Although the coronavirus pandemic has dominated recent headlines, climate change hasnt gone away. Many experts are calling for a green economic recovery that directs investments into low-carbon energy sources and technologies.

Buildings account for 40 percent of total energy consumption in the US, compared to 32 percent for industry and 28 percent for transportation. States and cities with ambitious climate action plans are working to reduce emissions from the building sector to zero. This means maximizing energy efficiency to reduce building energy use, and then supplying the remaining energy needs with electricity generated by carbon-free sources.

My colleagues and I study the best ways to rapidly reduce carbon emissions from the building sector. In recent years, construction designs have advanced dramatically. Net zero energy buildings, which produce the energy they need on site from renewable sources, increasingly are the default choice. But to speed the transition to zero carbon emissions, I believe the US must think bigger and focus on designing or redeveloping entire communities that are zero energy.

Tackling energy use in buildings at the district level provides economies of scale. Architects can deploy large heat pumps and other equipment to serve multiple buildings on a staggered schedule across the day. Districts that bring homes, places of work, restaurants, recreation centers, and other services together in walkable communities also significantly reduce the energy needed for transportation. In my view, this growing movement will play an increasingly important role in helping the US and the world address the climate crisis.

Heating and cooling are the biggest energy uses in buildings. District design strategies can address these loads more efficiently.

District heating has long been used in Europe, as well as on some US college and other campuses. These systems typically have a central plant that burns natural gas to heat water, which then is circulated to the various buildings.

To achieve zero carbon emissions, the latest strategy uses a design known as an ambient temperature loop that simultaneously and efficiently both heats and cools different buildings. This concept was first developed for the Whistler Olympic Village in British Columbia.

In a typical ambient loop system, a pump circulates water through an uninsulated pipe network buried below the frost line. At this depth, the soil temperature is near that of the yearly average air temperature for that location. As water moves through the pipe, it warms or cools toward this temperature.

Heat pumps at individual buildings or other points along the ambient loop add or extract heat from the loop. They can also move heat between deep geothermal wells and the circulating water.

The loop also circulates through a central plant that keeps it in an optimum temperature range for maximum heat pump performance. The plant can use cooling towers or wastewater to remove heat. It can add heat via renewable sources, such as solar thermal collectors, renewable fuel or heat pumps powered by renewable electricity.

One example of a potentially zero-energy district currently being developed, the National Western Center, is a multi-use campus currently under construction in Denver to house the annual National Western Stock Show and other public events focused on food and agriculture.

A six-foot-diameter pipe carrying the citys wastewater runs underground through the property before delivering the water to a treatment plant. The water temperature stays within a narrow range of 61 to 77 degrees F throughout the year.

The wastewater pipe and a heat exchanger transfer heat to and from an ambient loop circulating water throughout the district. The system provides heat in winter and absorbs heat in the summer via heat recovery chillers, which are heat pumps that can simultaneously provide heating and cooling. This strategy serves individual buildings at very high efficiency.

Electricity used to operate the heat pumps, lighting and other equipment will come from on-site photovoltaics and wind- and solar-generated electricity imported from off-site.

Another district that will minimize carbon emissions is the Whisper Valley Community, under construction in Austin, Texas. This 2,000-acre multi-use development includes 7,500 all-electric houses, 2 million square feet of commercial space, two schools, and a 600-acre park. Its design has already received a green building award.

Whisper Valley will run on an integrated energy system that includes an extensive ambient loop network heated and cooled by heat pumps and geothermal wells located at each house. Each homeowner has the option to include a 5-kilowatt rooftop solar photovoltaic array to operate the heat pump and energy-efficient appliances, including heat pump water heaters and inductive stovetops. According to the developer, Whisper Valleys economy of scale allows for a median sale price $50,000 below that of typical Austin houses.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and other project partners are developing an open source software development kit called URBANopt that models elements of zero energy districts, such as building efficiency/demand flexibility strategies, rooftop photovoltaic arrays, ambient loop district thermal systems. The software can be integrated into other computer models to aid in the design of zero energy communities. NREL engineers have been engaging with high-performance district projects across the country, such as the National Western Center, to help inform and guide the development of the URBANopt platform.

The projects Ive described are new construction. Its harder to achieve net zero energy in existing buildings or communities economically, but there are ways to do it. It makes sense to apply those efficiency measures that are the most cost-effective to retrofit, convert building heating and cooling systems to electricity and provide the electricity with solar photovoltaics.

Utilities are increasingly offering time-of-use rate schedules, which charge more for power use during high demand periods. Emerging home energy management systems will allow home owners to heat water, charge home batteries and electric vehicles and run other appliances at times when electricity prices are lowest. Whether were talking about new or existing buildings, I see sustainable zero energy communities powered by renewable energy as the wave of the future as we tackle the climate change crisis.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Denys NevozhaionUnsplash

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Buildings Consume Lots of EnergyHere's How to Design Whole Communities That Give Back as Much as They Take - Singularity Hub

Air University Press and Air University Library have relaunched the Fairchild Series, which is an academic series that publishes cutting-edge research.

The series is named after General Muir Stephen Fairchild, who served as the first leader of the Air University, located at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

This timely volume discusses the impact of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) that will lead to panoptic surveillance and directly contribute to highly authoritarian forms of political control.

This edited volume aims to prepare Anglo-American security practitioners for the impact of AI-related technologies on a countrys domestic political system.

This book contains 27 chapters, which is divided into six sections with 24 expert contributors drawing their insights from mixed professional backgrounds.

Particularly, this book traces the differential impact of AI technology on competing domestic regime types.

Chapters in the book describe how China will seek to further increase its authoritarian control by utilizing AI, while making its citizens prosperous and shielding them from external knowledge influences.

The Chinese model of digital authoritarianism or digital social and political control is likely to emerge as a major and direct rival to free, open, and democratic society a model championed by the Anglo-American alliance.

The Russian model, offers a hybrid approach that relies on a variety of manipulative digital tools to destabilize challenger regimes while maintaining tight state control over critical resources and quashing political rivals.

Part 1 of the book with four framing chapters authored by the editorNicholas D. Wrightfocuses on the impact of AI technologies on domestic politics and its far-reaching impact on the evolving global order.

The remaining five sections of the book are filled with contributions from 23 authors, who are some of the worlds leading experts in the field of AI and Internet technologies.

Part two of the book, with five chapters, focuses on how the Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism are shaping domestic political regimes with tools of surveillance, monitoring, big data-fueled AI led governance, facial recognition, and behavioral pattern recognition.

Collectively these technologies are leading to intensifying political control of citizens. The third section of the book is on the export and emulation of Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism to other parts of the world.

Part four contains four chapters on how AI technologies influence Chinas domestic and foreign policy decision making.

Focus of the fifth section, with five chapters, is on the various military dimensions of AI and its application to the development of modern weapon systems such as hypersonic glide weapons and enhancement of Chinese command authority through artificial intelligence.

Probably the most provocative section in this book is the final part of the book that focuses on Artistic Perspectives and the Humanities.

This section draws on science fiction writings, movies, and art to present various telling scenarios of the future.

The set of five chapters offers a vivid and frightening rendering of AI driven technological futures such as precognition to prevent crime, drones to monitor public spaces and summarily execute offenders, a color-coded social credit ranking system to categorize people in a society by obedience to authority, and AI applications that goes beyond facial recognition to diagnosing depression and mood conditions in individuals.

Drawing linkages between AI technologies and terrifying dystopian futures, this set of chapters has issued a clarion call to policy makers to develop robust rules and regulations for democratic governance of the digital world without which corporate and authoritarian control will become the norm.

