Category Archives: Singularity

Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets, known as exoplanets, may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earths. Some may even harbor life. Over 99 percent of these alien worlds remain undiscoveredbut this is about to change.

With NASAs new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESSorbiting Earth every 13.7 days and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the next few years. This could transform astronomers understanding of alien worlds around us and provide targets to scan with next-generation telescopes for signatures of life. In just over a year, TESS has identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 29 of which astronomers have already confirmed as planets. Given TESSs unique ability to simultaneously search tens of thousands of stars for planets, the mission is expected to yield over 10,000 new worlds.

These are exciting times for astronomers and, especially, for those of us exploring exoplanets. We are members of the planet-hunting Project EDEN, which also supports TESSs work. We use telescopes on the ground and in space to find exoplanets to understand their properties and potential for harboring life.

Worlds around us await discovery. Take, for example, Proxima Centauri, an unassuming, faint red star, invisible without a telescope. It is one of over a hundred billion or so such stars within our galaxy, unremarkable except for its status as our next-door neighbor. Orbiting Proxima is a fascinating but mysterious world, called Proxima b, discovered only in 2016.

Scientists know surprisingly little about Proxima b. Astronomers name the first planet discovered in a system b. This planet has never been seen with human eyes or by a telescope. But we know it exists due to its gravitational pull on its host star, which makes the star wobble ever so slightly. This slight wobble was found in measurements collected by a large, international group of astronomers from data taken with multiple ground-based telescopes. Proxima b very likely has a rocky composition similar to Earths, but higher mass. It receives about the same amount of heat as Earth receives from the sun.

And that is what makes this planet so exciting: It lies in the habitable zone and just might have properties similar to Earths, like a surface, liquid water, andwho knows? maybe even an atmosphere bearing the telltale chemical signs of life.

NASAs TESS mission launched in April 2018 to hunt for other broadly Earth-sized planets, but with a different method. TESS is looking for rare dimming events that happen when planets pass in front of their host stars, blocking some starlight. These transit events indicate not only the presence of the planets, but also their sizes and orbits.

Finding a new transiting exoplanet is a big deal for astronomers like us because, unlike those found through stellar wobbles, worlds seen transiting can be studied further to determine their densities and atmospheric compositions.

By measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star, scientists can determine the size or radius of the planet. NASA Ames

For us, the most exciting exoplanets are the smallest ones, which TESS can detect when they orbit small stars called red dwarfs (stars with masses less than half the mass of our sun).

Each of these systems is unique. For example, LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star 86 light-years from Earth around which TESS found two worlds. The first is a super-Earth, a planet larger than Earth but probably still mostly rocky, and the second is a mini-Neptune, a planet smaller than Neptune but gas- and ice-rich. Neither of these planets have counterparts in our solar system.

Among astronomers current favorites of the new broadly Earth-sized planets is LHS 3884b, a scorching hot Earth that orbits its sun so quickly that on it you could celebrate your birthday every 11 hours.

But how Earth-like are Earth-sized planets? The promise of finding nearby worlds for detailed studies is already paying off. A team of astronomers observed the hot super-Earth LHS 3884b with the Hubble Space Telescope and found the planet to be a horrible vacation spot, without even an atmosphere. It is just a bare rock with temperatures ranging from over 700 C (1300 Fahrenheit) at noon to near absolute zero (-460 Fahrenheit) at midnight.

The TESS mission was initially funded for two years. But the spacecraft is in excellent shape and NASA recently extended the mission through 2022, doubling the time TESS will have to scan nearby, bright stars for transits.

However, finding exoplanets around the coolest starsthose with temperatures less than about 2700 C (4900 F)will still be a challenge due to their extreme faintness. Since ultracool dwarfs provide our best opportunity to find and study exoplanets with sizes and temperatures similar to Earths, other focused planet searches are picking up where TESS leaves off.

Illustration of TESS, NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

In May 2016, a Belgian-led group announced the discovery of a planetary system around the ultracool dwarf they christened TRAPPIST-1. The discovery of the seven transiting Earth-sized exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system was groundbreaking.

It also demonstrated how small telescopesrelative to the powerful behemoths of our age can still make transformational discoveries. With patience and persistence, the TRAPPIST telescope scanned nearby faint, red dwarf stars from its high-mountain perch in the Atacama desert for small, telltale dips in their brightnesses. Eventually, it spotted transits in the data for the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, whichalthough just 41 light-years awayis too faint for TESSs four 10-cm (4-inch) diameter lenses. Its Earth-sized worlds would have remained undiscovered had the TRAPPIST teams larger telescope not found them.

Two projects have upped the game in the search for exo-Earth candidates around nearby red dwarfs. The SPECULOOS team installed four robotic telescopesalso in the Atacama desertand one in the Northern Hemisphere. Our Exoearth Discovery and Exploration NetworkProject EDENuses nine telescopes in Arizona, Italy, Spain, and Taiwan to observe red dwarf stars continuously.

The SPECULOOS and EDEN telescopes are much larger than TESSs small lenses and can find planets around stars too faint for TESS to study, including some of the transiting Earth-sized planets closest to us.

