Teresa Goodson walks to work in ski goggles in downtown St. Paul during the first snowstorm of the season on Nov. 10, 2014.(Photo: Leila Navidi, AP)
November 11, 2014 - UNITED STATES
- Arctic air will plunge toward the South and East on Wednesday and
Thursday, after as much as 2 feet of record-breaking snow buried
portions of the upper Midwest.
Temperatures only made it into the
single digits, teens and 20s Tuesday across much of the north-central
U.S. — 20 to 40 degrees below average for many areas, the National
Weather Service said.
Wind chills were as cold as minus 20 in
parts of western Montana. By Wednesday morning, wind chills could drop
to minus 35 in some spots — low enough to cause frostbite in 10 minutes.
Source AccuWeather, As of Nov. 10.(Photo: Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY)
SOURCE AccuWeather, As of Nov. 10.(Photo: Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY)
Weather
service meteorologist Paul Kocin said the cold air will reach the
Appalachians to mid-South by Wednesday morning and then hit the East
Coast by Thursday morning. The East Coast will see cooler temperatures
but be spared from the dramatic lows in the middle of the country, Kocin
said.
Freezing temperatures are still possible in parts of the South and East, AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.
By Monday afternoon, areas of northwest Montana saw 14 inches of snow; parts of North Dakota saw as much as 8 inches.
The
heaviest snow fell across Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan. Ishpeming in northern Michigan picked up 24.5 inches of
snow as of late Tuesday afternoon, the highest total from the storm so
far, according to the weather service.
WATCH: Minneapolis already covered in snow.
Marquette, Mich., got socked with 21.5 inches of snow so far, creating treacherous driving conditions.
At least two people were killed in Minnesota on icy roads, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
In
Minnesota alone, there were reports of more than 180 weather-related
crashes during the morning commute, including a 16-car pileup in Duluth,
CBS News’ Jamie Yuccas reported.
"It's really bad," said Jonie Magnant, who works at a Walgreens in Marquette. "There are thick, whiteout conditions," she said.
Top
snowfalls in other states included 18 inches in Mellen, Wis.; 16.5
inches in Cambridge and St. Augusta, Minn., and 14 inches in Whitefish,
Mont.
St. Cloud, Minn., got 13.2 inches of snow Monday, breaking
the all-time November calendar-day record of 12 inches set on Nov. 21,
1898.
Richard Anderson, a professional holiday decorator who was
working on some small trees outside the Seven Steakhouse in Minneapolis,
was downcast about the snow.
"It's wet, cold, sticks to you,"
Anderson said. "It's freezing on your jacket as it's raining. What do
you call it?
Rain, sleet and snow. And it's bitter. It's really bitter.
It's not very nice."
By Wednesday temperatures will be in the teens and single digits in Washington state and Oregon.
Snow was welcome in northern Wyoming, where firefighters were battling to contain a late wildfire.
Firefighters
struggled with the blaze west of Buffalo, and by Sunday evening it had
burned almost 2 square miles. Then came the arctic front, with snow and
temperatures plunging from the 60s on Sunday to single digits by Monday
morning.
“That’s the best fire control you can have is Mother Nature,” said John Garman, a firefighter with Johnson County.
A Duluth, Minn. resident shovels the snow from in front of a vehicle, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014, following the season's first measurable snowfall on Monday. Some areas of Minnesota recorded over one foot of snow. (AP Photo/WDIO-TV, Carl Sauer)
The
National Weather Service has issued Wind Chill Warnings and Advisories
for Wyoming and the Nebraska Panhandle through 10 AM Wednesday.
As
the polar airmass continues to surge southward, temperatures will fall
below zero and winds will be breezy from the north at 5-15 MPH. This
will send wind chill values as low as -35° over the Laramie Valley and
down to -25° across the rest of the region.
With wind chill values as low as -35°, frostbite could set in within 5 to 10 minutes of exposure.
Arctic
air continues to surge into the central U.S. on Tuesday. The cold wave
will continue to slide south and east over the next couple of days,
finally reaching the Deep South and East Coast by Thursday. VPC
Temperatures are expected to remain below freezing for nearly two weeks in the Upper Midwest, Minneapolis included. READY. SET. WAIT.
If
you’re flying in the coming days, expect some delays. Minneapolis-St.
Paul International Airport estimated roughly one-third of its arrivals
and departures would be canceled by the end of Monday.
As far as
driving, if you must do it in snow and sleet, be prepared: Have a full
tank of gas, an emergency kit and exercise caution. Wind-blown snow can
make it difficult to see, and ice underneath can make driving slippery.
Dangerously
low wind chill values can threaten livestock and pets when left
outdoors. Frostbite and hypothermia can develop in less than 10 minutes
with wind chill values near 40 below in some read.
“It’s part of
being in South Dakota,” said Nancy Miller, a manager at Mid-America
Travel Plaza in Belle Fourche. “It’s just the topic of the day. It’s the
first snowstorm of the season.”
OMINOUS SIGN?
The
wintry blast stirred fears of a repeat of last year’s bitter season,
but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doesn’t expect
it. Federal forecasters have predicted this winter will be fairly
average.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be cold, and other private weather forecasters are predicting a slightly cooler winter than NOAA.
This
week’s storm is part of a powerful system being pushed in by the
remnants of Typhoon Nuri that hit Alaska’s sparsely populated Aleutian
Islands.
Unlike chilly air episodes thus far this season, this particular cold
outbreak will have staying power and is likely to last well into next
week.
November 11, 2014 - TECHNOLOGY
- On a bright fall day last year off the coast of Southern California,
an Air Force B-1 bomber launched an experimental missile that may herald
the future of warfare.
