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San Francisco startup RealityEngines. AI has turned off stealth mode and today launched its completely autonomous cloud AI service. It’s all very tedious to the common reader IMO — enterprise-level business stuff — but the technology itself and how it could shape our future in both data and perceived reality should be at least mildly considered.

Here’s how RealityEngines. AI works: using a Neural Architecture Search (NAS) technique called BANANAS, when a user points their data (through an API) to RealityEngines. AI and selects a use case (churn predictions, fraud detection, sales lead forecasting, security threat detection, cloud spend optimization, et al.), the data is attacked by the NAS to create cutting-edge models then refined by a generative adversarial network (GAN) in order to augment sparse or noisy data with synthetic data to further enhance the data modeling. Now that, is bananas.

It’s a democratization of AI that will not only create a service that allows anyone to create AI models without having to hire a team of developers, but it makes that service accessible to any business that feels it needs it and might not even have enough data. The synthetic data technology can help companies create AI models with a moderate amount of data.

Three and a half hours later, the group finished the simulation exercise — and despite their best efforts, they couldn’t prevent the hypothetical coronavirus from killing 65 million people.

The fictional coronavirus at the center of the Event 201 simulation — a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — was called CAPS, and it started with pigs in Brazil before spreading to farmers, not unlike how 2019-nCoV reportedly began with animals before spreading to people.

In the simulation, CAPS infected people all across the globe within six months, and by the 18-month mark, it had killed 65 million people and triggered a global financial crisis.

Circa 2019 Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.

Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world. With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.


Event 201 simulation hosted by university’s Center for Health Security envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.

Terahertz radiation is used for security checks at airports, for medical examinations and also for quality checks in industry. However, radiation in the terahertz range is extremely difficult to generate. Scientists at TU Wien have now succeeded in developing a terahertz radiation source that breaks several records: it is extremely efficient, and its spectrum is very broad—it generates different wavelengths from the entire terahertz range. This opens up the possibility of creating short radiation pulses with extremely high radiation intensity. The new terahertz technology has now been presented in the journal Nature Communications.

The “Terahertz Gap” Between Lasers and Antennas

“Terahertz has very useful properties,” says Claudia Gollner from the Institute of Photonics at TU Wien. “It can easily penetrate many materials, but unlike X-rays, it is harmless because it is not ionizing radiation.”

Cory Doctorow’s sunglasses are seemingly ordinary. But they are far from it when seen on security footage, where his face is transformed into a glowing white orb.

At his local credit union, bemused tellers spot the curious sight on nearby monitors and sometimes ask, “What’s going on with your head?” said Doctorow, chuckling.

The frames of his sunglasses, from Chicago-based eyewear line Reflectacles, are made of a material that reflects the infrared light found in surveillance cameras and represents a fringe movement of privacy advocates experimenting with clothes, ornate makeup and accessories as a defense against some surveillance technologies.

Homeland Security might soon have a new tool to add to its arsenal.

Researchers at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new material that opens doors for a new class of neutron detectors.

With the ability to sense smuggled , highly efficient neutron detectors are critical for national security. Currently, there are two classes of detectors which either use helium gas or flashes of light. These detectors are very large—sometimes the size of a wall.

Location: Manhattan, KS

NBAF - National Agor-Defense Facility

The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) will be a state-of-the-art biocontainment laboratory for the study of diseases that threaten both America’s animal agricultural industry and public health. DHS S&T is building the facility to standards that fulfill the mission needs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) which will own, manage and operate (PDF, 16 pgs., 165 KB) the NBAF once construction and commissioning activities are complete. The NBAF will strengthen our nation’s ability to conduct research, develop vaccines, diagnose emerging diseases, and train veterinarians. DHS S&T will leverage the facility as a national asset to fulfill homeland security mission needs.

The United States currently does not have a laboratory facility with maximum biocontainment (BSL-4) space to study high-consequence zoonotic diseases affecting large livestock. The NBAF will be the first laboratory facility in the U.S. to provide BSL-4 laboratories capable of housing cattle and other large livestock. The NBAF will also feature a vaccine development module. For more information about the facility and intended use of its state-of-the-art features, please visit the USDA NBAF Program website.

Found this article being passed around amongst some of the Colorado/Nebraska drone sightings speculators…


TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) – All committee meetings were canceled Tuesday afternoon and all Kansas House members were called to the Kansas Air National Guard for a meeting with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Kansas Deputy Attorney General Jay Scott Emler sent a letter to Speaker Ron Ryckman Tuesday saying that the DHS briefing should be given in a closed caucus.

In the letter, Emler also said the closed session will include information applicable to the security of the State and its citizens.