Deep-learning software may help scientists predict extreme weather patterns more accurately than relying on today's weather prediction models alone. Simulations involving complex differential equations are run on supercomputers to predict the weather. The accuracy of forecasts using this approach have improved over time, though it's still tricky to pinpoint extreme events like cold spells or heat waves. "It may be that we need faster supercomputers to solve the governing equations of the numerical weather prediction models at higher resolutions," Pedram Hassanzadeh, an assistant professor at the United States' Rice University's Department of Mechanical Engineering, said on Tuesday. "But because we don't fully understand the physics and precursor conditions of extreme-causing weather patterns, it's also possible that the equations aren't fully accurate, and they won't produce better forecasts, no matter how much computing power we put in." Here's where AI may come in handy.

First ever footage of the underside of the'doomsday' Thwaites glacier has been sent back by a robotic yellow submarine dubbed Icefin. Glaciologists have likened the groundbreaking images and video to the first steps on the moon taken by Neil Armstrong in 1969. Early analysis reveals that turbulent warm waters underneath the ice sheet, which is the same size as Britain, are causing an'unstoppable retreat'. Experts have previously predicted that if Thwaites was to melt completely, it would lead to a significant increase in worldwide sea levels of around two feet (65cm). The impact on coastal communities around the world would be catastrophic.

A team of researchers from the University of La Rochelle in France have converted albatrosses into de facto surveillance drones as part of a project to gather data on illegal fishing boats in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. The team traveled to popular albatross nesting locations at Amsterdam Island and Kerguelen Island in the Indian Ocean north of Antarctica, and attached small sensors to 169 albatrosses in a procedure that took about 10 minutes per bird. The sensors weigh 65 grams, or around a seventh of a pound, and were equipped with a GPS receiver, a radar antenna, and a satellite communications monitor to track various boat communication systems. The devices were each powered by a small lithium battery that maintains a charge through a small solar panel, according to a report from ArsTechnica. The albatrosses covered more than 18 million square miles between East Africa and New Zealand, gathering data from more than 600,000 GPS locations.

Recently, human being's curiosity has been expanded from the land to the sky and the sea. Besides sending people to explore the ocean and outer space, robots are designed for some tasks dangerous for living creatures. Take the ocean exploration for an example. There are many projects or competitions on the design of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which attracted many interests. Authors of this article have learned the necessity of platform upgrade from a previous AUV design project, and would like to share the experience of one task extension in the area of fish detection. Because most of the embedded systems have been improved by fast growing computing and sensing technologies, which makes them possible to incorporate more and more complicated algorithms. In an AUV, after acquiring surrounding information from sensors, how to perceive and analyse corresponding information for better judgement is one of the challenges. The processing procedure can mimic human being's learning routines. An advanced system with more computing power can facilitate deep learning feature, which exploit many neural network algorithms to simulate human brains. In this paper, a convolutional neural network (CNN) based fish detection method was proposed.

Kremlin analysts could have used Twitter as a source of military intelligence to inform their actions in the 2014 Russia–Ukraine conflict, a study has found. University of California experts showed that location-tagged tweets by Ukraine residents could have been used to map out sentiments towards Russia in real-time. The map they made of pro-Kremlin regions turned out to bear a striking resemblance to the actual areas to which Russia dispatched its special forces. Specifically, this included Crimea and regions in the far east of Ukraine -- where the incoming forces would have been most likely to be seen as liberators. In contrast, the data could also reveal those areas where dispatching forces would have lead to greater resistance and corresponding casualties and costs.

Archaeologists recently discovered a Roman shipwreck in the eastern Mediterranean. The ship and its cargo are both in good condition, despite being 2,000 years old. The wreck, named the Fiskardo after the nearby Roman Empire port of the same name, is the largest shipwreck found in the region to date. The Fiskardo is filled with amphorae -- large terracotta pots that were used in the Roman Empire for transporting goods such as wine, grain, and olive oil. CNN reported, "The survey was carried out by the Oceanus network of the University of Patras, using artificial intelligence image-processing techniques."