This artists concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The next decade is likely to be remembered as the time when we opened our eyes to the incredible diversity of other worlds. TESS is likely to find between 10,000 and 15,000 exoplanet candidates by 2025. By 2030, the European Space Agencys GAIA and PLATO missions are expected to find another 20,000-35,000 planets. GAIA will look for stellar wobbles introduced by planets, while PLATO will search for planetary transits as TESS does.

However, even among the thousands of planets that will soon be found, the exoplanets closest to our solar system will remain special. Many of these worlds can be studied in great detail, including the search for signs of life. Discoveries of the nearest worlds also represent major steps in humanitys progress in exploring the universe we live in. After mapping our own planet and then the solar system, we now turn to nearby planetary systems. Perhaps one day Proxima b or another nearby world astronomers have yet to find will be the target for interstellar probes, like Project Starshot, or even crewed starships. But first weve got to put these worlds on the map.

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

Image Credit: Image by JAKO5D from Pixabay

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NASA's TESS Spacecraft Is Finding Hundreds of Exoplanetsand Is Poised to Find Thousands More - Singularity Hub

Virtual realitys ability to create artificial worlds has come a long way in recent years. Now new technology could make those worlds even more realistic by simulating one of the most crucial ways in which we experience things: touch.

While theyre still struggling to gain commercial traction, the latest VR headsets are able to transport people to impressive virtual worlds. But the technology relies primarily on our senses of sight and hearing to create these illusions, which means they still lack realism.

A new lightweight, flexible, and wirelessly-powered synthetic skin could soon change that. Developed at Northwestern University, the 15-centimeter-square patch can be stuck onto any part of the body and uses actuators that vibrate against the skin to simulate tactile sensations.

Virtual reality is a very important emerging area of technology, John Rogers, who co-led the research, said in a press release. Currently, were just using our eyes and our ears as the basis for those experiences. The community has been comparatively slow to exploit the bodys largest organ: the skin. Our sense of touch provides the most profound emotional connection between people.

Haptic interfacesdevices designed to simulate physical sensationsarent new, and often rely on vibration to simulate sensory experiences. But theyve typically been bulky and have used either large battery packs or wires to power them.

The key innovation with the VR skin was creating a vibrating actuator only a couple millimeters thick that can be powered with very little energy. That not only means the device is lightweight enough to stick to the body without falling off, but it can also be powered using the same kind of inductive charging found in wireless smartphone chargers.

The prototype device described in a recent paper in Nature features an array of 32 of these actuators sandwiched between soft flexible fabric that can stick directly onto the skin. Each actuator can be individually programmed and tuned to different frequencies to vary the strength of the sensation.

The synthetic skin is controlled wirelessly using a touchscreen interface on a smartphone or tablet that transmits tactile patterns to the patch. Currently, the device has to be kept within 30 to 50 centimeters of the antenna that powers it.

In an accompanying video, the researchers show how the device can be used to allow a mother to stroke her child while video chatting, provide a sense of touch to the user of a prosthetic arm, and even give the sensation of strikes to someone playing a combat video game.

At present, the device only produces fairly simple pressure-based tactile sensations, but the researchers hope the platform can eventually be extended to convey a wider range of sensations such as temperature changes or twisting sensations. Their ultimate goal is to create a VR suit that could provide a fully immersive VR experience.

They estimate that that would require roughly 1,800 actuators distributed evenly across the body, with even more to cover sensitive areas like the hands and face. This will require them to further miniaturize the components, but their simulations suggest they should be able to shrink the diameter and thickness of the magnet at the heart of the actuators by a factor of 10 and 3, respectively.

The patch developed at Northwestern isnt the only recent advance in this area. Last month, Swiss scientists revealed a 500-nanometer-thick artificial skin made up of soft sensors and actuators that can be worn over the fingertips to provide real-time tactile feedback.

While it could be some time before the device becomes commercially available, it looks like virtual reality is about to become a lot more touchy-feely.

Image Credit: ABO Photography/Shutterstock.com

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Synthetic 'Skin' Is Bringing a Sense of Touch to Virtual Reality - Singularity Hub

Artificial intelligence is going to overhaul the way we live and work. But will the changes it brings be for the better? As the technology slowly develops (lets remember that right now, were still very much in the narrow AI space and nowhere near an artificial general intelligence), whether it will end up doing us more harm than good is a question at the top of everyones mind.

What kind of response might we get if we posed this question to an AI itself?

Last week at the Cambridge Union in England, IBM did just that. Its Project Debater (an AI that narrowly lost a debate to human debating champion Harish Natarajan in February) gave the opening arguments in a debate about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence.

Critical thinking, linking different lines of thought, and anticipating counter-arguments are all valuable debating skills that humans can practice and refine. While these skills are tougher for an AI to get good at since they often require deeper contextual understanding, AI does have a major edge over humans in absorbing and analyzing information. In the February debate, Project Debater used IBMs cloud computing infrastructure to read hundreds of millions of documents and extract relevant details to construct an argument.

