Science X Newsletter Mon, Apr 22

Dear manoj dole,

Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for April 22, 2024:

Technology news

	Microsoft teases lifelike avatar AI tech but gives no release date Researchers at Microsoft have revealed a new artificial tool that can create deeply realistic human avatars—but offered no timetable to make it available to the public, citing concerns about facilitating deep fake content.
	A coffee roastery in Finland has launched an AI-generated blend. The results were surprising An artisan roastery based in the Finnish capital has introduced a coffee blend that has been developed by artificial intelligence in a trial in which it's hoped that technology can ease the workload in a sector that traditionally prides itself on manual work.
	An ultralow-concentration electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries Lithium salts make batteries powerful but expensive. An ultralow-concentration electrolyte based on the lithium salt LiDFOB may be a more economical and more sustainable alternative. Cells using these electrolytes and conventional electrodes have been demonstrated to have high performance, as reported by a research team in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. In addition, the electrolyte could facilitate both production and recycling of the batteries.
	People, not design features, make a robot social It takes a village to nurture social robots. Researchers who develop social robots—ones that people interact with—focus too much on design features and not enough on sociological factors, like human-to-human interactions, the contexts where they happen, and cultural norms involving robots, according to an award-winning paper from Cornell and Indiana University scholars who specialize in human-robot interaction.
	Plasma treatment enhances electrode material for fuel cells in industry, homes and vehicles Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have improved the properties of a carbon-based electrode material by exposing it to air plasma. Such treatment turned out to enhance electrode performance, which is the limiting factor for high-tech energy sources—particularly fuel cells.
	A win-win approach: Maximizing Wi-Fi performance using game theory Connectivity has become paramount in modern societies over the past two decades. With the immense rise in the number of laptops, tablets, and smartphones, most people nowadays expect to have access to free Wi-Fi in a variety of public and private spaces. Some common examples include airports, restaurants, and libraries, but even parks, trains, and subways offer Wi-Fi in some cities.
	AI chatbots refuse to produce 'controversial' output—why that's a free speech problem Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly's image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone "woke." Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.
	AI's relentless rise gives journalists tough choices The rise of artificial intelligence has forced an increasing number of journalists to grapple with the ethical and editorial challenges posed by the rapidly expanding technology.
	X owner Musk says opposed to US ban of competitor TikTok Elon Musk on Friday came out against banning TikTok in the United States, even if it would mean less competition for his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, as the initiative sees fresh bipartisan momentum in Congress.
	In historic election, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee vote to unionize Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted decisively to become a union shop, according to election results released Friday, marking the first victory for organized labor at a foreign-owned auto plant in the American South.
	AI a 'fundamental change in the news ecosystem': Expert Artificial intelligence is shaking up journalism and in the short term will cause "a fundamental change in the news ecosystem", media expert David Caswell told AFP.
	'Halving' arrives for bitcoin miners The bitcoin market on Friday engineered the "halving" of the reward for operating the cryptocurrency, a much-anticipated step designed to limit production and boost the digital money.
	InstaDeep CEO takes AI from Tunis to London Karim Beguir launched the artificial intelligence start-up InstaDeep in Tunisia in 2014 with just two computers and $2,000.
	Splashy Saudi mega-project NEOM chases Chinese funds Bigwigs behind a Saudi megacity dogged by questions about its viability have wrapped up a tour courting Chinese investors, detailing plans for a futuristic ski resort and 170-kilometer-long skyscrapers.
	Tesla cuts the price of its 'Full Self Driving' system by a third to $8,000 Tesla knocked roughly a third off the price of its "Full Self Driving" system—which can't drive itself and so drivers must remain alert and be ready to intervene—to $8,000 from $12,000, according to the company website.
	Japan's anti-monopoly body orders Google to fix ad search limits affecting Yahoo Japan's antitrust watchdog said Monday that U.S. search giant Google must fix its advertising search restrictions affecting Yahoo in Japan.
	Denmark launches its biggest offshore wind farm tender The Danish Energy Agency on Monday launched its biggest tender for the construction of offshore wind farms, aimed at producing six gigawatts by 2030—more than double Denmark's current capacity.
	Supermarket facial recognition failure—why automated systems must put the human factor first The incident of a woman misidentified by facial recognition technology at a Rotorua supermarket should have come as no surprise.
	Crash data show road safety measures must improve By analyzing the trends and locations of crashes in the Greater Melbourne Area during a 15-year period, from 2006 to 2020, Dr. Ali Soltani, from the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute at Flinders University, and his research colleagues have determined the places where crashes were most prevalent and reasons contributing to high crash rates in those areas. The study is published in Transport Policy.
