LEESBURG, Va., Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT), a leader in bridging the power of classical and quantum computing, announced that its Qatalyst ready-to-run quantum software was selected as one of three finalists for the second and final round of the BMW Group and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Quantum Computing Challenge for the Vehicle Sensor Placement use case.

The Quantum Computing Challenge invited the quantum community to apply innovations in quantum computing to real world problems in industrial applications. The use case problems presented in the challenge represent critical commercial applications that demonstrate the real-world value of quantum computing.

BMW stated that its goal with the challenge is to tap into additional innovative power, inspire new thinking, and create opportunities for quantum builders to work with BMW on meaningful business problems.

The Vehicle Sensor Placement use case challenges participants to find optimal configurations of sensors for a given vehicle so that it can reliably detect obstacles in different driving scenarios using quantum computing or nature-inspired optimization approaches. The number of sensors per car is expected to increase significantly as autonomous driving becomes more common. Vehicles need sensors to gather data from as large a portion of their surroundings as possible, but each sensor adds additional costs, so optimizing the sensor placement uses genetic algorithms. The goal of the challenge is to use quantum computing techniques to optimize the positions of sensors, enabling maximum coverage while keeping costs to a minimum.

This Challenge is yet another step in showcasing quantum computings potential for commercial applications and real-world business problem solving, said Bob Liscouski, CEO of QCI. We are pleased that we have been selected to participate in the final level of competition, and our team will work hard to demonstrate the power of Qatalyst. Regardless of the final outcome, we believe that the applications for quantum computing will significantly increase over the coming years, and QCI is well positioned to be a key player.

About Quantum Computing Inc. Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) (Nasdaq: QUBT) is focused on accelerating the value of quantum computing for real-world business solutions. The companys flagship product, Qatalyst, is the first software to bridge the power of classical and quantum computing, hiding complexity and empowering SMEs to solve complex computational problems today. QCIs expert team in finance, computing, security, mathematics and physics has over a century of experience with complex technologies; from leading edge supercomputing innovations, to massively parallel programming, to the security that protects nations. Connect with QCI on LinkedIn and @QciQuantum on Twitter. For more information about QCI, visit http://www.quantumcomputinginc.com.

About the BMW Group Quantum Computing Challenge The BMW Group Quantum Computing Challengeis open to participants from research groups and companies worldwide. The challenge is organized into two rounds. In the first round, participants need to submit a well-documented concept proposal for one of four use case challenges. In the second and final round, teams with the top three submissions in each use case will be asked to build out their solutions. The final, virtual presentation to the competitions judging panel, including domain experts from BMW and AWS will take place in December. The winners will be announced at theQ2B quantum computing industry conference(Dec. 79).

Important Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forecasts involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the near future. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Quantum Computing (Company), and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements.

The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. Statements in this press release that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements relating to future events, and as such all forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements may contain certain forward-looking statements pertaining to future anticipated or projected plans, performance and developments, as well as other statements relating to future operations and results. Any statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be considered to be forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, believe, anticipate, estimate, intends, goal, objective, seek, attempt, aim to, or variations of these or similar words, identify forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in Item 1A in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, and other factors as may periodically be described in the Companys filings with the SEC.

Qatalyst is the trademark of Quantum Computing Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Company Contact: Robert Liscouski, CEO Quantum Computing, Inc. +1 (703) 436-2161 Email Contact

Investor Relations Contact: Ron Both or Grant Stude CMA Investor Relations +1 (949) 432-7566 Email Contact

Media Relations Contact: Bob Geller Fusion Public Relations +1 (917) 816-0562 qci@fusionpr.com

Continued here:

QCI Qatalyst Selected by BMW Group and Amazon Web Services - GlobeNewswire

COMPUTING

Two of Worlds Biggest Quantum Computers Made in China Charles Q. Choi | IEEE Spectrum scientists in China have tested two different quantum computers on what they say are more challenging tasks than [Googles] Sycamore faced and showed faster results. They note their work points to an unambiguous quantum computational advantage.i

Alternative Rocket Builder SpinLaunch Completes First Test Flight Michael Sheetz | CNBC The company is developing a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method to get off the groundwith a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spinning the rocket at several times the speed of sound before releasing. This is about building a company and a space launch system that is going to enter into the commercial markets with a very high cadence and launch at the lowest cost in the industry, SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney told CNBC.