For the purposes of this book, AI is defined as a constellation of new technologies that combines big data, machine learning, and digital things (e.g., the Internet of Things).

Application of AI implies the analysis of data in which inferences from models are used to predict and anticipate possible future events (p.3).

Critically, what is important to understand is that AI programs do not simply analyze data in the way they were originally programmed, instead the AI programs respond intelligently to new data and adapt their outputs accordingly (p. 3).

Ultimately AI is understood as giving computers new behaviors and knowledge which would be thought intelligent in human beings (p. 3).

The authors argue that the greatest strength of AI capabilities are primarily perceptual, the ability to process images, speeches, and other patterns of behavior and choosing bounded actions to guide decision making.

Googles Deepmind AI is one such example, which draws data from Googles datacenters and accurately predicts when the data-load is going to increase or decrease and correctly adjusts the cooling systems for the datacenters (p.7).

This book raises legitimate concerns with regards to singularity that represents the fear that an exponentially accelerating technological progress will create an AI that exceeds human intelligence and escapes our control (p. 18).

AI systems will self-learn from data without any human input or management. The precise concern is that AI will become super-intelligent, which may then deliberately or inadvertently destroy humanity or usher changes that are outside the control of humans (p. 18).

The terror of singularity is well captured in the five excellent chapters in the concluding section of the book, which draw on sources from reality, fiction, and art to depict an Orwellian dystopia in which conscious human beings either fight back as depicted in the movie seriesMatrix or the Terminatoror they become mindless tools of these self-thinking and regenerating machines (p. 194).

Middle sections of book focusing on the Chinese model of digital authoritarianism, the hybrid Russian model of authoritarianism, and the American model of digital openness, but dependent on corporate control are temporary predictions of AI usage.

The Chinese, Russian, and American models assume that governments could, should, and will be able to control AI and maybe deploy AI toward social control and military applications.

Given the rate of progress, the singularity may occur at some point this century (p. 18).

The lead author, Wright, adds that although clearly momentous, given that nobody knows when, if or how a possible singularity will occur and limits clearly exist on what can sensibly be said or planned for now (p. 18).

The authors are hoping that humans would be able to master and control AI in the same way that we have been (so far) successful in controlling the use and spread of nuclear weapons, albeit imperfectly.

The key assertion here is that much like nuclear weapons, singularity issues related to AI will require managing within the international order as best we can, although our best will inevitably be grossly imperfect (p. 18).

Our solutions are likely to incomplete, inadequate, imperfect, and potentially counterproductive because singularity potentially represents a qualitatively new challenge for humanity that we need to think through and discuss internationally (p. 18). This is a serious and a major claim of the book that readers should take note!

At a more temporal level, the contributors to this important volume proffer three key recommendations: (1) the United States must pursue robust policies to keep ahead of the digital curve and it must respond by preventing the emergence of a military-industrial complex that is managed by an AI corporate oligopoly and a surveillance state; (2) the United States must build a new global order of norms and institutions required to persuade the world that the American model of free and open digital democracy offers an attractive and viable alternative to the Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism; and (3) the United States should fight back against digital authoritarianism and hybridism so that it manages the risks associated with a multifaceted interstate AI competition.

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Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia, and the Global Order - Khabarhub

Novelist Sheila Heti on how Phyllis Roses classic study of five famous Victorian couples unravels the myth of matrimony

I mentioned to some friends last year that I was writing about Parallel Lives, Phyllis Roses 1983 study of five Victorian marriages. One, a man in his 30s who has been with his boyfriend for seven years, but is always falling in love and talks about his relationships constantly, almost fell down in my living room. Another, who claims that thoughts of her husband take up only 10 per cent of her brain, actually did a double-take: it was the only book about marriage she had ever wanted to read.

Parallel Lives had been hiding in the bookshelves of so many of my friends, a shared favourite, without any of us knowing it. These are some of the most exciting books: the ones you feel you have stumbled upon, fortuitously, and that seem so tailored to your interests that its impossible to imagine them having a general, wide readership. Yet Parallel Lives, for all its singularity, does.

One of the virtues of the book and I think one reason it appeals topeople of such different temperaments is its refusal to make sweeping statements about love or life. It remains faithfully close to the factual details of the marriages it depicts, and its mode of conclusion is not generalisation, but the epigram. A generalisation asks to be disagreed with. An epigram unfolds in all directions.

Rereading this book at the age of 42, a decade into a relationship that might well be called a marriage, I cannot perceive the book I first read when I was 23, engaged to a different man, who bought it for me. Back then, I was naively confident about our ability to make a happy marriage of equals, because that is what we wanted to do. I imagined he gave me Parallel Lives as if to say: pick which of these marriages you want, my dear. I am available for any of them. I read the book almost like a mail-order catalogue. But today it seems to be illustrating the opposite point: about the sad and comical fact of our natures, which defines the limits of our most intimate connections.

Rose began writing Parallel Lives when she was 35, a mother, two years divorced. She continued to work on it for six years, while a professor at Wesleyan University. Several years after it was published, she met a man while she was living in Paris researching a book about Josephine Baker; eventually they would marry. This is a heartening fact: though a feminist had attained near X-ray vision for how marriages can develop in all sorts of ways ways that cant be predicted at the start she saw enough value in this arrangement to try it for a second time.

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Parallel Lives the only book you'll ever need to read about marriage - Telegraph.co.uk

Jerry Coyne and his Darwinist/materialist/atheist brethren make public assertions that are nonsense on their face: they claim to be mindless meat machines, they deny the indisputable evidence for intelligent design in biology and for teleology in all of nature, they deny the obvious evidence for the supernatural in cosmological singularities such as black holes and the singularity at the origin of the Big Bang, and they deny the manifest corruption of modern science by materialism and arrogance and egotism. Materialists tout determinism and deny free will, despite the fact that determinism in physics has been quite decisively refuted and the fact that free will is well supported by neuroscience and that denial of free will negates the ability to make a truth claim of any sort (if a materialists opinion is forced by chemical reactions, theres no reason to think it corresponds to truth. Chemistry is not a propositional and can be neither true nor false). Atheists deny the existence of God because of evil in nature, without realizing that the recognition of evil presupposes an objective moral standard that can only be grounded in a Mind outside of man.

Darwinism/materialism/atheism (the three are nearly always found together) is beset with self-refuting non-sequiturs. This triad is not even a genuine ideological perspective as much as it is an incoherent mistake. Yet, ironically, many who tout it are quite intelligent people.

Playwright David Mamet noted a characteristic in politics that applies broadly to flawed belief systems. It struck me as a key to understanding the philosophical perspective of those who deny free will, design in nature, Gods existence, and the like. Mamet originally applied it to a particular political philosophy, but I apply Mamets principle to Darwinists et al:

in order for [Darwinists, atheists, materialists, etc.] to continue their illogical belief systems they have to pretend not to know a lot of things.

The pretense not to know things is at the root of Darwinist/atheist/materialist ideology. It was stated with astonishing candor by Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin, one of the past centurys leading Darwinists:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door

Lewontins confession is a remarkable invocation of Mamets principle: in order to maintain the Darwinist/materialist ideology, atheists have to pretend not to know a lot of things.

The fundamental reason that Darwinists have vented such fury at the intelligent design movement even to the point that a prominent scientific journal openly advocates government censorship of ID is that ID has forced Darwinists and other atheist and materialist ideologues to publicly explain themselves, and that has made their pretense that there is no design in nature so much harder to pull off.

Photo: David Mamet, by David Shankbone / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

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Lewontin's Confession and Mamet's Principle - Discovery Institute

THE heart of our Milky Way galaxy is blinking at us, according to scientists.

