'Greasy, Gross' Cannibal Mormon Crickets Invade Nevada, Horrify Residents
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Perfect Corp. Partners with Warner Bros. Pictures for The Flash Interactive AR Movie Try-On Experience
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2023-06-09 18:59
YouTube reveals AI music experiments that allow people to make music in other people’s voices and by humming
YouTube has revealed a host of new, musical artificial intelligence experiments. The features let people create musical texts by just writing a short piece of text, instantly and automatically generating music in the style of a number of artists. Users can also hum a simple song into their computer and have it turned into a detailed and rich piece of music. The new experiments are YouTube’s latest attempt to deal with the possibilities and dangers of AI and music. Numerous companies and artists have voiced fears that artificial intelligence could make it easier to infringe on copyright or produce real-sounding fake songs. One of the new features is called “Dream Track”, and some creators already have it, with the aim of using it to soundtrack YouTube Shorts. It is intended to quickly produce songs in people’s style. Users can choose a song in the style of a number of officially-licensed artists: Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. They can then ask for a particular song, deciding on the tone or themes of the song, and it can then be used in their post on Shorts. Another is called Music AI Tools, and is aimed to help musicians with their creative process. It came out of YouTube’s Music AI Incubator, a working group of artists, songwriters and producers who are experimenting with the use of artificial intelligence in music. “It was clear early on that this initial group of participants were intensely curious about AI tools that could push the limits of what they thought possible. They also sought out tools that could bolster their creative process,” YouTube said in an announcement. “As a result, those early sessions led us to iterate on a set of music AI tools that experiment with those concepts. Imagine being able to more seamlessly turn one’s thoughts and ideas into music; like creating a new guitar riff just by humming it or taking a pop track you are working on and giving it a reggaeton feel. “We’re developing prospective tools that could bring these possibilities to life and Music AI Incubator participants will be able to test them out later this year.” The company gave an example of one of those tools, where a producer was able to hum a tune and then have it turned into a track that sounded as if it had been professionally recorded. The tools are built on Google Deepmind’s Lyria system. The company said that was built specifically for music, overcoming problems such as AI’s difficulties with producing long sequences of sound that keep their continuity and do not break apart. At the same time, Deepmind said it had been working on a technology called SynthID to combine it with Lyria. That will put an audio watermark into the sound, which humans cannot hear but which can be recognised by tools so that they know the songs have been automatically generated. “This novel method is unlike anything that exists today, especially in the context of audio,” Deepmind said,. “The watermark is designed to maintain detectability even when the audio content undergoes many common modifications such as noise additions, MP3 compression, or speeding up and slowing down the track. SynthID can also detect the presence of a watermark throughout a track to help determine if parts of a song were generated by Lyria.” The announcement comes just days after YouTube announced restrictions on unauthorised AI clones of musicians. Earlier this week it said that users would have to tag AI-generated content that looked realistic, and music that “mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice” will be banned entirely. Those videos have proven popular in recent months, largely thanks to online tools that allow people to easily combine a voice with an existing song and create something entirely new, such as Homer Simpson singing popular hits. Those will not be affected straight away, with the new requirements rolling out next year. Read More AI-generated faces are starting to look more real than actual ones Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers New tech listens to your belly gurgling and monitors how well you are New tech listens to your belly gurgling and monitors how well you are SpaceX is launching the world’s biggest rocket – follow live Instagram users warned about new setting that could accidentally expose secrets
2023-11-17 04:50
Camco Fund to Mobilize $1.6 Billion for Africa Power
A UK-government backed renewable energy fund plans to mobilize $1.6 billion to help provide 16 million people and
2023-11-17 20:22
Scientists make surprising discovery that could help boost the global population
Infertility is a problem that afflicts more than a billion people across the world, which is why treatments such as IVF are so important. The procedure (in vitro fertilisation, to use it’s full name) involves the extraction of an egg from the woman's ovaries to be fertilised with sperm in a laboratory and returned to the woman’s womb. The goal is that the resulting embryo will then grow and develop into a foetus, blessing the parent or parents with a baby. However, success rates for IVF – as in, the percentage of treatments that result in a live birth – remain somewhat unencouraging: 32 per cent for women aged under 35; 25 per cent for women aged 35 to 37, with the numbers continuing to drop the older you get, according to the NHS. Nevertheless, a major new study has revealed a striking new finding which could help boost the hopes of countless aspiring mums and dads across the world. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter After analysing 3,657 frozen embryos over a period of eight years, researchers in Western Australia found that IVF was much more likely to work when eggs had been harvested in the summer. The team clarified that it didn’t seem to matter when the embryos were transferred to the mother’s womb, just when the eggs were collected. Indeed, the likelihood of babies being born when the eggs had been retrieved in the summer was 30 per cent higher than when they had been retrieved in the autumn, according to the scientists. The team also found that the temperature on the day of egg collection didn’t seem to have an impact on success rates, but the number of sunny hours did. Of the embryos they tested, those harvested on days that had the most sunshine were 28 per cent more likely to result in a live birth compared to the darkest and most overcast days. “Our study suggests that the best conditions for live births appear to be associated with summer and increased sunshine hours on the day of egg retrieval,” the study’s lead, Dr Sebastian Leathersich, of Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital, said about the paper, which was published in the journal Human Reproduction. Still, he noted: “There are many factors that influence fertility treatment success, age being among the most important. “However, this study adds further weight to the importance of environmental factors and their influence