Connect with us

Technology

‘Shazam for whales’ uses AI to track sounds heard in Mariana Trench

Published

on

‘Shazam for whales’ uses AI to track sounds heard in Mariana Trench

A Bryde’s whale surfacing for air

NOAA Fisheries

A mysterious sound emitted from the depths of the Pacific Ocean has finally been identified as a Bryde’s whale. Now, artificial intelligence is helping researchers track the elusive whale species responsible for the call.

The puzzle began in 2014 when researchers recorded a sound resembling a moan followed by metallic pings over the Mariana Trench. “Your average person would not think that it was made by an animal – they would think it was some ship or the [US] Navy,” says Ann Allen at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Advertisement

Years later, additional recordings of the sound, which researchers call a biotwang, were eventually linked to sightings of Bryde’s whales (Balaenoptera brydei) at the nearby Mariana Islands.

Bryde’s whales are large baleen whales that filter huge amounts of krill and fish from the water, but they are rarely seen because they are nearly always on the move. Allen saw an opportunity to track migrating Bryde’s whales by finding similar biotwang sounds in more than 180,000 hours of underwater recordings from NOAA’s network of hydrophones mounted on the Pacific seafloor.

“It’s important any time you can discover a new call type for any species of animal that occurs most of the time out of sight of people because it allows you to use passive acoustic monitoring to detect their presence,” says Caroline Casey at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Advertisement

Given the impracticality of manually sifting through the audio recordings, Allen teamed up with Google researchers who had been developing an AI model to automatically identify vocalisations of multiple whale species. Google trained its AI to categorise different patterns in spectrogram images, which convert sound to a visual form.

The AI was able to identify calls – a bit like the music-identifying app Shazam – by comparing them to the training set. It was successful at identifying calls from eight species: humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, North Pacific right whales, North Atlantic right whales, minke whales, killer whales and Bryde’s whales – you can hear one below.


![endif]–>

The team also found that biotwangs occur most consistently among a specific population of Bryde’s whales in the western Pacific. The patterns of calls also suggest the whales may be following the movements of an ocean boundary of warm and cool water. Called the transition zone chlorophyll front, this region of the ocean has a high concentration of plankton and other prey creatures that act as a moving buffet for whales.

Advertisement

“As climate change advances, we expect more frequent and more extreme El Niño and La Niña events, and we expect this transition zone chlorophyll front to go further north and be more variable,” says Allen. “This means that the whales may have to travel further and work a lot harder to find their food, which can impact the health of the population.”

Topics:

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Technology

The Samsung Galaxy S25 could be announced on January 23 – and the Galaxy S25 Slim might also make an appearance

Published

on

Samsung Galaxy S24 hands on handheld front straight


  • A report suggests the Samsung Galaxy S25 will be unveiled on January 23
  • Samsung is apparently aiming to launch the S25 Slim at the same time
  • A leaker has reiterated that all S25 models will use a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset

The wait for the Samsung Galaxy S25 series could almost be over, as according to a report the S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will all be announced on January 23.

That’s according to South Korean site FNNews (via @Jukanlosreve), citing “industry sources.” It’s a date that makes sense, since based on past form we always expected to see the Galaxy S25 range appear in either January or February.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Thursday, November 14

Published

on

NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Saturday, September 21

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon launches Haul, a direct competitor to Temu and Shein

Published

on

Amazon launches Haul, a direct competitor to Temu and Shein

Amazon is well-known for aggressively battling out its competitors. Earlier this year, a report hinted that the popularity of Temu and Shein has been bothering Amazon and it’s mulling over something big. We now know what it was. Today, Amazon announced “Amazon Haul,” an e-commerce storefront that takes on competitors like Temu, Shein, and more.

Amazon launches Temu competitor, it’s called “Haul”

Amazon Haul allows you to discover and buy even more affordable fashion, home, lifestyle, electronics, and other products. The new e-commerce store offers a variety of products with ultra-low prices. All the products listed on Amazon Haul have a price tag of $20 or less.

You can access Amazon Haul in the Amazon Shopping app or the mobile website by searching “Haul” in the search bar. Amazon Haul can be also accessed by navigating from the main menu icon. If you have ever wondered about getting products for as low as $1, Haul is for you.

You can grab an iPhone 16 case for $1.79 or a three-piece trimmer razor set for DIY slim haircuts for $2.99. Well, these are just two of the examples, there are tons of products that you can grab. In the announcement blog, Amazon notes that orders of $25 or more are eligible for free delivery in one or two weeks. While the orders below $25 will require you to pay a delivery fee of $3.99.