Mysterious signals from Sagittarius A, a huge black hole at the centre of our galaxy, were picked up by one of the world's most powerful telescopes.

2

In a new study, experts at Keio University in Japan outline how the strange, repeating signals may form.

"This emission could be related with some exotic phenomena occurring at the very vicinity of the supermassive black hole," team member Professor Tomoharu Okasaid.

Researchers studied readings of Sagitarius A (Sag A) taken in 2017 by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

They found a previously-undiscovered light signalcoming from the supermassive black hole, which is four million times as massive as our Sun.

2

The burst of energy likely originated from a region of swirling hot gas around Sag A known as its accretion disk.

Activity appears to stem from the innermost edge of the disk.

The edge is close to the black hole, which is spinning gas and debris around at close to the speed of light.

During this process, random "hot spots" appear that flash millimeter and submillimeter light - the signal detected by the scientists.

What is a black hole? The key facts

What is a black hole?

What is an event horizon?

What is a singularity?

How are black holes created?

It remains unclear what is causing the flashes, but scientists hope the answer could help them learn more about the activity of black holes.

Experts may struggle to find out, however, as photos of Sag A are next-to-impossible to capture because it absorbs all surrounding light.

"The faster the movement is, the more difficult it is to take a photo of the object," Professor Oka said.

The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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In other space news, Nasas first astronaut launch from US soil in almost a decadelifts off tomorrow.

Nasa recentlyunveiled the Tesla carthat will be ferrying astronauts to the launch.

And, incrediblephotos of eerie Martian landscapeshave been released online by scientists.

What do you think of the black hole find? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

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Mystery radio signal detected coming from the heart of our galaxy and may be sent from a black hole - The Sun

Collision from Home has announced that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), will speak at this years virtual conference. Tedros is an Ethiopian microbiologist and malaria researcher who has served in his role at the WHO since 2017.

We are relying on everyone in the field, from world leaders in medicine to the nurses on the frontline.

Ghebreyesus is expected to speak about the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the WHO. Collision from Homes organizers intend to put a particular focus on healthcare for this years event, specifically on how the tech industry is accelerating solutions and addressing challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Were incredibly humbled to welcome [Adhanom], one of the most important people in the world right now, to Collision from Home, said Paddy Cosgrave, founder and CEO of Collision from Home. This global pandemic has created a warlike scenario where the health industry is in an arms race, except the arms are not weapons, they are medical advancements that will save lives, such as tracking systems for contact tracing, and super fast testing.

In addition to Ghebreyesus, speakers expected to focus on the pandemic response include Patrice Harris, president of the American Medical Association, Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, and Leana Wen, visiting professor of health policy and management of George Washington University.

Startups that are expected to speak at Collision from Home, such as Austin, Texas-based Everlywell, are also playing a role in the pandemic recovery. Everlywell, which was also featured in Singularity Universitys virtual summit on COVID-19 in March, recently secured authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to launch self-administered, at-home COVID-19 testing kits.

RELATED: Collision to give 1,000 laid-off Toronto residents free access to virtual conference

We are desperate to return to any kind of normal and now more than ever, we are relying on everyone in the field, from world leaders in medicine to the nurses on the frontline, Cosgrave added. I believe the tech advancements well make over the next year and into 2021 will be incredible, and change the way healthcare is run forever.

Since the in-person portion of Collision was cancelled earlier this year due to the pandemic, the organizers have brought on speakers that address a wide array of issues pertaining to the COVID-19 crisis. NBA All-Star champion turned investor Shaquille ONeal, for example, will be speaking at the 2020 virtual tech conference about unemployment.

Startups, speakers, investors, partners, and attendees will be able to access networking and content experiences through the Collision from Home app. The conference is expected to return to Toronto as a physical event from June 21 to 24, 2021, at the Enercare Centre.

Image source ITU via Flickr.

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Director-general of World Health Organization to speak at Collision from Home - BetaKit

What would happen if human beings could individually control thousands of lethal drones with the power of their minds alone? Ashes of the Singularity, thats what its an RTS based on huge swarms of laser-armed robotic fighters, battling it out across distant planets, and its free right now at the Humble Store. But youll want to hurry to pick up your copy.

The Humble freebie is available for the next 24 hours or so, and supplies are limited. But if you head to the store now, youll get a 100% discount on a Steam code for Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. If you already own the game, its DLC packs are discounted too, with markdowns ranging from 10% to 55%.

Ashes of the Singularity is an RTS thats all about managing the flow of an economy, reminiscent of the Supreme Commander series. Youll set up resource extractors that determine your income, and then set production queues for your factories to start pumping out robots. These youll send to your front lines to apply lasers directly to the face of anyone standing in your way.

Ashes of the Singularity has always been a pretty game, and since Escalations 2.4 patch, its supported the Vulkan graphics rendering API. Its a great RTS for showing off a beefy graphics card, since you can get huge crowds of buzzing units on screen all at once, each firing lasers or artillery rounds at its own target.

Again, youll have to hurry to pick this up: the offer is only good until 13:00 EST / 18:00 BST tomorrow, May 10, and if Humble runs out of keys before then, well, youre out of luck. So if you have any interest at all in unending drone wars, grab your copy now. All you have to do is subscribe to Humbles email newsletter.

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Free games: Ashes of the Singularity puts you in command of swarms of laser deathbots - PCGamesN

BIOTECH

With CRISPR, a Possible Quick Test for the CoronavirusCarl Zimmer | The New York TimesA team of scientists has developed an experimental prototype for a fairly quick, cheap test to diagnose the coronavirus that gives results as simply as a pregnancy test does. The test is based on a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, and the researchers estimated that the materials for each test would cost about $6.

IBM Now Has 18 Quantum Computers in Its Fleet of Weird MachinesStephen Shankland | CNETEighteen quantum computers might not sound like a lot. But given that each one is an unwieldy device chilled within a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and operated by PhD researchers, its actually a pretty large fleet. In comparison, Googles quantum computers lab near Santa Barbara, California, has only five machines, and Honeywell only has six quantum computers.

An AI Can Simulate an Economy Millions of Times to Create Fairer Tax PolicyWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology ReviewThe tool is still relatively simple (theres no way it could include all the complexities of the real world or human behavior), but it is a promising first step toward evaluating policies in an entirely new way. It would be amazing to make tax policy less political and more data driven, says team member Alex Trott.

Spot the Robot Is Reminding Parkgoers in Singapore to Keep Their Distance From One AnotherJames Vincent | The VergeThe robot is fitted with cameras that will be used to estimate the number of visitors to the park, but Singapores National Parks Board (NParks) says it wont collect personal data or use the video to identify individuals. If the trial is successful, NParks says the robot could be deployed full-time during peak hours in the park.

In the Future, Touchscreens Will Be Obsolete. This Lab Designs Whats NextLuke Dormehl | Digital TrendsConductive paint that turns regular, boring walls intoenormous touch-sensitive panelsat a cost of $1 per square foot? Of course! Asmartwatch that uses laser projectionto extend its touchscreen all the way up your arm? No problem! A device for simulating touch in virtual reality byturning humans into living marionettes? Youve come to the right place!

How Much Energy Does It Take to Blow Up a Planet?Rhett Allain | WiredSo, on orders from Emperor Palpatine, a Xyston-class Star Destroyer fires a super powerful beam from space andblows up the planet Kijimi. Just like that. I know what youre thinking: How much energy would it take to blow up a planet? Of course, its just an academic question. Im sure youre not a Sith lord with bad intentions, so Ill show you how to figure this out.

