Researchers at Apple recently published their first paper on artificial intelligence (AI). The paper introduces new ways to teach machines how to recognize images, likely to be a major part of their self-driving car technology.

The paper, titled "Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training," was written by Ashish Shrivastava and his colleagues, and published through the Cornell University Library. In the paper, researchers introduce the idea of training AI with synthetic images, created by computers, alongside real world images.

Researchers at Apple claim that synthetic images are easier for a computer to recognize because they contain data like annotations and labels that can help the computer recognize individual parts.

However, computers also have difficulties in translating the lessons they learn from synthetic images into their real-world counterparts. The paper from Apple explains that data from synthetic images is "often not realistic enough, leading the network to learn details only present in synthetic images and fail to generalize well on real images."

To improve AI learning, the paper suggests a "Simulated+Unsupervised" training method, where a simulated image is combined with a real world image to create a "refined" image.

One by one, the viruses have slipped from their hiding places in nature to threaten global populations — SARS, MERS, Zika.

In each case, scientists have scrambled to identify the viruses and to develop vaccines or drugs to stop their spread. After each crisis, the assessment has been the same: Countermeasures were not ready in time to help in the containment effort.

"Always too late," said Jonna Mazet, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, who is keen to break the bugs' winning streak. "We need to think about something different."

Mazet is a key player in an ambitious endeavor called the Global Virome Project, which has proposed cataloguing nearly all of the unknown viruses lurking in nature around the world. In a nutshell, Mazet and other experts want to search out mystery threats before they find us.

A recently discovered set of original Nikola Tesla drawings reveal a map to multiplication that contains all numbers in a simple to use system. The drawings were discovered at an antique shop in central Phoenix Arizona by local artist, Abe Zucca. They are believed to have been created during the last years of Tesla's Free Energy lab, Wardenclyffe. The manuscript is thought to contain many solutions to unanswered questions about mathematics.

The Sketches were hidden in a small trunk with numerous other drawings and manuscripts ranging from hand-held technological devices to free-energy systems, many with notes scrawled all over them. Some of the pieces are already familiar to the public, but a few others are not. Most notably is the Map to Multiplication or the Math Spiral. Zucca made a few copies and showed the drawings around to different thinkers, dreamers, and mathematicians.

After decades of fruitless scanning the skies for alien messages, scientists say it's time to try a basic rule of etiquette: Say "hello" first.

We should broadcast our own signal to E.T., rather than just waiting for it to call us, as prevailing projects have done. That's the vision of a new San Francisco-based organization called METI, or Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

By the end of 2018, the project aims to send some conversation-starters via radio or laser signals — the mathematical equivalent of "we're here and would love to chat!" — to a rocky planet circling our nearest star Proxima Centauri, then out to more distant neighborhoods, hundreds or thousands of light years away.

The world's oldest mummified remains have gotten medical attention more than 7,000 years after being left by the Chinchorro civilization in what is modern-day Chile. They are getting tomography scans and DNA analysis to provide clues about ancient humans.

Fifteen of the mummies, mostly children and unborn babies, were put through computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans last week at the Los Condes clinic in Santiago, Chile, AFP reported on Sunday.

"We collected thousands of images with a precision of less than one millimeter," said chief radiologist Marcelo Galvez.

Repeating FRBs came from same location far beyond the Milky Way where 10 had previously been detected.
Six additional repeating fast radio bursts have been discovered coming the same unknown source in space. The FRBs came from the same region beyond the Milky Way where 10 bursts had previously been detected - and their discovery should give a greater insight into what caused them.

FRBs are radio signals from deep space that last just a few milliseconds. The first FRB was detected in 2001 and since then over a dozen have been found in telescope data. However, these all appeared to be one-off events, with no two bursts coming from the same location. This means follow-up observations were not possible, keeping their source a mystery.

Current theories as to their cause involve a cataclysmic event like a neutron star collapsing into a black hole or a supernova. Another option is they are coming from a young, highly magnetised, extragalactic neutron star.