Scientists Build Tiny Robot That Could Deliver Drugs With Amazing Accuracy Julian Dossett | CNET [A] team of scientists at [ETH Zurich] has built a microrobot thats inspired by the movement of starfish larva. Their yet-to-be-named robot measures just a quarter of a millimeter across and swims through liquid by moving tiny surface hairs, or cilia, found on all kinds of microorganisms, including newborn starfish.

Wind and Solar Could Meet 85 Percent of Current Electricity Needs K. Holt | Engadget Windandsolar powercould meet around 85 percent of US electricity needs, according to a paper published inNature Communications. Batteries, capacity overbuilding and other storage options could increase that figure. A blend of wind and solar power should be enough to meet most of the current energy needs in advanced, industrialized nations, according to the study.

An E. Coli Biocomputer Solves a Maze by Sharing the Work Siobhan Roberts | MIT Technology Review this multitalented bacterium has a new trick: it can solve a classic computational maze problem using distributed computingdividing up the necessary calculations among different types of genetically engineered cells. This neat feat is a credit to synthetic biology, which aims to rig up biological circuitry much like electronic circuitry and to program cells as easily as computers.

Lidar Uncovers Hundreds of Lost Maya and Olmec Ruins Kiona N. Smith | Wired Over the last several years, lidar surveys have revealedtens of thousands of irrigation channels, causeways, and fortresses across Maya territory, which now spans the borders of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Infrared beams can penetrate dense foliage to measure the height of the ground, which often reveals features like long-abandoned canals or plazas.The results have shown that Maya civilization was more extensive, and more densely populated, than we previously realized.

The Long Search for a Computer That Speaks Your Mind Adam Rogers | Wired The trick is to use data from the brain to synthesize speech in real time so users can practice and the machine can learn. New brain computer interface systems are getting there. The endgame, probably half a decade away, will be some unification of accuracy and intelligibility with real-time audio. Thats the common direction all of the groups doing this are going towarddoing it in real time, Anumanchipalli says.i

AR Is Where the Real Metaverse Is Going to Happen Steven Levy | Wired iOur overarching goal is to help bring the metaverse to life, Mark Zuckerberg told his workforce in June. [Niantic CEO John] Hanke hates this idea. Hes read all the science fiction books and seen all the films that first imagined the metaverseall great fun, and allwrong. He believes that his vision, unlikevirtual reality, will make the real world better without encouraging people to totally check out of it.

Image Credit: Shubham Dhage / Unsplash

Read the original here:

This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through November 13) - Singularity Hub

New Jersey, United States,- This Quantum Software market report study describes a productive and motivated sector as well as a market prognosis. Industry players would be able to make smart decisions based on the results of the study. Overall, research is a useful tool for establishing a competitive advantage over competitors and long-term profitability in the existing economy. This Quantum Software market report study provides detailed information on several industrial aspects such as techniques, models and important competitors operating in separate districts. Examiners use point-by-point testing processes to provide accurate and crucial information about the status and progress of the showcase.

Market analysts and researchers have conducted an in-depth analysis of the global bQuantum Software market using research methodologies such as PESTLE and Porter's five forces analysis. They provided accurate and reliable market data and useful recommendations with the aim of helping the players to get an overview of the overall scenario of the present and future market. The report on Quantum Softwares includes an in-depth study of potential segments, including product type, application, and end user, as well as their contribution to the overall market size.

