OpenAI may not be so open going forward. The former nonprofit announced today that it is restructuring as a “capped-profit” company that cuts returns from investments past a certain point. But some worry that this move — or rather the way they made it — may result in making the innovative company no different from the other AI startups out there.
View More OpenAI shifts from nonprofit to ‘capped-profit’ to attract capitalCategory: Science
Geoengineering might not be so ludicrous an idea — if we gave Earth the right dose
Solar geoengineering is widely viewed as risky business.
The somewhat sci-fi concept — to use blimps, planes, or other means to load Earth’s atmosphere with particles or droplets that reflect sunlight and cool the planet — has crept into the mainstream conversation as a means of reversing relentless climate change, should our efforts to slash carbon emissions fail or sputter. But geoengineering schemes come with a slew of hazards. A number of studies have cited the ill consequences of messing with Earth’s sun intake, including big falls in crop production, the likelihood of unforeseen adverse side effects, and critically, a weakened water cycle that could trigger drops in precipitation and widespread drought. Read more…
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View More Geoengineering might not be so ludicrous an idea — if we gave Earth the right doseThe jaguar who attacked a woman taking a selfie won’t be put down
Good news everyone: The jaguar who attacked a woman taking a selfie will live.
The woman reportedly crossed over a barrier near the jaguar enclosure at the Wildlife World Zoo in Arizona on Saturday to take a photo with the cats when one reached out and slashed her arm. Paramedics took her to a nearby hospital to treat the non life-threatening injuries, according to a statement from the zoo.
“Please understand why barriers are put in place,” the zoo tweeted. “Sending prayers to the family tonight.”
Please understand why barriers are put in place. Sending prayers to the family tonightpic.twitter.com/2MPb8bXhwR
— Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium & Safari Park (@ZooWildlife) March 10, 2019 Read more…
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View More The jaguar who attacked a woman taking a selfie won’t be put downWill cockroaches really inherit the Earth?
Big cockroaches live beneath Price Hall at Virginia Tech University. The stately, gray, five-story building, built of stone over a century ago, houses the school’s entomology department, whose faculty study the insects that flourish in our forests, farms, and, often, homes. Sometimes, these reddish-brown American cockroaches — the largest species of cockroach in the U.S. — will leave their underworld dwellings, crawl through the structure’s old pipes, and creep into Price Hall, said Dini Miller, an urban entomologist at the university.
“I’m kind of thrilled about it,” she added.
Miller has devoted her academic career to the flat-bodied, six-legged, and often abhorred pests, developing a keen understanding of why roaches have proven so resilient in our modern world, a world where many inspect species — but certainly not all — have been eviscerated by pesticides and the destruction of their habitats. Moths, dung beetles, wasps, bees, and dragonflies have all been given well-deserved PR recently from new widely-reported research and an expertly-told front page story in The New York Times Magazine, foretelling environmental doom should we annihilate the foundation of the planet’s food web. Read more…
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SpaceX splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean, completes historic crew capsule mission
The Dragon has returned to Earth.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule parachuted down to the Atlantic Ocean Friday morning, successfully capping the first test of a commercial spacecraft that will likely bring astronauts to the International Space Station — possibly in the next year.
The Crew Dragon capsule gently splashed down off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:45 a.m. ET after spending five days docked to the space station. The demonstration mission — which carried no humans but a dummy covered in sensors — is the first of at least one more test that NASA will use to determine if the Dragon capsule passes the space agency’s rigid safety standards. Read more…
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View More SpaceX splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean, completes historic crew capsule missionThis adorable experiment created a real-life Dug the Dog from ‘Up’
We all remember Dug the Dog, the adorably goofy pup from Pixar’s Up who was able to communicate his thoughts and feelings thanks to some nifty technology.
Well, now we’re one step closer to such technology being real, thanks to some students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The team explains in the above video how they built the interface, which reads the neural responses of Alma, an adorable golden retriever. They’re then translated and deliver a pre-recorded vocal response.
