An artist’s conception shows the SPARC tokamak experiment that Commonwealth Fusion Systems and MIT intend to build. (MIT PSFC Visualization / Ken Filar)
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $1 billion energy innovation fund spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has revealed seven more companies in which it’s investing, including startups that aim to build fusion reactors, produce biofuels with microbes, and pull drinking water out of the air affordably.
In addition to Gates, contributors to the fund include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Alibaba’s Jack Ma and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.
Machine-learning technology can contribute to image recognition programs that could identify elephants in aerial imagery on their own. (Vulcan Photo)
Paul Allen has made a name for himself as a co-founder of Microsoft, a supporter of artificial intelligence research and a contributor to causes such as wildlife conservation — so it only makes sense that the Seattle-area billionaire wants to use machine learning to further his philanthropic goals.
His latest contribution comes through the Seattle-based Vulcan Machine Learning Center for Impact, or VMLCI. “Its mission will be to apply the tools of machine learning and AI for good,” Bill Hilf, CEO of Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., said today in a tweet.
The milestone 100th launch of Europe’s heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket put two telecommunications satellites into geostationary transfer orbit today. The rocket rose from Arianespace’s launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:38 p.m. local time (3:38 p.m. PT), after a 45-minute delay. The dual payloads were the Boeing-built Horizons-3e satellite, which will provide telecom coverage for Intelsat and Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT in the Asia-Pacific region; and Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38, built by Maxar/SSL to boost communications coverage in Europe, Asia and Africa for Azercosmos and Intelsat.
A high-resolution image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Opportunity rover as a bright blip inside the white box. The box marks a 154-foot-wide area in Mars’ Perseverance Valley. Click on the image for a larger version. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona Photo)
NASA’s Opportunity rover still hasn’t made contact after a weeks-long Martian dust storm forced it to go into hibernation, but at least the skies are now clear enough to spot the solar-powered robot from orbit.
And mission managers say they’re a long way from giving up on Opportunity, which began its work on the surface of Mars almost 15 years ago.
Oppy shows up as a blip on the slopes of Perseverance Valley in a color image captured Sept. 20 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, from a height of 166 miles.
The orbiter’s clear view raises hopes that winds will sweep dust off Opportunity’s solar panels, as has happened several times before, and allow the rover to build up enough power to resume transmissions.
An artist’s representation shows a megastructure known as a Dyson sphere capturing the energy from a distant star. Such a structure could create observable technosignatures pointing to the civilization behind its construction. (Credit: Danielle Futselaar / SETI International)
It’s been a quarter-century since Congress cut off NASA funding for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, but now the space agency is revisiting the topic under another name: technosignatures.
“I’m excited to announce that NASA is taking the 1st steps to explore ways to search for life advanced enough to create technosignatures: signs or signals, which if observed, would let us infer the existence of technological life elsewhere in the universe,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a tweet today.
That’s a far cry from 1993, when a congressional effort spearheaded by Sen. Richard Bryan killed off NASA’s 10-year SETI program, which was known as the High Resolution Microwave Survey, or HRMS. “This hopefully will be the end of Martian hunting season at the taxpayer’s expense,” Bryan declared at the time.
An artist’s conception shows Millennium Space Systems’ Altair satellite. (Millennium Illustration)
As promised, Boeing has completed its acquisition of California-based Millennium Space Systems, a provider of small-satellite solutions. Millennium, which has about 260 employees, will operate as a subsidiary of Boeing Phantom Works. When the acquisition plan was announced in August, Boeing said it’d be completed by the end of September. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The National Science Foundation’s director, France Cordova, worked on the STEM training partnership with Heidi Capozzi, senior vice president of human resources at Boeing. (NSF Photo)
The National Science Foundation and Boeing say they’ve forged a $21 million partnership to accelerate skill development and increase diversity in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, known collectively as STEM.
Supported by $10 million in funding from Boeing, NSF will team up with learning institutions to develop online training in critical skill areas for students and Boeing employees.
The skill areas being targeted include model-based engineering and systems engineering, mechatronics, robotics, data science and sensor analytics, program management and artificial intelligence. Boeing and NSF expect the first project to launch in 2019.
To complement that part of the program, NSF’s Directorate for Education and Human Resources will invest $10 million in awards focused on skill development and training for America’s STEM workforce.
Boeing also will contribute $1 million to the NSF INCLUDES initiative, which aims to boost U.S. innovation by broadening participation in STEM fields. INCLUDES stands for “Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science.”
A White House summit on quantum information science brings together Jake Taylor of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, France Cordova of the National Science Foundation, Paul Dabbar of the U.S. Energy Department, Walter Copan of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Mike Griffin of the Defense Department. (White House / OSTP Photo via Twitter)
Federal officials and industry leaders — including representatives from Microsoft and Google — met today at a White House summit to spark new initiatives in quantum information science.
Among the recommendations contained in a newly released strategic overview: setting up a U.S. Quantum Consortium, modeled after past efforts such as the non-profit, industry-led Semiconductor Research Corp.; and establishing a set of Grand Challenges to focus quantum computing research.
Alaska Airlines is adding virtual reality to its in-flight entertainment menu in an experiment aimed at recreating a movie theater experience at 35,000 feet.
The Seattle-based airline has partnered with SkyLights, a French-American immersive-media company, to offer VR headsets and noise-canceling headphones to first-class customers on 10 flights that go between Seattle and Boston, and Boston and San Diego.
The users can watch 2-D and 3-D films such as “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” or “Ready Player One.” They can also click into 360-degree, head-tracking virtual-reality videos.
SkyLights’ lightweight Allosky VR headsets have been adopted for tryouts on other airlines, ranging from Joon and XL Airways to Lufthansa, but Alaska Airlines’ experiment ranks among the most ambitious yet.
