Labeling data can be a chore. It’s the main source of sustenance for computer-vision models; without it, they’d have a lot of difficulty identifying objects, people, and other important image characteristics. Yet producing just an hour of tagged and labeled data can take a whopping 800 hours of human time. Our high-fidelity understanding of the world develops as machines can better perceive and interact with our surroundings. But they need more help.

Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Microsoft, and Cornell University have attempted to solve this problem plaguing vision models by creating “STEGO,” an algorithm that can jointly discover and segment objects without any human labels at all, down to the pixel.

Perhaps it’s a part of what makes us human, to explore the next frontier, to seek out new worlds… Today, we’re excited to share a new planet discovered outside of our Solar System by the Cool Worlds Lab – HD 183579b. Join us to hear about the new strategy we developed to find this object, and why this is a particularly valuable planet discovery.

Via The Scout Project

“For readers enamored with birds all around the world, the Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is an excellent place to spend some time. This nonprofit project describes itself as “an online audiovisual library of videos, photos and sound recordings of the world’s birds” created “with the ultimate goal of disseminating knowledge about the world’s avifauna.” Visitors to the IBC can explore multimedia materials and recordings of thousands of bird species crowdsourced by birdwatchers around the world, with their species identifications cross-checked by trained ornithologists. This vast collection can be searched and filtered by family name (common or scientific), country, keyword, date, and more, and each media entry includes a location map and shows other media recorded nearby. The IBC also has several quizzes for those who enjoy testing their ornithology skills. Begun in 2002, the IBC was created by Lynx Edicons, the publishing house behind the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, whose staff were inspired by their conversations with other birdwatchers to create a collective repository for multimedia collected by avid birders worldwide. Those interested can contribute their own bird photos, videos, and sound recordings to the IBC by creating a free account. “

The Sun is nothing special when comparing it with other stars, there are stars that are smaller but there are also stars that have unimaginable sizes. Stephenson 2–18 is arguably the largest star known at this time. It lies 18,900 light-years from the Earth. But remember, light travels 1,080 million kilometers per hour or 9.46 trillion kilometers in a year, yes this star is very far away by our standards. How can we visualize the size of Stephenson 2–18 when comparing it to the Sun? This gigantic star has a diameter that is 2,150 times that of the Sun. The Sun has a diameter of 1,392,680 kilometers, so using a simple sum the diameter of Stephenson 2–18 works out at 2,994,262,000 kilometers.

When we use large numbers it becomes difficult for us to comprehend. Replace the Sun with Stephenson 2-18 so it is in the same position in the Solar System, that would be very bad news for all the planets, especially the five closest to the Sun and possibly the sixth planet Saturn, they would all be inside the giant star. In the above image, our sun is only 3 pixels big.

The journey of commissioning the Webb telescope continues this week with the successful cooling of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), through the critical ‘pinch point,’ down to its final operating temperature of less than 7 kelvins (-447 degrees Fahrenheit, or -266 degrees Celsius). This was a precondition to completing the seventh and final stage of the mirror alignment process.  The next steps include initial check-outs of MIRI and continue on to the final stages of multi-instrument, multi-field alignment with all four science instruments.

Webb will investigate star and planet formation and will study planets around other stars, which are known as extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. Knicole Colón, Webb’s deputy project scientist for exoplanet science, discusses the discovery space of exploring new worlds beyond our solar system. Dr. Colón brings a unique perspective as she is also the project scientist for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission that has found many exoplanet targets that Webb will observe.

Over the years, we have been making good progress in tapping underground spaces, from utility lines to rail lines and roads, to meet the many and growing needs of our urban environment. There are also extensive underground pedestrian links in areas like Marina Bay, which enhance connectivity and allow people to walk in comfort.

As evident in many urban cities, the use of underground space has largely been developed on a first-come-first-served basis. Over time, this hinders further expansion and optimal use of underground space.

By planning and safeguarding the space upfront and with the help of technology, we can unlock the potential of underground space and make better use of it. …

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an “intense and violent process.” This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called “disk instability.”

Direct images of protoplanets embedded in disks around infant stars provide the key to understanding the formation of gas giant planets such as Jupiter. Using the Subaru Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers just found evidence for a Jovian protoplanet around AB Aurigae orbiting at a wide projected separation (~93 au), probably responsible for multiple planet-induced features in the disk. Its emission is reproducible as reprocessed radiation from an embedded protoplanet. They also identified two structures located at 430–580 au that are candidate sites of planet formation.

These data reveal planet formation in the embedded phase and a protoplanet discovery at wide, >50 au separations characteristic of most imaged exoplanets. With at least one clump-like protoplanet and multiple spiral arms, the AB Aur system may also provide the evidence for a long-considered alternative to the canonical model for Jupiter’s formation, namely disk (gravitational) instability.