Facebook Releases Latest 'Topics to Watch' Report, Examining Emerging Trends

Facebook has released the latest version of their Topics to Watch report, looking at the trends which gained momentum across The Social Network in November.

Facebook launched their Topics to Watch Reports in April this year in order to highlight subjects that are seeing significant mention increases amongst their user base - and with 1.79 billion users, those trends can be pretty indicative of wider shifts. Facebook’s research team identifies these rising trends based on a combination of volume, velocity and other related engagement metrics, with the idea being that they can highlight emerging topics before they become larger movements, enabling marketers to start incorporating them into their strategies as they rise, rather than missing the boat and seeming out of touch by tagging on too late.

Obviously, not every trend's going to be relevant to your business - maybe none of them are – but if there’s one that relates, it’s worth taking note. Facebook says that up to 80% of the topics they’ve identified in this way have gone on to become more prominent trends.

teresting to see 'Copywriting' on the list - obviously there's been a much bigger focus on content of late, and the increased discussion of copywriting would suggest that it's going to remain a focus moving into the new year. 'User experience' rates a mention too, which also shows that the discussions around improved engagement and interaction online are gaining more momentum - both topics obviously resonate very strongly with us at SMT.

Also, if you're interested in trending topics, Pinterest has also released their listing of the top emerging trends for 2017, based on what their users have shown increased interest in this year. 

Researchers prepare to wade through an ocean of data

A leading oceanographer predicts Australia is on the cusp of a dramatic increase in information on our marine environment, thanks to big data and low-cost, next-generation sensors.

Director of national research body the Integrated Marine Observing System, Roger Proctor, told iTnews new satellite data and next-generation sensors were driving an unprecedented increase in marine data.

“The emergence in oceanography of big data is only really just beginning. We also face an increase in the diversity of the data we have to handle,” Proctor said.

IMOS is the custodian of the Australian Ocean Data Network, a distributed network of open data from a range of research organisations (including Geoscience Australia, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology) that can be viewed through a single portal.

Along with satellites, some of the instruments IMOS funds to gather ocean data include gliders, autonomous underwater vehicles, listening devices, argo floats, ships, moorings and passive acoustic curtains that record the movements of tagged fish.

“In-situ sensors are getting cheaper and easier to implement, so we’ll see that scaling up. We see the increase happening over the next three to four years… We expect an increase in the frequency of data delivery as sensor networks become more powerful, and more sensors come on stream,” Proctor said.

“There are new EU Sentinel satellites that are going up that will transform surface properties for various data. The amount of data will be at least an order of magnitude more than is currently collected.

“We’re now starting to explore autonomous methods of measuring marine microbes, and that will be something that we’ll be looking at in the next 12 months.”

One example of how big data is shaping oceanography is the Australian Geoscience Data Cube project, a joint effort between Geoscience Australia, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

“This project has assembled all the Landsat imagery for the last 40 years into a four-dimensional stack so you can drill through it using supercomputer facilities,” Proctor said.

Additionally, IMOS data is currently being fed into models used by climate scientists to help provide new insights into the impact of climate change on Australian oceans.

“We now have 10 years of oceans data, which is sufficient to start identifying the impacts of climate change, for example understanding how the ocean heat content is changing over time,” Proctor said.

“That means being able to understand how deep water temperatures are changing, not just the surface waters, and where these changes may be occurring.”

Data from IMOS is also used by the offshore energy industry to aid exploration and discovery, as well as to inform government agencies and departments in areas such as fisheries management, Proctor said.

“We’re involved in a project run by BP at the moment in the Great Australian Bight looking to identify and quantify petroleum resources – IMOS’ role is to provide information about the water movements and ecosystem in the Bight,” Proctor said.

“IMOS data is used by fisheries to identify optimal fishing locations. The biological information is used by the Department of Environment in its reporting.”

A recently released federal government research issues paper argued that maintaining Australia’s world leadership in marine science meant improved ocean observation capabilities should be a high priority.

