NASA's Class of 1978, 'represent the most competent, talented, and experienced people available to us today.' The first six women in newly issued, incompletely adorned astronaut jumpsuits, 1978: (front, left to right) Sally Ride, Rhea Seddon; (rear) Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, Anna Fisher, Judy Resnik. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Smithsonian Books. Out October 28 and available wherever books are sold. Members of the media peppered administrator Robert Frosch with questions and sought assurances about the selection process, the number of women and people of color, and the number of military and civilian pilots selected. Chris Kraft, director of the Johnson Space Center, fielded questions and explained the experience-based filters and rating process for competitive selection. He was satisfied that the men and women selected "represent the most competent, talented, and experienced people available to us today." The main press conference to introduce the new astronaut candidates to the public occurred on January 31.

Encouraged early on by Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, the "Queen of Carbon" laid the foundation for countless advances in nanotechnology--and mentored countless young scientists along the way. At MIT, Mildred Dresselhaus became a beloved professor who pushed her students to be their very best and provided support in ways big and small. Institute Professor Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus forever altered our understanding of matter--the physical stuff of the universe that has mass and takes up space. Over 57 years at MIT, Dresselhaus also played a significant role in inspiring people to use this new knowledge to tackle some of the world's greatest challenges, from producing clean energy to curing cancer. Although she became an emerita professor in 2007, Dresselhaus, who taught electrical engineering and physics, remained actively involved in research and all other aspects of MIT life until her death in 2017. She would have been 95 this November.

"I observed assistive technologies -- developed by scientists and engineers my friends and I never met -- which liberated us. My dream has always been to be one of those engineers." Before James Hermus started elementary school, he was a happy, curious kid who loved to learn. By the end of first grade, however, all that started to change, he says. As his schoolbooks became more advanced, Hermus could no longer memorize the words on each page, and pretend to be reading.

Aicadium, a global AI Centre of Excellence, was launched today to empower companies to achieve better business outcomes through the adoption and delivery of AI technologies and solutions. Founded by Temasek, a global investment firm headquartered in Singapore, Aicadium will leverage a common machine learning platform to deliver AI-as-a-Service from discovery to deployment. Based in Singapore and San Diego, CA, Aicadium's management, data scientists, software and solutions engineers are being assembled with the guidance of Michael Zeller, Head of AI Strategy & Solutions at Temasek. Aicadium aims to fulfill a need shared by Temasek's global network of portfolio companies and others seeking to improve their business outcomes using artificial intelligence. However, these companies are typically faced with significant barriers to achieving operational AI within their organisations.

It's been suggested that an advance party of robots will be needed if humans are ever to settle on other planets. Sent ahead to create conditions favorable for humankind, these robots will need to be tough, adaptable, and recyclable if they're to survive within the inhospitable cosmic climates that await them. Collaborating with roboticists and computer scientists, my team and I have been working on just such a set of robots. Produced via 3D printer – and assembled autonomously – the robots we're creating continually evolve in order to rapidly optimize for the conditions they find themselves in. Our work represents the latest progress towards the kind of autonomous robot ecosystems that could help build humanity's future homes, far away from Earth and far away from human oversight.

British engineers are set to build a spacecraft that will track down and'ambush' comets in order to study them in unprecedented detail. The mission, dubbed the'comet chaser', will feature three main components, a mothership built by a company called Thales Alenia Space based in the UK, and two robotic probes which will be manufactured by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). Astronomers hope the highly-detailed 3D-scans of the space rock's surface will reveal secrets about the formation of comets and the early universe. British engineers are set to build a spacecraft that will track down and ambush comets in order to scan them in unprecedented detail. Comets are chunks of icy rock spewed out from fierce explosions following the universe's inception.

On Dec. 1 at re:Invent 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Amazon Lookout for Vision, an anomaly detection solution that uses machine learning to process thousands of images an hour to spot manufacturing defects and anomalies -- with no machine learning experience required. The new offering means manufacturers can send camera images to Lookout for Vision to identify defects, such as a crack in a machine part, a dent in a panel, an irregular shape, or an incorrect product color. Lookout for Vision also utilizes few shot learning, so customers can assess machine parts or manufactured products by providing small batches -- sometimes as few as 30 images (10 images of defects or anomalies plus 20 "normal" images). Lookout for Vision then reports the images that differ from baselines so that appropriate action can be taken -- quickly. Because modern manufacturing systems are so finely tuned, defect rates are often 1% or less.

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" -Peter Thiel The closing quarter of the twentieth century was peak tech innovation in the United States. AT&T's Bell Labs invented the information age with the transistor and data networking, and many transformative technologies tangential to its core business: from solar cells to the Unix operating system to lasers.1 Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) brought about human-computer interaction with the initial computer mouse, as well as laser printing and Ethernet networking.2 In the 80's Pixar was born, creating the first ever computer-animated sequence in a feature film with novel computer-generated imagery (CGI).3,4 At the same time Gates and Allen were hacking at something special that soon revolutionized computing, as were Wozniak and Jobs.5,6 Amidst the heyday of invention in the world of bits, the "space race" brought about massive innovation and accomplishments in the world of atoms: government competition between the US and Russia put humans on the moon for the first time.

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" -Peter Thiel The closing quarter of the twentieth century was peak tech innovation in the United States. AT&T's Bell Labs invented the information age with the transistor and data networking, and many transformative technologies tangential to its core business: from solar cells to the Unix operating system to lasers.1 Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) brought about human-computer interaction with the initial computer mouse, as well as laser printing and Ethernet networking.2 In the 80's Pixar was born, creating the first ever computer-animated sequence in a feature film with novel computer-generated imagery (CGI).3,4 At the same time Gates and Allen were hacking at something special that soon revolutionized computing, as were Wozniak and Jobs.5,6 Amidst the heyday of invention in the world of bits, the "space race" brought about massive innovation and accomplishments in the world of atoms: government competition between the US and Russia put humans on the moon for the first time.

The dream of robots and intelligent machines that can perform a wide array of tasks has been around in the common visions and fantasies of people for centuries. Machines that can do the work of people without having the failings of people is one of those long-sought visions of the future. Originally envisioned as physical systems, the term robot is now used to describe any sort of software or hardware-based automation, whether intelligent or not, that can perform a task that would otherwise require human labor or brainpower. Since the term robot was first coined in 1920, robots have become an increasing part of our lives. Companies looking to increasingly automate and enable greater portions of their business that require physical human labor currently look to robots to help or fully replace humans with many tasks.