Help find exoplanets with EVE Online – Astronomy Magazine

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There have been plenty of opportunities for citizen scientists to join in the search for exoplanets, but this new opportunity makes a fun game out of it. Literally.

EVE Online is a space-based multiplayer online role-playing game set far into the future. In the game, players can visit any of the 7,800 star systems and take up any profession to mine for resources and survive in these systems.

Now the interactive game has become more helpful for actual scientific research. The company, in collaboration with the University of Geneva, has launched a minigame called Project Discovery, where players can help find exoplanets using real data from the CoRoT telescope. If something interesting comes up while the player is playing the game, they can submit the information to the university so scientists can follow up on it.

In addition to contributing to science, players will also receive higher ranks and rewards in the game for their efforts. If you want to join in on the search for exoplanets while playing EVE, all you need to do is create an account and get started.

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Help find exoplanets with EVE Online - Astronomy Magazine

Ghana, SKA South Africa partner to harness radio astronomy – BizNis Africa

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The Ghanaian and South African governments on 13 July 2017, announced the combination of first light science observations, which confirm the successful conversion of the Ghana communications antenna from a redundant telecoms instrument into a functioning Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) radio telescope.

Ghana is the first partner country of the African Very Large Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) Network (AVN) to complete the conversion of a communications antenna into a functioning radio telescope.

The 32 metre converted telecommunications antenna at the Ghana Intelsat Satellite Earth Station in Kutunse will be integrated into the African VLBI Network (AVN) in preparation for the second phase construction of the SKA across the African continent.

The combination first light science observations included Methanol Maser detections, VLBI fringe testing and Pulsar observations.

Reaching these three objectives confirms that the instrument can operate as a single dish radio telescope and also as part of global VLBI network observations, such as the European VLBI network.

Following the initial first light observations, the research teams from Ghana and South Africa, together with other international research partners, continue to do more observations and are analysing the data generated, with the aim of characterising the system and improving its accuracy for future experiments.

The Ghanaian government warmly embraces the prospect of radio astronomy in the country and our radio astronomy development plan forms part of the broader Ghana Science, Technology and Innovation Development Plan, said Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, the Ghanaian Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI).

As a SKA Africa partner country, Ghana is collaborating with the SKA South Africa (SKA SA)/HartRAO (Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomical Observatory) group to harness the radio astronomy potential of the redundant satellite communication antenna in Kutunse.

A team of scientists and engineers from SKA SA/HartRAO and the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI), which is under MESTI, has been working since 2011 on the astronomy instrument upgrade to make it radio astronomy ready.

Growing Africas science skills base

In 2012, Ghana launched the GSSTI as the vehicle through which to grow its astrophysics programme.

The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has been funding a large part of the conversion project through the African Renaissance and International Cooperation Fund (ARF).

The African Renaissance Fund is aimed at strengthening cooperation between South Africa and other African countries and to support the development of skills and build institutional capacity on the continent, said DIRCO Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

Nine African partner countries are members of the SKA AVN, including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.

A vital part of the effort towards building SKA on the African continent over the next decade is to develop the skills, regulations and institutional capacity needed in SKA partner countries to optimise African participation in the SKA, said Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor.

The AVN programme is aimed at transferring skills and knowledge in African partner countries to build, maintain, operate and use radio telescopes.

It will bring new science opportunities to Africa on a relatively short time scale and develop radio astronomy science communities in SKA partner countries, Minister Pandor said.

The Leverhulme-Royal Society Trust and Newton Fund in the UK are co-funding extensive human capital development programmes in the SKA AVN partner countries.

A seven-member Ghanaian team has undergone training in South Africa and has been trained in all aspects of the project, including the operation of the telescope.

Several PhD students and one MSc student from Ghana have received SKA SA bursaries to pursue further education in various fields of astronomy and engineering. The Royal Society has awarded funding, in collaboration with Leeds University, to train two PhDs and 60 young aspiring scientists in the field of astrophysics.

Based on the success of the Leverhulme-Royal Society programme, a joint UK-South Africa Newton Fund intervention [the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA)] has since been initiated in other partner countries to grow high technology skills that can lead to broader economic development in Africa.

A Ministerial Forum comprising Ministers from the nine SKA AVN partner countries convenes on an annual basis to provide strategic and political leadership on the cooperation with the SKA and AVN projects, and on other relevant radio astronomy programmes and initiatives.

The next SKA AVN Ministerial Forum will be held in Accra, Ghana, in August when the Kutunse radio telescope will officially be launched.

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Understanding the universe: Astrophysicist Dunkley shines through her research – Princeton University

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Jo Dunkley, a professor of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton, asks big questions about the universe and the fundamental laws that describe nature. Dunkley joined thefaculty in 2016, deepening research collaborations she already had developed with Princeton colleagues. Dunkley also is a mentor to women in science.Dunkley, who as of this spring has two young children,said she feels it is part of her job to "figure out how to have a family life, be a mother, and be a professor."

Photo by Richard W. Soden

Astrophysics inspires Princeton professor Jo Dunkley to ask questions about the universe and the fundamental laws that describe nature.

"I love that we can answer big questions about something so vast as the whole universe and actually use our scientific tools to answer them," she said.

A professor of physics and astrophysical sciences, Dunkley has always been fond of mathematics. She was first drawn to physics when she was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England. Although she conducted some astrophysics research her final year, she came out of her university experience thinking that she did not want to be a scientist. She considered working for a nongovernmental organization or the civil service.

"I had a thought that being a scientist meant sitting on your own in a room, doing something that might not be so fascinating," she said. "I got that wrong."

A year away from science made her realize how much she missed it. Not only did she want to use math again, she had gained a newfound appreciation for research as a means to serve the community. She decided to return to research and earned her doctorate in physics from the University of Oxford in 2005.

"What we're trying to do is to find these deep answers to questions we've been asking for millennia," she said. "It's no good finding these things out unless we can explain to everyone else what it is we've learned. I see it as enriching people's lives to know more about the world we live in."

Dunkley joined Princeton's faculty in fall 2016, after serving on the faculty at Oxford. Before coming to Princeton, she already had collaborated with Princeton researchers on multiple projects. From 2006 to 2008, she worked with professors David Spergel and Lyman Page while a postdoctoral fellow on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, a NASA mission to make cosmology measurements and study the properties of the universe.

Spergel, the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation and professor of astrophysical sciences, first encountered Dunkley when she was a promising graduate student at Oxford. He recruited her to Princeton, and was pleased to see her grow from a postdoctoral fellow to play a major leadership role in the WMAP project.

"At that stage, she was very quickly given significant responsibilities in the analysis and interpretation of the data, and made major contributions to the analysis that led to the development of what we now think of as the standard model of cosmology," Spergel said.

Soon after, Dunkley was asked to be part of the analysis team for the Planck satellite at the European Space Agency. "It was really a tribute to both Jo's scientific talents and ability to work in a big complex team that she was able to make contributions to both the leading NASA mission and then the leading European Space Agency mission," Spergel said.

At Princeton, Dunkley realized that she loved to work as part of a team, performing theoretical and data analysis work connected to experiments, and collaborating with people possessing a huge range of skills.

"As scientists, we can't just work by ourselves," she said.

On campus, Dunkley works on the theoretical interpretation of new observations, primarily using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope situated at 16,000 feet above sea level in a desert mountain range in Chile. Using sophisticated computer programs, Dunkley's group develops theories to describe the universe or particular properties of the universe.