How accurate is the device? That’s debatable, to say the least. There’s a mountain of research and debate about how dogs “think” that’s yet to be settled. Still, it’s a neat — and extremely cute — experiment. Read more…
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Some icebergs are a glorious emerald green. Why?
While traversing the seas off of eastern Antarctica in 1988, glaciologist Stephen Warren came upon green icebergs floating in the ocean. “We never expected to see green icebergs,” said Warren, noting that a deep blue hue — not emerald green — is commonly observed in these chunks of ice.
Over three decades later, Warren and a team of researchers have put forward an explanation for these rarely seen icebergs’ green hue. Their hypothesis, published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, argues that tiny iron-rich rocky particles, similar to flour or dust, are the culprits. Specifically, this finely ground-up rock, aptly named “glacial flour,” gets trapped in the ice on the bottom of ice shelves — the ends of glaciers that float over the ocean — ultimately lending to the ice’s deep green appearance. When the icebergs eventually snap off, the fresh bergs carry the verdant hue. Read more…
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View More Some icebergs are a glorious emerald green. Why?The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it’s nearly all gone
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished.
“The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water,” Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the Un…
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon test flight gets through the toughest bit without issue
SpaceX sent its Crew Dragon capsule skyward on Saturday for a crucial test of its ability to carry human passengers. Now, slightly more than 24 hours later, the next phase of the test has played out.
It went well.
The Crew Dragon capsule, designated Demo-1, was able to successfully dock with the International Space Station at roughly 3:00 a.m. ET. Although there was no crew aboard this time, SpaceX’s reusable capsule is designed to carry up to seven astronauts to and from Earth’s orbit.
The company has been sending an earlier version of its capsule to the ISS for a number of years, but in those instances the space station’s robotic arm has helped the smaller vehicle successfully dock. For this test, the Crew Dragon’s own navigational system handled the docking procedure — and it happened without issue. Read more…
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View More SpaceX’s Crew Dragon test flight gets through the toughest bit without issueSpaceX kicks off a ‘new era in spaceflight’ with the Crew Dragon launch
It’s been a momentous Saturday for SpaceX, and for the future of crewed voyages into space.
At 2:49 a.m. ET, the American aerospace company founded by Elon Musk staged its first launch of Crew Dragon. It’s big news because this is the first time a commercial interest has launched a spacecraft that was built to carry humans.
LIFTOFF! The next big leap in a new chapter of U.S. human spaceflight systems has left the pad@SpaceX’s #CrewDragon demo flight will be the 1st commercially-built & operated American spacecraft designed for humans to dock at the @Space_Station. Watch: https://t.co/Fm5NQSfAXJ pic.twitter.com/YoiOf67kQL
— NASA (@NASA) March 2, 2019 Read more…
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View More SpaceX kicks off a ‘new era in spaceflight’ with the Crew Dragon launchKoala-sensing drone helps keep tabs on drop bear numbers
It’s obviously important to Australians to make sure their koala population is closely tracked — but how can you do so when the suckers live in forests and climb trees all the time? With drones and AI, of course.
View More Koala-sensing drone helps keep tabs on drop bear numbersA dinner plate-sized tarantula killed an opossum in the dark jungle
The dark jungle is full of terrors.
As it should be, because chaos reigns in the wild, and spotting the peculiar or unexpected is the norm.
“We’re always seeing crazy things,” University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Daniel Rabosky said in an interview.
Each year Rabosky travels to the Amazon to observe and document the flourishing biodiversity deep in these jungles. On a recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon, his team filmed some nightmarish predator-prey interactions, including a large Tarantula dragging a limp opossum — a rat-like marsupial — across the dark jungle floor.
“The body on that thing is bigger than a baseball,” said Rabosky, referring to the spider and adding that if its legs were spread out, the spider would be the size of a dinner plate. Read more…
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View More A dinner plate-sized tarantula killed an opossum in the dark jungle