Climate-driven change in the Gulf of Maine is raising new threats that "red tides" will become more frequent and prolonged. But at the same time, powerful new data collection techniques and artificial intelligence are providing more precise ways to predict where and when toxic algae will bloom. One of those new machine learning prediction models has been developed by a former intern at Bigelow Labs in East Boothbay. In a busy shed on a Portland wharf, workers for Bangs Island Mussels sort and clean shellfish hauled from Casco Bay that morning. Wholesaler George Parr has come to pay a visit.

A mathematical study claims to have proven the long-held belief that the Battle of Britain could have easily been won by the Germans if not for tactical ineptitude. University of York researchers have created a computer model that uses a statistical technique called'weighted bootstrapping' to re-imagine the 1940 battle under different circumstances. It identifies two enormous blunders by notorious Nazi commander Hermann Goering - a trained fighter pilot - who led the assault that crippled the Nazi effort and helped Britain win. The researchers say it provides statistical backing to many historians' belief that if Germany had launched an attack immediately after Winston Churchill's famous'Battle of Britain' speech on June 18, rather than three weeks later on July 10, and targeted airfields rather than cities and populated areas, the Nazis would probably have been victorious. This would have crippled the British response by decimating the number of fighter pilots and destroying vital radar systems used to track German planes, paving the way for a naval and land invasion.

A model and expansion plan have been developed to optimally determine microgrid designs as they evolve to dynamically react to changing conditions and to exploit energy storage capabilities. In the wake of the highly electrified future ahead of us, the role of energy storage is crucial wherever distributed generation is abundant, such as microgrid settings. Given the variety of storage options that are recently becoming more economical, determining which type of storage technology to invest in, along with the appropriate timing and capacity becomes a critical research question. In problems where the investment timing is of high priority, like this one, developing analytical and systematic frameworks for rigorously considering these issues is indispensable. From a business perspective, these strategic frameworks will aim to optimize the process of investment planning, by leveraging novel approaches and by capturing all the problem details that traditional approaches are unable to. Reinforcement learning algorithms have recently proven to be successful in problems where sequential decision-making is inherent. In the operations planning area, these algorithms are already used but mostly in short-term problems with well-defined constraints and low levels of uncertainty modeling. On the contrary, in this work, we expand and tailor these techniques to long-term investment planning by utilizing model-free approaches, like the Q-learning algorithm, combined with simulation-based models. We find that specific types of energy storage units, including the vanadium-redox battery, can be expected to be at the core of the future microgrid applications, and therefore, require further attention. Another key finding is that the optimal storage capacity threshold for a system depends heavily on the price movements of the available storage units in the market.

Aviation Maintenance Administrationman 3rd Class Shea Wright, assigned to the Skinny Dragons of Patrol Squadron (VP) 4, recovers a squadron P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft following an anti-submarine warfare mission over the Atlantic Ocean, Nov. 30, 2019. The increasingly global reach of Chinese nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, armed with JL-2 weapons reportedly able to hit parts of the U.S., continues to inspire an ongoing Navy effort to accelerate production of attack submarines, prepare long-dwell drones for deployment to the Pacific and continue acquisition of torpedo-armed sub-hunting planes such as the P-8/A Poseidon. The Navy has been moving quickly to increase its fleet of Poseidon's on an accelerated timetable; in the Navy's 2020 budget, the service was authorized for a near term increase in Poseidon production by three, moving funding for the year up for nine Poseidons, as cited in a report from USNI news. Last year, the Navy awarded Boeing a $2.4 billion deal to produce 19 more P-8A Poseidon surveillance and attack planes. The Poseidon increase appears to align with the service's overall Pacific theater strategy, which makes a point to sustain peaceful, yet vital surveillance and Freedom of Navigation missions in the region.