Initially,
pilots aboard the plane directed the missile, but halfway to its
destination, it severed communication with its operators. Alone, without
human oversight, the missile decided which of three ships to attack,
dropping to just above the sea surface and striking a 260-foot unmanned
freighter.
Warfare
is increasingly guided by software. Today, armed drones can be operated
by remote pilots peering into video screens thousands of miles from the
battlefield. But now, some scientists say, arms makers have crossed
into troubling territory: They are developing weapons that rely on
artificial intelligence, not human instruction, to decide what to target
and whom to kill.
As
these weapons become smarter and nimbler, critics fear they will become
increasingly difficult for humans to control — or to defend against.
And while pinpoint accuracy could save civilian lives, critics fear
weapons without human oversight could make war more likely, as easy as
flipping a switch.
Britain,
Israel and Norway are already deploying missiles and drones that carry
out attacks against enemy radar, tanks or ships without direct human
control. After launch, so-called autonomous weapons rely on artificial
intelligence and sensors to select targets and to initiate an attack.
A Long Range Anti-Ship Missile prototype, launched by a B-1 bomber, is designed to maneuver without human control.
Credit Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Britain’s
“fire and forget” Brimstone missiles, for example, can distinguish
among tanks and cars and buses without human assistance, and can hunt
targets in a predesignated region without oversight. The Brimstones also
communicate with one another, sharing their targets.
Armaments
with even more advanced self-governance are on the drawing board,
although the details usually are kept secret. “An autonomous weapons
arms race is already taking place,” said Steve Omohundro, a physicist
and artificial intelligence specialist at Self-Aware Systems, a research
center in Palo Alto, Calif.
“They can respond faster, more efficiently
and less predictably.”
WATCH: Animation of how new missiles may work.
Concerned
by the prospect of a robotics arms race, representatives from dozens of
nations will meet on Thursday in Geneva to consider whether development
of these weapons should be restricted by the Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons. Christof Heyns, the United Nations special
rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, last year called for a moratorium on the development of these weapons.
The
Pentagon has issued a directive requiring high-level authorization for
the development of weapons capable of killing without human oversight.
But fast-moving technology has already made the directive obsolete, some
scientists say.
“Our
concern is with how the targets are determined, and more importantly,
who determines them,” said Peter Asaro, a co-founder and vice chairman
of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control,
a group of scientists that advocates restrictions on the use of
military robots. “Are these human-designated targets? Or are these
systems automatically deciding what is a target?”
Weapons
manufacturers in the United States were the first to develop advanced
autonomous weapons. An early version of the Tomahawk cruise missile had
the ability to hunt for Soviet ships over the horizon without direct
human control. It was withdrawn in the early 1990s after a nuclear arms
treaty with Russia.
Back
in 1988, the Navy test-fired a Harpoon antiship missile that employed
an early form of self-guidance. The missile mistook an Indian freighter
that had strayed onto the test range for its target. The Harpoon, which
did not have a warhead, hit the bridge of the freighter, killing a crew
member.
Despite the accident, the Harpoon became a mainstay of naval armaments and remains in wide use.
In
recent years, artificial intelligence has begun to supplant human
decision-making in a variety of fields, such as high-speed stock trading
and medical diagnostics, and even in self-driving cars. But
technological advances in three particular areas have made
self-governing weapons a real possibility.
New
types of radar, laser and infrared sensors are helping missiles and
drones better calculate their position and orientation. “Machine
vision,” resembling that of humans, identifies patterns in images and
helps weapons distinguish important targets. This nuanced sensory
information can be quickly interpreted by sophisticated artificial
intelligence systems, enabling a missile or drone to carry out its own
analysis in flight. And computer hardware hosting it all has become
relatively inexpensive — and expendable.
The
missile tested off the coast of California, the Long Range Anti-Ship
Missile, is under development by Lockheed Martin for the Air Force and
Navy. It is intended to fly for hundreds of miles, maneuvering on its
own to avoid radar, and out of radio contact with human controllers.
In
a directive published in 2012, the Pentagon drew a line between
semiautonomous weapons, whose targets are chosen by a human operator,
and fully autonomous weapons that can hunt and engage targets without
intervention.
Weapons
of the future, the directive said, must be “designed to allow
commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human
judgment over the use of force.”
The
Pentagon nonetheless argues that the new antiship missile is only
semiautonomous and that humans are sufficiently represented in its
targeting and killing decisions. But officials at the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, which initially developed the missile, and
Lockheed declined to comment on how the weapon decides on targets,
saying the information is classified.
“It
will be operating autonomously when it searches for the enemy fleet,”
said Mark A. Gubrud, a physicist and a member of the International
Committee for Robot Arms Control, and an early critic of so-called smart
weapons. “This is pretty sophisticated stuff that I would call
artificial intelligence outside human control.”
Paul
Scharre, a weapons specialist now at the Center for a New American
Security who led the working group that wrote the Pentagon directive,
said, “It’s valid to ask if this crosses the line.”
Some
arms-control specialists say that requiring only “appropriate” human
control of these weapons is too vague, speeding the development of new
targeting systems that automate killing.
Images from a computer showing a strike by a Brimstone missile, a
British weapon, on an Islamic State armed truck in Iraq. The “fire and
forget” missile can distinguish among tanks and cars and buses without
human assistance. Credit Ministry of Defense/Crown Copyright, via
Associated Press
Mr.
Heyns, of the United Nations, said that nations with advanced weapons
should agree to limit their weapons systems to those with “meaningful”
human control over the selection and attack of targets. “It must be
similar to the role a commander has over his troops,” Mr. Heyns said.