"We have these telescopes that scan the sky, and we turn the data into maps of the sky and extract statistics about them that we can then compare to our theories," she explained.

The process of comparing the theories to what we really see has a lot of steps to it, she noted, from filtering for the correct signal to thinking of ways to tackle statistical data analysis problems. To match the theoretical model of the universe with experimental data, Dunkley must search through billions of models until she finds one that best fits the data by fine-tuning variables like how old the universe is, how much it weighs and how fast it is growing.

Dunkley looks as far back almost to when the universe was born and studies light that has been traveling since the beginning of time. This light is called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a signal that was produced soon after the Big Bang that has been traveling to us since the universe was just a few hundred thousand years old.

"As we look out into space, we look back in time," she said.

As space expands, the wavelength of light also grows on its journey to us, she explained. By measuring this effect, scientists can see the universe evolving and changing.

"We get to pull out all sorts of information like what the universe is made of, and we see the beginnings of all the things that we now find around us in space that are more familiar, like stars and galaxies. We're seeing their birth, or their initial formation, right at this earliest time," Dunkley said.

Another area Dunkley investigates is dark matter, an invisible substance that clumps together due to gravity and does not emit light. Although there is at least five times more of this dark matter than normal matter, dark matter still remains one of the big mysteries in cosmology research, Dunkley said.

A technique to analyze dark matter is called gravitational lensing, a phenomena of light bending around a mass when shone from behind.

"We're now starting to reveal where the dark matter is by using these backlights," Dunkley said.

Although exactly what makes up dark matter is not yet known, most researchers think it includes some type of particle that has not yet been discovered. Whatever dark matter is, it has definitely influenced what the universe looks like today, she said.

"If you took it away, we would have ended up with a universe that looks quite different from the one we've got," she said. "There is probably dark matter going through us all the time. It's here," she said.

Dunkley is also interested in neutrinos, which are small, invisible particles. She would like to find out how much of dark matter is made of these neutrinos.

The mass of neutrinos has not yet been measured, but by looking at how distant light bends around dark matter, it will be possible to figure out their mass, and what fraction of this invisible dark matter is made up of these particles, Dunkley said. Answering these questions is part of a 10-year goal in a new project called the Simons Observatory, supported by the Simons Foundation, for which Dunkley is leading the science committee.

The new Simons Observatory telescopes will be located near the existing Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile. "It's beautiful. It's desert-like and it feels a bit like you're on Mars or something. It just doesn't look like anything else," Dunkley said. The telescopes will be used to look at the Cosmic Microwave Background in order to understand how the universe began, what it is made of and how it has evolved.

Dunkley is one of two tenured female professors in the Department of Physics, along with Suzanne Staggs, the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics, who leads the Atacama Cosmology Telescope project.

"It is sometimes disheartening that there are so few of us [women] in this field, but I have always felt very positively supported in all the places I've worked," Dunkley said. Although most of her mentors and advisers throughout her career have been men, they were very encouraging, she said.

Nevertheless, Dunkley insists that more female role models are needed. "I think we're missing out on this huge number of great women who could be doing great physics who are just being lost out of the system," she said. "I think they are being put off quite early and are not continuing with science, and physics in particular. I think a lot of that is cultural, but I think that's something we can change."

One way to increase visibility is through the media, she said. "If someone invites you to go on TV or radio to talk about your work even for two minutes, you should do it. You get out there, you talk about your work, and you let people see you're real and that you're a real scientist."

Dunkley is writing an astronomy and cosmology book for the general public called "Our Universe," due out early next year. She hopes that young women will get excited about physics and space, and will be inspired.

"Jo is a real leader as a scientist," Spergel said. "She already mentors a number of outstanding young women, and I think she will play a big role in increasing the number of women in science," he said.

This past semester, Dunkley taught "General Physics II," a course geared toward engineering students. "It's fun for me to be teaching a big class of students who want to learn physics, but it's not the only thing they're doing and it's certainly not their only interest," she said.

In addition to her research and teaching responsibilities, Dunkley has two young children. "I feel like it's part of my job, to figure out how to have a family life, be a mother, and be a professor," she said.

"She's a fabulous scientist and a wonderful person, and were very lucky to have her at Princeton," said Page, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics. "Its not common when you have regardless of male or female an absolutely top-flight scientist who's also just so fun to work with. [She] adds a spark, a positivity to the department, and to our group here."

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Understanding the universe: Astrophysicist Dunkley shines through her research - Princeton University

Indian scientists discover ‘Saraswati’, a supercluster of galaxies – Hindustan Times

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Indian scientists have discovered Saraswati, a large supercluster of galaxies located in the direction of the constellation Pisces, and at a distance of 4,000 million (400 crore) light years away from Earth.

A team of astronomers from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, and members of two other Indian universities, have discovered this supercluster of galaxies.

Supercluster is a chain ofgalaxies and galaxy clusters, bound by gravity, often stretching to several hundred times the size ofclusters of galaxies, consisting of tens of thousands of galaxies. This newly-discovered Saraswatisupercluster, extends over a scale of 600 million light years and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns.

The discovery will be published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal, the premier research journal of the American Astronomical Society.

Joydeep Bagchi from IUCAA, the main author of the paper and co-author Shishir Sankhyayan (PhD scholar at IISER, Pune) said, We were very surprised to spot this giant wall-like supercluster of galaxies, visible in a large spectroscopic survey of distant galaxies, known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This supercluster is clearly embedded in a large network of cosmic filaments traced by clusters and large voids.

They stated that previously only a few comparatively large superclusters have been reported,for example the Shapley Concentration or the Sloan Great Wall in the nearby universe, while the Saraswati supercluster is far more distant one.

Our work will help to shed light on the perplexing question of how such extreme large-scale, prominent matter-density enhancements had formed billions of years in the past when the mysterious Dark Energy had just started to dominate structure formation, they added.

Officials also stated that to understand galaxy formation and evolution, one needs to identify these superclusters and closely study the effect of their environment on the galaxies. This is a new research area and the discovery will enhance this field of research.

They added that when astronomers look far away, they see the universe from long ago, since light takes a while to reach us. The Saraswati supercluster is observed as it was when the Universe was 10 billion years old.

Officials from IUCAA said the paper was special because it is a direct product of IUCAAs associateship programme. While two of the authors are faculty members of IUCAA namely Prof. Joydeep Bagchi and Prof. Somak Raychaudhury, Director IUCAA), the other authors are Shishir Sankhyayan - PhD student at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune and regular visiting student at IUCAA, Pratik Dabhade - Research Fellow at IUCAA, Joe Jacob - Department of Physics, Newman College, Thodupuzha, Kerala (IUCAA Associate) and Prakash Sarkar - Dept. of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur (ex-IUCAA Postdoctoral Fellow).

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Indian scientists discover 'Saraswati', a supercluster of galaxies - Hindustan Times

More ways to classify planets – The Economist

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More ways to classify planets - The Economist

What an artificial intelligence researcher fears about AI – San Francisco Chronicle

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(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Arend Hintze, Michigan State University

(THE CONVERSATION) As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. Its perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, Matrix-like, as some sort of human battery.

And yet it is hard for me to look up from the evolutionary computer models I use to develop AI, to think about how the innocent virtual creatures on my screen might become the monsters of the future. Might I become the destroyer of worlds, as Oppenheimer lamented after spearheading the construction of the first nuclear bomb?