This time around, Debater looked through 1,100 arguments for or against AI. The arguments were submitted to IBM by the public during the week prior to the debate, through a website set up for that purpose. Of the 1,100 submissions, the AI classified 570 as anti-AI, or of the opinion that the technology will bring more harm to humanity than good. 511 arguments were found to be pro-AI, and the rest were irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Debater grouped the arguments into five themes; the technologys ability to take over dangerous or monotonous jobs was a pro-AI theme, and on the flip side was its potential to perpetuate the biases of its creators. AI companies still have too little expertise on how to properly assess datasets and filter out bias, the tall black box that houses Project Debater said. AI will take human bias and will fixate it for generations.After Project Debater kicked off the debate by giving opening arguments for both sides, two teams of people took over, elaborating on its points and coming up with their own counter-arguments.

In the end, an audience poll voted in favor of the pro-AI side, but just barely; 51.2 percent of voters felt convinced that AI can help us more than it can hurt us.

The softwares natural language processing was able to identify racist, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate comments and weed them out as being irrelevant to the debate. But it also repeated the same arguments multiple times, and mixed up a statement about bias as being pro-AI rather than anti-AI.

IBM has been working on Project Debater for over six years, and though it aims to iron out small glitches like these, the systems goal isnt to ultimately outwit and defeat humans. On the contrary, the AI is meant to support our decision-making by taking in and processing huge amounts of information in a nuanced way, more quickly than we ever could.

IBM engineer Noam Slonim envisions Project Debaters tech being used, for example, by a government seeking citizens feedback about a new policy. This technology can help to establish an interesting and effective communication channel between the decision maker and the people that are going to be impacted by the decision, he said.

As for the question of whether AI will do more good or harm, perhaps Sylvie Delacroix put it best. A professor of law and ethics at the University of Birmingham who argued on the pro-AI side of the debate, she pointed out that the impact AI will have depends on the way we design it, saying AI is only as good as the data it has been fed.

Shes right; rather than asking what sort of impact AI will have on humanity, we should start by asking what sort of impact we want it to have. The people working on AInot AIs themselvesare ultimately responsible for how much good or harm will be done.

Image Credit: IBM Project Debater at Cambridge Union Society, photo courtesy of IBM Research

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An AI Debated Its Own Potential for Good vs. Harm. Here's What It Came up With - Singularity Hub

Some men aint got game so they take to booze to drown their sorrows while others take matters into their own hands and beat their meat.

But one North Carolina man has emerged with a funny yet marvel idea of creating a dating app which has him as the only male for various females to have access to; that is an app which bars other males.

Aaron Smith, 31, observed his hopes of landing a lady by visiting dating sites were not yielding the desired result because his photos were not displayed boldly enough. So he took the initiative with the help of an app developer friend to outdoor Singularity dating app which he says saves a lady seeking love countless hours of swiping by just matching you with me!

The biggest problem with the other apps is that my face is not featured prominently, he told CBS affiliate WFMY.

Critics note Smith is just eliminating competition but he is unperturbed, confident he will meet the one now.

According to the Greenboro man: If life gives you lemons, you should first make lemonade, adding, then make sure no other companies can produce or distribute their own soft drinks. So the only game in town is lemonade.

Scott McDowell, Smiths engineering friend, said he sympathizedwith his pal when approached with the idea.

All of us who have done online dating in some sorta way canall relate to the fact that it really does sometimes suck, he told the outlet.

Unlike other popular apps like Tinder or OkCupid, women who sign up for Singularity will be met with a rotating collection of pictures that only feature Smith. He has photos showing in a Santa Claus hat, playing the guitar, and jumping in front of an ice cream truck, all sure to be featured prominently on the app.

Smith also has a YouTube channel where he posts footage from rock concerts and music sessions, and he recently uploaded an ad for Singularity that has received over 20,000 views.

Despite the views so far, Smith is yet to line up any dates from the app but believes the tide will soon turn in his favor.

Given that Smith is easy on the eye, its a wonder ladiesare not looking his way even when he says he is gainfully employed.

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Frustrated with dating sites, man creates app where he's the only guy available - Face2Face Africa

- Aaron Smith, a 31-year-old handsome man has created a dating app and has made himself the only male user

- The handsome North Carolina man said he did this to eliminate all competition he faces on other dating platforms

- The app was named Singularity and was built with the help of Aaron's friend

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

A 31-year-old man from North Carolina has created a dating software for public use with him being the only man available.

In a video report cited by YEN.com.gh, Aaron Smith says he created the app to cut down on competition he faces with the use of other dating apps.

The handsome gentleman calls the app Singularity which has started making waves as it has caught the eye of the internet users.

READ ALSO: Meet Ephraim Amu, the man behind Ghana's most popular patriotic song 'Yen Ara Asase Ni'

The North Carolina man further explains that other dating sites or softwares he has used did not show his features properly.

In Singularity, he creates several versions of himself showing the Aaron that got a job, the Aaron celebrating Christmas and more.

To promote the software, Aaron smith advertises his app on different platforms to get more and more users.

According to the interview Aaron granted, his friend helped him build the app. Aaron is so grateful as his ploy is beginning to see some success.

READ ALSO: Man breaks 'susu' boxes he started on 1st January; makes almost GHC 2,838 (Photo)

Narrating the need to eliminate competition, Aaron gave a brilliant analogy saying:

If life gives you lemons, you should first make lemonade." He continued, Then make sure no other companies can produce or distribute their own soft drinks. So the only game in town is lemonade.

