Saturday 15 June 2019

With lions, elephants, Airbnb goes all-in on adventure tours

A new category of adventure travel—from tracking lions in Kenya to walking with elephants in Thailand—is now on the menu at Airbnb as the home-sharing startup expands its offerings.

* This article was originally published here

Connecting the dots between voice and a human face

Once again, artificial intelligence teams tease the realm of the impossible and deliver surprising results. This team in the news figured out what a person's face may look like just based on voice. Welcome to Speech2Face. The research team found a way to reconstruct some people's very rough likeness based on short audio clips.

* This article was originally published here

Empirical energy consumption model quantifies Bitcoin's carbon footprint

Researchers have conducted the first analysis of Bitcoin power consumption based on empirical data from IPO filings and localization of IP addresses. They found that the cryptocurrency's carbon emissions measure up to those of Kansas City—or a small nation. The study, published June 12 in the journal Joule, suggests that cryptocurrencies contribute to global carbon emissions, an issue that must be considered in climate change mitigation efforts.

* This article was originally published here

CDC opens emergency operations center for Congo Ebola outbreak

(HealthDay)—The United States is stepping up its response to a historic outbreak of Ebola in two African nations. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its Emergency Operations Center Thursday to assist in the government's response to the second-largest outbreak of Ebola on record.

* This article was originally published here