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Archive for the ‘government’ category: Page 104

Jan 11, 2021

DARPA Increases Access to Critical Tools, IP to Accelerate Innovation

Posted by in categories: business, government, law

New initiative aims to lower high barrier to entry for resource-constrained organizations, increasing access to participate in forward-looking research.

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Jan 11, 2021

Police Robots Are Not a Selfie Opportunity, They’re a Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen

Posted by in categories: drones, education, government, law, robotics/AI, security, space, surveillance

The arrival of government-operated autonomous police robots does not look like predictions in science fiction movies. An army of robots with gun arms is not kicking down your door to arrest you. Instead, a robot snitch that looks like a rolling trash can is programmed to decide whether a person looks suspicious —and then call the human police on them. Police robots may not be able to hurt people like armed predator drones used in combat— yet —but as history shows, calling the police on someone can prove equally deadly.

Long before the 1987 movie Robocop, even before Karel Čapek invented the word robot in 1920, police have been trying to find ways to be everywhere at once. Widespread security cameras are one solution—but even a blanket of CCTV cameras couldn’t follow a suspect into every nook of public space. Thus, the vision of a police robot continued as a dream, until now. Whether they look like Boston Dynamics’ robodogs or Knightscope’s rolling pickles, robots are coming to a street, shopping mall, or grocery store near you.

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Jan 8, 2021

Scientists develop a cheaper method that might help create fuels from plants

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, government, sustainability

Scientists have figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to conduct a chemical reaction at the heart of many biological processes, which may lead to better ways to create biofuels from plants.

Scientists around the world have been trying for years to create biofuels and other bioproducts more cheaply; this study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that it is possible to do so.

“The process of converting sugar to alcohol has to be very efficient if you want to have the end product be competitive with ,” said Venkat Gopalan, a senior author on the paper and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “The process of how to do that is well-established, but the cost makes it not competitive, even with significant government subsidies. This new development is likely to help lower the cost.”

Jan 8, 2021

Brett Vaughan — U.S. Navy Chief AI Officer and AI Portfolio Manager, Office of Naval Research

Posted by in categories: government, military, robotics/AI, satellites, surveillance

U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, and AI Portfolio Manager, Office of Naval Research.


Brett Vaughan is the U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer and AI Portfolio Manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

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Jan 6, 2021

U.S. law sets stage for boost to artificial intelligence research

Posted by in categories: government, law, robotics/AI

Frias-Martinez says CloudBank has allowed her to stretch her research dollars and, as a result, improve the quality and scope of her analyses. “For example, we started to do some experiments with an AWS database and the costs were much higher than we had expected,” she explains. “We submitted a ticket to their helpdesk and they quickly responded” with a full explanation of expenses and some money-saving alternatives.

Going the last mile

CloudBank was created to serve NSF grantees, starting with those funded by select CISE programs who have requested cloud computing. That pool is now tiny by design, but Norman expects demand to increase rapidly once NSF begins to make awards from this year’s program solicitations, the first that include CloudBank as an option. CloudBank could also serve as a template for a far larger, national cloud computing resource, part of a massive scale-up in cloud computing and artificial intelligence outlined in a law passed by Congress last week.

Jan 5, 2021

Venezuela’s Maduro Plans Shift to Fully Digitalized Economy

Posted by in categories: economics, finance, government

Venezuela’s government is planning to move to a fully digital economy as hyperinflation has made worthless bolivar notes practically disappear, and dollarization expands through the local financial system.

The U.S. dollar has operated as an escape valve for Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil revenues, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview with Telesur on Friday. He said 18.6% of all commercial transactions are in dollars, while 77.3% are carried out in bolivars with debit cards. Only 3.4% are paid with bolivar notes.

“They have a war against our physical currency. We are moving this year to a more profound digital economy, in expansion. I’ve set the goal of an economy that’s 100% digital,” Maduro said, adding that physical money will eventually disappear.

Jan 4, 2021

UK to enter another national lockdown, Prime Minister Johnson says

Posted by in category: government

BREAKING: U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says England will go into a “national lockdown.”

“That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home.” https://abcn.ws/2Llledb

Jan 2, 2021

Tens of thousands of people living in the Caribbean are on high alert as volcanoes come back to life after remaining dormant for decades

Posted by in category: government

The St. Vincent and the Grenadines government issued an orange alert, meaning eruptions could occur with less than 24 hours’ notice.

Jan 1, 2021

What is China’s home-grown C919 aeroplane, and why is it important?

Posted by in categories: government, transportation

The Chinese government formed Comac in 2008 to design and build the single-aisle C919.

However, most of the parts are imported from foreign manufacturers, including the engine, avionics, control systems, communications and landing gear.


China’s government formed the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) in 2008 to design and construct the single-aisle C919 to reduce reliance on Europe’s Airbus and the United States’ Boeing.

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Jan 1, 2021

The Russia-linked hackers behind a widespread cyber-intrusion into U.S. corporate and government systems were able to access internal systems within Microsoft and view internal source code

Posted by in category: government

used to build software products, the company said.