Matters of the heart have brought interesting news lately. YEN.com.gh earlier reported that Popular Ghanaian artiste Okyeame Kwame has come out to reveal the main cause of many breakups in marriages.

He said it is the fact that many partners practice phubbing.

In a news report put together by GhanaWeb, the Rap Dacta explained that phubbing is the act of ignoring one's partner in other to focus on one's cellphone.

Hurray! YEN.com.gh has won the Online News Portal of the Year award at NCA awards 2019. Click here to view the beautiful photos.

Ghana News Today: Ex-trotro driver becomes one of Legon's best graduating students | #Yencomgh

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Man creates dating app where he's the only man available (Video) - YEN.COM.GH

A TRIO of monster black holes have been spotted crashing into each other.

The galactic fracas is taking place 300million light years from Earth and will lead to the birth of a single, mega black hole.

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Scientists in Germany discovered the rare event within NGC 6240, a well-studied nearby galaxy.

The black holes are close to each other at the core of the system, and shed light on how massive galaxies are born.

"Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe," said Dr Peter Weilbacher, of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.

"The present case provides evidence of a simultaneous merging process of three galaxies along with their central black holes."

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Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to make their discovery.

The NGC 6240 galaxy is relatively close to our own Milky Way in space terms, and has an odd shape.

Galaxies are often made up of hundreds of billions of stars locked in an orbital dance with a supermassive black hole at the core.

It had long been assumed NGC 6240 formed when two smaller galaxies collided, leaving it with a pair of black holes hence the odd shape.

However, the new observations revealed the galaxy in fact had three black holes crammed into its violent core.

"Through our observations with extremely high spatial resolution we were able to show that NGC 6240 hosts not two but three supermassive black holes in its center," said Professor Wolfram Kollatschny, an astronomer at the University of Gttingen.

"Each of the three heavyweights has a mass of more than 90 million Suns.

What is a black hole? The key facts

Here's what you need to know...

What is a black hole?

What is an event horizon?

What is a singularity?

How are black holes created?

"They are located in a region of space less than 3,000 light-years across, i.e. in less than one hundredth of the total size of the galaxy."

According to the team, the discovery opens new doors for our understanding of the universe.

Up until now, scientists had not been able to explain how the biggest galaxies in the universe evolved through the space processes we know and understand.

This puzzle could be solved if it's proved that three or more supermassive black holes can merge into a single entity.

"If simultaneous merging processes of several galaxies took place, then the largest galaxies with their central supermassive black holes were able to evolve much faster," Dr Weilbacher added.

"Our observations provide the first indication of this scenario."

The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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In other news, scientists unveiled the first ever picture of a black hole in April.

Theres an enormous black hole lurking in this Nasa photo can you find it?

And, here's what happens if you fall head-first into a black hole.

What do you think of the new finding? 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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First merger of THREE black holes in a single galaxy caught on camera by astronomers - The Sun

The Rival Series has expanded Rocket Leagues talent pool immensely and has really freshened up the faces in the games competitive scene.

With the regular season concluded in the first division, twelve teams have booked their ticket to the World Championship in Madrid, Spain.

Four teams face dropping into the Rival Series from the Championship Series, and who they face will depend on the results from this weekends Rival Series Regional Championship.

NA and EUs top four teams in the second division will face off to decide who claims automatic promotion into RLCS Season 8, and who will have to test their mettle against Cloud9, G2, Team SoloMid and Complexity next week in the Promotion Playoff.

To be clear, no ones season will end on Saturday and Sunday. The short tournaments just determine who gets to the RLCS without having to play in the promotion tournament.

There are a lot of new teams in the mix given Psyonixs decision to expand the Rival Series to ten teams earlier this season. Lets meet this weekends competitors and perhaps the next stars of the game.

Stats: 2.15 GPG (2nd), 1.72 APG (2nd), 5.51 SAPG (3rd), 1.62 GAPG (T-3rd)

Roster: Jamie Karma Bickford, Jake JWismont Wismont, Daniel Shadow Manso

Season in review: 7-2, 25-14, +11. Beat Afterthought 3-0, RBG 3-2 and Chaos 3-2 in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

This is the former Splyce roster that finished last in the RLCS in Season 7, but with Shadow in place of Trevor DudeWithTheNose Hannah. They looked just as dominant as they did in Season 5 when they earned promotion.

Karma and JWismont have been through this cycle and have experience on their side. All four of the promotion hopefuls in NA have a former RLCS player on the roster, but Charlotte Phoenix houses a team that has played three full seasons in the Rival Series.

They have two chances to qualify this weekend. If they can beat Afterthought in the upper final, then theyre through, but if they lose they get the winner of Chaos/RBG. They beat all three of these teams in League Play, so history might repeat itself and put these veterans back in the first division.

Stats: 2.23 GPG (1st), 1.94 APG (1st), 5.17 SAPG (6th), 1.34 GAPG (1st)

Roster: Nathaniel Shock Frommelt, Matthew Satthew Ackermann, Chris Dappur Mendoza

Season in review: 7-2, 23-12. +11. Beat Chaos 3-2, but lost to Charlotte 3-0 and RBG 3-2 in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

Afterthought were the best team in NA according to goal differential. They had the best offense and the stingiest defense. Their roster makeup is similar to Charlottes with two former RLCS players and a Rival

Series Season 7 standout.