Apple buys U.S. machine learning startup

SAN FRANCISCO —

Apple has bought U.S. machine learning startup Turi as Silicon Valley giants focus on a future rich with artificial intelligence.

Turi specializes in enabling developers to imbue software applications with artificial intelligence, so the apps learn to think more the way people do.

Apple declined to elaborate the deal for Seattle-based Turi, telling AFP that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Technology news website GeekWire cited people close to the acquisition as pegging the purchase price at $200 million.

Apple has been stepping up its artificial intelligence efforts to compete against rival services from Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Improving machine learning capabilities of its Siri virtual assistant could enable it to better understand intent behind commands or queries spoken by users.

Siri is spreading from Apple mobile devices to its Mac computer system, allowing users of the PCs to search their machines or the Internet with voice commands, according to recent announcements from the Silicon Valley based company.

The move expands the footprint for Siri, which is facing increased competition from Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Now, which also use artificial intelligence.

Venus is a horrid hellscape now, but it may have been livable for eons

For billions of years our planet didn't even exist, and after Earth finally came on the scene, it was still a lifeless hellscape for over a half billion years. Now, new findings from NASA scientists suggest Venus -- one of the least desirable destinations in today's solar system -- may have been habitable for billions of years in the past.

The Venus we know is just plain awful. Its thick, carbon dioxide atmosphere topped with clouds of sulfuric acid has a crushing pressure over 90 times more than that of Earth. Did I mention that the place has an average temperature of 462 degrees Celsius (863 degrees Fahrenheit)?

The atmosphere of Venus is so thick, it was once presumed that it had something to do with the planet's very slow rotation rate -- a day on Venus is equal to 117 Earth days. However, newer research has shown that a planet with a thinner atmosphere like ours could also have a very slow rotation rate.

According to NASA, this also means that ancient Venus could have had the same rotation period it has now, but with a thin atmosphere like Earth's.

A new supercomputer from China has topped the latest list of the world's most powerful machines.

The 93 petaflop Sunway TaihuLight is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi.

At its peak, the computer can perform around 93,000 trillion calculations per second.

It is twice as fast and three times as efficient as the previous leader Tianhe-2, also from China, said Top500 which released the new list on Monday.

Its main applications include advanced manufacturing, weather forecasting and big data analytics, wrote Jack Dongarra in a paper about the new machine.

It has more than 10.5 million locally-made processing cores and 40,960 nodes and runs on a Linux-based operating system.

For the first time since the list began, China has overtaken the US with 167 computers in the top 500 while the US has 165.

"Considering that just 10 years ago, China claimed a mere 28 systems on the list, with none ranked in the top 30, the nation has come further and faster than any other country in the history of supercomputing," said Top500.

The US has four supercomputers in the top 10 of the Top500 list, while China has two which currently occupy the top two places.

The other positions in the top 10, published twice a year, are occupied by machines from Japan, Switzerland, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

"As a computer scientist it's difficult writing software that can take advantage of and control large numbers of computer cores," said Professor Les Carr from the University of Southampton.

"This is why supercomputers are restricted to specialised applications - you need very specialised computing needs to take advantage of them.

"They are like extremely high-spec Grand Prix racing cars - they are fantastic for racing on circuits but they're not great for travelling from London to Edinburgh."

A rare dinosaur fossil is found in N China

A rare well-preserved hadrosaur fossil has been unearthed in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and is expected to be of huge value for research into how the species evolved, Chinese archaeologists said.

More than 90 percent of the bones of the animal were intact, including the head, cervical vertebrae, limbs and a complete tail-bone. It is the most complete dinosaur fossil unearthed in Inner Mongolia in 20 years.

The fossil was first dis-covered in 2012 in Urad Back Banner, in the north-west part of the region. Excavation started in June 2013.

More than 300 fossil bone fragments were excavated at the site, weighing 1 metric ton altogether, said Tan Lin, an engineer at the Longhao Geological Institute of Paleontology in Inner Mongolia.