Systems
that permit humans to override the computer’s decisions may not meet
that criterion, he added. Weapons that make their own decisions move so
quickly that human overseers soon may not be able to keep up. Yet many
of them are explicitly designed to permit human operators to step away
from controls. Israel’s antiradar missile, the Harpy, loiters in the sky
until an enemy radar is turned on. It then attacks and destroys the
radar installation on its own.
Norway
plans to equip its fleet of advanced jet fighters with the Joint Strike
Missile, which can hunt, recognize and detect a target without human
intervention. Opponents have called it a “killer robot.”
Military
analysts like Mr. Scharre argue that automated weapons like these
should be embraced because they may result in fewer mass killings and
civilian casualties. Autonomous weapons, they say, do not commit war
crimes.
On
Sept. 16, 2011, for example, British warplanes fired two dozen
Brimstone missiles at a group of Libyan tanks that were shelling
civilians. Eight or more of the tanks were destroyed simultaneously,
according to a military spokesman, saving the lives of many civilians.
It would have been difficult for human operators to coordinate the swarm of missiles with similar precision.
“Better, smarter weapons are good if they reduce civilian casualties or indiscriminate killing,” Mr. Scharre said. - NY Times.
November 11, 2014 - SPACE
- The quieting of sunspot AR2205 has prompted NOAA forecasters to lower
the odds of an X-class flare today to only 10%.
However, they are
raising the odds again tomorrow when old sunspot AR2192 is expected to
return from its two-week trip around the farside of the sun.
Our
old friend AR 2192, the largest visible sunspot in over 20 years, is
lurking behind the east limb and is making its presence known.
An
eruption of plasma, presumably centered around whatever remains of the
active region, is visible off the limb in the latest imagery courtesy of
the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
We should see the long lasting region begin to reappear during the next 48 hours.
In
late October, AR2192 unleashed six intense X-flares. If it still
possesses any of its former vigor, the old sunspot could bring a sharp
uptick in solar activity.
NOAA estimates a 30% chance of X-flares on
Nov. 12-13.
Sunspots
Here is an updated look at the visible solar disk on Tuesday.
Solar
activity during the past 24 hours was low. Region 2205 continued to
produce minor C-Flares, including a C6.7 at 11:22 UTC. The active region
will remain a threat for an isolated M-Class flare.
In the southeast quadrant, region 2208 is showing new spot growth this morning, but remains remains relatively quiet for now.
A
coronal mass ejection (CME) was observed off the east limb and is
directed away from Earth. This looks to have been the result of activity
surrounding old region 2192. The active region will begin to turn back
into view during the next couple of days. Magnetic field lines towering
high above the active region are now visible in the latest solar
imagery.
Auroras
Attached
is another great image courtesy of Marketa Murray captured earlier this
month from near Fairbanks, Alaska. Her husband Ronn Murray is pictured
in the foreground capturing video of the event.
To view some of their work, please check out the following awesome video.
WATCH: Magic Morning - Alaska's Northern Lights in Real Time.
Geomagnetic Storm Category G1 Predicted
Space Weather Message Code: WATA20
Serial Number: 588
Issue Time: 2014 Nov 11 2331 UTC
WATCH: Geomagnetic Storm Category G1 Predicted
Highest Storm Level Predicted by Day:
Nov 12: G1 (Minor) Nov 13: None (Below G1) Nov 14: None (Below G1)
THIS SUPERSEDES ANY/ALL PRIOR WATCHES IN EFFECT
Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 60 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.
Induced Currents - Weak power grid fluctuations can occur.
Spacecraft - Minor impact on satellite operations possible.
Aurora - Aurora may be visible at high latitudes, i.e., northern tier of the U.S. such as northern Michigan and Maine.
Speaking to MPs from the House of
Commons international development committee, MSF’s head of UK programmes
said the apparent decline in numbers in Liberia did not signal the end
of the epidemic.
Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, a UK-based doctor in
emergency medicine who has recently returned from Sierra Leone where he
was a volunteer with MSF, said there was “too little of everything being
done in terms of intervention”.
He described how doctors in MSF’s
treatment centre in Kailahun would don protective suits to meet an
ambulance that could have been travelling across the country for 10
hours expecting dead bodies, which are highly infectious.
“Usually
there is a patient who is dead,” he said. “There was [in one ambulance]
one dead woman and two who were alive but terrified. They have watched
this poor woman die a wretched death and they are thinking, ‘I’m now
going to die as well.’”
Prof John Edmunds, from the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who in September called the outbreak a
potential doomsday scenario, said he would not say that the nightmare
had been averted.
“Things have improved dramatically in Liberia now –
cases were doubling every two weeks. Now there is a turnaround and they
are declining.
“The number of cases in Liberia has flattened out.
The increase has stopped and come down, but we haven’t got rid of Ebola.
In Guinea and Sierra Leone the rate of increase hasn’t really changed
much at all.”
The improvements in Liberia have been seen as safe
burials have increased in Monrovia and the numbers of treatment beds
have gone up. MSF said the opening of new treatment centres could not be
rushed, however.
“It may take time to build something but the most
critical moment is the opening of the treatment centre,” said
Abdelmoneim.
Rushing things could put health and sanitation
workers at risk. “The opening is always going to be slow and needs to be
done safely and effectively for the sake of the healthcare workers,” he
said.
Justine Greening, the international development secretary,
told the committee 1,000 NHS staff had volunteered to work in west
Africa, although it is thought that few, if any, have yet left the UK.
“Many are now going through a process of being trained up and will be
heading out to Sierra Leone,” she said. They would help staff the UK
treatment centres that are being constructed.
Abdelmoneim said
some may face difficulties over their absence from their usual NHS jobs.
“Whether they can get the time away from their trusts and their
position backfilled is an altogether different question,” he told MPs.