I would take the fame, I suppose, but perhaps the critics are right. Maybe I shouldnt avoid asking: As an AI expert, what do I fear about artificial intelligence?

The HAL 9000 computer, dreamed up by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and brought to life by movie director Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a good example of a system that fails because of unintended consequences. In many complex systems the RMS Titanic, NASAs space shuttle, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant engineers layer many different components together. The designers may have known well how each element worked individually, but didnt know enough about how they all worked together.

That resulted in systems that could never be completely understood, and could fail in unpredictable ways. In each disaster sinking a ship, blowing up two shuttles and spreading radioactive contamination across Europe and Asia a set of relatively small failures combined together to create a catastrophe.

I can see how we could fall into the same trap in AI research. We look at the latest research from cognitive science, translate that into an algorithm and add it to an existing system. We try to engineer AI without understanding intelligence or cognition first.

Systems like IBMs Watson and Googles Alpha equip artificial neural networks with enormous computing power, and accomplish impressive feats. But if these machines make mistakes, they lose on Jeopardy! or dont defeat a Go master. These are not world-changing consequences; indeed, the worst that might happen to a regular person as a result is losing some money betting on their success.

But as AI designs get even more complex and computer processors even faster, their skills will improve. That will lead us to give them more responsibility, even as the risk of unintended consequences rises. We know that to err is human, so it is likely impossible for us to create a truly safe system.

Im not very concerned about unintended consequences in the types of AI I am developing, using an approach called neuroevolution. I create virtual environments and evolve digital creatures and their brains to solve increasingly complex tasks. The creatures performance is evaluated; those that perform the best are selected to reproduce, making the next generation. Over many generations these machine-creatures evolve cognitive abilities.

Right now we are taking baby steps to evolve machines that can do simple navigation tasks, make simple decisions, or remember a couple of bits. But soon we will evolve machines that can execute more complex tasks and have much better general intelligence. Ultimately we hope to create human-level intelligence.

Along the way, we will find and eliminate errors and problems through the process of evolution. With each generation, the machines get better at handling the errors that occurred in previous generations. That increases the chances that well find unintended consequences in simulation, which can be eliminated before they ever enter the real world.

Another possibility thats farther down the line is using evolution to influence the ethics of artificial intelligence systems. Its likely that human ethics and morals, such as trustworthiness and altruism, are a result of our evolution and factor in its continuation. We could set up our virtual environments to give evolutionary advantages to machines that demonstrate kindness, honesty and empathy. This might be a way to ensure that we develop more obedient servants or trustworthy companions and fewer ruthless killer robots.

While neuroevolution might reduce the likelihood of unintended consequences, it doesnt prevent misuse. But that is a moral question, not a scientific one. As a scientist, I must follow my obligation to the truth, reporting what I find in my experiments, whether I like the results or not. My focus is not on determining whether I like or approve of something; it matters only that I can unveil it.

Being a scientist doesnt absolve me of my humanity, though. I must, at some level, reconnect with my hopes and fears. As a moral and political being, I have to consider the potential implications of my work and its potential effects on society.

As researchers, and as a society, we have not yet come up with a clear idea of what we want AI to do or become. In part, of course, this is because we dont yet know what its capable of. But we do need to decide what the desired outcome of advanced AI is.

One big area people are paying attention to is employment. Robots are already doing physical work like welding car parts together. One day soon they may also do cognitive tasks we once thought were uniquely human. Self-driving cars could replace taxi drivers; self-flying planes could replace pilots.

Instead of getting medical aid in an emergency room staffed by potentially overtired doctors, patients could get an examination and diagnosis from an expert system with instant access to all medical knowledge ever collected and get surgery performed by a tireless robot with a perfectly steady hand. Legal advice could come from an all-knowing legal database; investment advice could come from a market-prediction system.

Perhaps one day, all human jobs will be done by machines. Even my own job could be done faster, by a large number of machines tirelessly researching how to make even smarter machines.

In our current society, automation pushes people out of jobs, making the people who own the machines richer and everyone else poorer. That is not a scientific issue; it is a political and socioeconomic problem that we as a society must solve. My research will not change that, though my political self together with the rest of humanity may be able to create circumstances in which AI becomes broadly beneficial instead of increasing the discrepancy between the one percent and the rest of us.

There is one last fear, embodied by HAL 9000, the Terminator and any number of other fictional superintelligences: If AI keeps improving until it surpasses human intelligence, will a superintelligence system (or more than one of them) find it no longer needs humans? How will we justify our existence in the face of a superintelligence that can do things humans could never do? Can we avoid being wiped off the face of the Earth by machines we helped create?

The key question in this scenario is: Why should a superintelligence keep us around?

I would argue that I am a good person who might have even helped to bring about the superintelligence itself. I would appeal to the compassion and empathy that the superintelligence has to keep me, a compassionate and empathetic person, alive. I would also argue that diversity has a value all in itself, and that the universe is so ridiculously large that humankinds existence in it probably doesnt matter at all.

But I do not speak for all humankind, and I find it hard to make a compelling argument for all of us. When I take a sharp look at us all together, there is a lot wrong: We hate each other. We wage war on each other. We do not distribute food, knowledge or medical aid equally. We pollute the planet. There are many good things in the world, but all the bad weakens our argument for being allowed to exist.

Fortunately, we need not justify our existence quite yet. We have some time somewhere between 50 and 250 years, depending on how fast AI develops. As a species we can come together and come up with a good answer for why a superintelligence shouldnt just wipe us out. But that will be hard: Saying we embrace diversity and actually doing it are two different things as are saying we want to save the planet and successfully doing so.

We all, individually and as a society, need to prepare for that nightmare scenario, using the time we have left to demonstrate why our creations should let us continue to exist. Or we can decide to believe that it will never happen, and stop worrying altogether. But regardless of the physical threats superintelligences may present, they also pose a political and economic danger. If we dont find a way to distribute our wealth better, we will have fueled capitalism with artificial intelligence laborers serving only very few who possess all the means of production.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/what-an-artificial-intelligence-researcher-fears-about-ai-78655.

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What an artificial intelligence researcher fears about AI - San Francisco Chronicle

India’s Infosys eyes artificial intelligence profits – Phys.Org

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July 14, 2017

Indian IT giant Infosys said Friday that artificial intelligence was key to future profits as it bids to satisfy clients' demands for innovative new technologies.

India's multi-billion-dollar IT outsourcing sector has long been one of the country's flagship industries. But as robots and automation grow in popularity its companies are under pressure to reinvent themselves.

"We are revealing new growth with services that we (have been) focusing on for the past couple of years includingAI (artificial intelligence) and cloud computing," said Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka, announcing a small rise in quarterly profits.

"Going forward, we will count on strong growth coming from these services," added Sikka, who signalled his intent by arriving at the press conference in a driverless golf cart.

Infosys reported an increase of 1.4 percent in consolidated net profit year-on-year for the first quarter, marginally beating analysts' expectations.

Net profit in the three months to June 30 came in at 34.83 billion rupees (540 million), marginally above the 34.36 billion rupees it reported in the same period last year, Infosys said.

India's $150-billion IT sector is facing upheaval in the face of automation and US President Donald Trump's clampdown on visas, with reports of mass redundancies.

Industry body Nasscom recently called on companies to teach employees new skills after claims they had failed to keep up with new technologies.

In April Infosys launched a platform called Nia to "help clients embrace AI".