Chinese researchers said the fossil structure of the hadrosaur was about 8 meters long, 1 meter wide and 5 meters tall. It was a mature dinosaur that lived 80 million years ago.

Ten workers are restoring the fossil in a storehouse in Chengguan town, Bayannur city. The work began in May this year and is expect-ed to end in October.

Such a complete dinosaur fossil is a very rare find, said Xu Xing, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It will greatly inform research into the evolution of the hadrosaur species and biology in the Rehe area, he said.

Archaeologists also found fossils of other plants and living organisms in the Rehe area, which will prove invaluable in future research.

New satellite keeps eye on sea interests

High-tech radar will also improve nation's ability to forecast, warn of natural disasters, experts say

China is putting its nearby waters under more effective surveillance with its newly operational high-tech satellite.

Launched on Wednesday morning, the Gaofen 3 high-resolution Earth observation satellite will help the nation beef up its capabilities to safeguard its maritime interests and to help forecast and warn of natural disasters, space program officials said.

The satellite was delivered by a Long March 4C rocket that blasted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province.

It is equipped with a radar system that captures images from space with a resolution down to 1 meter, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which oversees China's space programs.

The Gaofen 3, which was developed by the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing, is capable of generating radar images in all weather conditions and can work around the clock.

The satellite will play an important role in monitoring the marine environment, islands and reefs, and ships and oil rigs, said Xu Fuxiang, head of the Gaofen 3 project at the academy.

He said that considering China has a total of 32,000 km of coastline, 380,000 square kilometers of territorial seas and more than 6,500 islands that have an area of at least 500 square meters, satellites like the Gaofen 3 will be very useful in safeguarding the country's maritime rights and interests.

The Gaofen 3 will also help in disaster forecasting, assessment and relief, which now heavily rely on imported satellite data, Xu added.

Gaofen 1 was sent into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in April 2013. Four other Gaofen satellites were launched in 2014 and last year.

The Gaofen 5, 6 and 7 will be optical remote sensing satellites and are under development, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

AOC deletes thousands of comments on Mack Horton’s Instagram account

Thousands of vitriolic comments left on Australian swimmer Mack Horton’s Instagram account have been deleted by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC). Netizens, many of them Chinese, bombarded Horton’s social media accounts after he called Chinese swimming rival Sun Yang a “drug cheat” before they competed in Saturday’s men’s 400 meters freestyle final, demanding that he apologize.

By Wednesday, all comments – which numbered at least 200,000 on one photo post alone – had disappeared from Horton’s page. “My staff are instructed to remove any comments that are offensive and in breach of the AOC’s Social Media Guidelines. Comments must not be disrespectful, threatening or in poor taste,” AOC’s director of media & communications, Mike Tancred, told Reuters in an e-mail.

Instagram told Reuters it could not comment on specific user accounts. It has recently introduced new tools giving users more control over comments on their pages. Censorship is common in China, whose users are prohibited from visiting certain websites by the government and often see controversial remarks on social media sites being deleted. Facebook and Instagram are banned in China, meaning that mainland users have to access the sites by jumping the “Great Firewall” using a virtual private network.

That does not mean that users have stopped trying – screenshots of the message “mackhorton has turned off comments for this post” were posted on China’s social media sites. The spat between Horton and Sun is turning into a battle of national media commentators and underlines how the issue of doping has become a defining issue for these Olympics. Chinese state media reacted to Horton’s remarks by calling Australia “uncivilized” and “Britain’s offshore prison”, while the Australian delegation said they would support Horton’s right to speak freely on the issue.

Sun, who finished second to Horton in the 400 freestyle, was revealed two years ago to have secretly served a three-month suspension for using a banned stimulant. He said at the time the stimulant was in medication to treat a heart issue and did not enhance his performance.