Edmunds
said more staff were critical to the Ebola response. “There are not
many UK health workers out there at the moment. There is no point
opening new treatment centres if there is nobody to staff them,” he told
MPs.
“This needs to be much more urgent on the part of the NHS
for our own good. If we don’t stop this epidemic in west Africa, we are
going to get cases in the UK.” - The Guardian.
November 11, 2014 - TECHNOLOGY-
Engineers at Google-owned Boston Dynamics have released a new video of
its human-like robot, Atlas, and the machine’s demonstrated ability to
maintain a karate stance may someday earn it a black belt in martial
arts. Boston Dynamics isn’t exactly building a ninja robot by any means,
but a video released this week of Atlas mimicking the maneuvers made
famous by Ralph Macchio in 1984’s blockbuster Karate Kid is quickly
raising questions about what sort of capabilities the world can expect
from the next generation of automated androids.
Dawn of the Google Machine - DARPA’s Atlas robot learns karate
The
latest video of Atlas, released over the weekend by the robotics team
at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, is the latest
example out of the lab to exhibit its 6’2”, 330 lbs mass of metal in
action.
Unlike earlier examples, however, the latest YouTube clip
of the robot, nicknamed “Ian,” shows the colossal creation balancing in a
way that would be difficult for most anyone to execute, absent the
utmost athletic ability.
WATCH: Atlas' Karate Kid.
As RT has reported
previously, Boston Dynamics and DARPA, the Pentagon’s personal science
lab of sorts, have helped supply Atlas models to institutions across the
United States, including Florida’s IHMC, in hopes of seeing what the
nation’s brightest robotics engineers are capable of when they port
their own personalized software in the skin of the cyborg-like
automaton.
And while select teams from coast to coast intend on
perfecting Atlas in order to make it ideal for assisting with emergency
situations and disaster reliefs in the future, IHMC engineers told the
IEEE Spectrum that there isn’t all that much behind the unorthodox
stance they’ve programmed Ian to adopt. According to the Spectrum’s Evan
Ackermann, the IHMC team said they strived to have their robot emulate
the iconic Karate Kid pose simply “For the fun and challenge of it.”
“Nobody
is quite sure yet what robots are going to have to do in the [DARPA
Robotics Challenge] Finals next year. But if part of the disaster
scenario involves robots getting their legs swept by evil ninja robots
(totally possible), IHMC’sAtlaswill be ready for that and more,”
Ackermann wrote.
Additionally, he said the latest video is a vast
improvement from what engineers unveiled last year when they publically
operated the robot.
“We’re not actually expecting that Atlas will
be jumping, but the balance that it’s demonstrating in this ‘Karate Kid’
video has us feeling a lot more optimistic about the DRC Finals, since
in the DRC Trials, Atlas could literally be toppled by a gentle breeze,”
Ackermann added.
On the IHMC website, the Atlas team says that
their “focus on humanoid robots is rooted in a simple concept: Because
the robots will be working in environments built for humans, a
human-like robot is best-suited to the challenges involved.”
That
isn’t to say Atlas is all that human, though. In addition to being made
out stereo cameras sensors and a laser range finder, each model is made
mobile by way of 28 hydraulically-actuated joints. - RT.
Google signs 60-year, $1 billion NASA lease... Projects involving aviation, space exploration, robots,...
Google
has signed a long-term lease for part of a historic Navy air base,
where it plans to renovate three massive hangars and use them for
projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics.
The
giant Internet company will pay $1.16 billion in rent over 60 years for
the property, which also includes a working air field, golf course and
other buildings. The 1,000-acre site is part of the former Moffett Field
Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Google
plans to invest more than $200 million to refurbish the hangars and add
other improvements, including a museum or educational facility that
will showcase the history of Moffett and Silicon Valley, according to a
NASA statement. The agency said a Google subsidiary called Planetary
Ventures LLC will use the hangars for "research, development, assembly
and testing in the areas of space exploration, aviation, rover/robotics
and other emerging technologies."
Google founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin have a well-known interest in aviation and space. The
company has recently acquired several smaller firms that are working on
satellite technology and robotics. But a Google spokesperson declined
Monday to discuss specific plans for the property, which is located just
a few miles from the company's main campus in Mountain View.
NASA
plans to continue operating its Ames Research Center on the former Navy
site. Google will take over operations at the runways and hangars,
including a massive structure that was built to house dirigible-style
Navy airships in the 1930s. NASA said the deal will save it $6.3 million
in annual maintenance and operation costs.
Local officials
praised Google's promise to restore the historic structure known as
Hangar One, which is a San Francisco Bay Area landmark. U.S. Rep. Anna
Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, called the lease agreement "a major win for our
region."
Google already has a
separate lease for another portion of the former air base, where it
wants to build a second campus. Page and Brin have also used the Moffett
runways for their collection of private jets, under another lease
arrangement that's been criticized by some watchdog groups who say NASA
gave the executives a sweetheart deal. - Yahoo.
Robot Brains Catch Humans in 25 Years, Then Speed Right On By
An android Repliee S1, produced by Japan's Osaka University professor
Hiroshi Ishiguro, performing during a dress rehearsal of Franz Kafka's
"The Metamorphosis." Phototographer: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP via Getty
Images
We’ve been wrong about these robots before.
Soon
after modern computers evolved in the 1940s, futurists started
predicting that in just a few decades machines would be as smart as
humans. Every year, the prediction seems to get pushed back another
year.
The consensus now is that it’s going to happen in ... you guessed
it, just a few more decades.
There’s more reason to believe the predictions today. After research that’s produced everything from self-driving cars to Jeopardy!-winning supercomputers, scientists have a much better understanding of what they’re up against. And, perhaps, what we’re up against.
