condensation sequence, said Ramirez, who explains thats the temperature at which such elements change their phase from gas to rock. For example, Ramirez says our own Sun is depleted in specific elements that indicate that we have a planetary system; such as barium, aluminum, iron, magnesium, titanium, chromium, silicon, and yttrium.

The team is still in the process of proving the hypothesis, but has found that five or six stars in the current survey have chemical depletions which could signal planetary systems.

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Nearby Star 'Alpha Centauri A' May Harbor Rocky Planets; 'Find' Heralds Planet-Hunting Shortcut

Robots as teachers: school in Abu Dhabi leads with effective artificial intelligence for teaching – Video

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Robots as teachers: school in Abu Dhabi leads with effective artificial intelligence for teaching
Robots as teachers: school in Abu Dhabi leads with effective artificial intelligence for teaching.

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Robots as teachers: school in Abu Dhabi leads with effective artificial intelligence for teaching - Video

Bankers beware: City 'will soon be run by robots'

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I believe in Moravecs Paradox, Mr Coplin, Microsofts UK-based chief envisioning officer, told The Telegraph, referring to the Eighties hypothesis discovered by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers. This states that what we think is easy, robots find really hard, and what we think it really hard, robots find easy, he said. Complex maths equations are hard for humans but take nanoseconds for a computer, but moving around and picking things up is easy for us, while being almost impossible for a robot.

Algorithms are already commonplace on City trading floors, and are used in many industries, from online retail to internet dating. High-frequency trading, governed by algorithms, is already one of the most profitable trading classes. But, according to Mr Coplin, in 10 years people will no longer be required to manage these algorithms. Decisions will be taken directly by the artificial intelligence.

Everyone thinks of Terminator and Skynet [the computer that becomes self-aware and attempts to destroy mankind in James Camerons 1984 film] when I start talking about this, but technology affords us a tremendous opportunity to play to our strengths as humans, and stand on the shoulders of robotic giants, said Mr Coplin.

Microsoft has tasked Mr Coplin with exploring the new trends that will shape the world of work in the coming years.

I am hunting for the game-changers of the next 10 years, he said.

Mr Coplin believes that the rise of big data and innovations in the field of ambient intelligence smart technology that responds to the presence of people are going to bring about radical changes in the workplace.

I call my mobile a smartphone but even though it has information about where I am and who I speak to, it doesnt do anything with that information. It doesnt deliver a service.

In the future, ambient intelligence will allow devices to anticipate your needs and respond in real time. Your phone will send automated email responses based on keywords and contributing factors such as location, time of day, and calendar entries. Business processes will be increasingly automated, freeing up humans to do more useful things, Mr Coplin said.

Big data is not a new concept but technologists are increasingly interested in finding new ways that these mountains of data can be read and interpreted.

Microsoft is an active participant in this field of research. It recently trialled a new feature for Skype, its voice over IP service, which allows users to select a language and translates their speech in real-time.

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Bankers beware: City 'will soon be run by robots'