This might be the safest bet to qualify for the RLCS. There is a lot of speed and great communication in this team and it feels right to have Satthew and Dappur in the premier division.

Shock originally brought Nick mist Costello and Colby Hockser James together before WSOE 4, but while his former teammates are heading to the World Championship hes still in the Rival Series. Not for long.

They need to beat Charlotte or the winner of RBG/Chaos to qualify.

Stats: 1.85 GPG (6th), 1.62 APG (5th), 4.54 SAPG (9th), 1.62 GAPG (T-3rd)

Roster: Jalen Rapid Parker, Daniel Aeon Dunfee, Sebastian Sea-Bass Becerra

Season in review: 6-3, 22-17. +5. Beat Afterthought and Chaos 3-2, but lost to Charlotte 3-2 in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

RBG Esports have displayed an aggressive interest in Rocket League Esports, and they would be a fun team to have in the premier division. Rapids super deep voice would be fun to listen to as a team radio segment like mousesports and Pittsburgh Knights often do.

The stats are not amazing, but RBG found a way to win. Sea-Bass never really got his chance after Allegiance demoted to RLRS after Season 6. Now might be his best chance to make it back to the premier division.

They need to win consecutive best of sevens against Chaos and the loser of Charlotte/Afterthought.

Stats: 2.00 GPG (4th), 1.63 APG (4th), 4.58 SAPG (8th), 1.60 GAPG (2nd)

Roster: Gabe CorruptedG Vallozzi, Alexandre Taroco Pedrogam, Jack mectos Privitera

Season in review: 6-3, 23-17. +6. Lost 3-2 against Charlotte, Afterthought and RBG in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

Chaos Esports houses the best defense in the region and a hungry team ready to make RLCS. All three of the series Chaos played against their Regional Championship opponents got away from them in the fifth game during League Play, but two of the losses were decided by one goal.

Good defense can keep a decent team in any series, and CorruptedG is not afraid of big moments. He has been to World Championships and won RLCS player of the week. He wont be scared.

They need to beat RBG and the loser of Charlotte/Afterthought to qualify.

Stats: 2.56 GPG (1st), 2.06 APG (1st), 5.24 SAPG (4th), 1.53 GAPG (3rd)

Roster: Lucas RelatingWave Rose, Nelson Virtuoso Lasko, Nacho Nachitow Gimenez

Season in review: 7-2 24-10. +14. Beat Method 3-0. Lost to AS Monaco 3-1 and Team Singularity 3-2 in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

Discombobulators were the best RLRS team from either region, and they absolutely exploded onto the scene. Their game margin, goals per game and assists per game were higher than any Rivals Series team.

Three of the top four goal scorers in the league play for this team. They can run the score up and are the only team from either region to have three players in their first RLRS season in the top four.

Theyve struggled against more experienced teams, but they have two chances to qualify. If they can beat AS Monaco or the winner of Method/Singularity, theyre in.

Stats: 1.68 GPG (5th), 1.29 APG (6th), 4.12 SAPG (8th), 1.18 GAPG (1st)

Roster: Jordan EyeIgnite Stellon, Maik Tigreee Hoffmann, Alex Extra Paoli

Season in review: 6-3, 21-13. +8. Beat Discombobulators, but lost 3-1 to Method and Singularity in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

This team might have a little bit of Veloce in them. AS Monaco had the best defense in either region. They play quickly and aggressively to constantly keep offensive pressure.

AS Monaco is a classic EyeIgnite team that decides the game in the midfield. They allowed the fewest shots in the region and finished second in the region in shots per game. Theyre the good ol bim and bam mistake punishers, and theyre an experienced, fast bunch.

If Disombobulators and the winner of Method/Singularity make any mistakes, AS Monaco will punish them on the way to qualification.

Stats: 1.97 GPG (2nd), 1.75 APG (2nd), 5.69 SAPG (1st), 1.75 GAPG (6th)

Roster: Euan Tadpole Ingram, Boris Borito B Pieper, Rix Rix Ronday Ronday

Season in review: 6-3, 18-14. +4. Beat AS Monaco 3-1 and Singularity 3-0, but lost 3-0 to Discombobulators in League Play.

Weekend outlook:

Method is the complete opposite of AS Monaco. Theyre a much more offensive team but are also willing to take the game into their own half.

They led the league in saves because they gave up a ton of shots, but Method can create from their own goal better than anyone else in the region. They can pass the ball well, Tadpole is incredibly dangerous offensively and his teammates are desperate to finally make RLCS.

Method has been on the outside looking in for Promotion Playoffs for so long, and they should try and avoid it altogether. Theyd need wins over Team Singularity and the loser of Discombobulators/AS Monaco to qualify for RLCS.

Stats: 1.86 GPG (4th), 1.35 APG (4th), 5.27 SAPG (3rd), 1.62 GAPG (4th)

Roster: Leon Godsmilla Mares, Thomas ThO. Binkhorst, Joseph Noly Kidd

Season in review: 6-3, 20-17, +3. Beat Disombobulators 3-2 and AS Monaco 3-1. Lost 3-0 to Method.