Get | Download Sample Copy with TOC, Graphs & List of [emailprotected]https://www.marketresearchintellect.com/download-sample/?rid=177936

In addition, market revenues based on region and country are provided in the report on Quantum Softwares. The authors of the report also shed light on the common business tactics adopted by actors. The main players in the global bQuantum Software market and their full profiles are included in the report. In addition, investment opportunities, recommendations and current trends in the global Quantum Software market are mapped by the report. Thanks to this report, key players in the global Quantum Software market will be able to make good decisions and plan their strategies accordingly to stay ahead of the curve.

The competitive landscape is an essential aspect that every key player must know. The report highlights the competitive scenario of the global Quantum Software market to know the competition at the national and global levels. The market experts also presented the broad outlines of each major player in the global Quantum Software market, taking into account key aspects such as business areas, production and product portfolio. In addition, the companies in the report are studied according to key factors such as company size, market share, market growth, revenues, production volume and profits.

The major players covered in Quantum Software Markets:

Quantum Software Market Breakdown by Type:

Quantum Software Market breakdown by application:

The Quantum Software market report has been separated according to separate categories, such as product type, application, end-user, and region. Each segment is evaluated on the basis of CAGR, share, and growth potential. In the regional analysis, the report highlights the prospective region, which is expected to generate opportunities in the global Quantum Softwares market in the coming years. This segmental analysis will surely prove to be a useful tool for readers, stakeholders and market participants in order to get a complete picture of the global Quantum Softwares market and its growth potential in the coming years.

Get | Discount On The Purchase Of This Report @ https://www.marketresearchintellect.com/ask-for-discount/?rid=177936

Quantum Software Market Report Scope

Regional market analysis Quantum Software can be represented as follows:

Each regional Quantum Software sectors is carefully studied to understand its current and future growth scenarios. This helps players to strengthen their position. Use market research to get a better perspective and understanding of the market and target audience and ensure you stay ahead of the competition.

The base of geography, the world market of Quantum Software has segmented as follows:

Key questions answered in the report:

For More Information or Query or Customization Before Buying, Visit @ https://www.marketresearchintellect.com/product/global-quantum-software-market-size-forecast/

Visualize Quantum Software Market using Verified Market Intelligence:-

Verified Market Intelligence is our BI-enabled platform to tell the story of this market. VMI provides in-depth predictive trends and accurate insights into more than 20,000 emerging and niche markets to help you make key revenue impact decisions for a brilliant future.VMI provides a comprehensive overview and global competitive landscape of regions, countries, and segments, as well as key players in your market. Showcase your market reports and findings with built-in presentation capabilities, providing more than 70% of time and resources for investors, sales and marketing, R & D, and product development. VMI supports data delivery in Excel and interactive PDF formats and provides more than 15 key market indicators for your market.

Visualize Quantum Software Market using VMI @ hhttps://www.marketresearchintellect.com/mri-intelligence/

The study explores in depth the profiles of the main market players and their main financial aspects. This comprehensive business analyst report is useful for all existing and new entrants as they design their business strategies. This report covers production, revenue, market share and growth rate of the Quantum Software market for each key company, and covers breakdown data (production, consumption, revenue and market share) by regions, type and applications. Quantum Software historical breakdown data from 2016 to 2020 and forecast to 2021-2029.

About Us: Market Research Intellect

Market Research Intellect provides syndicated and customized research reports to clients from various industries and organizations in addition to the objective of delivering customized and in-depth research studies.We speak to looking logical research solutions, custom consulting, and in-severity data analysis lid a range of industries including Energy, Technology, Manufacturing and Construction, Chemicals and Materials, Food and Beverages. Etc Our research studies assist our clients to make higher data-driven decisions, admit push forecasts, capitalize coarsely with opportunities and optimize efficiency by bustling as their belt in crime to adopt accurate and indispensable mention without compromise.Having serviced on the pinnacle of 5000+ clients, we have provided expertly-behaved assert research facilities to more than 100 Global Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Dell, IBM, Shell, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Siemens, Microsoft, Sony, and Hitachi.