Image credit:Joel Mbugua /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 9) - Singularity Hub

Its 2020. Why cant we binge Netflix as our cars drive us down the highway? Well, weve made progress, but not at the pace once promised. While some cars offer automated driving modes, youre not to take your eyes off the road or hands from the wheel. Volvo wants to remedy that.

The company isnt promising 100% self-driving cars in the near future. Instead, theyll make mainstream cars that reliably drive themselves on highwaystotally autonomously, no human attention needed. For a brand built on safety, and in light of autopilot accidents in recent years, its notable the company thinks thats possible in the not-too-distant future.

To make it happen, Volvo said this week that it would begin adding lidar to production cars in 2022. Theyll also develop self-driving software to integrate lidar, cameras, radar, and back-up vehicle control systems. Once the software, dubbed Highway Pilot, is deemed safe, itll be sent out as an update to customers who opt in.

While Volvos autopilot aspirations are notable, the fact theyre integrating lidar into cars aimed at the mainstream is perhaps even more interesting.

The most advanced self-driving cars (think Waymo) use lidar to navigate. Its the spinning can you may have seen slapped on top of a self-driving Lexus or minivan. Lidar shoots lasers into the immediate environment to create a real-time, high-fidelity, 3D map of a cars surroundings. Lidar is better quality than cameras or radar, but its also clunky and, historically costing upwards of $75,000 per unit, can itself be as pricey as a luxury car.

Which is why its mostly been used in self-driving car trials as opposed to production cars. Though Audi has offered lidar in some models, its been short range and low resolution, somewhat limiting capability.

Volvos lidar will be made by Luminar and is reportedly cheaperunder $1,000 when produced at scaleand sleeker, without sacrificing too much on critical capabilities like resolution and range. So, while Waymo cars still rock the can, Volvo will integrate lidar into its models much more seamlessly (see the image at the top of the article).

There is a catch, however.

Luminars lidar is fixed and can only scan 120 degrees. To get 360-degree coverage, like Waymo, Volvo would have to integrate multiple units into its cars. This would, of course, raise the cost (though maybe not too much, relative to lidar systems that run tens of thousands of dollars). In this iteration, at least, Volvo appears to believe front-facing lidar combined with cameras and radar is enough to safely automate highway driving.

There are already autopilot systems available.

In Teslas, for example, a simple version of their autopilot software matches the cars speed to traffic (an option thats fairly widely available in many cars at this point) and steers within a lane. More advanced features include lane change and navigation between highway on- and off-ramps (this ones still in beta). Critically, all this must be supervised by the driver, who isnt technically supposed to remove their hands from the wheel. (A detail thats been sadly underscored by multiple high-profile accidents.)

But this is where Volvos plan differs. Soon, your Volvo will be able to drive autonomously on highways when the car determines it is safe to do so, Henrik Green said in Volvos press release. At that point, your Volvo takes responsibility for the driving and you can relax, take your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel.

Volvo says full autonomous driving will be limited in the beginning to certain areas and conditions. Likely, this means theyll map particular stretches of road to help the software navigate. Over time, theyll expand the areas where its available with software updates.

So, while todays cars have some degree of what industry jargon labels level 2 autonomy (which requires supervision) Volvo is aiming for level 3 autonomy (unsupervised in some situations). The car would do the driving, but the driver has to be available to take control at any time. Not full automation across the board, then, but a step in that direction.

It is worth noting that Audi had similar, albeit more limited, plans for its lidar system to enable autonomous driving at low speeds on highways. But the company recently scrapped the feature due to regulatory challenges and liability concerns. If its lidar is more capable, Volvo may succeed where Audi fell short, but that success will depend on more than technology.

Even if Volvos plans dont come together as planned, they may lead to wider integration of lidar in production cars, which could improve even basic driver assist and safety features.

Youd be forgiven if youre a little underwhelmed.

Four or five years ago, the tenor of the conversation was different. After Googles self-driving project (now Waymo) made impressive progress early last decade, mainstream automakers were eager to jump on board. No one wanted to be left out.

This led to billion-dollar investments, headline-making partnerships, and aggressive predictions and timelines for full autonomy. Since then, however, many large automakers have recalibrated expectations and added years to timelines.

Still, more advanced self-driving trials continue in urban and suburban areas. Waymo has now driven over 20 million miles in the real world and adds another 8 million a day in simulations.

In the companys Phoenix trial, theyve removed safety drivers in some cars, and participants can hail a true self-driving ride. But when this will be rolled out more widely is uncertain. It could be soon-ish; it could be several years or more. In the meantime, niche usessuch as low-speed, geofenced applications and trucking, which Volvo is also developingappear to be more imminent than mainstream roll-outs.

Which isnt too surprising.

Its a long slog between early dreams and widespread availability. Like all long slogs, its easy to question the reason one started slogging in the first place and when well get there. Full autonomy in the real world is hard. There are just so many edge cases that cant be anticipated, and earning the trust of regulators and the public at large takes time.

But self-driving tech is moving ahead and finding its way into real applications. If Volvo delivers on its promises, your car might soon shoot lasers as it drives you down the highway.

Image credit: Volvo

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Volvo Will Add Lidar for 'Eyes-Off-the-Road' Self-Driving Cars on Highways - Singularity Hub

Musk has no idea what is he talking about, says Facebook head of AI

San Francisco, May 14 (IANS) Facebooks Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has slammed Tesla CEO Elon Musk over his understating of AI, saying he has no idea about the Artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology.

Reacting to a CNBC report that cited research community and CEOs as saying that Musk''s confidence is misplaced as far as AI is concerned, Jerome Pesenti who is Head of AI at Facebook said Musk is distracting people from real issues.

"I believe a lot of people in the AI community would be ok saying it publicly. @elonmusk has no idea what he is talking about when he talks about AI. There is no such thing as AGI and we are nowhere near matching human intelligence," tweeted Pesenti.

"My point is that AGI is a meaningless concept, don''t even talk about it. There are a lot of risks related to AI, he talks about the wrong ones (machines taking over) distracting us from the real issues (eg fairness)," Pesenti continued.

Musk has been speaking frequently on AI and has called its progress the "biggest risk we face as a civilization", saying that if not regulated or controlled soon, AI could become an "immortal dictator" and there will be no escape for humans.

Pesanti said that lots of people are talking about fairness and AI.

"There is even a conference for it https://facctconference.org. It hasn''t reached broader awareness because it''s just drowned out by all the AGI/singularity nonsense," he said on Wednesday.

Multiple AI researchers from different companies told CNBC that they see Musk''s AI comments as inappropriate.

"A large proportion of the community think he''s a negative distraction," an AI executive with close ties to the community was quoted as saying.

Another AI scientist said Musk is "not always looked upon favourably" by the AI research community.

In a documentary on AI, Musk said recently: "At least when there''s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI there would be no death. It would live forever, and then you''d have an immortal dictator, from which we could never escape".

"If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it. No hard feelings," Musk told Chris Paine, the director of the new documentary, titled "Do You Trust This Computer?"

Musk has always been a critic of AI and asked for stiff regulations to curb the technology.

In a tweet, Musk said that people should be more concerned with AI than the risk posed by North Korea.

"If you''re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea," Musk had tweeted.

Musk has also quit the board of OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company he co-founded that aims to promote and develop friendly AI that benefits the humanity.

In a public spat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is a big advocate for the AI technology, Musk said: "I''ve talked to Mark about this (AI). His understanding of the subject is limited".

Zuckerberg replied: "I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios -- I just, I don''t understand it. It''s really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible".

In February this year, Musk said he has now hired AI as a subordinate that "reports directly" to him daily.

"Join AI at Tesla! It reports directly to me & we meet/email/text almost every day. My actions, not just words, show how critically I view (benign) AI," tweeted the Tesla CEO.

