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Archive for the ‘mapping’ category

Mar 24, 2024

Gravity Measurement Based on a Levitating Magnet

Posted by in categories: energy, mapping

A new gravimeter is compact and stable and can detect the daily solar and lunar gravitational oscillations that are responsible for the tides.

Gravity measurements can help with searches for oil and gas or with predictions of impending volcanic activity. Unfortunately, today’s gravimeters are bulky, lack stability, or require extreme cooling. Now researchers have demonstrated a design for a small, highly sensitive gravimeter that operates stably at room temperature [1]. The device uses a small, levitated magnet whose equilibrium height is a sensitive probe of the local gravitational field. The researchers expect the design to be useful in field studies, such as the mapping of the distribution of underground materials.

Several obstacles have impeded the development of compact gravimeters, says Pu Huang of Nanjing University in China. Room-temperature devices generally use small mechanical oscillators, which offer excellent accuracy. However, they are made from materials that exhibit aging effects, so these gravimeters can lose accuracy over time. Much higher stability can be achieved with superconducting devices, but these require cryogenic conditions and so consume lots of power and are hard to use outdoors.

Mar 21, 2024

Google used AI to accurately predict floods up to 7 days in advance

Posted by in categories: mapping, robotics/AI

Google just announced that it has been riverline floods, up to seven days in advance in some cases. This isn’t just tech company hyperbole, as the findings were actually published Nature. Floods are the most common natural disaster throughout the world, so any early warning system is good news.

Floods have been notoriously tricky to predict, as most rivers don’t have streamflow gauges. Google got around this problem by with all kinds of relevant data, including historical events, river level readings, elevation and terrain readings and more. After that, the company generated localized maps and ran “hundreds of thousands” of simulations in each location. This combination of techniques allowed the models to accurately predict upcoming floods.

Mar 21, 2024

Gaia maps largest ever collection of quasars in space and time

Posted by in categories: cosmology, mapping

Astronomers have created the largest yet cosmic 3D map of quasars: bright and active centres of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. This map shows the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, with the furthest shining bright when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old.

The new map has been made with data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope. While Gaia’s main objective is to map the stars in our own galaxy, in the process of scanning the sky it also spots objects outside the Milky Way, such as quasars and other galaxies.

The graphic representation of the map (bottom right on the infographic) shows us the location of quasars from our vantage point, the centre of the sphere. The regions empty of quasars are where the disc of our galaxy blocks our view.

Mar 14, 2024

Larry Ellison and Elon Musk teaming up to bring AI to farming

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, mapping, robotics/AI, space travel, sustainability

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is teaming up with Larry Ellison’s Oracle to help farms plan and predict their agricultural output using an AI tool.

Larry Ellison said on Oracle’s earnings call on Monday that it’s collaborating with Musk and SpaceX to create the AI-powered mapping application for governments. The tool creates a map of a country’s farms and shows what each of them is growing.

The Oracle executive chairman said the tool could help farms assess the steps needed to increase their output, and whether fields had enough water and nitrogen.

Mar 11, 2024

Scientists Intrigued by Jet Inside Jupiter

Posted by in categories: mapping, space

Jupiter is iconic, with its swirls of water and ammonia vapor that characterize its outer surface and its distinctive Giant Red Spot, a gigantic storm raging across its face.

But its mysteries abound — such as Jupiter’s strange and asymmetrical magnetic field, which has a strong area of magnetism in its equator called the “Great Blue Spot” — blue because that’s how it’s color-coded in maps tracing the magnetic field.

In an effort to understand the planet’s magnetic field better, a team of American scientists from Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology, NASA and the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas studied an atmospheric jet — a high speed current in the gas giant’s atmosphere — in the Great Blue Spot. Their finding? It’s a dynamic system that fluctuates every four years or so.

Mar 10, 2024

Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts

Posted by in categories: cosmology, mapping

A recent study of thousands of galaxy clusters may ease a debate about the clumpiness of cosmic matter and reinforce the standard model of cosmology.


By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.

Mar 9, 2024

Researchers reach new AI benchmark for computer graphics

Posted by in categories: climatology, mapping, robotics/AI

Computer graphic simulations can represent natural phenomena such as tornados, underwater, vortices, and liquid foams more accurately thanks to an advancement in creating artificial intelligence (AI) neural networks.

Working with a multi-institutional team of researchers, Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Bo Zhu combined computer graphic simulations with machine learning models to create enhanced simulations of known phenomena. The new benchmark could lead to researchers constructing representations of other phenomena that have yet to be simulated.

Zhu co-authored the paper “Fluid Simulation on Neural Flow Maps.” The Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics and Interactive Technology (SIGGRAPH) gave it a best paper award in December at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Sydney, Australia.

Feb 29, 2024

ResLoRA: Identity Residual Mapping in Low-Rank Adaption

Posted by in category: mapping

Microsoft presents ResLoRA

Identity residual mapping in low-rank adaption.


Join the discussion on this paper page.

Feb 28, 2024

Space observatory in Chile unveils new maps of the universe

Posted by in categories: cosmology, mapping, physics

We are always making strides to unravel the mysteries of our universe. Now, a small observatory nestled in the Andes mountains of northern Chile has provided a snapshot of the cosmos in space. This one is clearer than we imagined.

The U.S. National Science Foundation Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), spearheaded by astrophysicists from Johns Hopkins University, mapped a whopping 75 percent of the sky.

Feb 28, 2024

AI Is Everywhere—Including Countless Applications You’ve Likely Never Heard Of

Posted by in categories: information science, mapping, robotics/AI, transportation

One major area of our lives that uses largely “hidden” AI is transportation. Millions of flights and train trips are coordinated by AI all over the world. These AI systems are meant to optimize schedules to reduce costs and maximize efficiency.

Artificial intelligence can also manage real-time road traffic by analyzing traffic patterns, volume and other factors, and then adjusting traffic lights and signals accordingly. Navigation apps like Google Maps also use AI optimization algorithms to find the best path in their navigation systems.

AI is also present in various everyday items. Robot vacuum cleaners use AI software to process all their sensor inputs and deftly navigate our homes.

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