Thursday 23 May 2019

European pilots 'deeply disturbed' by possible 737 MAX return

European pilots said Thursday they found it "deeply disturbing" that the Boeing 737 MAX was already being considered for a return to service after being grounded worldwide following two deadly crashes.

* This article was originally published here

NASA unveils schedule for 'Artemis' 2024 Moon mission

NASA on Thursday unveiled the calendar for the "Artemis" program that will return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in half a century, including eight scheduled launches and a mini-station in lunar orbit by 2024.

* This article was originally published here

Soft, social robot brings coziness to home robotics

A few years ago, when social robots began appearing in stores and homes, Guy Hoffman wondered why they all looked so much alike.

* This article was originally published here

How a zebrafish could help solve the mysteries of genetic brain disease

A close look at the rapidly developing zebrafish embryo is helping neuroscientists better understand the potential underpinnings of brain disorders, including autism and schizophrenia.

* This article was originally published here

CycleMatch: a new approach for matching images and text

Researchers at Leiden University and the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), in China, have recently developed a new approach for image-text matching, called CycleMatch. Their approach, presented in a paper published in Elsevier's Pattern Recognition journal, is based on cycle-consistent learning, a technique that is sometimes used to train artificial neural networks on image-to-image translation tasks. The general idea behind cycle-consistency is that when transforming source data into target data and then vice versa, one should finally obtain the original source samples.

* This article was originally published here

Threat or promise? E-auto boom could cost industry jobs

Over 115 years the auto industry in the east German town of Zwickau has lived through wrenching upheavals including World War II and the collapse of communism. Now the city's 90,000 people are plunging headlong into another era of change: top employer Volkswagen's total shift into electric cars at the local plant.

* This article was originally published here

With a hop, a skip and a jump, high-flying robot leaps over obstacles with ease

Topping out at less than a foot, Salto the robot looks like a Star Wars imperial walker in miniature. But don't be fooled by its size—this little robot has a mighty spring in its step. Salto can vault over three times its height in a single bound.

* This article was originally published here

Hot spots in rivers that nurture salmon 'flicker on and off' in Bristol Bay region

Chemical signatures imprinted on tiny stones that form inside the ears of fish show that two of Alaska's most productive salmon populations, and the fisheries they support, depend on the entire watershed.

* This article was originally published here

Vegas tourism board backs $49M Elon Musk transit system

A company backed by tech billionaire Elon Musk has been awarded a nearly $49 million contract to build a transit system using self-driving vehicles underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center.

* This article was originally published here

Family crucial to orca survival

Orcas live in stable, structured social groups. And their survival directly depends on it, as a CNRS and University of La Rochelle research team has just demonstrated. Between 1996 and 2002, half of the Crozet Islands orca population was killed off by an illegal fishing operation targeting Patagonian toothfish, with the orcas removing the fish from the line during hauling.

* This article was originally published here

MobiKa: A low-cost mobile robot that can assist people in a variety of settings

Researchers at Fraunhofer IPA, in Stuttgart, Germany, have recently developed MobiKa, a low-cost, mobile robot capable of two-modal (voice and text) interactions with humans. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, could be particularly useful for assisting elderly people.

* This article was originally published here

Private, stable and landed: Meet Tor Browser 8.5

A Tor browser has arrived as a stable release for Android. Ultraprivate. And some Tor wish-listers will say, finally. "Until recently, it was only available on desktop devices. Now, the stable version is available for Android, too," said George Burduli, XDA Developers.

* This article was originally published here