Tag: technology

REVOLUTIONARY AI TOOL, “DEEP-DRAM,” OPENS DOOR TO DISCOVERING UNPRECEDENTED METAMATERIALS WITH “UNUSUAL PROPERTIES”

Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as “Deep-DRAM” to discover and fabricate novel metamaterials with unparalleled ease and accessibility.

The groundbreaking method promises to revolutionize metamaterial development by streamlining the discovery and creation of durable, custom-designed materials with “unprecedented functionalities” and “unusual properties.”  

“Traditionally, designers use the materials available to them to design a new device or a machine. The problem with that is that the range of available material properties is limited. Some properties that we would like to have just don’t exist in nature,” study co-author and professor of biomechanical engineering, Dr. Amir Zadpoor, explained in a press release by Delft University. 

“Our approach is: tell us what you want to have as properties and we engineer an appropriate material with those properties. What you will then get is not really a material but something in-between a structure and a material, a metamaterial.”

Metamaterials are materials engineered to have properties not found in naturally occurring substances. These engineered composites can defy conventional material properties by deriving their unique characteristics from a structure’s geometry rather than molecular composition. 

Metamaterials are currently employed in various industries, serving practical purposes such as improving antenna performance in telecommunications and controlling sound waves for noise reduction or focusing in acoustic engineering. Recent advancements include creating the world’s first genuine “one-way glass,” showcasing metamaterials, versatility, and potential for innovative applications.

In 2006, two research papers published in Science demonstrated that metamaterials could be used to manipulate the propagation and transmission of specified light frequencies and electromagnetic radiation to render an object invisible. 

Recent publications from Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Naval Institute, and Northrop Grumman have discussed the military potential of metamaterials, suggesting the possibility of creating real-life versions of the fictional “Klingon Cloaking Device” or “Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak.” However, despite ongoing research efforts, practical metamaterial cloaking technology has yet to be publicly demonstrated thus far.

This most significant challenge in developing novel metamaterials stems from solving the so-called “inverse problem” or calculating the specific geometry needed to produce desired properties.  

Keep reading

Government Funds AI Tools For Whole-Of-Internet Surveillance And Censorship

Ifeel scared. Very scared.

Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.

This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.

Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet.

This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea.

What’s happening is that a tool powerful enough to surveil everything that’s said and done on the Internet (or large portions of it) is becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time. And, based on that monitoring, the government – and any organization or company the government partners with – can then use the same tool to suppress, silence, and shut down whatever speech it doesn’t like.

But that’s not all. Using the same tool, the government and its public-private, “non-governmental” partners (think, for example: the World Health Organization, or Monsanto) can also shut down any activity that is linked to the Internet. Banking, buying, selling, teaching, learning, entertaining, connecting to each other – if the government-controlled AI does not like what you (or your kids!) say in a tweet or an email, it can shut down all of that for you.

Yes, we’ve seen this on a very local and politicized scale with, for example, the Canadian truckers.

But if we thought this type of activity could not, or would not, happen on a national (or even scarier – global) scale, we need to wake up right now and realize it’s happening, and it might not be stoppable.

Keep reading

DNA and Developmental Damage from Cell Towers on the Greek Island of Samos: Effects on Insects, Flowers and Vegetables

A recent paper, ‘Human‑made electromagnetic fields: Ion forced‑oscillation and voltage‑gated ion channel dysfunction, oxidative stress and DNA damage (Review) published in the International Journal of Oncology by biophysicist Dimitris J. Panagopoulos et. al. states unequivocally that electromagnetic radiation from wireless technology damages DNA. This leads to infertility, sterility, mutations and extinctions, and it explains the loss of biodiversity that we are currently experiencing on this planet.

DNA damage from wireless radiation is not a new discovery. It has been confirmed over and over by numerous scientists using a variety of experimental subjects and frequencies. But do observations in the laboratory translate into the same effects in the real world? If these scientists are correct, they must do. In the real-world things might be a lot worse, because in the real world we are not exposed to a single frequency or bandwidth but to a whole soup of them, from multiple sources. In the real world, exposure time is not limited to a few minutes or hours per day or week; the cell towers are on day and night. DNA damage from wireless radiation is not a laboratory phenomenon; it is real. We are losing the insects—among them, the pollinators. We are losing the birds. Animals are dying out. We are wiping ourselves out.

The damage to DNA, says Panagopoulos, is being done by the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) components of the wavebands used in wireless communications. For decades, regulatory bodies such as ICNIRP, SCENIHR (EU), the FCC (USA) and others have insisted that the only way wireless technology can cause damage is by heating tissue, and that the power levels which are allowed protect us from being harmed. This is not true for human beings, and these regulatory bodies have never even considered nature.

