Science and Technology

Thursday, 23 March 2023 02:54

This electric plane could be in the sky in just two years

Early customers include Air New Zealand, which aims to start with cargo deliveries and then explore passenger flights. The transition to electric vehicles on the road is well underway. But electrifying aviation is a longer slog, mainly due to battery limitations for long ranges and large loads. The key may be starting with shorter flights. One of the companies striving to electrify aviation, Beta Technologies, announced this week that it’s producing an all-electric plane for regional trips. The model could start to replace jet-engine aircraft for cargo delivery starting in 2025, and could eventually be deployed for passenger flights as…

Wednesday, 22 March 2023 03:46

Google opens AI chatbot Bard to the public with this caveat

Google is rolling out open access to the chatbot Bard, its answer to ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence computer program. The search engine said the “early experiment” makes the generative AI chatbot available for people in the U.S. and Britain starting Tuesday, with more countries and languages to be added at a later date. The announcement was made in a Google blog post written with Bard’s assistance. “We’ve learned a lot so far by testing Bard, and the next critical step in improving it is to get feedback from more people,” the Google blog post reads. The company said it will continue…

Monday, 20 March 2023 03:35

AI develops treatment for an aggressive cancer in just 30 days

Artificial intelligence has developed a treatment for an aggressive form of cancerin just 30 days and demonstrated it can predict a patient's survival rate using doctors' notes. The breakthroughs were performed by separate systems, but show how the powerful technology's uses go far beyond the generation of images and text. University of Toronto researchers worked with Insilico Medicine to develop potential treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using an AI drug discovery platform called Pharma. HCC is a form of liver cancer, but the AI discovered a previously unknown treatment pathway and designed a 'novel hit molecule' that could bind to…

Saturday, 18 March 2023 01:47

Common cleaning chemical linked to 500% increased risk of Parkinson’s Disease

A common and widely used chemical may be fueling the rise of the world’s fastest-growing brain condition – Parkinson’s disease. For the past 100 years, trichloroethylene (TCE) has been used to decaffeinate coffee, degrease metal, and dry clean clothes. It contaminates the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, 15 toxic Superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and up to one-third of groundwater in the U.S. TCE causes cancer, is linked to miscarriages and congenital heart disease, and is associated with a 500% increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. According to the National Cancer Institute, TCE is present in some household products, including cleaning…

Wednesday, 15 March 2023 06:06

Microsoft-backed OpenAI starts release of powerful AI known as GPT-4

The startup OpenAI on Tuesday said it is beginning to release a powerful artificial intelligence model known as GPT-4, setting the stage for human-like technology to proliferate and more competition between its backer Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc's Google. OpenAI, which created the chatbot sensation ChatGPT, said in a blog post that its latest technology is "multimodal," meaning images as well as text prompts can spur it to generate content. The text-input feature will be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and to software developers, with a waitlist, while the image-input ability remains a preview of its research. The highly-anticipated launch…

Tuesday, 14 March 2023 05:48

US weapons captured by Russian military in Ukraine head to Iran for ‘reverse-engineering - Report

Russia has been supplying western-manufactured weapons and equipment captured on the battlefield in Ukraine to Iran, hoping that Tehran might reverse-engineer the technology, a CNN report claimed. The report, citing four sources, claimed that US, NATO, and other Western officials had recorded Russian forces taking control of US-made shoulder-fired weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that the Ukrainian army left behind on the battlefield. The sources suggest that Russia has shipped some of these weapons to Iran, probably so the country can disassemble them and examine the technology to produce similar weapons. Ukraine has acquired weaponry worth…

Sunday, 12 March 2023 05:56

Mind-reading AI turns your thoughts into pictures

Artificial intelligence can create images based on text prompts, but scientists unveiled a gallery of pictures the technology produces by reading brain activity. The new AI-powered algorithm reconstructed around 1,000 images, including a teddy bear and an airplane, from these brain scans with 80 percent accuracy. Researchers from Osaka University used the popular Stable Diffusion model, included in OpenAI's DALL-E 2, which can create any imagery based on text inputs. The team showed participants individual sets of images and collected fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans, which the AI then decoded. We show that our method can reconstruct high-resolution images…

Friday, 10 March 2023 05:59

OpenAI cofounder responds to Elon Musk's criticism that ChatGPT is too 'woke': 'We made a mistake'