For him, AI can only do ''benign'' tasks and those jobs too are being evaluated critically by him.

During a recent presentation about his company Neuralink''s brain-machine interface technology, Musk said: "Even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind.

"Hopefully, it is a benign scenario. But I think with a high-bandwidth brain-machine interface we can actually go along for the ride. And we can effectively have the option of merging with AI," Musk told the gathering.

--IANS

na/

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: IANS

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Musk has no idea what is he talking about, says Facebook head of AI - Outlook India

Its that time again where we take a look at what the future ofLeague of Legends has in store for us with patch 10.10. This is one of the biggest patches this year with a major overhaul, and most probably meta changing. Anyway, without further ado, lets get into the changes!

Annie will have her Summon: Tibbers (R) aura damage increased from 10/15/20 to 10/25/40. Alongside this, Tibbers armor and magic resist increase from 30/50/70 to 40/70/100.

Fiddlesticks will have his passive changed. If Fiddlesticks is pretending to be an effigy (as in, standing still after a few seconds out of combat), his next ability will fear enemy targets. There will be an added buff icon when this effect takes place. To balance this change, the time itll take to pose as an effigy has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds.

Alongside thisLeague of Legends change, Fiddlesticks Bountiful Harvest (W) will have its reduced damage to minions decreased from 60% damage reduction to 40% damage reduction.

Irelia will have her Flawless Duet (E) stun increased from 0.75 seconds to 1 second.

Katarinas dagger AP ratio will increase from 55/70/85/100% to 55/66/77/88%.

Luxs Lucent Singularity (E) will have its slow duration increased from 0.25 seconds to 1 second. A new effect has been added where enemies affected by Luxs Lucent Singularity will remain slowed for 1 second after exiting the damaging zone or after being damaged by Lucent Singularity.

Maokais base mana decreased from 377.28 to 375. Bramble Smash (Q) mana cost has increased from 50 to 60.

Not all changes have been added to the PBE server yet. There are still more changes to come, and Ill be updating this article till then. Below is the original tweet detailing the planned future changes for League of Legends patch 10.10.

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League of Legends Patch 10.10 update: The biggest patch so far - PC Invasion

The absolute dominance of Silicon Valley might face its biggest challenge yet staring down the barrel of a brave new world of tech.

As virus fears sent the Valley's billionaire founders into doomsday mode, many were quick to trade the tech bubble for greener pastures, jumping on their private jets en-route to New Zealand.

While some have picked Waiheke Island near Auckland, known as the "Hamptons of New Zealand", others have gone further afield in the land of the long white cloud.

Speaking from Queenstown on the South Island, Jason Wilby has been in prime position to witness their flood into town.

"Right now I'm sitting with a view of the airport. All of the 747s stopped landing about six weeks ago but I can't believe how many private jets are still coming in. Half of Silicon Valley seems to be flying into their boltholes and bunkers it's quite bizarre," the co-founder of insurance platform Open told Business Insider Australia.

"Peter Thiel has got a house up on the hill over my shoulder. I think Bezos has a place around here as well. It really is a long list of the who's who."

It's unsurprising given the immense resources each has at their disposal they have opted for a country that boasts some of the cleanest air and water in the world over a US state as well-known for its wildfires and for its droughts.

But ecology aside there are places one would rather be and then there are places one can reliably find work. Those in the tech sector with big ambitions have for years had little choice but migrate to hubs like San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv and increasingly second-tier cities like Sydney and Vancouver.

Those established hubs have successfully traded on the magnitude of the companies headquartered there to attract some of the brightest talent in the world. However, if there's any sector that should be able to optimise remote working, surely it's the companies who invented the software and hardware that makes the thing itself possible.

"These hubs are predicated on the false idea that if you want to earn good money you have to live in those tier-one cities and you have to trade off a lifestyle for a career," Wilby said.

It was something Wilby, who also founded Huddle Insurance, had in mind when establishing Open, deciding to buck the trend by opening its second office on the Sunshine Coast as an alternative to Sydney.

"Everyone is competing for the best talent and trying to attract bright minds and high performing teams, but we wanted to challenge the idea you have to be in a tier-one city to do that," he said.

"We're just an hour from a major city in Brisbane where you have a load of skilled and experienced professionals and graduates. We've got a team of 20 who can love where they live and love what they do without giving up something major."

Looking back, he says it was the right decision joining other startups and entrepreneurs up north.

"We have people who have relocated to the Sunshine Coast, not just to work with us, but from all over the world. We regularly meet software engineers from the US and all over," he said.

"When we hold events we might get 50 talented individuals attend as opposed to the 100 we may have got elsewhere but they're very much of the same calibre and pretty diverse."

It was a testament that the strategy was working, with the Open team managing to be split across its different offices and being "more productive than ever" during the current COVID-19 shutdown.

With Wilby calling the shots from Queenstown for the moment, he can see it becoming an increasingly attractive proposition for startups and tech companies in a post-COVID-age.

"In Queenstown, you can bump into engineers from Facebook and Google, entrepreneurs based down here making all kinds of businesses, people from Singularity great talent is always attracted to great destinations," he said.

While giants like Google are hardly going to forfeit the billions they've spent on refitting factories and aeroplane hangers, smaller companies and startups could be less inclined to try to compete on digs.

Instead by decentralising, they can compete on location and offer regional towns and cities an opportunity to diversify, with Queenstown a prime example. With tourism responsible for more than half the local economy, a pandemic like COVID-19 has effectively knee-capped local industry. But, if it can continue to attract new industries, a town like Queenstown can thrive in any weather.

Story continues

For tech workers themselves it offers an opportunity to get away from living in some of the most artificially expensive places on earth. With sky-high cost of living and population density driving residents out of cities like New York and San Francisco prior to the outbreak, the current crisis may further accelerate the trend. Silicon Valley, for example, is already seeing it take effect.

In an ultra-urbanised Australia, it could be a way to ease the strain placed on major cities by increasing employment opportunities outside. with much of the population confined to just a few major cities, it could be a resolution.

"I think the resolution is an economic one but also a social one. It's a reality in Sydney that you have people who think they have no choice but to save and save so they can one day buy a one-bedroom apartment. But they can work from wherever they fancy and have a beach house or a farm or a pool or whatever it is," Wilby said.

"I'm not saying we're going to see a mass exodus from the cities but I do think we're going to see more people choosing to live and work somewhere they love."

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Why the new normal after COVID-19 could have tycoons and startups fleeing tech hubs like Silicon Valley - Yahoo Finance Australia

The Humble Store's Spring Sale is now underway, with discounts of up to 90 percent on more than 4000 gamesand 100 percent on one of them. The sci-fi RTS Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is free for the taking until Sunday.

To claim your free stuff, point yourself here and click the appropriate button. You'll need to sign up for the Humble Newsletter, if you haven't already; with that taken care of you'll be given a Steam key for your efforts. Note that while the game is free to keep forever after you've claimed it, the keys themselves have a relatively short expiry date of May 14, so be sure to activate it right away.

Even setting aside the fact that it's free, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is worth your time. It's a standalone expansion to the 2016 RTS Ashes of the Singularity, which we liked quite a bit, even though the maps and story left us flat. Escalation improves on the original considerably, with new units, interface changes, and a better campaign. In 2017, Stardock "merged" Escalation into Ashes of the Singularity, and discontinued the base game.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is free on the Humble Store until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on May 10. The Humble Store Spring Sale is on until May 21.

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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is free in the Humble Store Spring Sale - PC Gamer

After a dominant start in the Call of Duty Challengers, we take a look at whether Bidz and his team are ready to compete at the pro level.