"Nia continues to be central to all our conversations with clients as we work with them to transform their businesses," the company said in its earnings statement Friday.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected profits of 34.3 billion rupees.

Infosys announced revenues of 170.78 billion rupees, marginally up from the 167.8 billion rupees reported for the same period last year.

Its shares rose nearly 3 percent in early trade after the company forecast revenue growth of between 6.5 to 8.5 percent for the current financial year.

Explore further: India's TCS profits fall by 6 percent

2017 AFP

India's largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services reported a nearly 6 percent fall in quarterly earnings Thursday owing to a strengthening rupee, the company said.

Indian software giant Infosys cut its annual earnings outlook for the second time in just three months Friday, sending shares down almost three percent, as cautious clients rein in spending.

Indian software giant Infosys Technologies reported a five percent rise in quarterly net profits on Tuesday, aided by a weak rupee and strong demand from the United States.

Infosys shares plunged more than nine percent on the Bombay Stock Exchange Friday after the Indian software giant cut its earnings outlook for the year.

Indian software giant Infosys announced Friday a better-than-expected 13 percent jump in third-quarter net profit, helped by strong demand for services in the United States.

Indian software giant Infosys Technologies saw its shares dip nearly seven percent Friday after it reported a single digit rise in yearly revenues and also missed quarterly profit estimates.

Microsoft has ended support for its Windows 8 smartphones, as the US tech giant focuses on other segments, amid ongoing speculation about its strategy for mobile.

Pilotless aircraft, flying electric vehicles and bespoke air cabins are the future of flight, Airbus said Thursday.

A glove fitted with wearable electronics can translate the American Sign Language alphabet and then wirelessly transmit the text for display on electronic devicesall for less than $100, according to a study published July ...

Dutch researchers unveiled Tuesday a model of what could become within two decades a floating mega-island to be used as a creative solution for accommodating housing, ports, farms or parks.

Microsoft wants to extend broadband services to rural America by turning to a wireless technology that uses the buffer zones separating individual television channels in the airwaves.

What's the point of smart assistants and intelligent electricity meters if people don't use them correctly? In order to cope with the energy transition, we need a combination of digital technologies and smart user behaviour ...

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India's Infosys eyes artificial intelligence profits - Phys.Org

Artificial intelligence helps scientists map behavior in the fruit fly … – Science Magazine

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Examples of eight fruit fly brains with regions highlighted that are significantly correlated with (clockwise from top left) walking, stopping, increased jumping, increased female chasing, increased wing angle, increased wing grooming, increased wing extension, and backing up.

Kristin Branson

By Ryan CrossJul. 13, 2017 , 1:00 PM

Can you imagine watching 20,000 videos, 16 minutes apiece, of fruit flies walking, grooming, and chasing mates? Fortunately, you dont have to, because scientists have designed a computer program that can do it faster. Aided by artificial intelligence, researchers have made 100 billion annotations of behavior from 400,000 flies to create a collection of maps linking fly mannerisms to their corresponding brain regions.

Experts say the work is a significant step toward understanding how both simple and complex behaviors can be tied to specific circuits in the brain. The scale of the study is unprecedented, says Thomas Serre, a computer vision expert and computational neuroscientist at Brown University. This is going to be a huge and valuable tool for the community, adds Bing Zhang, a fly neurobiologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. I am sure that follow-up studies will show this is a gold mine.

At a mere 100,000 neuronscompared with our 86 billionthe small size of the fly brain makes it a good place to pick apart the inner workings of neurobiology. Yet scientists are still far from being able to understand a flys every move.

To conduct the new research, computer scientist Kristin Branson of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia, and colleagues acquired 2204 different genetically modified fruit fly strains (Drosophila melanogaster). Each enables the researchers to control different, but sometimes overlapping, subsets of the brain by simply raising the temperature to activate the neurons.

Then it was off to the Fly Bowl, a shallowly sloped, enclosed arena with a camera positioned directly overhead. The team placed groups of 10 male and 10 female flies inside at a time and captured 30,000 frames of video per 16-minute session. A computer program then tracked the coordinates and wing movements of each fly in the dish. The team did this about eight times for each of the strains, recording more than 20,000 videos. That would be 225 straight days of flies walking around the dish if you watched them all, Branson says.

Next, the team picked 14 easily recognizable behaviors to study, such as walking backward, touching, or attempting to mate with other flies. This required a researcher to manually label about 9000 frames of footage for each action, which was used to train a machine-learning computer program to recognize and label these behaviors on its own. Then the scientists derived 203 statistics describing the behaviors in the collected data, such as how often the flies walked and their average speed. Thanks to the computer vision, they detected differences between the strains too subtle for the human eye to accurately describe, such as when the flies increased their walking pace by a mere 5% or less.

When we started this study we had no idea how often we would see behavioral differences, between the different fly strains, Branson says. Yet it turns out that almost every strain98% in allhad a significant difference in at least one of the behavior statistics measured. And there were plenty of oddballs: Some superjumpy flies hopped 100 times more often than normal; some males chased other flies 20 times more often than others; and some flies practically never stopped moving, whereas a few couch potatoes barely budged.

Then came the mapping. The scientists divided the fly brain into a novel set of 7065 tiny regions and linked them to the behaviors they had observed. The end product, called the Browsable Atlas of Behavior-Anatomy Maps, shows that some common behaviors, such as walking, are broadly correlated with neural circuits all over the brain, the team reports today in Cell. On the other hand, behaviors that are observed much less frequently, such as female flies chasing males, can be pinpointed to tiny regions of the brain, although this study didnt prove that any of these regions were absolutely necessary for those behaviors. We also learned that you can upload an unlimited number of videos on YouTube, Branson says, noting that clips of all 20,000 videos are available online.

Branson hopes the resource will serve as a launching pad for other neurobiologists seeking to manipulate part of the brain or study a specific behavior. For instance, not much is known about female aggression in fruit flies, and the new maps gives leads for which brain regions might be driving these actions.

Because the genetically modified strains are specific to flies, Serre doesnt think the results will be immediately applicable to other species, such as mice, but he still views this as a watershed moment for getting researchers excited about using computer vision in neuroscience. I am usually more tempered in my public comments, but here I was very impressed, he says.

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Artificial Intelligence Will Help Hunt Daesh By December – Breaking Defense

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Daesh fighters

THE NEWSEUM: Artificial intelligence is coming soon to a battlefield near you with plenty of help from the private sector. Within six months the US military will start using commercial AI algorithms to sort through its masses of intelligence data on the Islamic State.

We will put an algorithm into a combat zone before the end of this calendar year, and the only way to do that is with commercial partners, said Col. Drew Cukor.

Air Force intelligence analysts at work.

Millions of Humans?

How big a deal is this? Dont let the lack of generals stars on Col. Cukors shoulders lead you to underestimate his importance. He heads the Algorithmic Warfare Cross Function Team, personally created by outgoing Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work to apply AI to sorting the digital deluge of intelligence data.

This isnt a multi-year program to develop the perfect solution: The state of the art is good enough for the government, he saidat the DefenseOne technology conference here this morning. Existing commercial technology can be integrated onto existing government systems.

Were not talking about three million lines of code, Cukor said. Were talking about 75 lines of code placed inside of a larger software (architecture) that already exists for intelligence-gathering.

For decades, the US military has invested in better sensors to gather more intelligence, better networks to transmit that data, and more humans to stare at the information until they find something. Our work force is frankly overwhelmed by the amount of data, Cukor said. The problem, he noted, is staring at things for long periods of time is clearly not what humans were designed for. U.S. analysts cant get to all the data we collect, and we cant calculate how much their bleary eyes miss of what they do look at.