Weekend outlook:

Poor ARG. ARG finished with a +7 game differential and didnt even make it to the Regional Championship. Thats because Singularity found a way to close out series, and theyll have to keep that up to make RLCS.

Method is a tough matchup for Singularity, but they looked good against the other two teams in the bracket. If they can slow Tadpole down, then they might make RLCS through the lower bracket.

Saturdays Rival Series Regional Championship kicks off Saturday at 2 p.m. ET in NA and continues Sunday beginning at noon ET.

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Get to Know the Teams Vying in the Rival Series Regional Championship - The Game Haus

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We can see each other better when no screen is involved

"One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are no mirrors in hell. At least, that's the case in philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's powerfully intense drama "No Exit." Estelle, one of three characters confined in hell to a stifling, brightly lit room, desires to wear makeup. Inez offers to be Estelle's mirror. And so, peering at her reflection in Inez's eyes, Estelle smudges her mouth with lipstick.

The lesson? A logic of self-flagellation: We create our own hell when others are our only mirror. The room's third inhabitant Garcin later utters the famous line "Hell is other people," which now makes sense in this wider context of Estelle's narcissism.

Though not your uplifting holiday missive, the moral is painfully pertinent. These days, we pretty much see everything. It's all right there on some screen, always occupying center position. The screen's two-dimensionality offers "reality" without texture, a flattening that reduces as it seduces. No depth, only breadth philosopher Jean Baudrillard's "triumph of superficial form."

We not only see, but are seen. Unrelenting. And our self-imposed hell occurs the moment we define who we are according to others' gaze. In doing so, we remain vassals in the kingdom of digital utopia, drowning in images devoid of imagination, struggling to master unreality, anything to escape the gravity of time and flesh. Obsessed with self-presentation, caged by what we think others think, deploying crutches to not only fit in but stand out in the process, like wearing makeup in hell, we create our own suffocating abyss.

There's a mockery in all this however. Under the rule of others' gaze, we are faceless. Faceless? Even though we are submerged in Facebook, Facetime, selfies, Instagram, happy-face emoji? We look at each other, but do we really see? Do we truly behold, eye to eye, without a device?

During this sacred season that beckons being-with, being-for and opening our hearts, can we recover depth and meaning? I believe we can. The secret lies right in front of us the face of the other. Not some pixilated, edited version, but the real tangible living face that we can only encounter in embodied physical interaction, unmediated.

Face-to-face conversation is what we desperately need more of. It is indeed a ballet, not always pleasant, of embodied humanness, a dance of spoken and unspoken signals, a slight nod, spark in the eye, thin frown, give-and-take, a tangible connecting that far surpasses connectivity through emotionless tools. Because it is real, reaching out in this way is what makes us human. When you think about it, looking into another's face really looking fractures our visual routine of simply noticing. Only face-to-face can we rediscover the other's peerless singularity, one that can never be captured by a gaze.

Remember this as we break bread and celebrate together with loved ones or see that same person at the same corner with the same sign. As philosopher Emmanuel Levinas puts it, the face is a window to the other's mystery. Stuck in my bubble, I habitually peer out of a shut window, the window frame enclosing all that I see in front of me. The trick is to see without framing, outside the window.

Here are two face-rules for this season and beyond. First, during our face-to-face moments, conversations, dinners, etc., don't just turn off your phones. Put them away. They'll steal your soul. Next, never forget that when we meet each other face-to-face, as we all know but somehow forget, the moment is all the more divine because it will never come again.

Michael C. Brannigan is a philosopher, author and speaker. His email and website: mcbrannigan64@gmail.com; http://www.michaelcbrannigan.com.

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We can see each other better when no screen is involved - Times Union

Food. What we eat, and how we grow it, will be fundamentally transformed in the next decade.

Already, indoor farming is projected to be a US$40.25 billion industry by 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 9.65 percent. Meanwhile, the food 3D printing industry is expected to grow at an even higher rate, averaging 50 percent annual growth.

And converging exponential technologiesfrom materials science to AI-driven digital agricultureare not slowing down. Todays breakthroughs will soon allow our planet to boost its food production by nearly70 percent, using a fraction of the real estate and resources, to feed9 billionby mid-century.

What you consume, how it was grown, and how it will end up in your stomach will all ride the wave of converging exponentials, revolutionizing the most basic of human needs.

3D printing has already had a profound impact on the manufacturing sector. We are now able to print in hundreds of different materials, making anything from toys to houses to organs. However, we are finally seeing the emergence of 3D printers that can print food itself.

Redefine Meat, an Israeli startup, wants to tackle industrial meat production using 3D printers that can generate meat, no animals required. The printer takes in fat, water, and three different plant protein sources, using these ingredients to print a meat fiber matrix with trapped fat and water, thus mimicking the texture and flavor of real meat.

Slated for release in 2020 at a cost of $100,000, their machines are rapidly demonetizing and will begin by targeting clients in industrial-scale meat production.

