Existing unsupervised methods for keypoint learning rely heavily on the assumption that a specific keypoint type (e.g.

Political consultant Bradley Tusk has spent a fortune on mobile voting efforts. Now, he's launching a protocol to try to mainstream the technology. Joe Kiniry, a security expert specializing in elections, was attending an annual conference on voting technology in Washington, DC, when a woman approached him with an unusual offer. She said she represented a wealthy client interested in funding voting systems that would encourage bigger turnouts. Did he have any ideas?

The transnational ivory trade continues to drive the decline of elephant populations across Africa, and trafficking networks remain difficult to disrupt. Tusks seized by law enforcement officials carry forensic information on the traffickers responsible for their export, including DNA evidence and handwritten markings made by traffickers. For 20 years, analyses of tusk DNA have identified where elephants were poached and established connections among shipments of ivory. While the links established using genetic evidence are extremely conclusive, genetic data is expensive and sometimes impossible to obtain. But though handwritten markings are easy to photograph, they are rarely documented or analyzed. Here, we present an AI-driven pipeline for extracting and analyzing handwritten markings on seized elephant tusks, offering a novel, scalable, and low-cost source of forensic evidence. Having collected 6,085 photographs from eight large seizures of ivory over a 6-year period (2014-2019), we used an object detection model to extract over 17,000 individual markings, which were then labeled and described using state-of-the-art AI tools. We identified 184 recurring "signature markings" that connect the tusks on which they appear. 20 signature markings were observed in multiple seizures, establishing forensic links between these seizures through traffickers involved in both shipments. This work complements other investigative techniques by filling in gaps where other data sources are unavailable. The study demonstrates the transformative potential of AI in wildlife forensics and highlights practical steps for integrating handwriting analysis into efforts to disrupt organized wildlife crime.

Is Chicago the violent crime capital of the US? How did India-US relations decline so fast? A Ukrainian drone attack killed two women in the village of Golovchino in Russia's Belgorod region, Russia's state TASS news agency reports. A man who was seriously injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia's Belgorod region in April has died in hospital, TASS reports. TASS also reported that Russian forces shot down 82 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period.

How is Russia replenishing its military? What is a'coalition of the willing'? How China forgot promises and'debts' to Ukraine How are Europe, the US pulling apart on Ukraine? Poland shoots down Russian drones: Will NATO enter war in Ukraine? Polish and NATO forces scrambled to intercept Russian drones which entered Poland's airspace early on Tuesday night and early on Wednesday, marking their first direct military engagement with Moscow since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

With their long, spiral tusks, narwhals (Monodon monoceros) look like something out of a fairy tale. Primarily seen in male narwhals, these single elongated teeth that can grow up to 10 feet. These gregarious whales typically travel in pods of two to 10 individuals, but are a bit elusive and difficult to study in the wild. Scientists believe that the tusks are primarily used in competition for mates, but that might not be the whole story. New drone evidence detailed in a study published February 28 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science found that narwhals can use their tusks to forage, explore their surroundings, and even play.

This greatly limits their applicability, as each instance must be isolated before applying the method--an issue that is never discussed or evaluated. We thus propose a novel method to learn Task-agnostic, UnSupervised Keypoints (TUSK) which can deal with multiple instances. To achieve this, instead of the commonly-used strategy of detecting multiple heatmaps, each dedicated to a specific keypoint type, we use a single heatmap for detection, and enable unsupervised learning of keypoint types through clustering. Specifically, we encode semantics into the keypoints by teaching them to reconstruct images from a sparse set of keypoints and their descriptors, where the descriptors are forced to form distinct clusters in feature space around learned prototypes. This makes our approach amenable to a wider range of tasks than any previous unsupervised keypoint method: we show experiments on multiple-instance detection and classification, object discovery, and landmark detection--all unsupervised--with performance on par with the state of the art, while also being able to deal with multiple instances.

Multilateral solutions remain the best way to address threats to international peace and security. This is true when we talk about the situation in Syria, Libya, Yemen or the Middle East peace process.

Talking about Intel, one immediately thinks of computer science, since this American company manufactures world-renowned microprocessors for computers. It now aims to use artificial intelligence to protect elephants, the largest terrestrial mammals threatened with extinction due to poaching. These pachyderms are killed for their ivory tusks. It is a software that works with "intelligent" cameras. The project is supported by the National Geographic Society and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

The tech giant announced the HomePod speaker last summer, and originally planned to release it in December. However, Apple aapl then delayed the HomePod's debut, reportedly to modify its software. Now that the HomePod is nearing arrival, it faces stiff competition from competing web-connected speakers like the Amazon amzn Echo, Google goog Home, and Sonos One. The HomePod is the priciest of the speakers at $350. So far, reviewers seem pleased with the HomePod's sound quality, but are underwhelmed by the version of Apple's voice activated Siri digital assistant used in the speaker.