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USS Grunion's bow discovered off the coast of Alaska nearly 80 years after the submarine sunk

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Ocean explorers have discovered the bow of the USS Grunion off the coast of Alaska nearly 80 years after it was lost during the Second World War. A team from the Lost 52 Project found the submarine part in 2,700 ft (820m) of water near the Aleutian Islands using pioneering robot technology. The Gato-class submarine, which was carrying 70 people on board when it sank, was last heard from in July 1942. In 2006, the sons of the ship's captain Lieutenant Commander Mannert'Jim' Abele - Bruce, Brad and John - began a search for the lost submarine, finding it a year later. The USS Grunion was a Gato-class submarine that sank during the Second World War.


Being Progressive Shouldn't Mean Being Anti-Algorithm

#artificialintelligence

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking at an event in January 2019 honoring the legacy of Dr. Luther King, said, "Algorithms are still made by human beings, and those algorithms are still pegged to basic human assumptions. And if you don't fix the bias, then you are just automating the bias." Though her comments were correct--algorithms can indeed reflect and exhibit human bias--Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's framing of the intersection of algorithms and fairness highlighted an often-ignored issue in progressive politics. The political movement, defined in part by its commitment to social justice, is unsurprisingly critical of the potential for algorithms, particularly AI, to facilitate discrimination, yet seemingly pays little attention to the ways in which algorithms can actually reduce discrimination.


New Flyer, Robotic Research Plan to Improve Public Transit Using Autonomous Bus Technology - Inside Unmanned Systems

#artificialintelligence

St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA โ€“New Flyer of America Inc., a subsidiary of NFI Group Inc., the largest bus manufacturer in North America, recently announced an exclusive partnership with Robotic Research, LLC to advance autonomous bus technology through developing and deploying advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in heavy-duty transit bus applications. Last week, New Flyer had more big news as the company announced a new contract from New York's Capital District Transportation Authority for four 40-foot, zero-emission, battery-electric Xcelsior CHARGE heavy-duty transit buses. New Flyer invested more than two years assessing world-leading technology providers for sophisticated autonomous vehicle development. It ultimately selected Robotic Research based on the company's proven, industry-leading, artificial intelligence-based technology, coupled with its extensive experience delivering successful Level 5 autonomous vehicle applications for customers within the defense and intelligence community, including the U.S. Department of Defense. "New Flyer has a proud history of leading innovation, industry firsts, and technology advancement in public transportation," said New Flyer President Chris Stoddart, in a press release "Our ADAS vision supports the mobility needs of all Americans relying on public transit for safe and reliable transportation every day. Partnering with Robotic Research furthers our commitment to utilize the best expertise and technology available, while reaffirming our responsibility to work with regulators and stakeholders on standards and test protocols that integrate automated vehicles safely into the existing transportation system."


World AI Leaders From Dell Technologies, Rolls-Royce And Kryon, Among Others, Discuss AI Strategies In Singapore IndianWeb2.com

#artificialintelligence

The Singapore edition of World AI Show reinvigorated the nation's AI efforts by bringing in top global investors, startups, digital companies, solution providers and AI experts such as Dr Terence Hung from Rolls-Royce Singapore; Sutowo Wong from the Ministry of Health, Singapore; and Guido Jouret, Chief Digital Officer of ABB; to name a few. Given its infrastructure capacity, education system and investor-friendly laws, Singapore has all the right ingredients to nurture a robust AI ecosystem that could be the cornerstone for the small island's economic upswing. According to a recent report by Accenture, AI could add up to US$215 billion in gross value across 11 industries in Singapore by 2035. With the Singapore government's vehement efforts to foster initiatives in the AI space, the nation was the ideal location to host the 9th edition of the global World AI Show series that had hit the ground running for the second time in Singapore on 24 July 2019. The show was organised by international business events and consulting firm, Trescon.


Joe Biden says video games may play role in gun violence

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines for August 6 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden agreed with President Trump's sentiments Monday that violence in video games could be connected with rising gun violence in the U.S., saying video games teach children it's OK to just shoot somebody and "blow their brains out." CNN's Anderson Cooper prompted Biden by saying "when I mentioned that the president talked about video games today as being part of the problem, I saw you kind of rolled your eyes" but "it's something people have talked about it's for a long time." "I've talked about it, too," Biden said.