We cant keep throwing people at the problem. At the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, for example, NGA mission integration director Scott Currie told the conference, if we looked at the proliferation of the new satellites over time, and we continue to do business the way we do, wed have to hire two million more imagery analysts.

Rather than hire the entire population of, say, Houston, Currie continued, we need to move towards services and algorithms and machine learning, (but) We need industrys help to get there because we cannot possibly do it ourselves.

Private Sector Partners

Cukors task force is now spearheading this effort across the Defense Department. Were working with him and his team, said Dale Ormond, principal director for research in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Were bringing to bear the combined expertise of our laboratory system across the Department of Defense complex.

Were holding a workshop in a couple of weeksto baseline where we are both in industry and with our laboratories, Ormond told the conference. Then were going to have a closed door session (to decide) what are the investments we need to make as a department, what is industry doing (already).

Just as the Pentagon needs the private sector to lead the way, Cukor noted, many promising but struggling start-ups need government funding to succeed. While Tesla, Google, GM, and other investors in self-driving cars are lavishly funding work on artificial vision for collision avoidance, theres a much smaller commercial market for other technologies such as object recognition. All a Google Car needs to know about a vehicle or a building is how to avoid crashing into it. A military AI needs to know whether its a civilian pickup or an ISIS technical with a machinegun in the truck bed, a hospital or a hideout.

An example of the shortcomings of artificial intelligence when it comes to image recognition. (Andrej Karpathy, Li Fei-Fei, Stanford University)

These are not insurmountable problems, Cukor emphasized. The Algorithmic Warfare project is focused on defeating Daesh, he said, not on recognizing every weapon and vehicle in, say, the Russian order of battle. He believes there are only about 38 classes of objects the software will need to distinguish.

Its not easy to program an artificial intelligence to tell objects apart, however. Theres no single Platonic ideal of a terrorist you can upload for the AI to compare real-life imagery against. Instead, modern machine learning techniques feed the AI lots of different real-world data the more the better until it learns by trial and error what features every object of a given type has in common. Its basically the way a toddler learns the difference between a car and a train (protip: count the wheels). This process goes much faster when humans have already labeled what data goes in what category.

These algorithms need large data sets, and were just starting labeling, Cukor said. Its just a matter of how big our labeled data sets can get. Some of this labeling must be done by government personnel, Cukor said; he didnt say why, but presumably this includes the most highly classified material. But much of it is being outsourced to a significant data-labeling company, which he didnt name.

This all adds up to a complex undertaking on a tight timeline something the Pentagon historically does not do well. I wish we could buy AI like we buy lettuce at Safeway, where we can walk in, swipe a credit card, and walk out, Cukor said. There are no shortcuts.

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Understand Urban Change Through Artificial Intelligence – CityLab – CityLab

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The researchers' map shows how neighborhoods in five cities have physically changed between 2007 and 2014. MIT Media Lab

A team of Harvard and MIT researchers takes a new approach to figure out why some neighborhoods improve while others decline.

Google Street View is like an urban time machine. In the 10 years since it launched, it has captured how neighborhoods have transformed over timefor the better or for worse. Whats not apparent, though, is why some neighborhoods improve and others decline.

To dive into that question, a team of Harvard and MIT economists and computer science researchers is turning to a combination of Street View and artificial intelligence. In a study of neighborhoods physical changes and perceived safety, the researchers ran nearly 3,000 images through an algorithm to determine the predictors of neighborhood improvement. While some of the conclusions may not be bombshells for urban experts who study neighborhood change, the researchers say the study, published last week in the journal Proceeding of the National Academies of Sciences, highlights the potential of artificial intelligence to give policymakers and urban scientists a more robust way of testing longstanding theories.

For one thing, the researchers concluded that population density and residents education level are two particularly strong predictors of neighborhood improvement, more so than median income levels, housing prices, and rental costs.

The study found that attractive neighborhoods, defined here as appearing safer, are more likely to see improvements. But neighborhoods that appear less safe tend not to fall into further decline, showing mixed support for the theory that when neighborhoods hit a tipping point, they will head sharply in one direction. And finally, the results show support for the spillover effect, the idea that neighborhood transformation is positively linked to its proximity to central business districts and other physically attractive neighborhoods.

Often, these theories are tested using indirect measures of urban change in a small handful of neighborhoods, says Nikhil Naik, a Prize Fellow at Harvard University who led the research and studies the built environment through big data. Economic successes may be measured by how many new businesses came up, he tells CityLab. But with the help of machine learning, we can directly measure the physical change.

And at a much larger scale. Since 2011, Naik and his colleagues have been asking thousands of people to compare pairs of Street View images from Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, New York City, and Washington, D.C., and assess which one looks safer. Not surprisingly, people ranked images with potholes, broken sidewalks, and dilapidated buildings lower on the perceived safety scale than those with plenty of walkways and green space. Individually, those responses say very little, but his team has fed them into a machine-learning algorithm that can calculate the perceived safety, or Streetscore, of any neighborhood street based on its physical attributes.

In this latest study, the researchers ran nearly 3,000 images from those five cities, taken in 2007 and then again in 2014, through the algorithm. Then they calculated the difference in the areas Streetscores while accounting for unrelated elements like natural lighting, weather conditions, and the presence of parked vehicles. A positive Streetchange score indicates street improvement, while a negative one signals decline. (For accuracy, the scores were checked against human responses garnered from MIT students and participants from a crowdsourcing platform.) The researchers then mapped the Streetchange scores against demographic data from the Census to draw their conclusions.

What we're trying to do with the tool here is to understand different [aspects] of what makes city better for people, and here it's perceived physical improvement, says Scott Kominers, a professor at the Harvard Business School and one of the studys authors. For example, a better understanding of the spillover effect can help urban planners and officials consider how their policies affect not just the immediate neighborhood, but the surrounding communities, as well. If I build a community center, it may not just improve things for the people who live a block away, but also those in the surrounding rings, so these tools help us understand how big the spillovers are and how far they might move, Kominers says.

The study is limited in that it mostly looks at cities on the East Coast, which means more research needs to be done to see how applicable the conclusions are to cities around the countryor even overseas. Naik says the next step is to make the data and the tool available to other researchers asking all sorts of different questions. That also calls for improving the algorithm over time as more data is collected and fed into it. Already, theyve released an interactive map of the five cities showing which neighborhoods and streets show the largest change, positive or negative.

But theres a caveat. The researchers are careful not to declare causality in their conclusions. They note that neighborhood improvement is positively linked to higher percentage of college-educated residents, but acknowledge that it could be the case that more-educated folks seek out neighborhoods that appear safer.

The key is that you need the human assessment. This is not a circumstance in which you just set the algorithm and say, Go design a city, says Kominers. You're designing a city for people, and with people, but the tool makes it possible to work at a much finer resolution and larger scale than you could ever do with just people alone.

Linda Poon is an assistant editor at CityLab covering science and urban technology, including smart cities and climate change. She previously covered global health and development for NPRs Goats and Soda blog.

CityLab is committed to telling the story of the worlds cities: how they work, the challenges they face, and the solutions they need.

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Microsoft Debuts AI Unit to Take on Tricky Questions – Fortune

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Photograph by Mehau Kulyk/SPL Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

Microsoft has created a unit within its broader artificial intelligence and research organization that will take on tough AI challenges, like how to use different AI technologies, to make software smarter.