Advertisement

The discount e-commerce store is available to select beta testers in the US

An order of $50 or more can get you a discount of 5%. In addition, you’ll be eligible for a 10% discount on an order value of $75 or more. That’s not all, Amazon Haul offers a native shopping experience, search, cart, and checkout options to the customers.

The mystery behind low prices is that Amazon Haul receives shipments for individual packages directly from China via airfreights. It is a similar practice Haul’s competitor Temu has adopted for a long now. So, if you plan to shop on Amazon Haul, be ready for strict return policies and delayed delivery.

Amazon is now rolling out Haul to select beta users in the US. If you are an eligible beta tester, you should be able to access Amazon Haul after updating the Amazon Shopping app. Moreover, rumors are also there that Amazon is also working on smart glasses for its drivers.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

The Professional Women’s Hockey League will join EA’s NHL 25 this year

Published

on

The Professional Women's Hockey League will join EA's NHL 25 this year

NHL 25 is slated to get a sizable content update at the end of the year. EA that the six teams of the Professional Women’s Hockey League will be added to the game in an update this December. The Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montréal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres will be available to choose in the game’s Play Now, Online Versus, Shootout and Season modes.

This EA sports franchise has been putting more women’s leagues and female players into the spotlight in recent installments. Women’s teams first appeared in NHL 22 back in 2022, and last year NHL 23 showcased Olympic gold medalist of Team Canada on its cover alongside Trevor Zegras of the Anaheim Ducks.

In addition to the December update with the PWHL partnership, NHL 25 is adding an NHL Arcade mode this Friday. In early 2025, the game will also see new content tied to the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off event.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

Atlas.co wants its web-based mapping tool to be the Figma of geospatial data

Published

on

Atlas.co founders

Startup inspiration can strike anywhere. But for Atlas.co*, a freemium browser-based, real-time mapping tool that’s being built by an Oslo, Norway-based team of (initially student) engineers, the realization that there might be a business opportunity in competing with expensive legacy mapping software hit the founders during class.

“When we took introduction class to GIS [geographic information system], half of the class wasn’t able to download it because their computer didn’t meet the requirements of the software,” Fredrik Moger, CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. “That’s a barrier in general, right? And I think if you look… maybe 10 years back, Adobe kind of faced the same issue. And then Figma came on the field.”

Atlas wants to unlock the power of GIS data in a similar way, sidestepping the drag and cost of legacy software by offering a more flexible, user-friendly cloud-based collaboration platform and a software-as-a-service business model that starts at free and scales with usage.

Moger points to other cloud platforms — such as Airtable, Canva and Notion — as also providing the type of collaborative template it wants to bring to doing cool things with GIS data. While, on the legacy mapping side, he name-checks Esri as the main GIS platform competitor.

Advertisement

Google Maps also offers a custom maps features and an API for developers wanting to embed rich interactive maps elsewhere. Though it’s not a full GIS platform. So it is unlikely to be fully featured enough for the B2B users Atlas is going after.

Typical users so far include people working in renewable energy development, urban planning and real-estate, according to Moger. Journalists have also, perhaps unsurprisingly, been among its early users — as maps can be a powerful way to quickly convey information.

Making maps really easy

Running Atlas doesn’t require particularly powerful computer hardware, per Moger. Nor does software need to be downloaded and installed, as everything runs in the browser.

A tile rendering component the team built allows it to stream mapping data from its infrastructure to the user’s browser “very efficiently,” he suggests — and that in turn means no fancy hardware necessary.

Advertisement

On the user interface side, the goal is to maximize accessibility too, by designing a clean and modern software experience that’s easy to pick up. “[What] we are doing with GIS is making it available for everyone,” he said. “I think everyone should be able to build interactive maps and spatial apps really, really easily.”

Atlas was founded in 2021 when the founders were still at university. They bootstrapped during the early phase of the startup, opting to drop out of jobs they had lined up for after university to focus full-time on the startup. They launched the platform in June on Product Hunt. They’ve had close to 20,000 signups across 140+ countries, so far — mostly free users at this early stage, Moger confirms.

The main features currently include a builder tool that lets users build spatial maps and interactive dashboards. It supports data layering, too — where users can upload information to display on maps and use tools to visualize and style the data.

