University of Washington researchers have developed an AI program that uses machine learning in an effort to decipher the ultrasonic vocalizations made by mice. (UW Medicine Illustration / Alice Gray)
Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine have developed a software program that enlists artificial intelligence to decipher the ultrasonic vocalizations made by mice and rats.
Software converts the audio signals into visual graphs, or sonograms, and then puts those images through the kinds of machine-vision algorithms that are used for autonomous vehicles.
“DeepSqueak uses biomimetic algorithms that learn to isolate vocalizations by being given labeled examples of vocalizations and noise,” Russell Marx, one of the study’s authors, explained in a news release.
Boom Supersonic is assembling a subscale prototype called XB-1 in preparation for producing its Overture supersonic airliner. (Boom Supersonic Image)
Colorado-based Boom Supersonic says it has closed a $100 million Series B investment round to support the development of a Mach-2.2 commercial airliner called Overture.
The funding includes $56 million in new investment as well as $44 million in previously announced investments. Total funding for Boom now stands at more than $141 million. The round was led by Emerson Collective and includes funding from Y Combinator Continuity, Caffeinated Capital, SV Angel and individual investors, Boom said today.
“This new funding allows us to advance work on Overture, the world’s first economically viable supersonic airliner,” Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl said in a news release. “Overture fares will be similar to today’s business class — widening horizons for tens of millions of travelers. Ultimately, our goal is to make high-speed flight affordable to all.”
This first 3-D view of the icy Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69 or Ultima Thule is best seen using red-blue glasses. Click on the image for a larger view. (NASA / JHU / SwRI via YouTube)
LAUREL, Md. — The science team behind NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft today released the first 3-D image of an icy object more than 4 billion miles from Earth, and the variations in the picture hint at ridges, craters and knobby features that will be more fully charted as the resolution improves.
Two pictures, separated by just a moment in time, were fused together to produce a somewhat fuzzy but depth-enabled glimpse at the object — which has the official designation of 2014 MU69 but has been nicknamed Ultima Thule by the New Horizon team.
“Features appear to be rotating into view as the object twists underneath us,” Paul Schenk, a New Horizons co-investigator from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said during today’s briefing here at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “These have a knobby appearance, and could be the inside of a large impact crater that’s on the far side.”
The stereo view also appears to highlight ridge structures on the 19-mile-long object, which has been compared in appearance to a snowman or the BB-8 droid from “Star Wars.” Some of the ridges could represent elevation variations amounting to several hundred feet, he said.
Schenk said a side-by-side version of the 3-D images was created by Brian May, an astrophysicist specializing in scientific stereoscopy who also happens to be the lead guitarist for the classic rock group Queen.
University of Oklahoma meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier addresses a meeting of the National Science Board in 2016. (NSF Photo)
Nearly two years after taking office, President Donald Trump now has a Senate-confirmed science adviser: Kelvin Droegemeier, a meteorologist from the University of Oklahoma who’s gotten good reviews from climate advocates as well as climate deniers.
Trump chose Droegemeier to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in late July, but it took until Wednesday for the Senate to confirm the appointment on a voice vote. That was the last full day of the 115th Congress, and if the confirmation had been put off a day longer, the process would have had to start over.
Droegemeier is a former vice chair of the National Science Board, the oversight body of the National Science Foundation, and has long been active on national research policy.
An image captured from the Chang’e-4 lander shows the Yutu 2 rover rolling onto the terrain of the lunar far side. (CLEP via Weibo / Twitter)
Official Chinese media confirmed that the nation’s robotic Chang’e-4 probe made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon — but not before issuing, and then withdrawing, an initial set of announcements.
The honest-to-goodness announcement came via several state-run media outlets just after noon Beijing time on Jan. 3 (8 p.m. PT Jan. 2).
That’s about an hour after the Twitter accounts for China’s CGTV network and the China Daily newspaper flashed word of a landing. Within a minute or two, those tweets were deleted, but the media echoes nevertheless continued through the Twitterverse, mailing lists and online reports.
Those outlets apparently jumped the gun on what was intended to be a coordinated release of the news. In its re-issued announcement, CGTV said the landing took place at 10:26 a.m. Beijing time (6:26 p.m. PT), which meshes with the timing for the initial tweeted-then-deleted reports.
Chang’e-4 is the latest in a series of probes named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology. The combination lander and rover was sent into space in early December, and followed a slow but efficient 4.5-day trajectory from Earth to the moon. The lander made a series of lunar orbits over the past couple of weeks to line it up for the landing.
The latest view from NASA’s New Horizons probe shows an icy object known as 2014 MU69 or as Ultima Thule to consist of two balls of icy material stuck together. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo)
“It’s a snowman,” mission principal investigator Alan Stern, a planetary scientist from the Southwest Research Institute, said during a news briefing here at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
The two-balled shape reminded others of BB-8, the plucky droid from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” It even has a BB-8ish orangish-reddish color theme going on.
Today’s imagery, derived from data sent back to Earth on the previous day, literally casts a whole new light on the 19-mile-long object — which is known by its official designation, 2014 MU69, or by the nickname given by the New Horizons team, Ultima Thule (“Ul-ti-ma Too-lay”).
The views were captured by the piano-sized probe’s high-resolution camera from a distance of roughly 18,000 miles, a half-hour before the time of close approach on New Year’s Day. Two black-and-white pictures were released, with a resolution as fine as 140 meters (460 feet) per pixel.
An artist’s conception shows a nanosatellite equipped with Deep Space Industries’ non-toxic, water-based Comet thruster system. (DSI / BSI Illustration)
Bradford Space Group says it’s acquired California-based Deep Space Industries, which means that both of the ventures that were created to mine asteroids have now been bought up to focus on different priorities.
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern high-fives mission operations manager Alice Bowman at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory after the team receives word that the spacecraft is healthy. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)
LAUREL, Md. — NASA’s New Horizons science team today received confirmation that its spacecraft survived a New Year’s encounter with an icy world 4 billion miles away known as Ultima Thule — and it’s carrying a priceless load of data.
“We have a healthy spacecraft,” mission operations manager Alice Bowman announced here at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “We’ve just accomplished the most distant flyby. We are ready for Ultima Thule science transmissions … science to help us understand the origins of our solar system.”
The report was greeted with cheers and hugs at APL’s mission control center.
“This spacecraft is rock-solid!” the mission’s principal investigator, Alan Stern, told GeekWire just after New Horizons’ status report.