Self-destructing batteries could change recycling, medical implants, even war

The concept of self-destructing technology takes the inherent consumption at the heart of consumer electronics and brings it to the forefront. There’s something many people find almost distasteful about tech that’s designed to destroy itself — even if the timeline for that destruction is longer than the device could realistically last. Nonetheless, the idea of self-destructing technology is immediately applicable to problems of waste disposal, and further out than that, the ability to have a device or device component literally melt away could end up changing the abilities of a number of industries and even warfare. This week, researchers at Iowa State University got a lot closer to that goal with a new transient battery that could power self-destructing electronics.

Their achievement is important for two reasons. One, it increases the usefulness of self-destructing batteries by doubling their voltage to about 2.5 volts — more than the voltage of a AA or AAA battery. Two, this new battery dramatically decreases the time it takes to actually dissolve away, validating the concept from a pure practicality standpoint. If the technology is ever to succeed, it will need to be useful to the consumer while offering an accessible improvement when it comes time for cleanup. This battery is a step toward both goals.

The battery is only about a millimeter thick, smaller than a postage stamp. Nano- and micro-particles of lithium salts and silver make up the battery’s version of electrodes, held in a water-soluble polymer. When exposed to water for just 30 minute, this breaks down and the micro-particles disburse. It’s surprising that there’s no mention of a cleanup process to precipitate this battery dust out of a sample of water; in its current form, you’d have a hard time selling the concept of washing your battery down the drain, or of dumping millions of these batteries straight into the oceans.

Imagine if the highly computerized weapons systems captured by the Islamic State, things like aircraft tracking equipment and advanced artillery, were just a button-push from obsolescence. Knowing that ability was available might change the calculus in providing military assistance around the world. No longer would it be necessary to hold back on providing technology for fear of who will end up using it. The question would instead be: Will the people we want to have this technology be able to hold onto it long enough for the investment to be worth it, or will we just have to destroy our own equipment so quickly that the gift was a big waste of resources?

Apple slowly replacing IBM as number one choice for hardware in companies

In the primordial days of computing,IBM machines were so common inside corporations that there was a running joke in the industry: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

These days, the same could be said about Apple. Even IBM is promoting Apple gear.

Apple's iPhones and iPads have become the preferred mobile computing devices for corporations, as industries from insurers to airlines aim to ditch bulky PCs and give their employees the ability to do their jobs from anywhere using smartphones or tablets.

For Apple, which is struggling to reverse declining sales of its iPhones and Macs and has seen overall revenues drop for two quarters in a row, the corporate market is a surprising bright spot. Sales of high-end iPads to business customers in particular have been strong. Nearly half of all iPads are now bought by corporations and governments, according to the research firm Forrester.

Jaguar Land Rover joins others in the biggest auto recall in US history

In 2016, there was a case of a vehicle owner who was killed when the airbags of her car deflated, a device that was meant to protect her. According to the New York Times, Huma Hanif died in a matter of seconds when the airbag of her Honda Civic exploded launching shrapnel at her from a few feet away. And it was one of the many cases that Honda was being held up for (100 injuries and 8 deaths so far).

It is more than a decade now since Takata allegedly knew about the problem. The recall started in the US in 2014 after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) called for the recall to be expanded to national level also issuing a fine of $14,000 per day for not cooperating with the agency’s investigation into the airbag problems. At areported 64,000,000 vehicles, the recall is far from over.

Today, Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) joins the fray with an official press release issued by the company for the US market as reported by motor1. The luxury automotive brand announced plans to recall 54,000 cars in United States and this is just the first wave of many to come.

According to the same press release, JLR will be replacing 20,000 Jaguars XFs from the 2009-2011MY and on 34,000 Range Rovers from the 2007-2011MY.

The vehicles in the above mentioned range pose a high-risk of a rupture, that is caused when the inflator housing is exposed to high humidity for long periods of time. When this happens the part goes bad and instead of inflating the airbag, the inflator breaks up into a cloud of shrapnel which apart from rupturing the airbag also harms the driver in front of it.

As you may have noticed, this is an older range of vehicles that is being recalled. The current JLR range thankfully does not offer the faulty airbags. The Japanese company Takata however is still selling airbags to a number of automakers as of today.