The software also provides spatial analysis tools for automating functionality such as proximity searches, data aggregation and density analysis. Real-time collaboration is baked in as well, with support for things like real-time cursor display to help teams work together on compiling visual location data.

Advertisement

The startup has just closed a $2 million pre-seed round to keep developing the product. So hiring more engineers is top of the team’s to-do list as they focus on continuing to expand Atlas’ feature set.

Moger suggests there’s a growing need for geospatial data analysis visual and storytelling — including as a result of the climate crisis. (One topical example is satellite maps of Valencia, Spain, that have been doing the rounds in the wake of the DANA storm flooding disaster earlier this month, showing before and after shots.)

“With all the climate change that is happening, and all the actions we need to do to fight climate change, a lot of new industries actually need to work more and more with geospatial data,” he suggested. “They currently don’t hold the competence and the skills to work with existing tools. And [those are the] new users or industries that we want to target. That’s who we want to enable to use and work with spatial data.”

Moger explained that, whereas previously only one person on a target team might have served as the in-house GIS expert skilled in using legacy software, the goal with Atlas is to enable multiple team members to collaborate on geospatial data.

Advertisement

The funding is led by European climate-focused VC fund Pale Blue Dot. Other “high profile” investors in the round include Ben Lang (early employee and ex-community lead at Notion), and Andreas Klinger (ex-CTO and founding team
at Product Hunt).

Commenting in a statement, Joel Larsson, partner at Pale Blue Dot, said: “Atlas.co is a significant step toward making spatial data accessible for essential causes like climate action. We’re excited to support a team that views maps not only as data tools but also as catalysts for environmental and social change.”


*Not to be confused with 3D generative AI tool Atlas; Atlas the works benefits tool for global companies; Atlassian’s teams software Atlas; Boston Dynamics’ Atlas the humanoid robot; or VC Sequoia’s interactive map of European tech talent, to name a few of myriad uses of Atlas the term in tech. So it might be time to retire this name tbh.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Technology

Sonos revenue falls in the aftermath of company’s messy app debacle

Published

on

Sonos revenue falls in the aftermath of company’s messy app debacle

Sonos is still trying to climb out from the hole it dug itself earlier this year by recklessly shipping an overhauled mobile app well before the software was actually ready. Today, just a couple weeks after the release of its latest hardware products — the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 — Sonos reported its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings. And the damage done by the app debacle is clear.

Revenue was down 8 percent year over year, which Sonos attributed to “softer demand due to challenging market conditions and challenges resulting from our recent app rollout.” During the quarter, the company sank $4 million into unspecified “app recovery investments.” (Sonos previously estimated it could spend up to $30 million to resolve all of the trouble that has stemmed from the rebuilt app.)

“To date, we have released 16 updates and restored 90 percent of missing features,” the company wrote in its earnings presentation. “Moving forward, we’ll alternate between major and minor releases. This will allow us to maintain our momentum of making improvements while also ensuring adequate beta testing.”

CEO Patrick Spence has taken accountability for the app situation, and last month, Sonos announced multiple commitments that it believes will prevent another colossal misstep like this from happening again. Some aspects of the plan are focused on more rigorous testing and greater transparency — both inside the company and out. But others, like executives potentially losing out on their annual bonuses, have been mocked by customers as meaningless, half-hearted measures.

Advertisement

“The Sonos flywheel remains strong, as evidenced by the fact that the number of new products per home increased in fiscal 2024,” Spence said in today’s press release. The company also reported its “all-time highest annual market share” in home theater, another positive sign at a time when morale among Sonos employees has taken a serious hit.

The rebuilt app is in a better place now, which you’d hope would be the case after several months of bug fixes and performance enhancements. The mood within Sonos community spaces like the company’s subreddit has also improved, with less of the vitriol that felt non-stop (understandably so) from late spring through the early fall.

As far as hardware is concerned, Sonos seems to be getting back on track. Early reviews of the Arc Ultra have been largely positive. (Yes, I’ll have one coming in the near future.) One early bug with the new soundbar affected Trueplay tuning and, for some customers, resulted in lackluster bass response from a paired subwoofer. Sonos just rectified this issue with a software update that went out earlier today.

But some of the company’s most loyal customers are still feeling a sense of wariness and frayed trust towards the brand. Sonos’ next major new product is rumored to be a video streaming box. I’m still flummoxed as to just how the company plans to stand out from competitors in that space. But hopefully there won’t be another major controversy to derail the product, as was the case with the Sonos Ace headphones.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2024 WordupNews.com