on egg quality and embryonic development." He further explained: “We effectively separated the conditions at the time of egg collection from the conditions at the time of transfer, demonstrating that environmental factors when the eggs are developing are as, if not more, important than environmental factors during implantation and early pregnancy.” The expert obstetrician and gynaecologist added: “Optimising factors such as avoiding smoking, alcohol and other toxins and maintaining healthy activity levels and weight should be paramount. However, clinicians and patients could also consider external factors such as environmental conditions.” Despite Dr Leathersich and his colleagues concluding that the temperature on the day of egg collection had little bearing on the success of the process, they also found that the temperature on the day of embryo implantation did make a difference. The chances of a live birth rate decreased by 18 per cent when the embryos were transferred on the hottest days (when average temperatures measured between 14.5C and 27.8C) compared to the coolest days (0.1C to 9.8C), and there was a small increase in miscarriage rates, from 5.5 per cent to 7.6. The finding that miscarriage rates were highest when embryo transfer took place on the hottest days is consistent with other studies showing higher rates of miscarriage in the summer months. “This suggests that the negative effects of high temperature are more likely related to early pregnancy rather than egg development,” Dr Leathersich concluded. When it comes to the disparity in success rates between eggs retrieved in summer and autumn, he and his team pointed out that melatonin levels could be at play. Differences in lifestyles between the winter and summer months may also play a role, he and his colleagues acknowledged. "It is possible that there are differences in activity, diet, and lifestyle in different seasons which could underlie the observed differences in live birth rates, though such data were not collected in this study," they wrote. "It is also possible that other environmental factors, including pollutants, may impact clinical outcomes." Whilst the study’s findings are compelling, Dr Leathersich and his team admitted that it did have its limitations. The research was done in hindsight, using eggs that had been frozen, then thawed, so it could not draw watertight conclusions. “Ideally, these findings should be replicated in other sites with different conditions and different treatment protocols to confirm the findings,” Dr Leathersich said. “It would also be interesting to look at the impact of season and environmental factors on sperm parameters, as this could have contributed to our observations.” He added: “We are now planning to analyse this same group of patients using air quality data, as there may be seasonal changes in exposure to harmful pollutants which could negatively affect reproductive outcomes. “Finally, given the huge increase in so-called 'social egg freezing' for fertility preservation and the fact that this group generally have flexibility about when they choose to undergo treatment, it would be very interesting to see if these observations hold true with frozen eggs that are thawed and fertilised years later. “Any improved outcomes in this group could have big impacts for women making decisions about their future fertility, but the long-term follow-up required means it is likely to be some time before we can draw any conclusions for this population.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
2023-07-10 23:20
'But sounds like a valley girl from California': Melissa Gorga trolled as she calls herself 'Italian'
Melissa Gorga shared a video of herself promoting Amazon's Italy storefront
2023-05-29 09:19
EA Sports FC 24 Ratings Leak: Highest Rated Players 20-11
EA Sports FC 24 ratings leak detailing the first half of the top 20 highest rated players in the game including Virgil Van Dijk, Neymar Jr., Casemiro, Ada Hegerberg and more.
2023-08-31 04:54
Get creative with this Digi Pen, now $60 off
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2023-05-26 17:47
Astronomers detect life ingredient on the edge of the galaxy
Astronomers have discovered a key ingredient for life at the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. A team from the University of Arizona detected the presence of phosphorus while studying molecular clouds on the outskirts of the galaxy using giant radio telescopes in the US and Spain. Phosphorus is one of the so-called NCHOPS elements that make up the critical ingredients for life on Earth – nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur. All of the others have already been found on the edge of the galaxy, so the discovery of phosphorus has direct implications for the search for Earth-like planets around distant stars. Their observations of the chemical 74,000 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way calls into question our fundamental understanding of the universe, the researchers said. “The phosphorus we detected is at the edge of the galaxy, where it shouldn’t be,” said Lilia Koelemay, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona who led the research. Theories that could explain its presence include supernova stars, which are typically not found on the edge of galaxies, and low mass stars generating excess neutrons that are then added onto silicon atoms to create phosphorus. “To make phosphorus, you need some kind of violent event,” said Lucy Ziurys, Regents Professor of chemistry and biochemistry and astronomy at Steward Observatory. “It is thought that phosphorus is created in supernova explosions, and for that, you need a star that has at least 20 times the mass of the Sun. In other words, if you’re going to have life, you better be near a supernova, if that’s indeed the only source where phosphorus is created.” The detection of phosphorus at the edge of the galaxy could motivate studies of distant exoplanets, the researchers hope, which have not been properly considered until now due to the assumed lack of the chemical. The research team now plans to examine other molecular clouds in the far reaches of the Milky Way to see if they contain phosphorus. Their discovery was described in a paper, titled ‘Phosphorus-bearing molecules PO and PN at the edge of the galaxy’, in the scientific journal Nature. Read More Astronomers find unprecedented ‘disc’ around distant planet Astronomers discover new six-planet system China unveils ‘foldable’ Mars helicopter in mission to return samples to Earth China unveils ‘foldable’ Mars helicopter in mission to return samples to Earth New images of Mars released by Nasa’s Odyssey orbiter Scientists find planets moving around in strange ‘rhythm’
2023-11-30 22:55
Get two beginner-friendly Ninja drones for $220 off
TL;DR: The Ninja Dragon Phantom K Pro and Blade X Pro drones are on sale
2023-06-11 17:58
EA Sports FC 24 Trailblazers Promotion Leaked
FC 24 Trailblazers has been leaked as the next major promotion in Ultimate Team seemingly replacing Rulebreakers in this new era for EA Sports.
2023-10-10 22:21
Snag a pair of Beats Studio3 headphones for just $169 right now
SAVE 48%: As of June 20, the Beats Studio3 headphones are on sale at Walmart
2023-06-21 01:24
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