Drone strike by Khalifa Hifter's forces on south Libyan town kills at least 43, official says

The Japan Times

TRIPOLI โ€“ A drone airstrike by eastern Libyan forces on the southern Libyan town of Murzuq has killed at least 43 people, a local official said on Monday. The attack is the second major airstrike blamed on the eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces loyal to Khalifa Hifter after at least 44 migrants were killed in June when a detention center in a suburb of the capital Tripoli was hit. The LNA confirmed a strike late on Sunday on Murzuq, but denied it had targeted any civilians. The LNA had also denied it had hit the detention center but acknowledged increased air strikes on the capital. The internationally recognized government based in Tripoli opposing Hifter said dozens were killed and wounded in Murzuq. Reached by telephone, Murzuq municipal council member Mohamed Omar told Reuters: "The airstrike resulted in 43 killed and 51 wounded.


Taiwan looks to Japan for solutions to demographic woes

The Japan Times

TAIPEI โ€“ Between 2012 and 2018, Taiwanese authorities closed 594 schools islandwide. They also cut thousands of classes at the remaining schools and reduced the hiring of new teachers. All were steps taken in response to an ongoing fall in enrollments -- approximately 100,000 fewer students per year during that period. The drop is the result of Taiwan's declining birthrate, with women today bearing an average of 1.06 children, far below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to maintain the population. Beyond empty schools, such a decline spells trouble across the social and economic map, especially as Taiwanese are living significantly longer than in the past, with projections suggesting that by 2065 there will be one working-age adult for every retiree.


Video games, violence and mass shootings have a long, complicated history

USATODAY - Tech Top Stories

Talking about acts of violence like mass shootings with your children is not easy. If you have to have that difficult talk, remember the four S's. Video games again have been invoked as one of the causes of violence in the U.S. in the wake of mass shootings this weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. President Donald Trump, who last year held a video game summit after the February 2018 Parkland, Florida, shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was among several public officials who called out video games as a potential factor in shootings, mentioning video games and violence. President Donald Trump on Monday condemned white nationalism and said he supported "red flag" laws, which could limit a person's access to firearms if the person is determined to be a potential threat to the public.


Machine learning projects

#artificialintelligence

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries in partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago were awarded a National Leadership Grant (IMLS:LG-71-17-0202-17) from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to research the efficacy of using machine-learning algorithms to identify and extract content-rich publications contained in web archives. With the increase of institutions that are collection web-published content into web archives, there has been growing interest in mining these web archives to extract publications or documents that align with existing collections or collection development policies. These identified publications could then be integrated into existing digital library collections where they would become first-order digital objects instead of content accessible only to discovery by traversing the web archive or though a well crafted full text search. This project is focusing on the first piece of this workflow, to identify the publications that exist and separate them from content that does not align with existing collections. To operationalize this research, the project is focusing on three primary use cases, including: extracting scholarly publications for an institutional repository from a university domain's web archive (unt.edu


Strengthening the Case for a Bayesian Approach to Car-following Model Calibration and Validation using Probabilistic Programming

arXiv.org Machine Learning

-- Compute and memory constraints have historically prevented traffic simulation software users from fully utilizing the predictive models underlying them. When calibrating car-following models, particularly, accommodations have included 1) using sensitivity analysis to limit the number of parameters to be calibrated, and 2) identifying only one set of parameter values using data collected from multiple car-following instances across multiple drivers. Shortcuts are further motivated by insufficient data set sizes, for which a driver may have too few instances to fully account for the variation in their driving behavior . In this paper, we demonstrate that recent technological advances can enable transportation researchers and engineers to overcome these constraints and produce calibration results that 1) outperform industry standard approaches, and 2) allow for a unique set of parameters to be estimated for each driver in a data set, even given a small amount of data. We propose a novel calibration procedure for car-following models based on Bayesian machine learning and probabilistic programming, and apply it to real-world data from a naturalistic driving study. We also discuss how this combination of mathematical and software tools can offer additional benefits such as more informative model validation and the incorporation of true-to-data uncertainty into simulation traces. Traffic simulation software packages are widely used in transportation engineering to estimate the impacts of potential changes to a roadway network and forecast system performance under future scenarios. These packages are underpinned by math-and physics-based models, which are designed to describe behavior at an aggregate (macroscopic) level or at the level of individual drivers (microscopic).