Anrich3D aims to take this process a step further, 3D printing meals that are customized to your medical records, heath data from your smart wearables, and patterns detected by your sleep trackers. The company plans to use multiple extruders for multi-material printing, allowing them to dispense each ingredient precisely for nutritionally optimized meals. Currently in an R&D phase at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the company hopes to have its first taste tests in 2020.

These are only a few of the many 3D food printing startups springing into existence. The benefits from such innovations are boundless.

Not only will food 3D printing grant consumers control over the ingredients and mixtures they consume, but it is already beginning to enable new innovations in flavor itself,democratizingfar healthier meal options in newly customizable cuisine categories.

Vertical farming, whereby food is grown in vertical stacks (in skyscrapers and buildings rather than outside in fields), marks a classic case of converging exponential technologies. Over just the past decade, the technology has surged from a handful of early-stage pilots to a full-grown industry.

Today, the average American meal travels1,500-2,500 miles to get to your plate. As summed up by Worldwatch Institute researcher Brian Halweil, We are spending far more energy to get food to the table than the energy we get from eating the food. Additionally, the longer foods are out of the soil, the less nutritious they become, losing on average 45 percent of their nutrition before being consumed.

Yet beyond cutting down on time and transportation losses, vertical farming eliminates a whole host of issues in food production. Relying on hydroponics and aeroponics, vertical farms allows us to grow crops with 90 percent less water than traditional agriculturewhich is critical for our increasingly thirsty planet.

Currently, the largest player around is Bay Area-based Plenty Inc. With over $200 million in funding from Softbank, Plenty is taking a smart tech approach to indoor agriculture. Plants grow on 20-foot-high towers, monitored by tens of thousands of cameras and sensors, optimized by big data and machine learning.

This allows the company to pack 40 plants in the space previously occupied by 1. The process also produces yields 350 times greater than outdoor farmland, using less than 1 percent as much water.

And rather than bespoke veggies for the wealthy few, Plentys processes allow them to knock 20-35 percent off the costs of traditional grocery stores. To date, Plenty has their home base in South San Francisco, a 100,000 square-foot farm in Kent, Washington, an indoor farm in the United Arab Emirates, and recently started construction on over 300 farms in China.

Another major player is New Jersey-based Aerofarms, which can now grow two million pounds of leafy greens without sunlight or soil.

To do this, Aerofarms leverages AI-controlled LEDs to provide optimized wavelengths of light for each plant. Using aeroponics, the company delivers nutrients by misting them directly onto the plants rootsno soil required. Rather, plants are suspended in a growth mesh fabric made from recycled water bottles. And here too, sensors, cameras, and machine learning govern the entire process.

While 50-80 percent of the cost of vertical farming is human labor, autonomous robotics promises to solve that problem. Enter contenders like Iron Ox, a firm that has developed the Angus robot, capable of moving around plant-growing containers.

The writing is on the wall, and traditional agriculture is fast being turned on its head.

In an era where materials science, nanotechnology, and biotechnology are rapidly becoming the same field of study, key advances are enabling us to create healthier, more nutritious, more efficient, and longer-lasting food.

For starters, we are now able to boost the photosynthetic abilities of plants. Using novel techniques to improve a micro-step in the photosynthesis process chain, researchers at UCLA were able to boost tobacco crop yield by 14-20 percent. Meanwhile, the RIPE Project, backed by Bill Gates and run out of the University of Illinois, has matched and improved those numbers.

And to top things off, The University of Essex was even able to improve tobacco yield by 27-47 percent by increasing the levels of protein involved in photo-respiration.

In yet another win for food-related materials science, Santa Barbara-based Apeel Sciences is further tackling the vexing challenge of food waste. Now approaching commercialization, Apeel uses lipids and glycerolipids found in the peels, seeds, and pulps of all fruits and vegetables to create cutinthe fatty substance that composes the skin of fruits and prevents them from rapidly spoiling by trapping moisture.

By then spraying fruits with this generated substance, Apeel can preserve foods60 percent longer using an odorless, tasteless, colorless organic substance.

And stores across the US are already using this method. By leveraging our advancing knowledge of plants and chemistry, materials science is allowing us to produce more food with far longer-lasting freshness and more nutritious value than ever before.

With advances in 3D printing, vertical farming, and materials sciences, we can now make food smarter, more productive, and far more resilient.

By the end of the next decade, you should be able to 3D print a fusion cuisine dish from the comfort of your home, using ingredients harvested from vertical farms, with nutritional value optimized by AI and materials science. However, even this picture doesnt account for all the rapid changes underway in the food industry.

Join me next week forPart 2 of the Future of Foodfor a discussion on how food production will be transformed, quite literally, from the bottom up.

Abundance-Digital Online Community:Stay ahead of technological advancements and turn your passion into action. Abundance Digital is now part of Singularity University.Learn more.

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The Technologies Changing How We Grow, Distribute, and Consume Food - Singularity Hub

Goethes The Sorcerers Apprentice is a classic example of many stories in a similar theme. The young apprentice enchants a broom to mop the floor, avoiding some work in the process. But the enchantment quickly spirals out of control: the broom, mono-maniacally focused on its task but unconscious of the consequences, ends up flooding the room.

