Microsoft has thrown its weight behind Anthropic's legal challenge against the US Department of Defense. Microsoft has thrown its weight behind Anthropic's legal challenge against the US Department of Defense. Tech company files amicus brief in support of Anthropic's effort to overturn an aggressive Pentagon designation Microsoft has thrown its weight behind Anthropic's legal challenge against the Pentagon, filing a court brief in support of the AI company's effort to overturn an aggressive designation that effectively bars it from government work. In an amicus brief submitted to a federal court in San Francisco this week, Microsoft, which integrates Anthropic's AI tools into systems it provides to the US military, argued that a temporary restraining order was necessary to prevent serious disruption to suppliers whose products rely on the AI company's technology. Google, Amazon, Apple and OpenAI have also signed on to a brief in support of Anthropic. In a statement to the Guardian, Microsoft said: "The Department of War needs reliable access to the country's best technology.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Your morning catch-up: Mayor Lurie has SF feeling better, California's job market is taking a hit and more big stories Why outrage is erupting over Trump plan to exclude nursing from'professional' designation This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . Trump administration proposes excluding nursing and other fields from "professional" designation, capping graduate student loans. Nursing leaders warn the policy will worsen California's severe nurse shortage by discouraging graduate degrees required for teaching and specialized patient care.

As one of the most effective methods for cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnosis, multi-lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals present a characteristic multi-sensor information fusion challenge that has been continuously researched in deep learning domains. Despite the numerous algorithms proposed with different DL architectures, maintaining a balance among performance, computational complexity, and multi-source ECG feature fusion remains challenging. Recently, state space models (SSMs), particularly Mamba, have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness across various fields. Their inherent design for high-efficiency computation and linear complexity makes them particularly suitable for low-dimensional data like ECGs. This work proposes S2M2ECG, an SSM architecture featuring three-level fusion mechanisms: (1) Spatio-temporal bi-directional SSMs with segment tokenization for low-level signal fusion, (2) Intra-lead temporal information fusion with bi-directional scanning to enhance recognition accuracy in both forward and backward directions, (3) Cross-lead feature interaction modules for spatial information fusion. To fully leverage the ECG-specific multi-lead mechanisms inherent in ECG signals, a multi-branch design and lead fusion modules are incorporated, enabling individual analysis of each lead while ensuring seamless integration with others. Experimental results reveal that S2M2ECG achieves superior performance in the rhythmic, morphological, and clinical scenarios. Moreover, its lightweight architecture ensures it has nearly the fewest parameters among existing models, making it highly suitable for efficient inference and convenient deployment. Collectively, S2M2ECG offers a promising alternative that strikes an excellent balance among performance, computational complexity, and ECG-specific characteristics, paving the way for high-performance, lightweight computations in CVD diagnosis.

DJI has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Defense over its addition to the Pentagon list that designates it as a "Chinese military company." In its filing, shared by The Verge, the company said it's challenging the designation because it's "neither owned nor controlled by the Chinese military." It described itself as the "largest privately owned seller of consumer and commercial drones," mostly used by first responders, fire and police departments, businesses and hobbyists. The company claimed that because the Pentagon has officially proclaimed it as a national security threat, it has suffered "ongoing financial and reputational harm." It also said that it has lost business from both US and internal customers, which terminated contracts and refused to enter new ones, and it has been banned from signing contracts with multiple federal government agencies.

Neuralink says the Food and Drug Administration has designated its experimental Blindsight implant as a "breakthrough device." The company is developing the technology in an attempt to restore blind people's sight. Manufacturers who apply to the FDA's voluntary breakthrough devices program and receive the designation from the agency are granted "an opportunity to interact with FDA experts through several different program options to efficiently address topics as they arise during the premarket review phase." Ultimately, a breakthrough device designation can accelerate development of a technology. Last year, the FDA gave the designation to 145 medical devices.

The US government has reportedly approved AI-based memory loss prediction software for the first time. Darmiyan, a San Francisco-based brain imaging analytics company, says the FDA has granted De Novo approval for its product BrainSee. The software platform assigns "an objective score that predicts the likelihood of progression from aMCI to Alzheimer's dementia within 5 years," according to the medical company. Fierce Biotech first reported the announcement. Darmiyan says BrainSee can predict memory loss progression using clinical brain MRIs and cognitive tests, which are already standard for patients worried about early signs of decline.

It is now more than a half-century since the Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis (PSSH) was first articulated as an empirical hypothesis. More recent evidence from work with neural networks and cognitive architectures has weakened it, but it has not yet been replaced in any satisfactory manner. Based on a rethinking of the nature of computational symbols -- as atoms or placeholders -- and thus also of the systems in which they participate, a hybrid approach is introduced that responds to these challenges while also helping to bridge the gap between symbolic and neural approaches, resulting in two new hypotheses, one that is to replace the PSSH and other focused more directly on cognitive architectures.

Tehran, Iran – The European Parliament's approval of a resolution calling on the bloc to consider a "terrorist" designation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has received strong condemnation from senior Iranian officials and commanders. On Thursday, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution that calls on the European Union to recognise Iran's elite force and its subsidiaries, like the paramilitary Basij and the Quds Force, as "terrorist" organisations. It also condemned the Iranian government's response to the protests that have been taking place in the country since September, the executions linked to the protests, and drone sales to Russia, while also recommending sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and all IRGC-linked foundations. The EU is not obliged to enforce the resolution. While senior EU politicians have voiced their support for the resolution, it is not expected to be among new sanctions on dozens of Iranian individuals and entities expected to be approved by the bloc on Monday.

AMD launched its Ryzen 7000 family of mobile processors at CES 2023 with a family spread across four different processor architectures--and with a new AI effort, Radeon XDNA, ushering in a future driven by artificial intelligence. Recall last September when AMD introduced its new processor naming scheme. Now, that formula is more important than ever to decode the five Ryzen 7000 Mobile series--the Ryzen 7045, Ryzen 7040, Ryzen 7035, Ryzen 7030, and Ryzen 7020--and the Zen 4, Zen 3, Zen 3, and Zen 2 processor architectures spread between them. AMD also refers to them by their platform, too: the U-series chips for thin-and-light notebooks between 15 and 28 watts, the Ryzen HS series for 35W to 45W thin enthusiast notebooks, and the Ryzen HX series for 55W ultra enthusiast notebooks. AMD's new mobile offerings are headlined by "Dragon Range," the "extreme laptop gaming CPU" that AMD actually pre-announced last year.

The U.S. refrained from designating any trading partner as a currency manipulator in the Biden administration's first foreign-exchange policy report, even as Switzerland, Taiwan and Vietnam met thresholds for the label.The Treasury Department said Friday that those three economies met criteria for the manipulator label, including a large trade surplus with the U.S. In December, the last report done under President Donald Trump designated Switzerland and Vietnam as manipulators.The new assessments signal the Biden administration is taking a less confrontational approach to international currency policy after Trump labeling of China and other countries as manipulators proved ineffective and spurred concerns of politicization.The latest report assesses currency activities through 2020.Covid ImpactThe U.S. acknowledged that the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the global economy led to creative policy responses by governments and central banks.