A signal originally detected by the Kepler spacecraft has been validated as an exoplanet using the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State team and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. The HPF provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from nearby low-mass stars, and astronomers used…
Tag: high level
Don’t miss young moon and Venus after sunset (Neptune’s there, too)
After sunset on January 26, 27 and 28, 2020, watch for the young moon and planet Venus in the west at dusk and nightfall. Use the lit side of the moon to locate Mercury, the innermost planet. If you have a telescope, use Venus to locate the Neptune, the farthest planet. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/see-young-moon-venus-after-sunset-2…
An Algorithm That Learns Through Rewards May Show How Our Brain Does Too
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In a paper published in Nature today, DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI subsidiary, has once again used lessons from reinforcement learning to propose a new theory about the reward mechanisms within our brains. The hypothesis, supported by initial experimental findings, could not only improve our understanding of mental health and motivation. It could…
Christmas Bird Count starts December 14
It’s time again for the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count. This is the project’s 120th year! Learn how to join the count here. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/audubon-christmas-bird-count-starts-december14…
Goldman Sachs CEO Says Apple Card is the Most Successful Credit Card Launch Ever
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called his bank’s rollout of the Apple Card “the most successful credit card launch ever.” From a report: Solomon provided investors with an update on the bank’s new initiatives at the start of a conference call Tuesday. “We believe Apple Card is the most successful credit card launch ever,” he said. Continuing on the Apple Card,…
Why Is Earth So Biologically Diverse? Mountains Hold the Answer
omfglearntoplay shares a report from ScienceDaily: What determines global patterns of biodiversity has been a puzzle for scientists since the days of von Humboldt, Darwin, and Wallace. Yet, despite two centuries of research, this question remains unanswered. The global pattern of mountain biodiversity, and the extraordinarily high richness in tropical mountains in particular, is documented in two companion Science review papers…
EFF Warns: ‘Don’t Play in Google’s Privacy Sandbox’
An EFF analysis looks at the problems with some of Google’s new “Privacy Sandbox” proposals, a few of which it calls “downright dangerous”: Perhaps the most fleshed-out proposal in the Sandbox is the conversion measurement API. This is trying to tackle a problem as old as online ads: how can you know whether the people clicking on an ad ultimately buy…
MacGyvering Mars: How NASA’s Curiosity Team Worked Around A Broken Drill
As of Tuesday the Curiosity rover has been on Mars for over seven years, and this week NASA shared an interactive 360-degree panorama of the planet’s Teal Ridge. Digital Trends provides this update: Curiosity is halfway along its path through a region called the “clay-bearing unit” because the area has a high level of clay minerals. Clay minerals are of particular…
Google Tweaked Algorithm After Rise In US Shootings
A senior search engineer at Google revealed that the company had to tweak its algorithm to combat misinformation after mass shootings. The Guardian reports: “In these last few years, there’s been a tragic increase in shootings,” Pandu Nayak, who joined the company 14 years ago to work on its search engine, said. “And it turns out that during these shootings, in…
Microsoft Calls For Federal Regulation of the Tech Industry
In a blog post, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Julie Brill says the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been very effective in changing the way that tech companies handle personal data, and feels the U.S. should enact something similar at the federal level. TechSpot reports: “[Companies] have adapted, putting new systems and processes in place…