The subset organization, called Microsoft Research AI, was announced in London on Wednesday by Microsoft executive vice president Harry Shum. It will employ about 100 researchers and be based at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash. headquarters.

The new unit is roughly analogous to Google's DeepMind AI research organization.

Broadly speaking, AI comprises several technologies meant to endow software with human-like intelligence. Computers that recognize speech and images are manifestations of AI. Thus when you ask Amazon Alexa to order a pizza, or ask Apple ( aapl ) Siri, or Google Assistant, about a fun fact, you are tapping the fruits of extensive AI research.

Tech companies see gold in AI which is why IBM ( ibm ) , Google ( googl ) , Salesforce ( crm ) and others slather their marketing materials with references to AI when applicable. And even when not.

Related; Microsoft Loses Key Exec But Gains New AI Unit

If there is any doubt that AI is a hotbed of activity, the number of press releases generated claiming some link to it is a good measure. Other than this Microsoft news, this week IBM announced a new service based on its Watson AI technology running on IBM ( ibm ) cloud infrastructure. Its job: to automate the management of customer computer networks.

On Tuesday, business software maker Infor announced Coleman, its brand for the new AI underpinnings to its business applications. The name refers to pioneering NASA engineer Katherine Coleman Johnsonplayed by Tarji P. Henson in the movie Hidden Figures . Coleman is Infor's version of Einstein , the brand Infor rival Salesforce slapped on its AI technologies last year.

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On Wednesday, travel services company Sabre ( sabr ) launched a text-activated chat bot , built with Microsoft AI technologies. If you've used a customer service chat app on a web site, you have likely interacted with a chatbot, which is supposed to answer questions so human customer service agents don't have to.

Two Sabre-affiliated travel agencies are testing the new chatbot to see if it can give their clients an easy way to deal with the logistics of their trips. If the chatbot can handle frequently asked questions, travel agents can, theoretically, focus on more important things.

Note: (July 13, 2017 7:50 a.m. ET) This story was updated to correct Katherine Coleman Johnson's name. An earlier version incorrectly referred to her as Katherine Johnson Coleman.)

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Aerospace Ground Equipment Technicians Keep Aircraft Flying High – Department of Defense

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SOUTHWEST ASIA, July 13, 2017 Editor's note: The last names of Air Force personnel in this story have been removed for security reasons.

At the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, if planes arent in the air, theyre constantly undergoing maintenance to return to the fight. Aerospace ground equipment specialists play a pivotal role in ensuring 380 AEW aircraft are flight-ready.

For aircraft and their crews to deliver decisive airpower against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, teams of maintainers work around the clock to get them off the ground. This means their ground equipment -- such as generators, air conditioners, hydraulic test stands, liquid cooling units, and bomb lift-loaders -- have to be in constant working order.

The 45-person flight maintains and repairs nearly 500 pieces of aerospace ground equipment to meet the demands of the airpower mission. All the while it maintains a high ratio of mission-capable equipment versus pieces in need of repair.

"We like to hold ourselves above 90 percent in-commission rate, but we have a great crew of mechanics here in the [aerospace ground equipment] flight so we try to operate around 93 to 95 percent depending on workload, said Air Force Master Sgt. Joshua, the aerospace ground equipment flight chief for the 380th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron.

Joshus added, AGE plays a vital role by providing reliable, critical support equipment to aircraft so they can turn around and support other agencies in the [area of responsibility]."

Careful Coordination

Maintaining mission readiness for all of the aircraft from the only wing to support all five Air Force core missions requires careful coordination between a myriad of entities to ensure they can effectively support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

It's a team effort, and I feel great knowing our work makes the mission happen, said Air Force Senior Airman Nathan, an aerospace ground equipment journeyman with the 380th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron.

Once we deliver the equipment, the crew chiefs are able to do their job and everybody gets the jet in the air, Nathan said.

From inspecting and troubleshooting to making hands-on repairs and maintaining proper standards, the AGE flight works 24/7 overcoming obstacles to ensure that other maintenance teams have the equipment they need to launch aircraft on time.

"Extreme temperatures definitely play a role in our operations," Joshua said. "It's a struggle for the mechanics working out in the heat to keep the equipment running. Between the heat, the sand and corrosion, there's a lot of different obstacles the AGE flight needs to work together to overcome and ensure the mission is completed."

The type of ground equipment necessary to provide support to aircraft maintenance and flying operations depends on the aircraft systems and subsystems. Maintaining the variety of missions at the 380 AEW, and the specialized equipment that come with them, requires exceptional diversity.

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Aerospace Ground Equipment Technicians Keep Aircraft Flying High - Department of Defense

Upper airspace working group paves way for new and emerging aerospace technologies – Air Traffic Management

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The US-based Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has launched a new effort to open the skies even further.

The new Upper Airspace Working Group (UAWG) is focused on developing AIA positions on matters related to monitoring, responding to, and crafting industry policies and strategies concerning national and international regulation, legislation, and standards unique to high-altitude unmanned and manned aircraft, spacecraft, and other users.

Born out of an earlier effort by a group of experts focused almost purely on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), the group said it quickly realised the opportunity to provide access to Upper Class E airspace (per the US. classification) to as many users as possible and formed the UAWG.

The working group kicked off its work in early June with a wide range of participating companies, including Boeing, Google, Harris, Rockwell Collins, and Alta Devices. AIA members focused on diverse emerging missions such as commercial space transportation, supersonic aircraft developers, and infrastructure providers have joined UAS-focused members in formulating rules and regulations that will convert the vast, little-used airspace above 60,000 feet to a safe and productive medium for economic activity that will contribute to both the US and global economies.

The UAWG is bringing together a diverse field of experts from across the aerospace industry to tackle the shared challenges and opportunities associated with the high-altitude airspace. Facebook knows from experience that working with industry partners helps us all move faster and accomplish more, and we are excited to be part of this group, said Dave Hansell, public policy manager of Facebook, and chair of the UAWG.

The driving factor for success is international regulation. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)the United Nations specialized agency for civil aviation presents a unique opportunity for implementation this year. One of ICAOs duties is to develop global implementation concepts that maintain safety while increasing aviations benefit partly through increased airspace efficiency and capacity.

This December, ICAO will convene the Second Global Air Navigation Industry Symposium, where industry will present new concepts, needs, and requirements that the community will consider for inclusion in the Global Air Navigation Plan, an ICAO document that ensures synchronisation of aviation efforts across member nations. Since the document is only updated every six years, AIA said the next six months are critical both for the UAWG and to the future of an expanded airspace.

To be successful, the UAWG must bring together the full array of potential upper airspace users to agree on the concepts and requirements for global implementation over the next several years. Importantly, this collaboration extends beyond AIA to include the Federal Aviation Administration, which is already working in parallel towards solutions that support regulators, air navigation service providers, manufacturers, and operators so all can take advantage of the upper airspace benefit.

AIA also plans to work through the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations (ICCAIA)an organisation tailored for ICAO engagementto obtain buy-in from the global aerospace manufacturing community.

AIA said it was excited to lead this global effort that advances safe and efficient operation of future technologies, from Facebook and Googles plans to provide internet in remote regions via high-altitude large UAS and balloons, respectively, to routine commercial space operations, to the next generation of supersonic and commercial jets. AIA is the only organisation that can bring together such a team of industry talent and provide the structure to move the aerospace industry forward, it said.

