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Astronomers Have Found 6,000 Planets Outside the Solar System

WIRED

From lava worlds to gas giants, NASA says the variety of these worlds is staggering--and that signs of a further 8,000 distant planets are awaiting confirmation. The number of confirmed planets outside of our solar system--known as exoplanets-- has risen to 6,000, NASA has said. There is huge variety across these distant worlds, the space agency says, with discoveries including rocky planets, lava worlds, and gas giants enveloping their stars. Plenty more discoveries are likely on the way. As a result of continued monitoring by NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), there are more than 8,000 potential planets that have been identified and are awaiting confirmation.


The ancient part of your brain that controls your consciousness, found by scientists

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Eye-opening look inside wealthy'Tylenol town' that has become epicenter of autism controversy Stephen A. Smith reveals'real deal' Democrat he's backing to take on Donald Trump: 'Pay attention to this man' Jessica Alba is being humiliated by her ex-husband chasing lookalikes half her age! Why your star sign has been WRONG your whole life: As astronomers reveal the zodiac is more than 2,500 years out of date, use our graphic to find out what your horoscope really is - and why it's changed America's cheapest car gets a huge redesign... but its tiny fault-ridden engine remains D4vd's mansion is mysteriously EMPTIED by movers... as disturbing theory emerges about why he still hasn't been arrested after dismembered girl was found in his Tesla Nicolas Cage tossed Lisa Marie Presley's $65k engagement ring OVERBOARD during blazing row Charlie Kirk suspect's trans lover seen in trove of new images... as family friend reveals why parents kicked him out High school of football player who fractured rival's spine takes'strong and decisive action' after senseless attack My perfect affair: For six glorious years, I've followed these five rules for not getting caught. My partner and his wife still have no idea... Inside'America's scariest house' where THIRTEEN people have died and'ghosts haunt the halls' Brooklyn Beckham suffers HUMILIATION during Ryder Cup celebrity match as he's mocked by fans Colin Firth's ex-wife Livia dramatically hands back her MBE and tears up the prestigious certificate in fury over Trump: Activist hits out at'cowardly display of appeasing' by King Charles Barack Obama reveals he's been'digging himself out of a hole' with wife Michelle for years Wealthy oil exec'drunkenly' slammed Porsche into student, 19, causing horrific burns READ MORE: The test that spots Alzheimer's YEARS before symptoms appear For decades, scientists have thought that human consciousness arises from the newest and most sophisticated parts of the brain. But a Cambridge scientist now claims that the fundamental basis of our experience may be controlled by a far more primal structure. In a review of over a century of scientific research, neuroscientist Dr Peter Coppola examined stimulation studies, animal experiments, and neurological case reports.


How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral

MIT Technology Review

Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages? When Kenneth Wehr started managing the Greenlandic-language version of Wikipedia four years ago, his first act was to delete almost everything. It had to go, he thought, if it had any chance of surviving. Wehr, who's 26, isn't from Greenland--he grew up in Germany--but he had become obsessed with the island, an autonomous Danish territory, after visiting as a teenager. He'd spent years writing obscure Wikipedia articles in his native tongue on virtually everything to do with it. He even ended up moving to Copenhagen to study Greenlandic, a language spoken by some 57,000 mostly Indigenous Inuit people scattered across dozens of far-flung Arctic villages. The Greenlandic-language edition was added to Wikipedia around 2003, just a few years after the site launched in English. By the time Wehr took its helm nearly 20 years later, hundreds of Wikipedians had contributed to it and had collectively written some 1,500 articles totaling over tens of thousands of words.


'ChatGPT, what stocks should I buy?' AI fuels boom in robo-advisory market

The Japan Times

'ChatGPT, what stocks should I buy?' AI fuels boom in robo-advisory market Stock picking using ChatGPT requires some financial knowledge and even its adopters say there is a high risk of getting it wrong before getting it right. LONDON - As ChatGPT nears its third birthday, at least one in 10 retail investors is using a chatbot to pick stocks, fueling a boom in the robo-advisory market, but even fans say it is a high-risk strategy that cannot replace traditional advisers just yet. Thanks to artificial intelligence, anyone can select stocks, monitor them and obtain investment analysis that was once only available to big banks or institutional investors. The robo-advisory market -- which includes all companies providing automated, algorithm-driven financial advice such as fintech, banks and wealth managers -- is forecast to grow to $470.91 billion in revenues in 2029 from $61.75 billion last year, marking a roughly 600% increase, according to data analysis firm Research and Markets. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.