	How AI can enhance flexibility, efficiency for customer service centers Whenever you call a customer service contact center, the team on the other end of the line typically has three goals: to reduce their response time, solve your problem and do it within the shortest service time possible.
	DeFake tool protects voice recordings from cybercriminals In what has become a familiar refrain when discussing artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies, voice cloning makes possible beneficial advances in accessibility and creativity while also enabling increasingly sophisticated scams and deepfakes. To combat the potential negative impacts of voice cloning technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged researchers and technology experts to develop breakthrough ideas on preventing, monitoring and evaluating malicious voice cloning.
	Proposed sensing technology could assess quality of components in fields such as aerospace A sensing technology that can assess the quality of components could transform U.K. industry.
	Most executives already using generative AI tools, survey shows Despite popular concern about generative AI making jobs redundant, a new survey by INSEAD shows employees and business leaders alike are enthusiastic about the transformative technology. In fact, two out of three respondents are already using it in their personal and professional lives.
	Researchers develop performance technology for aerial and satellite image extraction The development of the world's most performant neural network module for accurately extracting objects from aerial and satellite imagery is expected to have wide applications across various fields, according to DGIST and the research team of Dabeeo Inc.
	Q&A: Could automation, electrification of long-haul trucking reduce environmental impacts? A new University of Michigan study finds that automation and electrification of long-haul trucking can reduce urban health impacts and environmental damages.
	Neural networks can mediate between download size and quality, according to researcher Application data requirements vs. available network bandwidth have been the ongoing Battle of the Information Age, but now it appears that a truce is within reach, based on new research from NJIT Associate Professor Jacob Chakareski.
	New metasurface innovation unlocks precision control in wireless signals Researchers have unveiled a technology that propels the field of wireless communication forward. This cutting-edge design, termed a reconfigurable transmissive metasurface, utilizes a synergistic blend of scissor and rotation actuators to independently manage beam scanning and polarization conversion. This introduces an innovative approach to boosting signal strength and efficiency within wireless networks.
	Ion thermoelectric conversion devices for near room temperature The electrode sheet of a thermoelectric device consists of ionic hydrogel, which is sandwiched between the electrodes to form, and the Prussian blue on the electrode undergoes a redox reaction to improve the energy density and power density of the ionic thermoelectric generator.
	Elon Musk's X fights Australian watchdog over church stabbing posts Elon Musk's X said Saturday it will fight an Australian watchdog's order to take down content related to the brutal stabbing of a priest during a live-streamed Sydney church service.
	Bill to ban TikTok in US moves ahead in Congress The US House of Representatives approved a bill Saturday that would force the wildly popular social media app TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or be shut out of the American market.
	Malaysia to build massive chip design park: PM Malaysia's leader on Monday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation's role in the global chip industry.
	'Tomb Raider' owner Embracer splits into three companies Sweden's Embracer, owner of the "Tomb Raider" franchise, announced Monday it would split into three separate companies in a major reset for one of Europe's biggest video game groups.
	Wind and solar in limbo: Long waitlists to get on the grid are a 'leading barrier' Ninety miles west of Chicago, the corn and soybean fields stretch to the sky, and dreams of the clean energy future dangle—just out of reach.
	Amazon sold a chemical that led to 15 deaths: Who is responsible? In December 2020, 15-year-old Tyler Schmidt took a deadly chemical to a wooded area near his home in Camas, Clark County, Washington.
	Report urges fixes to online child exploitation CyberTipline before AI makes it worse A tipline set up 26 years ago to combat online child exploitation has not lived up to its potential and needs technological and other improvements to help law enforcement go after abusers and rescue victims, a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory has found.
	The EU ratchets up pressure on TikTok's new rewards app over risks to kids, warns of suspension The European Union on Monday demanded TikTok provide more information about a new app that pays users to watch videos and warned that it could order the video sharing platform to suspend addictive features that pose a risk to kids.
	New logarithmic step size for stochastic gradient descent The step size, often referred to as the learning rate, plays a pivotal role in optimizing the efficiency of the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm. In recent times, multiple step size strategies have emerged for enhancing SGD performance. However, a significant challenge associated with these step sizes is related to their probability distribution, denoted as ηt/ΣTt=1ηt .

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