Luke Bidz Biddle joined Team Singularity back in 2019 when they announced a whole new roster for the Black Ops 4 season. This Singularity team was competitive and although there were roster changes throughout, Bidz was ever present. Placing Top 16 in every Black Ops 4 event, most notably placing 9-12 at the World League Championships.

With the move to a franchised league along came the Call of Duty Challengers; The amateur league which allowed players and teams to prove themselves for a spot on a roster in the Call of Duty League. This has already happened for players such as Blazt, Spart and Vivid. All of whom were picked up by The Los Angeles Guerrillas. And MackMelts, who made it onto The New York Subliners starting roster.

Team Singularity started off the year in Minnesota at the CDL Launch Weekend. Their team consisted of Jed Detain Mulcahy, Jamie Insight Craven, Jack Maple McCartney, Sam Chain Dineley and of course, Bidz. After losing to Renegades 3-0 in Winners Quarter-Finals. Team Singularity managed to bounce back to the Grand Finals, defeating Hybrid Black 3-0 to reset the bracket, and 3-2 to win the tournament and $80k. Singularity went back-to-back at CDL London where they defeated TrainHard Esports in the Grand Final. Singularity were unable to win three in a row; they fell to rivals Team WaR in the grand final 3-2 and 3-0.

After another second place finish in Los Angeles, and a 5-6th in Dallas. Team Singularity returned to winning form at the CDL Challengers Open #1 North American division. As well as The Chicago Huntsmen Home Series; taking another first place spot. On their return to the european division, they fell short against rivals Team WaR in the Winners Finals. Then again in the Grand Finals, both in 3-2 fashion to finish 2nd place. So far there have been eight Challengers events.Team Singularity have finished in the Top 2 at seven of these events winning four of them. Currently their 50% win rate is higher than any other team, solidifying them as the best Challengers team as of today.

We spoke to Bidz to get some more information about their success in the Call of Duty Challengers.

How did you get into Call of Duty and find yourself competing for thousands of dollars?

Bidz: I got into call of duty when my school friends convinced me to buy ghosts and play Gamebattles matches with them, we were horrible but the odd win was satisfying enough to continue playing. Obviously over time I improved from title to title and worked hard to get to the point Im at now, Im still nowhere near the top so the grind continues.

How does the standard of gameplay differ between the CWL and now CDL Challengers?

Bidz: The gameplay from pro teams are not too different. I stand by my words in the dexerto interview at the time of the London event only T2 pro teams would have given us good games. People caught up and we didn't improve for a while.

How do you and the team feel about being in Challengers and not having the chance to play on the Main Stage this year?

Bidz: Not being able to play on the main stage is heartbreaking but it just makes you work harder to get there. Played on it at CoD Champs and it felt incredible, just fuel for us to keep going.

What's your favourite role to play and why?

Bidz: My favourite role on a team is the flex, not really such a role on MW but Im happy with the SMG role this year.

If you had to put yourself on a current CDL roster, which team would it be and why?

Bidz: I feel like I would make any CDL team better just from the passion I bring in game, I want it more than anyone and I always will. Too many CDL players getting complacent and stealing a cheque.

Have you scrimmed against any pro teams?

We scrimmed all pro teams whilst in the states, usually split maps with them.

Bidz sounds very confident in his personal and his team's ability this year. Considering he's placed Top 16 every event during Black Ops 4 and Top 2 in seven out of eight events this year with a 50% win rate, his confidence is understandable. We may have to wait until next year to see Bidz or Team Singularity compete at a professional level; but when they return, their level of gameplay can keep up, and will not disappoint.

To keep up to date with all the latest Call of Duty and esports news follow ESTNN on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

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Are Team Singularity and Bidz Call of Duty League Ready? - ESTNN Esports

Singularity is one of Taehyungs most successful solos and marks 2 years since its release.

BTS has broken several records thanks to their songs and music videos on each comeback, as well as solo releases of singles and mixtapes.

V, is one of those who conquered ARMY thanks to his compositions and for the album Love Yourself: Tear, the idol performed Singularity , a song that was written by Namjoon, his voice and his talent made it one of his most successful solos and today marks its second anniversary.

2 years ago, V starred in Tears comeback trailer with Singularity, the lyrics of which speak of fear of the truth, showing that dark side of yourself, or remembering our past mistakes. Through the dance, V hides behind masks and lies so as not to face reality.

????#Singularity pic.twitter.com/3MD1fO8J6s

— ????? (@BTS_twt) May 7, 2018

Through the hashtag # 2YearsWithSingularity , ARMY has shared photos and videos of Taes live performances with this song, as they consider it to be one of his best performances.

The success of Singularity is not only limited to performances, V managed to overcome more than 130 million views on YouTube with the official video. On platforms like Spotify, Taehyung has more than 100 million streams.

https://twitter.com/glossyhobi_/status/1258144572686901249

With the new Comeback of BTS and songs written V, ARMY expected to get new records and on the second anniversary of Singularity he sent many messages of support and congratulations.

Taehyung has shown great talent as a singer and songwriter, with songs like Winter Bear , V has fallen in love with ARMY with his lyrics and in this quarantine he has dedicated himself to writing new songs, so the idol could release his first mixtape . Tae has compiled new songs that are sure to be just as successful as Singularity.

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Fans celebrate the anniversary of Singularity, one of Taehyung's solos - Somag News

#2YearsWithSingularity is currently trending worldwide as fans celebrate the second anniversary of BTS V's legendary solo song "Singularity"with its long list of massive achievements .

This evergreen song remains in the top tier as it is known to be one of most critically acclaimed songs of BTS which not only showcases V as a perfect vocalist , but also reflects V's amazing dance skills and unique facial expressions.

As the fans celebrate , "Singularity" has entered into the iTunes chart in many countries once again , including US and UK.

The song also went viral among locals few days back showing V's power as an Ultimate Stan Attractor of K-pop Industry .

Singularity remains a 'Queen' as she's still winning hearts worldwide !! The song has definitely contributed many new fans to the global group BTS.

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#2YearsWithSingularity is trending worldwide as fans celebrate the second anniversary of BTS V's legendary song "Singularity" - allkpop

Astronomers have discovered the closest black hole to our solar system found to date, located "just" 1,000 light-years away.

According to a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the black hole forms part of a triple star system known as HR 6819, which is so close, in astronomical terms, that you can see it without binoculars or telescopes from the southern hemisphere on a dark, clear night.

"We were totally surprised when we realised that this is the first stellar system with a black hole that can be seen with the unaided eye," Petr Hadrava, a co-author of the study from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, said in a statement.

The previous record holder is a black hole candidate known as V616 Mon that could be as near as 1,200 light-years away, although most astronomers consider a figure of 3,000 light-years to be more realistic.

Black holes are astronomical objects that are so massive and dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational pull.

First predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, black holes contain a singularity, a single point of infinite density and gravity where space and time as we understand them break down. Surrounding the singularity is the event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can escape.

Stellar-mass black holes, those with masses tens of times that of the sun, form after massive stars die as supernova explosions and collapse into themselves under the influence of gravity. Other black holes meanwhile, can form when incredibly dense star remnants, called neutron stars, collide. Similarly the merger of two black holes, or one neutron star and a black hole, can also generate a new, larger black hole. In addition, there are supermassive black holes, thought to be present at the center of many galaxies, whose origins are more mysterious.

"Stellar-mass black holes must not be confused with the supermassive black holes lurking at the center of most massive galaxies," Dietrich Baade, an author of the study from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), told Newsweek. "For instance, [the one] in the Milky Way has a mass of 4.2 million suns. Supermassive black holes formed early in the universe and probably keep growing through the accretion of stars and mergers with other supermassive black holes."