Nick
Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford
University, lays out the best predictions of the artificial intelligence
(AI) research community in his new book, “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.”
Here are the combined results of four surveys of AI researchers,
including a poll of the most-cited scientists in the field, totalling
170 respondents.
Human-level machine
intelligence is defined here as “one that can carry out most human
professions at least as well as a typical human.”
By that
definition, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised about these predictions.
Robots and algorithms are already squeezing the edges of our global
workforce. Jobs with routine tasks are getting digitized: farmers,
telemarketers, stock traders, loan officers, lawyers, journalists -- all
of these professions have already felt the cold steel nudge of our new
automated colleagues.
Replication of routine isn't the kind of
intelligence Bostrom is interested in. He’s talking about an
intelligence with intuition and logic, one that can learn, deal with
uncertainty and sense the world around it. The most interesting thing
about reaching human-level intelligence isn’t the achievement itself,
says Bostrom; it’s what comes next. Once machines can reason and improve
themselves, the skynet is the limit.
Computers
are improving at an exponential rate. In many areas -- chess, for
example -- machine skill is already superhuman. In others -- reason,
emotional intelligence -- there’s still a long way to go. Whether
human-level general intelligence is reached in 15 years or 150, it’s
likely to be a little-observed mile marker on the road toward
superintelligence. Superintelligence: one that “greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.”
Inventor
and Tesla CEO Elon Musk warns that superintelligent machines are
possibly the greatest existential threat to humanity. He says the
investments he's made in artificial-intelligence companies are primarily
to keep an eye on where the field is headed.
“Hope we’re not just
the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence,” Musk Tweeted
in August.
“Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.”
There
are lots of caveats before we prepare to hand the keys to our earthly
kingdom over to robot offspring. First, humans have a terrible track
record of predicting the future. Second, people are notoriously
optimistic when forecasting the future of their own industries. Third,
it’s not a given that technology will continue to advance along its
current trajectory, or even with its current aims.
Still, the
brightest minds devoted to this evolving technology are predicting the
end of human intellectual supremacy by midcentury. That should be enough
to give everyone pause. The direction of technology may be inevitable,
but the care with which we approach it is not.
“Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history,” wrote theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, in an Independent column in May. “It might also be the last.” - Bloomberg.
DARPA eyes converting large aircraft into drone carriers
A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber (Reuters / Tim Chong)
The
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has
launched a contest to find the best solution for large airplanes, such
as C-130 transport planes, to carry small drones.
The agency has recently placed a “request for information” in order to explore the possibilities of launching swarms of small UAVs from already existing large aircraft. “Small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have limited range and responsiveness, however, compared to larger airborne platforms,” DARPA stated. “Launching
and recovering small UAS from those larger platforms could provide a
cost-effective capability over a spectrum of operating environments to
greatly extend the range of UAS operations, as well as enable an
entirely new operational concept for mission sets that benefit from
distributed employment.”
The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency is interested in the range of drones that would be able
to carry out intelligence and military missions, thus limiting the risks
that US pilots might otherwise take, DARPA officials said on Sunday,
according to the Washington Post. “We want to find ways to
make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling
existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft
carriers in the sky,’” said Dan Patt, a DARPA program manager. “We
envision innovative launch and recovery concepts for new [unmanned
aerial systems] designs that would couple with recent advances in small
payload design and collaborative technologies.”
DARPA is likely to use planes like the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, B-1B Lancer bomber or C-130 Hercules cargo plane.
According
to DARPA’s statement, organizations or individuals that would like to
participate in the project must submit ideas by November 26, and their
concepts should be realizable within four years. They have to include “system-level conceptual designs” and “feasibility analysis.”
Perhaps Hollywood could pitch some ideas of its own:
The
military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lab
creates stunning inventions that could help our service members stay one
step ahead when answering the call of duty.
Those creative and
skillful minds gave "CBS This Morning" a sneak peek at technology you
may have thought only existed in your dreams, reports CBS News
correspondent Chip Reid.
When Jason Kerestes goes for a run, he gets a boost from a strange contraption he wears on his back. He calls it "Airlegs."
"It basically makes you feel like you have bigger muscles," Kerestes said.
Kerestes, a graduate student at Arizona State University, and Professor Tom Sugar, are developing the device for the Pentagon.
The power comes from a tank of compressed air which is connected by pulleys and electronic sensors to braces on the knees.
"We
fire air and we pull up on the person's leg to give them assistance at
the right time and then this goes back down and back up," Kerestes said.
"It's helping you lift your leg so that it will help you run up stairs,
it will help you run faster."
At this early stage it reduces the
load by 10 percent. The goal is 25 percent, which they said will allow
the average soldier or Marine to run a mile in four minutes.
"We
do envision an entire platoon wearing wearable robots," Sugar said.
"These robots will assist them while carrying 100 pound backpacks."
It's
one of hundreds of projects at universities and companies across the
country funded by DARPA -- an agency known as the Pentagon's team of mad
scientists, that's a little like herding cats.
"Actually, if
they're great scientists and engineers, that's exactly what it's like,"
DARPA director Arati Prabhakar said. "Because you want the people that
have immense creativity and are off chasing great ideas."
DARPA was created in 1958 in response to the earth-shaking 1957 launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union.
"It
was a huge wake-up call for the United States," Prabhakar said. "Our
core mission is breakthrough technologies for national security."
For
example, DARPA was behind some of the key, early research on stealth
technology, allowing a U.S. aircraft to evade enemy radar.
But many of DARPA's brainstorms have had an enormous impact well beyond the military.
"Forty-five
years ago DARPA did this crazy experiment which was to hook a couple of
computers together and have them talk to each other," Prabhakar
explained. "That was the beginning of the ARPAnet which became the
internet today."