The classic fear surrounding hypothetical, superintelligent AI is that we might give it the wrong goal, or insufficient constraints. Even in the well-developed field of narrow AI, we see that machine learning algorithms are very capable of finding unexpected means and unintended ways to achieve their goals. For example, let loose in the structured environment of video games, where a simple functionpoints scoredis to be maximized, they often find new exploits or cheats to win without playing.

In some ways, YouTubes algorithm is an immensely complicated beast: it serves up billions of recommendations a day. But its goals, at least originally, were fairly simple: maximize the likelihood that the user will click on a video, and the length of time they spend on YouTube. It has been stunningly successful: 70 percent of time spent on YouTube is watching recommended videos, amounting to 700 million hours a day. Every day, humanity as a collective spends a thousand lifetimes watching YouTubes recommended videos.

The design of this algorithm, of course, is driven by YouTubes parent company, Alphabet, maximizing its own goal: advertising revenue, and hence the profitability of the company. Practically everything else that happens is a side effect. The neural nets of YouTubes algorithm form connectionsstatistical weightings that favor some pathways over othersbased on the colossal amount of data that we all generate by using the site. It may seem an innocuous or even sensible way to determine what people want to see; but without oversight, the unintended consequences can be nasty.

Guillaume Chaslot, a former engineer at YouTube, has helped to expose some of these. Speaking to TheNextWeb, he pointed out, The problem is that the AI isnt built to help you get what you wantits built to get you addicted to YouTube. Recommendations were designed to waste your time.

More than this: they can waste your time in harmful ways. Inflammatory, conspiratorial content generates clicks and engagement. If a small subset of users watches hours upon hours of political or conspiracy-theory content, the pathways in the neural net that recommend this content are reinforced.

The result is that users can begin with innocuous searches for relatively mild content, and find themselves quickly dragged towards extremist or conspiratorial material. A survey of 30 attendees at a Flat Earth conference showed that all but one originally came upon the Flat Earth conspiracy via YouTube, with the lone dissenter exposed to the ideas from family members who were in turn converted by YouTube.

Many readers (and this writer) know the experience of being sucked into a wormhole of related videos and content when browsing social media. But these wormholes can be extremely dark. Recently, a pedophile wormhole on YouTube was discovered, a recommendation network of videos of children which was frequented by those who wanted to exploit children. In TechCrunchs investigation, it took only a few recommendation clicks from a (somewhat raunchy) search for adults in bikinis to reach this exploitative content.

Its simple, really: as far as the algorithm, with its one objective, is concerned, a user who watches one factual and informative video about astronomy and then goes on with their day is less advantageous than a user who watches fifteen flat-earth conspiracy videos in a row.

In some ways, none of this is particularly new. The algorithm is learning to exploit familiar flaws in the human psyche to achieve its ends, just as other algorithms find flaws in the code of 80s Atari games to score their own points. Conspiratorial tabloid newspaper content is replaced with clickbait videos on similar themes. Our short attention spans are exploited by social media algorithms, rather than TV advertising. Filter bubbles of opinion that once consisted of hanging around with people you agreed with and reading newspapers that reflected your own opinion are now reinforced by algorithms.

Any platform that reaches the size of the social media giants is bound to be exploited by people with exploitative, destructive, or irresponsible aims. It is equally difficult to see how they can operate at this scale without relying heavily on algorithms; even content moderation, which is partially automated, can take a heavy toll on the human moderators, required to filter the worst content imaginable. Yet directing how the human race spends a billion hours a day, often shaping peoples beliefs in unexpected ways, is evidently a source of great power.

The answer given by social media companies tends to be the same: better AI. These algorithms neednt be blunt instruments. Tweaks are possible. For example, an older version of YouTubes algorithm consistently recommended stale content, simply because this had the most viewing history to learn from. The developers fixed this by including the age of the video as a variable.

Similarly, choosing to shift the focus from click likelihood to time spent watching the video was aimed to prevent low-quality videos with clickbait titles from being recommended, leading to user dissatisfaction with the platform. Recent updates aim to prioritize news from reliable and authoritative sources, and make the algorithm more transparent by explaining why recommendations were made. Other potential tweaks could add more emphasis on whether users like videos, as an indication of quality. And YouTube videos about topics prone to conspiracy, such as global warming, now include links to factual sources of information.

The issue, however, is sure to arise if this conflicts with the profitability of the company in a large way. Take a recent tweak to the algorithm, aimed to reduce bias in the recommendations based on the order videos are recommended. Essentially, if you have to scroll down further before clicking on a particular video, YouTube adds more weight to that decision: the user is probably actively seeking out content thats more related to their target. A neat idea, and one that improves user engagement by 0.24 percent, translating to millions of dollars in revenue for YouTube.

If addictive content and engagement wormholes are whats profitable, will the algorithm change the weight of its recommendations accordingly? What weights will be applied to ethics, morality, and unintended consequences when making these decisions?

Here is the fundamental tension involved when trying to deploy these large-scale algorithms responsibly. Tech companies can tweak their algorithms, and journalists can probe their behavior and expose some of these unintended consequences. But just as algorithms need to become more complex and avoid prioritizing a single metric without considering the consequences, companies must do the same.

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Algorithms Are Designed to Addict Us, and the Consequences Go Beyond Wasted Time - Singularity Hub