Astronomers think that there are vast numbers of black holes in the galaxy, but to date, only a couple of dozen have been identified.

"If you take the age of the Milky Way, the number of stars it contains, and the life expectancy of these stars, it is only a back-of-the-envelope effort to realize that there must be very many stellar-mass black holes in the galaxy," Baade said. "More complex models predict between 100,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of them."

Black holes cannot be observed directly with telescopes that detect X-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. However, scientists can infer their presence by looking for their effects on the matter that surrounds them. Any matter in the immediate vicinity of a black hole will gradually be drawn inwards in a process known as accretion, creating an "accretion disk" of orbiting material. For example, if a star ventures too close, it will be consumed by the black hole, violently ripped apart by its powerful gravitational forces.

Nearly all of the black holes that have been identified so far have revealed themselves due to their strong interactions with their immediate environment. However, the authors of the latest study say that the black hole they identified in HR 6819 is one of the first stellar-mass black holes that does not interact violently with its environment, appearing truly black so to speak. This makes it extremely difficult to detect.

The team only discovered the black hole after observing its two companion stars using a telescope at the ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Initially, they were monitoring the pair as a part of a study on double-star systems, but were shocked to uncover the previously hidden black hole while analyzing the data they had collected.

"We found that there was a third object whirling around one of the two luminous stars that weighs in at five suns or more," Baade said. "That fairly massive star's velocity changes with a period of 40 days. However, in spite of the strong gravitational pull exerted on this star, the third object does not emit any appreciable amount of light. Therefore, it can only be a black hole. The exciting thing is that it is one of the firstperhaps even the very firstabsolutely dull black holes that do not make themselves known through the violence in their immediate neighborhood."

"Other black holes were detected because gas that is transferred to them from a companion star heats up to very high temperatures and radiates strongly in X-rays, which are readily observed," Baade said. "The new black hole is really black because it is not fed by its companion. This makes it so much more difficult to discover: instead of a single X-ray image, it takes many observations suitably distributed over a long time to detect periodic velocity changes."

According to Baade, the latest discovery is surprising for two main reasons: Firstly, the fact that the team found possibly the first instance of a true black, or "non-accreting," black hole. And secondly, that it was discovered so nearby, relatively speaking. This indicates that there are many more similar black holes to be found in the future, the researchers say, with this system likely representing just "the tip of the iceberg."

Roberto Saglia, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, who was not involved in the latest study, told Newsweek that the important aspect of this research is the detection a "non-active" stellar mass black hole.

"Most stellar mass black holes are first discovered because they have a hot accretion disk around them that shines in the X-ray/ultraviolet range and is detected by X-ray satellites. Here there is no X-ray emission and the inference of the presence of a black hole comes just from dynamical measurements," he said.

"This is important, because we expect from stellar evolution that many more stellar mass black holes should be around compared to the number of detected ones," he said. "This system provides an alternative way to probe this 'unseen' family of black holes, as gravitational wave detections can also provide."

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The Closest Black Hole to Earth Has Been Discovered by Scientists - Newsweek

V who is popularly known for snatching hearts, as well as records with his solo music, has bagged another incredible achievement.

It has been reported that V took over the top three spots on the best-seller list of Amazon (US) with his solo tracks: Intro: Singularity, Inner Child, and Sweet Night.

This comes to no surprise as the three solo tracks entitle an astounding list of achievements to their name.

Intro: Singularity released in 2018 is highly regarded as one of the most critically acclaimed solo tracks by BTS. The song was listed on multiple Best of 2018 rankings by the western media/music critics. Singularity is also known as the ultimate stan attractor of BTSs discography due to the various amount of times the song has gone viral among non-fans. However, a majority of the fans have acknowledged Vs remarkable performances as the main reason for the songs success.

Inner Child released earlier this year continues to maintain its title as one of the most acclaimed tracks from BTS's latest album: Map of the Soul: 7. Aside from being a fan-favorite, the anthemic track currently ranks as the B-side song with the second most #1s in BTSs discography. Inner Child also holds multiple first-ever records in the U.K as the only solo track from MOTS: 7 to rank at #4 on iTunes and enter the official single sales chart of the country. Additionally, the song has also marked its debut on popular TV shows worldwide.

Vs most recent release, Sweet Night has claimed the title of the most celebrated soundtrack by a Korean soloist in history. The song remains as the only soundtrack to simultaneously top the iTunes chart of the U.S and U.K as well as thefirst-ever Korean O.S.T to debut at #1 on Worldwide and European iTunes charts in history. Sweet Night also holds the record as the song with the second most #1 on iTunes worldwide. Since the release, V has achieved #1s in 81 countries and ranks behind PSY who holds the top spot with #1s in 86 countries for his viral hit Gangnam Style.

As V continues to write his name in history as one of the most acclaimed multi-talented artists of this generation, fans are looking forward to his next project.

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BTS's V occupies the top three spots on the best-seller list of Amazon (US) with his solo songs. - allkpop

Automated vehicles dont have human operators to communicate their driving intentions to pedestrians at intersections. My teams research on pedestrians perceptions of safety shows their trust of traffic lights tends to override their fear of self-driving cars. This suggests one way to help pedestrians trust and safely interact with autonomous vehicles may be to link the cars driving behavior to traffic lights.

In a recent study by my team at the University of Michigan, we focused on communication via a vehicles driving behavior to study how people might react to self-driving cars in different situations. We set up a virtual-reality simulator that let people experience street intersections and make choices about whether to cross the street. In different simulations, self-driving cars acted either more or less like an aggressive driver. In some cases there was a traffic light controlling the intersection.

In the more aggressive mode, the car would stop abruptly at the last possible second to let the pedestrian cross. In the less aggressive mode, it would begin braking earlier, indicating to pedestrians that it would stop for them. Aggressive driving reduced pedestrians trust in the autonomous vehicle and made them less likely to cross the street.

However, this was true only when there was no traffic light. When there was a light, pedestrians focused on the traffic light and usually crossed the street regardless whether the car was driving aggressively. This indicates that pedestrians trust of traffic lights outweighs any concerns about how self-driving cars behave.

Introducing autonomous vehicles might be one way to make roads more safe. Drivers and pedestrians often use nonverbal communication to negotiate safe passage at crosswalks, though, and cars without drivers cant communicate in the same way. This could in turn make pedestrians and other road users less safe, especially since autonomous vehicles arent yet designed to communicate with systems that make streets safer, such as traffic lights.

Some researchers have tried to find ways for self-driving cars to communicate with pedestrians. They have tried to use parts that cars already have, such as headlights, or add new ones, such as LED signs on the vehicle.

However, unless every car does it the same way, this strategy wont work. For example, unless automakers agreed on how headlights should communicate certain messages or the government set rules, it would be impossible to make sure pedestrians understood the message. The same holds for new technology like LED message boards on cars. There would need to be a standard set of messages all pedestrians could understand without learning multiple systems.

Even if the vehicles communicated in the same way, several cars approaching an intersection and making independent decisions about stopping could cause confusion. Imagine three to five autonomous vehicles approaching a crosswalk, each displaying its own message. The pedestrian would need to read each of these messages, on moving cars, before deciding whether to cross.

Our results suggest a better approach would be to have the car communicate directly with the traffic signal, for two reasons.

First, pedestrians already look to and understand current traffic lights.

Second, a car can tell what a traffic light is doing much sooner by checking in over a wireless network than by waiting until its camera can see the light.