© Michal Samuni-Blank
The Egyptian fruit bat is a highly social mammal that roosts (and argues) in crowded colonies

A machine learning algorithm helped decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they "speak" to one another as individuals

Plenty of animals communicate with one another, at least in a general way—wolves howl to each other, birds sing and dance to attract mates and big cats mark their territory with urine. But researchers at Tel Aviv University recently discovered that when at least one species communicates, it gets very specific. Egyptian fruit bats, it turns out, aren't just making high pitched squeals when they gather together in their roosts. They're communicating specific problems, reports Bob Yirka at Phys.org.

According to Ramin Skibba at Nature, neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognizing human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software. They then analyzed the corresponding video to see if they could match the calls to certain activities.

They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds. The research appears in the journal Scientific Reports.

Scientists, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have developed a transparent, self-healing, highly stretchable conductive material that can be electrically activated to power artificial muscles and could be used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.

The findings, which were published today in the journal Advanced Material, represent the first time scientists have created an ionic conductor, meaning materials that ions can flow through, that is transparent, mechanically stretchable, and self-healing.

The material has potential applications in a wide range of fields. It could give robots the ability to self-heal after mechanical failure; extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries used in electronics and electric cars; and improve biosensors used in the medical field and environmental monitoring.

"Creating a material with all these properties has been a puzzle for years," said Chao Wang, an adjunct assistant professor of chemistry who is one of the authors of the paper. "We did that and now are just beginning to explore the applications."

The role of a journalist is to report "the truth" based on available verifiable evidence of unfolding events and developments in this world. Because undisputable empirical facts confirm that the current crime cabal dominating this earth has chosen war over peace, exploitation and greed over cooperation and sharing, fake news and propaganda lies over honesty and truth, and death over life, as an alternative news journalist I've felt compelled to focus on exposing the existing crime cabal's latest evildoing, ensuring that a wealth of hyperlinked source documentation is included to back up my contentions. A global network of child sex slavery, horrific ritualistic abuse and trafficking amongst the most powerful elite in this world was recently exposed through #Pizzagate, Weiner's laptop and Podesta-Clinton emails, my journalistic focus has centered around that despicable evil this last month. But now the urgency of another overlooked, highly controversial subject that alludes 99% of alt-media seems newsworthy and pressing enough to at least cover.

As a reporter of what is now drawing intense internet speculation via a number of emerging YouTube videos, apparently based on measurable geophysical data, I will present the following information for your consideration. I leave it up to you the reader to decide whether to believe what's presented or not. Because some of it is clearly conjecture, I encourage you to follow up exploring the possibilities of its veracity (or not) based on the best available information, rather than take what's offered here at face value as irrefutable Gospel truth. I am neither a proponent nor a denier of what's presented here, and I concede the possibility that what is suggested may turn out to be pure hype, proving bogus like numerous past false alarms - the Y2K fiasco and the 2012 Mayan calendar panic come readily to mind. Indeed legions of fear mongers thriving on and off the internet extend far into our history erroneously predicting the end of the world or life as we know it. Indeed in these troubled times on a daily basis an increasing number of doomsday scenarios are constantly surfacing. But as both an observer and reporter, I feel it my incumbent responsibility and duty to at least cover what could speculatively prove to be prophetically accurate and true based on extrapolated past empirical, connect-the-dot patterns.

Aerial photographs of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian rain forest are yielding a sensational new look at a Neolithic way of life that has all but disappeared from the face of the Earth.

The high-resolution images, taken from a helicopter last week by Brazilian photographer Ricardo Stuckert, offer an unprecedented glimpse of a vibrant indigenous community living in complete isolation in the depths of the Amazon jungle. National Geographic obtained first-time rights from Stuckert to publish a selection.

"I felt like I was a painter in the last century," Stuckert said, describing his reaction to seeing the natives. "To think that in the 21st century, there are still people who have no contact with civilization, living like their ancestors did 20,000 years ago—it's a powerful emotion."