Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, scientists at the University of Sydney.

The University of Sydney is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1,850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world. The University of Sydney has a strong focus on research and offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a variety of disciplines, including arts, business, engineering, law, medicine, and science.

If you go running over a trail in the woods or a grassy field, there are countless bumps and dips in the terrain, each with the potential to trip you up. But typically, runners manage just fine. It’s a remarkable physical feat that we tend to take for granted. A team of researchers set out to better understand it.

With a specially made running track and mathematical modeling, the lab of Madhusudhan Venkadesan found that when running on uneven terrain, humans mostly rely on the body’s mechanical response for stability rather than consciously plot out their footsteps to find level ground. Further, they found that the runners were just as efficient in their movements and physical exertion as when running on flat ground. The results are published in eLife.

Even without occasional hazards like steep drops, runners must contend with gentler, but still uneven, ground that can be destabilizing. So why aren’t trails typically littered with toppled runners? One possibility is that visual cues allow runners to carefully observe the land to step on mostly level areas. On the other hand, running played a huge role in human evolution, particularly in how it benefited humans in hunting. That means sight cannot be devoted solely to find areas to step on; it’s also needed to watch out for the prey, trees or other obstacles to avoid, and decide which path to take.

Chipmaker Nvidia has announced a new service that will allow users to access supercomputer level computing power from web browsers. The service, called Nvidia DGX Cloud, is an AI supercomputing service that allows enterprises to run workloads on the company’s A100 and H100 chips remotely.

“DGX Cloud provides dedicated clusters of NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputing, paired with NVIDIA AI software. The service makes it possible for every enterprise to access its own AI supercomputer using a simple web browser, removing the complexity of acquiring, deploying and managing on-premises infrastructure,” the company said in a blog post.

As reported by Reuters, however, the service isn’t cheap. Nvidia is charging $37,000 per month for access to eight of the A100 or H100 chips — the company’s flagship chips, which are both designed for AI computing. “Each instance of DGX Cloud features eight Nvidia H100 or A100 80GB Tensor Core GPUs for a total of 640GB of GPU memory per node. A high-performance, low-latency fabric built with Nvidia Networking ensures workloads can scale across clusters of interconnected systems, allowing multiple instances to act as one massive GPU to meet the performance requirements of advanced AI training,” Nvidia’s blog post explained.

Data analytics teams around the world are failing to bring value to their organisations. According to a survey by market research firm Gartner published on Wednesday, most data and analytics leaders reported that their teams do not provide effective value to the organisation. This is despite increased interest from the industry in investing in data and analytics to improve efficiency in business.

The research report noted that while the lack of available talent is the top impediment for which data and analytics teams are failing to add value to their firms, as reported by 39% of executives, other roadblocks, such as lack of resources and funding to support the programmes and lack of support from top management are also hindering data and analytics projects. Besides, culture challenges to accept change and overall poor data literacy in organisations are among other reasons why many of these projects continue to suffer.

At a time when technology companies are already facing the brunt of layoffs in the face of uncertain economic conditions, teams not performing well or failing to add value to the organisation can face dire consequences, believe experts.

A superconducting ink made through a simple process called chemical exfoliation could be used to print the cold circuits inside quantum computers and MRI machines.

By Leah Crane

US gaming and computer graphics giant Nvidia has joined forces with an Israeli startup to roll out a new hardware system to connect the quantum computer with classical computers.

The new system, Nvidia DGX Quantum, built together with Israel’s Quantum Machines, a developer of a standard universal language for quantum computers, is expected to be first deployed at Israel’s quantum computing research center at the end of this year.

The quantum computing R&D center funded by the Israel Innovation Authority at an investment of NIS 100 million ($27 million), which is headed by Quantum Machines, was established to help Israel build a quantum computer and advance research in the field that would lead to future developments in economics, technology, security, engineering, and science.

United Launch Alliance’s second-to-last Delta 4-Heavy rocket is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral April 20 with a classified cargo for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency, a mission that will mark ULA’s first flight of the year, officials announced this week.

ULA and the National Reconnaissance Office, the customer for the national security mission, announced the target launch date Tuesday.

The mission is known as NROL-68, and is expected to loft a large surveillance satellite into geosynchronous orbit, joining a fleet of government-owned spacecraft designed to eavesdrop on the communications of adversaries and foreign powers. But the NRO does not disclose details about its missions, and independent analysts use information about the rocket’s lift capability, trajectory, and similar past launches to predict the purpose of spy satellite missions.

GitHub Copilot is also coming to pull requests to help developers create AI-generated descriptions. Tags are automatically completed by GitHub Copilot based on what code has changed, and developers can then review and edit them.

“At GitHub we invented the pull request over a decade ago, so the natural next step for us was to bring Copilot into the pull request,” says Dohmke. “You can actually ask Copilot to describe the pull request to you, or you can ask Copilot to generate tests.”

And just in time for the “Last of Us” series. 😂

A drug-resistant fungus Candida Auris is spreading in US hospitals at an alarming rate. Those with fragile immune systems are at risk. What happens if it enters your country or your neighbourhood? Should you be scared? Molly Gambhir reports.

Continue reading “Gravitas: Alarming rise of drug-resistant fungus | Candida Auris spreads in US” »