DARPA has played a vital role in hundreds of
technologies ranging from sophisticated prosthetic limbs for wounded
warriors to GPS. They even developed many of the components in today's
smart phones, including SIRI.
Some of DARPA's wildest ideas come from nature -- like their research on mini-robots.
Just
as armies of ants work together to accomplish amazing things, DARPA
hopes to create armies of mini-robots for micro-manufacturing.
The gecko also caught DARPA's attention because of its ability to climb walls.
"It
looks like he is hanging on with ten toes but when you zoom in what you
find is there are about half a billion points of contact," Prabhakar
said.
So DARPA created a gecko-like material that easily supports the weight of humans.
In
a never-before seen video, a Special Forces soldier uses it to climb
straight up a wall -- a technology that could one day be used in hostage
rescue missions.
The inventors of the "Airlegs" device hope it
will not only help the military, but also one day give people with
disabilities greater mobility. - CBS News.
Robot courier delivers at Columbus medical center
Although
the RoboCourier autonomous mobile robot in use at Midtown Medical
Center arrived in September, Darrell Demeritt is still surprised by the
machine.
"I will turn around and there it is," said the senior director of laboratory services for Columbus Regional Health.
The
robot that delivers specimens by itself on the hospital's third floor
might even address him with one of close to 50 phrases it has been
programmed to say, such as "How is it going?", "When do I get a day
off?" or "I can be bribed with electrons."
The more appropriate
kinds of message it makes pertaining to its job are "I have a delivery
for pathology" or "I am here to pick up for chemistry."
The $38,000 robot was purchased entirely through donations to the Columbus Regional Health Foundation.
Demeritt said it was money well spent.
"We are highly automated here. Robots can do all kinds of things, This is about transportation," Demeritt said.
The robot can deliver specimens, pharmacy supplies, surgical equipment and other items using an open container.
Demeritt
said lab workers spend far less time walking and waiting because of the
robot. They can stay focused and that means specimens and tests can be
analyzed sooner which turns into faster results and better patient care.
Have This Artificially Intelligent Travel Agent Book Your Next Vacation
Fly without the hassles of travel sites (Wikimedia)
Just
when we were all convinced that travel agents had become obsolete did
we find out they’ve actually just gotten a hi-tech revamp for the next
century.
A link on Reddit tipped us off this morning to Dobby, a
service claiming to be an artificially intelligent travel agent that
will take care of all of your flight accommodations for you. Simply send
Dobby an email telling him where and when you want to go, and he’ll
reply with three itineraries in five minutes or less. All that’s left
for you to do is choose.
According to the service’s minimalist webpage,
Dobby is currently in the “early access” stage. It’s unclear what
company is behind this futuristic travel agent or when it will
officially launch, but it seems that Dobby’s artificial intelligence
might be more helpful than Expedia or Travelocity.
According to
the site, he learns users’ travel preferences and habits over time and
uses them to build a personalized travel portfolio for each user. He
also connects with all airlines, is equipped to handle group trips and
can even keep track of frequent flyer miles in order to get users the
best deals for their schedules.
After you book, Dobby will automatically
generate an expense report for your booking.
Currently, Dobby is only booking flights, but in the future he’ll book hotel and car accommodations as well.
The
site indicates that users are charged a booking fee based on the
frequency of their reservations, but exactly how much the service costs
is unclear. Since booking sites like Expedia already help users find
cheap flights, and don’t cost anything to use, it’s safe to say Dobby’s
artificial intelligence better be pretty impressive, to justify whatever
fee it ends up charging users.
This is the second time we’ve seen tech get disrupted in the past week. Last Friday saw the launch of Connections, a service that offers unused plane tickets to strangers with the same names as the people who originally booked them.
Now if only someone could make an app that could make flight delays go away. - Beta Beat.
November 11, 2014 - FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - Residents in central
Florida on Tuesday monitored the threat of a hole that swallowed a car
sitting in a driveway and forced six families to evacuate their homes.
The
hole measured 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep as of Monday afternoon, but
officials said they were not calling it a sinkhole, which is typically
formed by water erosion, until that had been confirmed by engineers.
The
hole was only 4 feet on each side when Pasco County Fire Rescue first
arrived at a residential property in Holiday, Florida, about 45 minutes
north of Tampa, authorities said in a statement.
Within 15 minutes, the hole grew big enough to swallow a car at its edge.
The
mobile home in front of the hole has since been condemned. Families
were told not to stay in five other nearby homes until the ground has
been found stable, officials said.
Florida's porous limestone
foundation makes it prone to sinkholes. The resulting cavities are a
common feature of the landscape, forming springs, lakes and portions of
rivers.
WATCH: Car falls into expanding sinkhole in Florida.
Most sinkholes occur as naturally acidic underground water
flows through and dissolves the underlying limestone. Communities in
north and central Florida, and particularly in the Tampa Bay area, are
especially vulnerable.
The sinkhole affecting residents in Holiday
on Tuesday was located about an hour from one that last year opened
under a house and swallowed a man who was sleeping in his bedroom. His
body was never recovered. - Chicago Tribune.
November 11, 2014 - EARTH - The following list constitutes the latest reports of high tides, heavy
rainfall, flash floods, widespread flooding, sea level rise and
catastrophic storms courtesy of Floodlist.
16,000 Displaced in Uganda after River Semliki Overflows
Floods in Ntoroko, Uganda, after the River Semliki burst its banks. Photo: UNICEF
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on Thursday 06
November 2014 that at least 16,000 people have been displaced by recent
floods in Uganda. Around half of the displaced are thought to be
children, according to UNICEF Uganda.