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The Finance World Is Preparing for a Bitcoin Civil War – Futurism

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In BriefThe battle for the future of Bitcoin is heating up. Twoopposing camps, one consisting of miners and the other ofdevelopers, are struggling to work out an ideological rift thatcould lead to a civil war that splits the cryptocurrency in two assoon as August. A House Divided Bitcoin may be themost popular, longest standing cryptocurrency, but that doesnt mean its path forward is without potential conflict. In fact, analysts are now predicting that the cryptocurrency is on the brink of a civil war that would put Captain America and Iron Mans to shame.

Like the Marvel story, the Bitcoin rift is an ideological one.On one side of the divide are the bitcoin miners who oversee every transaction made on the Bitcoin blockchain. On the other side are the developers thathave maintained Bitcoins bug-proof software theyre led by a group called Core.

The problem of how to handle increased Bitcoin traffic has caused the rift. The former group wants to increase Bitcoins block size limit in order to process more transactions. Meanwhile, the latter wants to move data off the main network, which would diminish the influence of miners and essentially make Bitcoin more enterprise-friendly, like its main competitor, Ethereum.

Its moderates versus extremists, Stephen Pair, chief executive officer of bitcoin wallet provider BitPay, told Bloomberg. It depends on how much a person values the majority of people staying on one chain at least for a little while longer, versus splitting and allowing each [to pursue] their own vision for scaling.

Whats ironic about this situation is that its made possible by blockchains decentralized nature, which is often heralded as one of the technologys most interesting features. The absence of a central Bitcoin authority has made it difficult for a consensus to be reached.

At any rate, a compromise called the SegWit2x updatehas been developed, and it should be available by July 21. It changes how some of Bitcoins data will be storedwhile also doubling the block size limit.

Though support for SegWit2x is reportedly high, no one knows for sure how it will be received until it is actuallyreleased. Its a high-stakes game of chicken, Arthur Hayes from Hong Kong-based BitMEX told Bloomberg. If youre a trader, theres a lot of uncertainty as to what happens.

Bitcoin has been enjoyinga continuous upward trend in market valuefor the past several months at one point, it was evenmore valuable than gold. Well have to wait to see if this growth can continue past the next couple of weeks, which will possibly be the most turbulent in Bitcoins history. As Hayes said, Once theres a definitive signal about what will be done, the price could move very quickly.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Two Guys Just Drove a Tesla Model S From California to NYC in a Record Breaking 52 Hours – Futurism

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In Brief Two friends driving from California to New York in a Tesla Model S just broke the record for quickest transcontinental run in an electric vehicle. The achievement is the latest to illustrate the impressive progression of electric vehicles.

Two friends, Jordan Hart and Bradly DSouza, have beaten the previous record for the fastest transcontinental run in an electric vehicle by more than three hours. Using a Tesla Model S, they traveled fromRedondo Beach, California, to New York City in just 51 hours and 47 minutes. The previous record was 55 hours.

The duo achieved the feat through a combination of bullishness and optimal driving strategies, only stopping to eat once and selectively ignoring the vehicles recommendations. I believe that our knowledge of the limitations and willingness to push the boundaries whenever possible is what made the largest difference, DSouza told The Verge.

Despite some hardware obstacles, like their Tesla Model S 85D being less efficient than the Model S used by the previous record holders, the pair endured no environmental hardships. As Hart explained, We hit essentially zero traffic jams, only [four] minutes of inclement weather, and arrived in NYC on a holiday to find the streets almost empty/devoid of traffic.

This represents a victory for not only the two Tesla owners, who were doing the run to raise awareness of human trafficking, but also for Tesla specifically and the electric car market in general. It illustrates the capabilities of EV technology and will potentially speed up the acceptance of EVs into the mainstream.

Fastest transcontinental run isnt the only EV record to be broken recently. Steven Peeters and Joeri Cools broke the hypermiling record for a Tesla, achieving a whopping 901.2 kilometers (~560 miles) on a single charge, and the Nio EP9 broke the record for fastest speed of an electric vehicle, getting to a dizzying 312 km/h (194 mph). The age of impressive electric vehicles is well and truly upon us.

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Ethereum Island May Soon Exist Off the Coast of Africa – Futurism

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In BriefEthereum startup ConsenSys and the nation of Mauritius areexploring a partnership and the creation of Ethereum Island, ablockchain technology hub. This would help transform the localeconomy and bring blockchain to more people around the world. Global Blockchain Hub

Ethereum startup ConsenSys and the African nation of Mauritius are actively exploring a partnership. This collaboration would allow the two to create Ethereum Island, a blockchain technology hub for innovators hoping to extend into Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in the world. ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin and a team of executives toured Mauritius in early July to meet with the Bank of Mauritius, the countrys Board of Investment, and various authorities in both the public and private sectors.

Located 700 miles east of Madagascar along Africas eastern coast, Mauritius is an established, offshore financial hub. Now the nation is hoping to solidify itself as a leader in blockchain technologies. In 2016, it began the regulatory sandbox license process in order to appeal to blockchain innovators.

Mauritius has also been working to become a center for the migration of tech knowledge from Silicon Valley, and other innovation locations, to the rest of the world. This has been referred to as a Silicon Corridor approach in a local publication. Beyond this, Mauritius offers enthusiasm for blockchain technology, a knowledge of technologies and regulatory issues more generally, and the nimbleness and ability to adopt new tools and technologies quickly that is typically associated with smaller countries.

For this plan to work for ConsenSys, it will need to invest locally in human capital something thats likely to be beneficial for both the company and the local community. The company would present and establish the basics of a blockchain ecosystem as it worked to develop a talent pool within the ecosystem. A ConsenSys Academy based in Mauritius similar to the Dubai version from May 2017 is one possible human capital tactic the company could take.

The presence of a strong blockchain ecosystem will also help Mauritius to accomplish its own economic goals, aside from employing its citizens. We are working to take our economy to another level, and these kinds of technologies are very important in our strategy, Atma Narasiah, head of technology, innovation and services at the Board of Investment Mauritius, told CoinDesk in May.

Lubin and the ConsenSys team appear to have come away from the meetings impressed by the knowledge and enthusiasm for the technology they saw in Mauritius. Lubin emphasized, We expected to encounter significant enthusiasm but we were overwhelmed with the excitement that we felt in every single meeting. If Mauritius puts together a concerted effort to be a world leader, it will be.

Disclaimer: Futurism has a personal affiliation with ConsenSys. This is a piece of editorial content. ConsenSys does not have any review privileges on editorial decisions.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Freedom Caucus increases pressure on GOP leaders to cancel recess – Politico

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If we dont have results, we shouldnt have a recess, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said during a news conference. | Getty

By Rachael Bade

07/12/2017 02:03 PM EDT

Updated 07/12/2017 02:22 PM EDT

The House Freedom Caucus is not backing off its demand that GOP leaders cancel the August recess, urging House leadership once again to forgo the break to work on Obamacare repeal, a budget deal and tax reform.

The group of hard-line conservatives, which often tangles with leaders, pushed back against Majority Leader Kevin McCarthys Wednesday announcement that the House would not stick around unless the Senate passes a health care bill.

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While Senate leaders on Tuesday canceled the first two weeks of the annual summer break to finalize health care and move delayed nominations, McCarthy (R-Calif.) said it would be pointless for the House to hang back with little to do. He warned members, however, that if the Senate were to pass the repeal bill, he would likely call everyone back to Washington within 72 hours so the House could send the bill to President Donald Trumps desk for enactment.

