Prince William made a big splash in Cape Town, South Africa, with his Earthshot Prize environmental awards. Looking stylish in biodegradable sneakers, he walked the “green carpet” of the event held inside a reusable dome by the harbor. The heir to the British throne started this prize in 2020 to aid
Deep in the heart of Halmahera Utara, there's a village named Talaga Paca, known for its breathtaking lakes, caves, forests, and an abundance of wildlife. Ironically, the villagers face high poverty rates, with nearly three-quarters living below the poverty line. Despite their natural riches, they h
Weather is studied using weather stations scattered worldwide. These stations collect data on various weather phenomena. Many organizations set up networks of these stations to gather data. The data is then sent to processing centers. However, the methods used to transmit this data aren't ideal. The
Imagine an agent that can understand your instructions and navigate through various environments. This is what Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) aims for. However, training these agents to handle new, unseen spaces is a challenge. Why? Well, there's limited data and the environments these agents
Ever wondered how random walks work in strange, or "degenerate, " environments? Scientists have figured out how to calculate the speeds of these walks, both in uniform and non-uniform places. Interestingly, in some non-uniform spots, the speeds aren't always smoothly increasing or decreasing – they
Imagine you're training an AI to navigate a world, but you don't have to stick to just one type of simulator. UDE, short for Unified Distributed Environment, is a toolkit that lets AI researchers mix and match different simulation platforms like Gazebo, Unity, Unreal, and OpenAI Gym. This clever too
Imagine you're walking through a park, but the path you take isn't just random—it's determined by a series of independent probabilities. This is the essence of a random walk in a Dirichlet environment. In this environment, the chances of moving from one spot to another are not fixed but are themselv
Ever wondered where survival is most likely? Let's explore three types of environments: local, global, and fixed. Surprisingly, creatures have a better chance in a locally changing environment than a fixed one. And guess what? A fixed environment is actually more forgiving than a global one! Imagin
In recent days, a photo of astronaut Sunita Williams has sparked worry about her health. She's been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) along with Barry Wilmore since June, after their Boeing Starliner had technical issues. They were initially supposed to stay for just eight days, but now
Even when they're orbiting Earth, astronauts still have the right to vote. Voting from space isn't as simple as heading to the local polling station, though. Instead, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) use NASA's Space Communication and Navigation Program. They start by filling