The floods occurred in the
western Ugandan district of Ntoroko after the River Semliki burst its
banks due to heavy rains. The areas worst affected are Bweramule sub
county, Butungama sub county, Rwebisengo sub country and Rwebisengo
town.
The river first overflowed around 01 November 2014.
Initially around 500 people were displaced, but the affected area has
since widened. Roads are submerged and many homes in the area have been
damaged. Crops and livestock has also been badly affected.
The Ugandan newspaper The Monitor says that the area is frequently under water at this time of year.:
Floods
are a chronic problem in Ntotoko which plague the district every rainy
season, displacing hundreds of people and leaving a trail destruction.
The also point to human activities being responsible for the regular flooding of the River Semliki
Environment
experts say overgrazing, and other alterations to the watershed have
caused bank erosion and frequent changes to the course of River Semliki.
Aid and Relief
The
Ugandan government have delivered some food aid for the victims after
Vice President Edward Ssekandi visited Ntoroko last week.
UNICEF
has prepositioned emergency medical supplies including 40,000 water
purification tablets to health centres within the affected. However
there is still need for additional support and relief items. UNICEF said “Affected population still need more items like food, non-food items, mosquito nets, soap, tents and emergency medicines.”
Floods Worsen in Somalia Leaving 21,000 Homeless
According
to African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), the total number of
people displaced by the recent flooding in Somalia has now risen to
21,000.
Further
heavy rainfall over the last 2 weeks has forced thousands more to leave
their homes for higher ground. The affected families have settled in
temporary shelters at a camp close to the AMISOM base camp, North
Eastern Beletweyne.
Shabelle River floods in Beledweyne, Hiran, Somalia, October 2014. Photo: Abdikarim Hussein / twitter
Make shift houses in Internal Displaced Camp outside of Belet Weyne
Capital of Hiran Region, Somalia on November 05, 2014 AU/UN IST / Photo
Ahmed Qeys
Make shift houses in Internal Displaced Camp outside of Belet Weyne
Capital of Hiran Region, Somalia on November 05, 2014 AU/UN IST / Photo
Ahmed Qeys
Major Ali Hussein, an AMISON spokesman said
“We
are looking at how we can evacuate them or offer medication, but they
need much more than that. On the side of the food and so on, they are
being provided with clean water by the use of water tankers but they
need food and medicines urgently. There is possibility of water borne
diseases outbreak, and they don’t have sanitation facilities”
Aid
agencies have warned that the floods are likely to worsen the already
fragile food security situation, with at least 1 million people in
urgent need of humanitarian assistance across Somalia. A statement by
the Food Agriculture Organization released last week indicates that the
floods have left large areas with crops submerged, further exposing the
population to food insecurity.
High Tide Floods in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam
Some
areas of Ca Mau Province in southern Vietnam are under 50cm (20 inches)
of water after unusually high tides over the past few days.
The
high tide season along this coastline usually runs from December to
March. The floods over the last few days have caught a few buy surprise.
The average water level is 30 cm higher than in previous years,
officials say.
VNS are reporting that the entire coastline of the
province – all 252 km (156 miles) of it – has been been flooded.
Furthermore, areas inland have also seen some flooding, including Nam
Can Town in Nam Can District. More than 2,000 hectares of aquaculture
farms and 1,000 hectares of crops and orchards have been damaged by the
tides. Saline intrusion has long been of major concern to local
industries such as shrimp and rice farming. VNS
say that local officials see the recent high tides as part of the
effects of rising sea levels and climate change. As a response, the
province is aiming to build a sea dyke along its eastern coastline, and
also repair and make improvements to the existing western sea dyke.
Map:
Image: Google Maps.
Federal Aid for Nevada and Arizona after September 2014 Floods
FEMA
announced on 06 November 2014 that federal disaster aid has been made
available to the states of Nevada and Arizona to supplement state,
tribal, and local recovery efforts in the area affected by severe storms
and flooding that hit parts of the two states between 07 and 09 September 2014.
The
storm and flooding at the time was said to be caused by the remnants of
former Hurricane Norbert that hit parts of Mexico in the previous days.
Heavy rain and flash flooding was also seen in parts of southern
California.
Nevada
In Nevada the worst hit area was Moapa, which is about 70 km / 45 miles north east of Las Vegas, where 118 mm (4.67 inches) of rain fell on Monday 08 September 2014 – an extreme amount of rain in this desert area. Flood water was so high that vehicles floated along Interstate 15. Some flooding was also seen in the Las Vegas area.
Moapa after the floods in September 2014. Photo: Rlan Levi / Twitter
Arizona
Phoenix
was one of the worst affected areas. Around 84 mm (3.3 inches) of rain
fell in 24 hours between 07 and 08 September 2014. This beats the
previous high of 74 mm (2.91 inches), set in 1933, and was more than the
combined total normally seen in the 3 months of July, August, and
September.
A woman died after her car became submerged in 10 feet
of flood water in a residential area in east Tucson. Rescue teams
couldn’t reach the victim in time.
A second victim drowned in her
car after it was caught in flash floods in Oracle Junction, north of
Tucson. A second passenger, the victim’s husband, managed to escape from
the vehicle and survived.
Floods in Arizona, September 2014. Photo: Ld Keith / Twitter
In their announcement on the Nevada flood aid, FEMA said:
The
President’s action makes federal funding available to state and
eligible tribal and local governments and certain private nonprofit
organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair
or replacement of facilities damaged by severe storms and flooding on
the Moapa Band of Paiutes Reservation. Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide.
November 11, 2014 - PAKISTAN
- At least 50 people, some 14 women and eight children among them, were
killed and 18 people were injured on Tuesday when a passenger bus
collided with a truck laden with goods in southern Pakistan, officials
said. "The Karachi-bound passenger bus, which was coming from
northwestern city of Swat went on the wrong side of the road and
collided head-on with a goods container, killing 56 people," senior local police official Nasir Aftab told AFP.
