NewsBrief November 5, 2021

How much does the James Webb Space Telescope cost?

(The Planetary Society) The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to cost NASA $9.7 billion over 24 years. Of that amount, $8.8 billion was spent on spacecraft development between 2003 and 2021; $861 million is planned to support five years of operations. Adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars, the lifetime cost to NASA will be approximately $10.8 billion. That is only NASA’s portion. The European Space Agency provided the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and two of the four science instruments for an estimated cost of €700 million. The Canadian Space Agency contributed sensors and scientific instrumentation, which cost approximately CA$200 million. Read More

Machine learning and AI may help 5G cloud providers detect sophisticated attacks — NSA

(fedscoop) Artificial intelligence and machine learning systems may help 5G cloud providers detect the presence of sophisticated attackers and other security incidents, according to new guidance from the National Security Agency. In a report published on Thursday, the intelligence agency said that while technology providers would have to balance data confidentiality requirements with the ability to inspect network traffic, sophisticated real-time continuous monitoring may be crucial in detecting the malicious use of cloud resources. Read More

Marine Corps will use AI to revamp recruiting and retention models

(DefenseNews) WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps needs a different kind of Marine to succeed in a future fight: older and more cognitively mature, cross-trained to juggle a variety of roles and missions, tech-savvy. And the service plans to cultivate a corps full of these types of warriors with the help of artificial intelligence and data analytics tools. Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger released a Talent Management 2030 report Wednesday that outlines new ideas on staffing the service to better meet the needs of the next decade. Read More

Solving complex learning tasks in brain-inspired computers

(ScienceDaily) Developing a machine that processes information as efficiently as the human brain has been a long-standing research goal towards true artificial intelligence. An interdisciplinary research team at Heidelberg University and the University of Bern (Switzerland) led by Dr Mihai Petrovici is tackling this problem with the help of biologically-inspired artificial neural networks. Spiking neural networks, which mimic the structure and function of a natural nervous system, represent promising candidates because they are powerful, fast, and energy-efficient. One key challenge is how to train such complex systems. The German-Swiss research team has now developed and successfully implemented an algorithm that achieves such training. Read More

Air Force Financial Management developing new acquisition strategy as part of IT modernization push

(Federal News Network) The Air Force’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Financial Management and Comptroller (FM) wants to get away from paying all the IT contract service fees it currently pays to the General Services Administration. Jeanette Duncan, chief information officer for FM, said it’s the next big push in the IT modernization strategy she’s been overseeing since she took over as CIO of the office. “I’ve spent the last, I want to say, four months — it feels probably longer — gathering the data points for where we as an FM community are spending our money on it,” Duncan said during an October 29 AFCEA Luncheon. Read More

DISA looks to spur enterprise data access, sharing with new CDO Office

(fedscoop) The Department of Defense‘s IT support agency has established an Office of the Chief Data Officer to enhance the sharing and integration of data across the organization — and the wider DOD — to better put the information that warfighters need “at their fingertips.” The Defense Information Systems Agency stood up its Office of the Chief Data Officer about seven months ago as part of its larger restructuring to think about how the agency can more effectively leverage its data as a strategic asset, Caroline Kuharske, DISA’s deputy chief data officer, said last week at AFCEA’s annual TechNet conference. Read More

AIoT: the Perfect Union Between the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence

(iot for all) Imagine Industrial IoT as the nervous system of a company: it is a network of sensors that collects valuable information from all corners of a production plant and stores it in a repository for data analysis and exploitation. This network is necessary to measure and obtain data in order to make informed decisions. But what happens next? what should we do with all that data? We always talk about making good decisions based on reliable information, but although it may sound obvious, it is not always that easy to achieve that goal. In this article, we will go a bit beyond IoT and will focus on the data and how to leverage it with AIoT and data analytics. Read More

NASA’s Juno: Science Results Offer First 3D View of Jupiter Atmosphere

(NASA) New findings from NASA’s Juno probe orbiting Jupiter provide a fuller picture of how the planet’s distinctive and colorful atmospheric features offer clues about the unseen processes below its clouds. The results highlight the inner workings of the belts and zones of clouds encircling Jupiter, as well as its polar cyclones and even the Great Red Spot. Researchers published several papers on Juno’s atmospheric discoveries today in the journal Science and the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Additional papers appeared in two recent issues of Geophysical Research Letters. Read More

‘Balding’ black holes prove Einstein right again on general relativity

(space.com) A new physics breakthrough shows how Einstein’s theory of general relativity continues to hold up, even for “balding” black holes. Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity’s pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from being dragged in and “eaten.” Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted the existence of black holes and that, no matter what such an object “eats,” black holes are characterized only by their mass, spin and electrical charge. Astrophysicists refer to this as the “no-hair” theorem. Read More

Enormous ‘shipyard’ of ancient galaxies discovered 11 billion light-years away

(space.com) Astronomers have discovered a massive “shipyard” where galaxies are built, similar to the one our Milky Way grew up in. The giant structure, called a protocluster, contains more than 60 galaxies and is 11 billion light-years from Earth, so far away that scientists are observing a part of the universe that is only 3 billion years old. Researchers released a paper on the protocluster named G237 in January, but its existence has now been confirmed by an international team of astronomers, who published their follow-up findings on Oct. 26 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Read More