Italy, Spain send navy ships to protect Gaza flotilla after drone attacks

Al Jazeera

Can Israel survive economic isolation? Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said his country's navy will join Italy in sending warships to protect the Global Sumud Flotilla, which has come under drone attack in international waters en route to deliver aid to Gaza. Speaking to reporters in New York on Wednesday, where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Sanchez said international law must be respected and the citizens of 45 nations participating in the aid mission had every right to sail in the Mediterranean unharmed. "Tomorrow we will dispatch a naval vessel from Cartagena with all necessary resources in case it is necessary to assist the flotilla and carry out a rescue operation." On Wednesday night, activists described a wave of attacks by Israeli drones and other aircraft which targeted vessels in the small fleet in what flotilla organisers described as "an alarmingly dangerous escalation".


Australian film altered in China to make gay couple straight

BBC News

An Australian film that was digitally altered to change a same-sex couple to a heterosexual one has drawn backlash from moviegoers in China. Together, a horror film starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was shown in selected Chinese cinemas in advance screenings on 12 September. Cinemagoers later realised some scenes had been modified after screenshots showing the original scenes went viral online. The film was due to be publicly released on 19 September - but as of Thursday has yet to be aired in cinemas. The film's global distributor, Neon, later condemned the edit, saying they did not approve of [this] unauthorised edit... and demand they ceased distribution, according to reports.


Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,309

Al Jazeera

Can Ukraine restore its pre-war borders? How is Russia replenishing its military? At least two people were killed by a daytime Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian city of Novorossiysk on Wednesday, according to The Moscow Times. Among those injured were employees of a Russian-Kazakh oil project. Russia's Ministry of Defence on Wednesday said 1,495 Ukrainian troops were killed in the past 24 hours of fighting, according to Russia's state news agency TASS.


Drone activity confirmed at multiple Denmark airports

BBC News

Denmark's Aalborg airport in the country's north has been closed after unauthorised drones were seen in its airspace, according to local authorities. Three other smaller airports in the country's southern region - Esbjerg, Sรธnderborg and Skrydstrup - also reported drone activity, but were not closed. The incident comes after the country's Copenhagen airport was forced to close earlier this week due to a drone incursion, which the prime minister described as the most severe attack on Danish infrastructure so far. Police said the devices could be seen from the ground, adding they couldn't rule out the activity being a prank. They were investigating who was controlling them and their motive.


Joint Channel Estimation and Computation Offloading in Fluid Antenna-assisted MEC Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

With the emergence of fluid antenna (FA) in wireless communications, the capability to dynamically adjust port positions offers substantial benefits in spatial diversity and spectrum efficiency, which are particularly valuable for mobile edge computing (MEC) systems. Therefore, we propose an FA-assisted MEC offloading framework to minimize system delay. This framework faces two severe challenges, which are the complexity of channel estimation due to dynamic port configuration and the inherent non-convexity of the joint optimization problem. Firstly, we propose Information Bottleneck Metric-enhanced Channel Compressed Sensing (IBM-CCS), which advances FA channel estimation by integrating information relevance into the sensing process and capturing key features of FA channels effectively. Secondly, to address the non-convex and high-dimensional optimization problem in FA-assisted MEC systems, which includes FA port selection, beamforming, power control, and resource allocation, we propose a game theory-assisted Hierarchical Twin-Dueling Multi-agent Algorithm (HiTDMA) based offloading scheme, where the hierarchical structure effectively decouples and coordinates the optimization tasks between the user side and the base station side. Crucially, the game theory effectively reduces the dimensionality of power control variables, allowing deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents to achieve improved optimization efficiency. Numerical results confirm that the proposed scheme significantly reduces system delay and enhances offloading performance, outperforming benchmarks. Additionally, the IBM-CCS channel estimation demonstrates superior accuracy and robustness under varying port densities, contributing to efficient communication under imperfect CSI.