Knowledge Science

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov in Moscow last year. General Gerasimov said Saturday that Russia should bring a blend of political, economic and military power to bear against its adversaries.  Credit: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik

nytimes.com - by Andrew E. Kramer - March 2, 2019

The chief of Russia’s armed forces endorsed on Saturday the kind of tactics used by his country to intervene abroad, repeating a philosophy of so-called hybrid war that has earned him notoriety in the West, especially among American officials who have accused Russia of election meddling in 2016 . . .

. . . General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine.

And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - A revised airway epithelial hierarchy includes CFTR-expressing ionocytes

cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com - by Patricia Inacio - August 3, 2018

A previously undiscovered and rare type of cell has been identified in the tissue lining the airway of the lungs and carrying high levels of the CFTR gene, the mutation of which is the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF), a study reports.

While the exact role of these cells, named “ionocytes” by the researchers, in CF is still unknown, the findings from this study highlight their potential as targets for future therapeutics.

The study, “A revised airway epithelial hierarchy includes CFTR-expressing ionocytes,” was published in the journal Nature . . .

 . . . “The data are starting to change the way we think about lung diseases like cystic fibrosis and asthma” . . .

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

People stand in line to withdraw cash from an automated teller machine (ATM) outside a bank in Caracas, Venezuela, on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. (Wil Riera/Bloomberg)

forbes.com - by Kevin Rands - February 3, 2017

As the value of hard currency changes drastically—and often—developing or recession-hit countries are finding Bitcoin as an innovative solution.

Just look at Venezuela, the country with the highest inflation rate in the world. The socialist nation has experienced a swift fall in oil prices, throwing the entire economy into turmoil. Experts say that Venezuelan inflation could go as high as 1,600%, leaving many people without basic necessities. . . .

. . . With the Venezuelan bolivar essentially worthless and supplies rapidly running out, Bitcoin is rising as an answer.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Guessing the location of a randomly chosen Street View image is hard, even for well-traveled humans. But Google’s latest artificial-intelligence machine manages it with relative ease.

CLICK HERE - PlaNet - Photo Geolocation with Convolutional Neural Networks

CLICK HERE - GeoGuessr

technologyreview.com - by Emerging Technology from the arXiv - February 24, 2016

Here’s a tricky task. Pick a photograph from the Web at random. Now try to work out where it was taken using only the image itself. . . .

. . . Tobias Weyand, a computer vision specialist at Google, and a couple of pals . . . have trained a deep-learning machine to work out the location of almost any photo using only the pixels it contains.

Their new machine significantly outperforms humans and can even use a clever trick to determine the location of indoor images and pictures of specific things such as pets, food, and so on that have no location cues.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)