Conflicting
reports have come about the number of victims. AP reported the death
and injury toll issued by police official Ghulam Jhokhio.
Image from @Faibyy
Image from @Faibyy
Image from @Faibyy
AFP,
however, estimates the body count at 56 people at least, with a much
higher rate of kids – including 17 women and 18 children.
The latter
death toll was confirmed by a senior doctor at the Khairpur civil
hospital, who added that the condition of three of the injured was
critical.
The accident happened in the morning, 450km
north of Karachi, near the city of Khairpur, which is the capital of
southern Sindh province.
A police official told AP, the most likely
cause of the accident was heavy fog.
Bad road infrastructure, combined with reckless driving makes fatal accidents quite common in Pakistan. - RT.
November 11, 2014 - MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Every spring and summer, when the ground warms up after winter frosts here and there parts of paved road go underground.
Moscow
authorities can’t say what is the reason for those things to happen and
usually can just suppose but don’t know for sure. But Moscow geologists
seem to know the answer.
“Moscow city stands on the top of the
giant ancient volcano”, says scientist, “we call often Moscow – the city
on the seven hills (as well Rome and some other cities) but just a few
know that those seven hill actually are the ancient volcano structure.
It
doesn’t matter that it is not active for thousands of years already,
still there are so called ‘fluid streams’ gases from the center of the
Earth comes to surface through ancient volcanoes, they cause the tremors
of the surface and ruining the roads and buildings in Moscow.”.
He also admitted that around 15% of Moscow city surface can get under the ground.
And
there is still a chance that the volcano can wake up. “It’s not to
clear what causes some old and forgotten volcanoes that were not active
for years to wake up suddenly”. In this case all the city would be
buried. - English Russia.
FLASHBACK: "Bottomless" Pits in Siberia - Leaves Scientists Baffled
A
huge, mysterious crater spotted in remote Siberia has scientists
scrambling for answers: Was it a meteor?
Was it a weapon? Or was it an
explosive sign of global warming?
The seemingly bottomless pit was
spotted by an oil-and-gas industry helicopter flying over northern
Siberia — a region notorious for devastating events.
It might be Armageddon, seeing as the place where it was found is known as Yamal, meaning “the end of the world.”
The
most deadly meteor impact of modern times — the Tunguska air burst —
happened in the region in 1908. It flattened vast swaths of forest over a
775-square-mile area.
No such streak in the sky, explosive flash or seismic event has been recorded recently.
But this mysterious hole has nevertheless appeared.
The Siberian Times reports
that startled helicopter passengers talked their pilot into loitering
over the mysterious crater. Engineer Konstantin Nikolaev then filmed the
hole and uploaded the footage to YouTube.
They say the hole was
big enough for their helicopter — a 60-foot-long Mi8 — to have
comfortably entered without touching the sides.
Since the footage
appeared online, the Internet has been abuzz with rumors of UFOs, secret
entrances to the “hollow Earth” — as well as the more mundane weapon
test sites and meteorite impact theories.
“We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite,” a spokesman for Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said.
Russian
scientist Anna Kurchatova, from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research
Center, believes the cause is something more logical, such as global
warming.
Siberia’s frozen soil — known as permafrost — contains
millions of tons of methane gas. As the surface slowly warms, this gas
begins to be released — and pools into highly volatile pockets.
A
mixture of water, salt and gas may have ignited an underground
explosion. Another possibility is that the gas pocket may simply have
built up enough pressure to pop like a Champagne cork, she said.
Clues to the crater’s cause are not far away.
“A
scientific team has been sent to investigate the hole and is due to
arrive at the scene on Wednesday,” The Siberian Times reports.
The
expedition includes experts from Russia’s Center for the Study of the
Arctic, and the Cryosphere Institute of the Academy of Sciences.
They will sample the soil, water and air at the scene in order to determine the nature of the hole.
The
crater was found in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, some
25 miles from the Bovanenkovo gas field. The peninsula, which sticks
into Arctic waters, is the source of Russia’s vast gas export market to
Europe. - NY Post.
Mystery fog, 'toxic' sulfur odor covers Moscow
A
massive cloud smelling like 'hell' sparked a widespread panic in
Moscow. Residents were afraid of a toxic gas after warnings to stay
indoors.
The source of the rotten eggs smell turned out to be a
leak from a sulfur dioxide processing facility at an oil refinery in
Moscow, the Emergencies Ministry confirmed.
The city’s ecology
watchdog and the Emergencies Ministry said that the level of hydrogen
sulfide was over the permitted level for a short period of time, while
the levels of sulfur dioxide remained within the norm. The two gases are
byproducts of oil processing.
Still from YouTube video
The smell created a wave of panic on local social media. “Guys,
who knows what the reason for such a stink in Moscow? There has been a
smell of hydrogen-sulfide in many parts of the city,” wrote Twitter user Sergey Krasilnikov.
“The smell even travels through [closed] windows,” wrote Twitter user Asya Zateeva.
Residents of the southeast of Moscow saw the buildings covered in smog in the morning.
WATCH: Mysterious fog over Moscow.
Many
MP’s in the Russian parliament, whose building is situated right next
to the Kremlin, also complained of the odor since Monday morning, but
their work was not disrupted.
The Emergencies Ministry
checked air samples in the southeast, east and center of Moscow
following an avalanche of complaints from local residents.
A
representative of the Russian Hydro-Meteorological Service, which
monitors environmental pollution, told Tass that the cloud first
appeared in Moscow's south-east Lublino region, where the concentration
of hydrogen sulfide has exceeded normal levels. - RT.