NASA’s TESS mission on track to start hunting exoplanets in 2017

Ever since it debuted in 2009, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has redefined our understanding of other star systems. But Kepler is in rough shape, and it won’t last forever. Now TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is ticking along on schedule to launch in 2017. While the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to be a partial replacement for the Hubble telescope, the JWST will also be a sort of spiritual successor to Kepler, in that it will team up with TESS to hunt for exoplanets in the visible and IR bands.

Like Kepler, TESS will use the transit method, searching for exoplanets by watching hundreds of thousands of stars for the telltale dimming. But where Kepler must cast its eyes to a small patch of distant space, peering deeply but narrowly into the skies, TESS will make a shallower whole-sky survey of stars within a few hundred light years of Earth. Most of Kepler’s exoplanet discoveries came from one relatively small patch of the sky. But NASA officials say that TESS should be able to look at over 200,000 stars.

To make things easier for mission scientists, TESS breaks up its spherical viewfield into 26 “tiles” that overlap near its north and south poles. “The spacecraft’s powerful cameras will look continuously at each tile for just over 27 days, measuring visible light from the brightest targets every 2 minutes,” NASA officials said in a statement. Based on the characteristics of those little dips in brightness, TESS scientists will be able to tell how big the newly discovered exoplanets are, and how long they take to orbit their parent stars.That’s not all TESS has up its sleeve, though. While it will be a planet hunter first and foremost, scientists and other “guest investigators” will also have the opportunity to take time on TESS to observe black holes, supernovas, and a variety of other cosmic objects and phenomena.

One of the other major goals of TESS is to examine short-period objects and transient phenomena, like the visible light energy that accompanies a gamma ray burst. The spacecraft’s glancing gaze might pose difficulties for asteroseismologists, because while transits might take some days or weeks, starquakes can happen in seconds, so TESS’s sampling rate might bump into the Nyquist limit. But that kind of data loss is apparently a niche enough problem that project scientists were willing to make the compromise.

TESS also has unique orbital characteristics. It’s designed to survey both the northern and southern hemispheres and will use a new lunar orbit, dubbed P/2, to do so. This highly elliptical orbit will allow the spacecraft to survey its target range while simultaneously remaining balanced between the gravitational effects of the Moon and those of the Earth.NASA has published an article with more details on the spacecraft’s orbit and its characteristics

Gun emoji: Microsoft 'doesn't agree' with Apple

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple and Microsoft on Friday appeared to be aiming in opposite directions with freshly unholstered gun emojis.

A Windows operating system update rolled out this week by Microsoft came with a pistol emoji changed from a cartoonish ray gun to a revolver.

Microsoft said in a blog post that it had a team design new emojis from scratch for the major Windows 10 anniversary update.

"They needed to feel more human, more personal, more expressive," Microsoft said in the post devoted to the new array of 'glyphs' that have become a standard for mobile messaging.
"The effect is clear, and pretty striking."

A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP that the company's intent with every glyph is to "map to industry designs or our customers' expectations" regarding what emojis mean.
A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP that the company's intent with every glyph is to "map to industry designs or our customers' expectations" regarding what emojis mean.

Meanwhile, a pistol character included among glyphs for messages sent using coming iOS 10 software powering Apple mobile devices looked like a toy instead of a real firearm.

New emojis teased by Apple in a blog post included women athletes, single parents, a rainbow flag, and a green water pistol.

California-based Apple promised that more than 100 new or redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users when iOS 10 software is released later this year.

Chinese Company Tests Giant Bus That Drives Over Cars

Every urban commuter laments the twice-a-day headache of traffic congestion and the often disappointing alternatives that mass transit offers.

A Chinese company has officially rolled out one potential solution: the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus. The giant "flying" bus, as some have called it, straddles two lanes of traffic and stands nearly 16 feet tall so that it can pass over cars on the roadway below. While still a long way from mass production, the TEB-1 could one day alleviate major traffic woes in China and other countries with crowded metropolitan areas.
The concept of an elevated bus was first floated in 2010, and a model was debuted in May of this year, the New York Times reported. The company behind the project, TEB Technology, conducted a road test and opened its doors to prospective passengers in the Chinese city of Qinhuangdao on Tuesday, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

72 feet long by 26 feet wide, capable of holding up to 300 riders. Surprisingly, there are not very many seats. That would probably have to change should an American model ever come to fruition.