Is DNA damage from wireless radiation visible? There have probably been DNA-damaged plants, insects, birds, animals, and people since the first generation of cell towers was erected, but would we recognize what we are seeing? A 2003 study 2 performed by a pair of scientists from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, studied the effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields on mice exposed at various sites around an antenna park. The newborn mice weighed more than normal newborn mice, and they all had extra vertebrae in the posterior sections of their spines, making them longer than normal mice. This is DNA damage. The mother mice, the dams, produced fewer—and bigger—babies with each litter, and after six months they became irreversibly sterile. This is also DNA damage.

A mouse runs by in a field; would you know that its spine is ever so slightly longer than it should be? I wouldn’t. Would you recognize that a great tit’s eggs are ever so slightly bigger than they ought to be? I wouldn’t. A study of great tits 3 found that birds which made nests near power lines laid bigger eggs with a higher volume of yolk and albumen. That too is DNA damage, and this damaged DNA will be passed on. unless the bird becomes sterile as did the mice in the antenna park study described above.

Keep reading

‘Extremely Alarming’ Election Threats Trigger Warning From FBI

An FBI official warned that state election systems are being targeted as the 2024 election approaches, describing them as “extremely alarming.”

“The threat environment, unfortunately, is very high,” said Tim Langan, executive assistant director for the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the FBI during a Washington conference with secretaries of state, according to Stateline. “It is extremely alarming.”

Officials said that voter databases could be hacked via phishing or ransomware attacks. They also warned about the rising use of artificial intelligence (AI) that could be used to potentially trick voters, according to the report.

Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told the news outlet that there have been significant advancements that could allow China, North Korea, and Russia to target election systems.

“We are in a really difficult cybersecurity environment right now,” he said. “Every single location is at risk regardless of size, regardless of sector,” he added

Neither official provided any concrete examples in the report. But during the event, Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said last month that a bomb threat was called into the state capitol in Frankfort, saying that explosives would “make sure you all end up dead.” No bombs were found, and eight other state capitols received threats.

Keep reading

A BREAKTHROUGH IN THE CONTROL OF QUANTUM PHENOMENA AT ROOM TEMPERATURE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED, RESEARCHERS SAY

Quantum physics and mechanical engineering have been united in a breakthrough method allowing the control of quantum phenomena at room temperature, according to the findings of a pioneering new study.

In quantum mechanics, observing and controlling quantum phenomena has traditionally only occurred under conditions where temperatures approach absolute zero. Theoretically the coldest temperature attainable and roughly equivalent to around -459.67 Fahrenheit, absolute zero is the point at which matter becomes so cold that the motion of particles would cease.

Although allowing for easier detection of quantum effects, reaching such astoundingly cold temperatures is not easy, and has limited applications and studies involving quantum technologies.

“Reaching the regime of room temperature quantum optomechanics has been an open challenge since decades,” says Tobias J. Kippenberg, the co-author of a new study that, based on its findings, could finally present practical ways of overcoming such challenges.

According to Kippenberg, the new work has brought what physicists call Heisenberg’s microscope—once only realized as a theoretical model—into reality.

Keep reading

Wife of Tesla employee who died in what may have been the first Full Self-Driving crash said she and her husband were ‘guinea pigs’

Hans von Ohain, a Tesla recruiter, died in a car crash on a Colorado mountain road after his Tesla Model 3 veered off the road and barreled into a tree, bursting into flames, according to a new report from The Washington Post.

Erik Rossiter, a friend of Ohain’s who was in the vehicle at the time of the 2022 crash and survived the incident, told first responders Ohain had been using the “auto-drive feature on the Tesla” and the vehicle “just ran straight off the road,” the outlet reported.

If what Rossiter said is true, the incident — which Tesla has so far refused to acknowledge publicly — would be the first known fatality linked to the car company‘s Full Self-Driving technology.

While Ohain had been intoxicated at the time of the crash, with a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, investigators found the incident was not a typical drunken-driving crash. Sgt. Robert Madden of Colorado State Patrol told the Post there were no skid marks, which would have indicated the vehicle attempted to brake before impact, but there were “rolling tire marks,” meaning power was still being deployed to the wheels after the crash.

Madden said that “given the crash dynamics and how the vehicle drove off the road with no evidence of a sudden maneuver, that fits with the [driver-assistance] feature” being engaged.

Madden also described the subsequent fire, which engulfed the car, as one of the “most intense” vehicle fires he had encountered, due largely to the lithium-ion battery cells housed in the undercarriage of the Tesla that Ohain was driving.

Ohain’s cause of death was determined to be smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, per the Post, and Madden said he probably would have survived the crash had it not been for the intensity of the flames.

Keep reading

AI and the new kind of propaganda

Do you remember how the unconstitutional, pastel-authoritarian and totally batshit insane “Disinformation Governance Board” – with its Mary Poppins-cosplaying, Monty Python level of unintentional self-satirizing department head – was rolled out two years ago like a half-joke, half-beta-test of a version of the 1984 Ministry of Truth?