Not good enough, Freedom Caucus leaders said Wednesday. The group wants to stay in town until three goals are met: an Obamacare repeal bill is signed by Trump, the Hill strikes some sort of budget agreement and lifts the debt ceiling, and GOP leaders release a much anticipated tax bill.

If we dont have results, we shouldnt have a recess, said Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) during a Freedom Caucus news conference at which conservatives vented their frustration.

This idea that were going to leave here and go home for five weeks makes absolutely no sense, fumed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "We should be here and we should get the work done."

The news conference couldn't have stood in starker contrast to those held by GOP leaders, where Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and McCarthy have continuously touted the current Congress as one of the most productive in decades. They did so just hours earlier.

But while the House has passed a raft of minor bills, including those aimed at helping veterans and creating jobs, most of Republicans' major campaign promises, from repealing Obamacare to cutting taxes, remain unaccomplished. And there's serious concern in Republican circles that the partys entire agenda could totally unravel if the repeal effort never passes, perhaps even costing it the congressional majorities.

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However, leadership allies and even a few conservatives who agree with the Freedom Caucus' frustration have grumbled that the groups public display about canceling recess is an attempt to garner headlines.

Others have argued that the groups calls are not fair because the onus is currently on the Senate to finalize its own repeal bill before the House can do anything. House insiders also want the Senate to take the lead on debt ceiling and budget deals because chamber's rules require eight Senate Democrats for passage so the House is waiting to do anything on the matter.

But the Freedom Caucus wants to be part of the debt-ceiling negotiations and does not want to get jammed with a bipartisan Senate debt ceiling-budget bill.

The debt ceiling is coming; we know its coming. Theres absolutely no reason to push ourselves into a corner like a bunch of rats, said an angry Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), arguing his constituents are tired of inaction.

They must be reading the writing on the wall. Many GOP insiders think thats exactly what will happen because few in leadership believe conservatives will ever support a debt ceiling increase. Whats more, the Senate needs eight Senate Democrats to do anything, so the debt ceiling bill wont likely have the steep cuts or reforms conservatives would need to back a deal.

That means GOP leaders probably wont turn to the Freedom Caucus at all to pass a budget agreement or a debt ceiling increase. And in that regard, conservatives probably will get squeezed on their priorities.

On tax reform, Ryan has said for months that the tax plan wont be ready until later this year, but he is working behind the scenes with select White House and the Senate leaders to write the bill expected this fall.

The Freedom Caucus, however, also wants to be part of these plans and is threatening to hold up a House budget until they get more details from leaders on what that tax bill will look like. In particular, they want Ryan to commit to dropping a controversial new revenue stream, which would essentially increase taxes on imports but reduce them on exports, called border adjustment.

Their frustration likely stems from a feeling of getting left out in the original drafting of the House's Obamacare replacement bill, which they initially opposed.

Asked whether conservatives would go so far as to block a budget from the floor if they don't get tax details, Meadows suggested they would: There would not be enough votes to pass it because of conservative concerns.

A GOP source following the budget said thats unreasonable because those details cannot be provided in a budget resolution." House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) has been trying for weeks to finalize her budget and move it forward, something she hopes to do before the recess in the next three weeks.

She made a huge push taking on other GOP chairmen and even GOP leaders for a time to add billions in mandatory cuts to programs like food stamps in the budget, hoping to win over conservatives.

If she can't get conservative support, however, her work may have been in vain.

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Freedom Caucus increases pressure on GOP leaders to cancel recess - Politico

AG Sessions under fire for closed-door speech to Alliance Defending Freedom – CNN

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Sessions' attendance at the closed-press "Summit on Religious Liberty" hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, was first disclosed Tuesday morning -- but the department has declined requests to release his full remarks.

In response to a CNN request, the group said that it would not provide a transcript of Sessions' remarks.

LGBTQ rights organizations blasted Sessions for attending the event.

"ADF is the most extreme anti-gay legal organization -- so extreme that it does not concede even that gay or transgender people should be permitted to exist as such," said Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "They are a truly destructive force in our country, and it is appalling that the attorney general of the United States would lend them the imprimatur of his office."

Several other LGBTQ advocates said they were particularly troubled by the decision to keep Sessions' remarks private.

"The attorney general has every right to speak to a group like Alliance Defending Freedom," said David Stacy, Government Affairs Director of Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights group promoting LGBTQ equality. "What troubles us is that his remarks are being kept hidden from the public at the same time he has been tasked by the President with issuing religious discrimination policies that ADF has long promoted."

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled, "Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty," which directed Sessions to "issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in federal law," but nothing has happened to date.

"Many times during the Obama administration, HRC hosted appearances by the president, vice president and Cabinet officials -- I cannot remember a single instance in which those remarks were not fully open to the media and the remarks and/or video made widely available to the public," Stacy added.

Sessions pledged his support late last month to "continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively," and revealed for the first time his focus on crimes against those in the transgender community, despite previous opposition as a senator to the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The Justice Department's LGBTQ affinity group also celebrated Pride month in June, though it remains unclear what administration officials said at the event, because it too was closed to the press.

CNN's Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.

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Freedom Partners ramps up campaign against border tax – Washington Times

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Freedom Partners, a pro-free market advocacy group affiliated with the industrialist Koch brothers, is launching a series of digital ads on Thursday intended to pressure members of the House Ways and Means Committee to drop a controversial tax on imports from the GOPs broader tax reform efforts.

The digital ads target close to two dozen Republican panel members, including Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee chairman, and Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, who chairs a tax policy subcommittee, and will run in the members home districts.

The [tax] is bad policy, its dead-on-arrival in the Senate, and its undermining efforts to unify Americans behind a positive vision for bold tax reform, said Freedom Partners spokesman Bill Riggs.

The tax on imports, known as a border adjustment, is a central feature of House Republicans tax reform blueprint, and Mr. Brady has been one of its leading advocates.

Proponents say taxing imports, while exempting exports, would encourage manufacturing to stay in the U.S. The measure is also projected to raise about $1 trillion, which Republicans could use to pay for lowering other rates for individuals and businesses.

Opponents, though, say the tax would ultimately get passed onto consumers through higher prices on retail goods.

The new Freedom Partners campaign, part of a broader multimillion effort, will also target a handful of Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 in states carried by President Trump. Those ads, which target senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, urge viewers to tell them to un-rig the economy and support tax reform.

The group also released a new letter addressed to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch warning Mr. Hatch against pursuing the border tax as part of broader tax reform efforts.

Though the Senate has been focused on health care this week, work on tax reform efforts is also proceeding in both Houses of Congress.

Mr. Roskams subcommittee is scheduled to hear from business executives on Thursday in a hearing on how tax reform will affect small businesses.

Mr. Hatch has also scheduled a hearing before his committee on tax reform next week and has invited top tax policy officials from the Obama, George W. Bush, and Clinton administrations to testify.

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Freedom Partners ramps up campaign against border tax - Washington Times

ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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Wall Street Journal (subscription)
ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options. REVIEW & OUTLOOK. ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options · Richard Cordray's Financial Damage. REVIEW & OUTLOOK. Richard Cordray's Financial Damage · U.S. Marines and Risk. REVIEW & OUTLOOK.
Hey Senate Republicans, give patients the Consumer Freedom OptionWashington Examiner

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ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options - Wall Street Journal (subscription)