ADVERTISEMENT

Indeed, it's unclear whether the idea of an elevated bus could gain traction in the United States. The model piloted by TEB Technologies appears to clear midsize sedans with ease, but the large SUVs and trucks that clog U.S. roads may present a greater challenge.

Wireless Implants Could Let You Control Prosthetics With Your Mind

Brain implants are going wireless. A newly developed implant announced in a new study today acts like "Neuro-WiFi," broadcasting signals from brain cells continuously for more than 48 hours on a single rechargeable AA battery, and at high data rates, the researchers say. Such a device could help people control robotic limbs, advanced exoskeletons, or even remote devices with their minds, and without the need for wires.

The implant is just 2 inches wide and weighs slightly less than a candy bar. It connects to a tiny implanted array of roughly 100 electrodes that are each a micron or so across. Together, they detect the activity of dozens of neurons in the brain. The device broadcasts up to 200 megabits per second, comparable to the current Wi-Fi standard, while requiring about 100 times less power. In experiments, the new system matched the performance of conventional wired systems.

In experiments, the researchers found the device could transmit data from three rhesus macaques as they walked on treadmills, measuring signals associated with the brain's motion commands that clearly matched the activity of leg muscles, revealing that the implant can help study how the brain controls the legs. They also used the device to study the brains of two rhesus monkeys as they slept and woke, showing distinct patterns of brain activity related to different stages of consciousness and the shifts between them.

For human patients, research that records which brain cells do what when people move their limbs is aiding scientists trying to develop brain implants that help control robotics using only the mind, which could one day allow people to overcome disabilities using bionic limbs or mechanical exoskeletons. However, such experiments usually tether subjects to computers via wires, significantly limiting the actions that investigators can record. "We can now access brain microcircuits wirelessly in freely moving, freely behaving animals rather easily, with lots of neural data at Internet speeds, streaming continuously," says study co-author Arto Nurmikko, a neuroengineer at Brown University. "It opens up new space in fundamental brain research."

Mukesh Ambani: Reliance Jio launch in 'coming months'

Assuring shareholders that significant progress had been made in erecting the infrastructure for Reliance Jio, along with some 1.5 million test users, chairman Mukesh Ambani has, without specifying a date, said that the commercial launch will happen in the "coming months".

"During the year, Reliance Jio moved towards completion of its network infrastructure as well as business services and platforms. We on-boarded over 1.5 million test users, who have been using the services extensively," Ambani said in the company's annual report for 2015-16.

"This has enabled testing of the network, user applications and services and business platforms. The feedback from test users is extremely encouraging. The test programme will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months."

Shareholders were also told that Jio is now present in all the 29 states of India with a direct physical presence in more than 18,000 urban and rural towns and over 150,000 villages.

The chairman said Reliance Industries invested over Rs 112,000 crore ($17 billion) in its various businesses operations during 2015-16, which he claimed was the highest-ever by any corporate in India in creating growth engines for the future.

                                                                                                                       http://allsocialupdates.yolasite.com/

Twitter Launches ‘Instant Unlock’ Ad Option to Boost Ad Reach and Response

This one’s interesting.

Today, via the official Twitter blog, the company has announced a new ad option called ‘Instant Unlock Cards’ which incentivize users to Tweet by “offering access to exclusive content (e.g., a film’s trailer or an exclusive Q&A) after the Tweet is sent”.

Which makes sense - you boost reach by providing motivation for users to share your brand message, while also increasing your response and hashtag usage rate, which looks good in your analytics.

But it’s interesting in that Twitter seems to almost be taking the exact opposite approach on this front to Facebook.

http://allsocialupdates.yolasite.com/