Well, kids, I wouldn’t really call this 4D chess or anything, but of course this was just bait. This parody and its rapid withdrawal reassures us that nothing of the sort could conceivably take place, while also seeding a visible, red-herring template for how we should expect heavy-handed, overt propaganda efforts to look in this day and age.

Meanwhile, there are currently massive efforts in the background and below the surface, all across the playing field, towards implementing big data and AI technology for not only the purposes of classical, increasingly obsolete propaganda or simple surveillance. No, this time, we’re exploring entirely novel methods of behavioural modification and narrative control intended to GET OUT AHEAD of the crystallization of discourses and even the formation of identities and worldviews.

They want to control the formation and reproduction of “social imaginaries”.

So the idea is to use massive data collection and AI pattern recognition to preemptively disrupt the formation of behaviourally significant narratives, discourses or patterns of information.

With these tools of “early diagnosis” of information that potentially could disrupt the power structure and its objectives, it then becomes possible to nip it in the bud incredibly early on, way before such information has even coalesced into something like coherent narratives or meaningful models for explanation or further (precarious) conclusions.

Keep reading

Israel deploys new military AI in Gaza war

The army has hinted at what the new tech is being used for, with spokesman Daniel Hagari saying last month that Israel’s forces were operating “above and underground simultaneously”.

A senior defence official told AFP the tech was destroying enemy drones and mapping Hamas’s vast tunnel network in Gaza.

New defence technologies including artificial intelligence-powered gunsights and robotic drones form a bright spot in an otherwise dire period for Israel’s tech industry.

The sector accounted for 18 percent of GDP in 2022, but the war in Gaza has wreaked havoc with an estimated eight percent of its workforce called up to fight.

“In general the war in Gaza presents threats, but also opportunities to test emerging technologies in the field,” said Avi Hasson, chief executive of Startup Nation Central, an Israeli tech incubator.

“Both on the battlefield and in the hospitals there are technologies that have been used in this war that have not been used in the past.”

But the rising civilian death toll shows that much greater oversight is needed over the use of new forms of defence tech, Mary Wareham, an arms expert at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

“Now we’re facing the worst possible situation of death and suffering that we’re seeing today –- some of that is being brought about by the new tech,” she said.

More than 150 countries in December backed a UN resolution identifying “serious challenges and concerns” in new military tech, including “artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems.”

Keep reading

INNOVATIVE SOLAR SAIL PROPULSION SYSTEM COULD SOON DRIVE SPACECRAFT FOR SCIENCE MISSIONS, NASA PROJECTS

NASA says it cleared a “key technology milestone” last month that could help move the agency toward future use of an ambitious and economical technique for propelling spacecraft through deep space: solar sail technology.

Operating in a manner similar to how wind is reflected by a sailboat, solar sail propulsion relies on sunlight, specifically the pressure created by solar radiation, to propel spacecraft.

Conceptually, the technology has existed for decades. A notable early example includes its appearance in Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven’s 1974 novel, “The Mote in God’s Eye,” where a light-propelled spacecraft is employed by an extraterrestrial civilization. More recently, the idea was even put forward that the curiously shaped interstellar object ‘Oumuamua could have potentially represented a form of this technology, although most astronomers found this possibility unlikely.

Given its promise for future space missions, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate recently provided funding for solar sail technology to assist in reaching a technology readiness level able to facilitate proposals for its use on science missions.

As of this week, the space agency is now reporting the successful deployment of one of four solar sail quadrants during a technology demonstration on January 30 at the Colorado facility of its prime contractor, Redwire Corporation, which developed the sail’s deployment mechanisms and 100-foot-long booms. The sail’s membranes were developed by Huntsville, Alabama-based NeXolve.

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center technologist Les Johnson called the demonstration “a major last step” prior to the technology’s use in space missions. Johnson has worked with NASA on the development of solar sail technology for the last quarter century and says that now he hopes there will be bids for its use in forthcoming space science missions.

Keep reading

Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship

Ifeel scared. Very scared.

Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.

This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.

Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet.

This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea. 

 What’s happening is that a tool powerful enough to surveil everything that’s said and done on the Internet (or large portions of it) is becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time. And, based on that monitoring, the government – and any organization or company the government partners with – can then use the same tool to suppress, silence, and shut down whatever speech it doesn’t like. 

But that’s not all. Using the same tool, the government and its public-private, “non-governmental” partners (think, for example: the World Health Organization, or Monsanto) can also shut down any activity that is linked to the Internet. Banking, buying, selling, teaching, learning, entertaining, connecting to each other – if the government-controlled AI does not like what you (or your kids!) say in a tweet or an email, it can shut down all of that for you. 

Yes, we’ve seen this on a very local and politicized scale with, for example, the Canadian truckers. 

But if we thought this type of activity could not, or would not, happen on a national (or even scarier – global) scale, we need to wake up right now and realize it’s happening, and it might not be stoppable.

Keep reading