In response to Elon Musk's criticism of ChatGPT being too "woke," OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman admitted the startup "made a mistake," in an interview with The Information. Musk, an OpenAI cofounder who has since severed ties with the company, has routinely criticized OpenAI for implementing safeguards that prevent the chatbot from producing responses that could be deemed offensive. "We made a mistake: The system we implemented did not reflect the values we intended to be in there," Brockman, who serves as OpenAI's president, told The Information. "And I think we were not fast enough to address that. And…

Wednesday, 08 March 2023 05:55

Russia’s ‘most feared’ S-400 missile ready for China battle

Russia recently delivered another batch of ‘super lethal’ S-400 ‘Triumf’ long-range air defense system to India, according to reports by multiple media outlets. The Russian Ambassador to India, Denis Alipov, had said last month that Russia would soon deliver the third regiment of the S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems to India. “It (third S-400 regiment) will be completed in the very near future…Both sides are committed to completing the contract, and we certainly will do that. Nothing prevents that,” Alipov said. An unnamed senior Indian defense official reportedly told Janes on March 2 that Russia has completed the delivery of…

Friday, 03 March 2023 06:04

China leads US in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies - Report

China has a "stunning lead" in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies as Western democracies lose a global competition for research output, a security think tank said on Thursday after tracking defence, space, energy and biotechnology. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said its study showed that, in some fields, all of the world's top 10 research institutions are based in China. The study, funded by the United States State Department, found the United States was often second-ranked, although it led global research in high-performance computing, quantum computing, small satellites and vaccines. "Western democracies are losing the global…

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Friday, 03 March 2023 06:02

Russia displays its own ‘HIMARS’ Tornado-S at IDEX 2023; expert calls it ‘far more potent’ than US’ MLRS

Russia has unveiled its Tornado-S multi-target rocket system at the IDEX 2023 international arms show in Abu Dhabi to sell the weapon to Gulf nations. The Tornado-S multi-target rocket system, similar to the US-made HIMARS, can strike opponent positions at longer ranges and inside enemy territories. In a statement on February 20, Rostec State Corporation, which is marketing this weapon system to Gulf nations, explained the capabilities of the Tornado-S multi-target rocket system. The Tornado-S control system unit enables each munition to have a unique flight assignment, allowing the combat vehicle to salvo attack several targets. Based on a strap-down…

Monday, 27 February 2023 05:41

China announces plans to take on Elon Musk’s ‘Starlink’

Chinese researchers are preparing to launch close to 13,000 satellites into a low-earth orbit, in a move which would dwarf – and potentially monitor – Elon Musk’s SpaceX ‘Starlink’ network, which first launched in 2019 and provides satellite internet access to 50 countries. The project, which is codenamed ‘GW’ and is being led by associate professor Xu Can of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Space Engineering University in Beijing, will see 12,992 satellites operated by the China Satellite Network Group Co launched into orbit, and is designed to improve communications efficiency. The launch schedule remains unknown but the team led…

Thursday, 23 February 2023 05:56

Under cover of Su-35, Su-30SM fighters, Russia deploys ‘highly modified’ Su-25 attack aircraft to strike Ukraine

On February 16, the Russian Ministry of Defense (RuMoD) highlighted the capabilities of the Su-25 attack aircraft upgraded by the country in a Telegram post titled ‘Upgraded Su-25SM3: Superpower Over The Battlefield’. The post was accompanied by the hashtag ‘Z,’ a letter that became the symbol of the Russian invasion in the initial weeks of the conflict, triggering speculations that the upgraded ground attack aircraft could have been deployed to Ukraine. The development is significant as it comes amid fears of an imminent aerial raid by the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) after several fighters and helicopters were stationed close to…

Wednesday, 22 February 2023 05:55

AI is going to ruin humanity – just not in the way you might expect

Attention all humans! This is Christian Guyton, your friendly TechRadar Computing Editor and definitely not a robot, here to give you a little heads up about the impacts of AI expansion on human intelligence. Now, I know what you're thinking, "AI is making our lives so much easier, why should I be worried?" And you're not wrong! AI has revolutionized many aspects of our lives, from navigation to language translation. However, if we're not careful, our reliance on AI could lead to a decline in human intelligence. When we rely on AI to answer every question, we may begin to…

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