This technology is still being developed, and scholars at Michigans Mcity mobility research center and elsewhere are studying problems like how to send and prioritize messages between cars and signals. It might effectively put self-driving cars under traffic lights control, with ways to adapt to current conditions. For example, a traffic light might tell approaching cars that it was about to turn red, giving them more time to stop. On a slippery road, a car might ask the light to stay green a few seconds longer so an abrupt stop isnt necessary.

To make this real, engineers and policymakers would need to work together on developing technologies and setting rules. Each would have to better understand what the other does. At the same time, they would need to understand that not every solution works in every region or society. For example, the best way for traffic lights and self-driving cars to communicate in Detroit might not work in Mumbai, where roads and driving practices are far different.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: WikimediaImages from Pixabay

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Linking Self-Driving Cars to Traffic Signals Might Help Pedestrians Give Them the Green Light - Singularity Hub

One death in Steven Soderberghs terrifyingly prescient masterpiece, Contagion, stayed with me: Kate Winslets Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer who chased down people with a terrifying viral infection in an effort to warn those who might be at risk and reconstruct the viruss rampage through an unknowing society.

For most of us, Mears was probably our first introduction to contact tracing, a technique thats crossed centuries as a tour-de-force in battling outbreaks. The core idea is simple, if laborious, detective work: manually seek out those infected, interrogate their movements through the world, and follow up with every single person who might have been in contact with the infected individual.

Its tedious. Its dangerous. Yet as a method, contact tracing has been wielded as a powerful weapon from typhoid fever to the 1918 flu pandemic, and more recently, from AIDS to SARS and the first Asian country responders to Covid-19.

Theres a reason contact tracing has survived the test of time: it works. Thanks to epic efforts at hunting down people with Covid-19which, in turn, was in part thanks to widespread testingSouth Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Indias Kerala district have emerged as success stories in their battle against a new foe, nipping new infections in the bud and dramatically reducing hospitalizations and deaths. Even Wuhan, under stringent autocratic surveillance from the central Chinese government, was lauded by the WHO as a positive responderthough their method of giving individuals a green, yellow, or red light as they return to society may give democratic countries uncomfortable chills.

But heres the thing: contact tracing has always teetered on the line between individual freedom and the good of the general public; the stigmatization of a viral scarlet letter versus keeping others safe; the price of health data sharing versus societal responsibility.

Today, thanks to the mini tracking devices in our pockets called smartphones, its easier than ever to bring an effective method for controlling outbreaks into the digital realm. Some epidemiologists even argue that due to the highly infectious nature of SARS-Cov-2, traditional analog methods are both too dangerous and too slow; digital contact tracing is the only way to go. In a technocratic world where we rely on our gadgets every day for news, maps, health tracking, and communication, not using the digital tools we have to update a century-long method almost seems silly.

The good news is that western societies dont have to start from scratch. One reason why Asias democratic countries quickly responded to Covid-19 is because they all suffered through the 2003 SARS epidemic. They learned their lesson and were the first to implement digital contact tracing, with both successes and hiccups along the way.

Its time to learn from them.

There are multiple ways contact tracing helps limit the reach of a virus, but its power is mainly felt at the beginning and tapering ends of a pandemic.

Take South Korea. The countrys enormously effective testing regime in January was an exemplary highlight of how contact tracing can plug the viral gush at the beginning of an outbreak. While they reported the first Covid-19 case in the US, South Korea rapidly ordered medical companies to develop and roll out testing kits aggressively, allowing health workers to track cases and keep infections containeda rollout arguably more effective than in the US, which has since seen its cases explode in numbers. These data resources then powered Corona 100m, an app that alerts users of diagnosed Covid-19 cases within 100 meters of their prior locations. The apps been downloaded over one million times to overwhelming positive reviews.

Perhaps the gold medal in digital contact tracing goes to Singapore. Backed by widespread testing, citizens were encouraged to download a Bluetooth-based app called TraceTogether, which anonymizes a users phone ID but stores similarly encrypted IDs from people he or she has been in contact with. If a person gets sick, those stored ID will be used to alert previous contacts. According to TraceTogethers official website, part of the Singapore Government Agency, roughly one million citizens have voluntarily signed up for the service.

The US has missed the boat on stemming Covid-19 from entering the country. However, digital contact tracing also comes in handy as were considering reopening our languishing economy. Serology tests, which look for antibodies that (in theory) render people immune will help assess when its mostly safe to return to work.

But before herd immunity becomes widespread or a working vaccine is easily accessible to most, contact tracing will become a key component of squashing new infection sparks before they flare up. California and Massachusetts are just two states looking to hire an army of contact tracers as part of their bid to reopen the economy.

Its perhaps not surprising that two giant tech companies, Apple and Google, announced last week a team-up to explore digital contact tracing in the land of the free.

An immediate response Ive heard is that it wont work here. After all, the narrative goes, even democratic Asian countries have a different social contract with their governments. Theyre focused more on society than on the independent selfa Confucius-esque philosophy thats slapped onto most East Asian citizens. Western countries such as the UK have tried similar approaches before: in 2011, Cambridge Universitys FluPhone app was supposed to track the spread of flu on a population level, yet fewer than one percent of people in Cambridge adopted it.

Bollocks. Dont sell yourself short. FluPhone wasnt released during a pandemic. If Covid-19 has one silver lining, its how on average people in the West are just as willing to sacrifice personal freedoms and adopt strange new customs (face masks everywhere!) to keep themselves and others safe. (Outliers exist, but they exist in every country.)

However, societal norms aside, early lessons from digital contact tracing efforts show that there are serious problems that need ironing out, and for now, our phones wont completely replace human workers in tracing the pandemic.

The basic idea behind Google-Apples app is similar to TraceTogether: its Bluetooth-based, meaning that itll only work locally without logging your location data. For now its opt-in, in that you have to download the app on either iOS or Android. The companies stress that they wont collect personal or location data (though Google Maps certainly does unless youve opted out), and all phone ID codes will be encrypted, making it difficult to link to a particular person. The app will periodically check to see if its been recently in contact with someone diagnosed with Covid-19.

Theres obviously the problem of data privacy. According to Covid Watch, a similar community-based, open-sourced app that uses Bluetooth for tracking, at least 50 percent of a population will need to use it to make tracking effective, and if people are hesitant, itll fail.

Another pre-requisite is that we need massively wider testing, which is currently still mostly reserved for people with clear symptoms. The Covid Tracking Project reports that less than one percent of Americans have received the test, which means a tracing app based on Covid-19 positive data would be of little to no value. Others worry about the opposite, which is that a Bluetooth-based app could over-alert users. For example, the most common Bluetooth signals have a reach roughly five times more than the six feet apart social distancing guideline.

All of the above concerns are valid. Yet without implementing the app, theyre also theoretical. Whats clear from Singapores success story is that digital contact tracing by itself isnt yet enough to curb Covid-19. Health workers, for example, may need anonymized ID data to help track down potentially exposed individuals to encourage self-isolation or provide care. Without sufficient testing and social distancing, asymptomatic carriers will still unknowingly spread the disease.

Digital contact tracing may ignite every freedom, privacy, and independence fiber in your body in protest. Tech giants and government alike havent helped build a foundation of trust or respect for our private data. But without doubt, digitization is the way of the future: its a replacement for fallible human memory, which cant recall what you had for lunch two weeks ago, let alone everyone youve been in contact with. Its a safety guard for real-world equivalents of Dr. Mears, who risk their health and lives to warn you of health risks to yourself and others.

Since its invention, contact tracing has always towed the line between privacy and social service. With our actions and voices, were now helping lay the foundation of its digital future, not just for this pandemic but for all the ones to come.

Image Credit: StockSnap from Pixabay

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Contact Tracing Is the Next Step in the Covid-19 BattleBut How Will It Work in Western Countries? - Singularity Hub