Contact us:Mr. Edwyne Fernandes US: +1 (650)-781-4080 UK: +44 (753)-715-0008 APAC: +61 (488)-85-9400 US Toll-Free: +1 (800)-782-1768

Website: https://www.marketresearchintellect.com/

Read the rest here:

Quantum Software Market Size by Top Companies, Trends by Types and Application, Forecast to 2028 | Origin Quantum Computing Technology, D Wave, IBM,...

In a decade and a half, Nvidia has come a long way from its early days as a provider of graphics chips for personal computers and other consumer devices.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia co-founder and chief executive officer, put his sights on the datacenter, pushing GPUs as a way of accelerating HPC applications and the CUDA software development environment as a way of making that happen. Five years later, Huang declared artificial intelligencethe future of computing and that Nvidia would not only enable that, but bet the company on this being the future of software development that AI-enhanced everything would be, in fact, the next platform.

The company has continued to evolve, expanding its hardware and software capabilities aimed at meeting the demands of an ever-changing IT landscape that now includes multiple clouds and the fast-growing edge and, Huang expects, a virtual world of digital twins and avatars, and all of this dependent on the companys technologies.

Nvidia has not been a point product provider for some time, but is now a full-stack platform vendor for this new computing world.

Accelerated computing starts with Nvidia CUDA general-purpose programmable GPUs, Huang said during his keynote address at the companys virtual GTC 2021 event this week. The magic of accelerated computing comes from the combination of CUDA, the acceleration libraries of algorithms that speed-up applications and the distributed computing systems and software that scale processing across an entire datacenter.

Nvidia has been advancing CUDA and expanding the surrounding ecosystem for it for more than fifteen years.

We optimize across the full stack, iterating between GPU, acceleration libraries, systems, and applications continuously, all the while expanding the reach of our platform by adding new application domains that we accelerate, he said. With our approach, end users experience speedups through the life of the product. It is not unusual for us to increase application performance by many X-factors on the same chip over several years. As we accelerate more applications, our network of partners see growing demand for Nvidia platforms. Starting from computer graphics, the reach of our architecture has reached deep into the worlds largest industries. We start with amazing chips, but for each field of science, industry and application, we create a full stack.

To illustrate that, Huang pointed to the more than 150 software development kits that target a broad range of industries, from design to life sciences, and at GTC announced 65 new or updated SDKs touching on such areas as quantum computing, cybersecurity, and robotics. The number of developers using Nvidia technologies has grown to almost three million, increasing six-fold over the past five years. In addition, CUDA has been downloaded 30 million times over 15 years, including seven million times last year.

Our expertise in full-stack acceleration and datacenter-scale architectures lets us help researchers and developers solve problems at the largest scales, he said. Our approach to computing is highly energy-efficient. The versatility of architecture lets us contribute to fields ranging from AI to quantum physics to digital biology to climate science.

That said, Nvidia is not without its challenges. The companys $40 billion bid for Arm is no sure thing, with regulators from the UK and Europe saying they want to take a deeper look at the possible market impacts the deal would create and Qualcomm leading opposition to the proposed acquisition. In addition, the competition in GPU-accelerated computing is heating up, with AMD advancing its capabilities we recently wrote about the companys Aldebaran Instinct MI200 GPU accelerator and Intel last week saying that it expects the upcoming Aurora supercomputer will scale beyond 2 exaflops due in large part to a better-than-expected performance by its Ponte Vecchio Xe HPC GPUs.

Still, Nvidia sees its future in creating the accelerated-computing foundation for the expansion of AI, machine learning and deep learning into a broad array of industries, as illustrated by the usual avalanche of announcements coming out of GTC. Among the new libraries was ReOpt, which is aimed finding the shortest and most efficient routes for getting products and services to their destinations, which can save companies time and money in last-mile delivery efforts.

CuQuantum is another library for creating quantum simulators to validate research in the field while the industry builds the first useful quantum computers. Nvidia has built a cuQuantum DGX appliance for speeding up quantum circuit simulations, with the first accelerated quantum simulator coming to Googles Cirq framework coming in the first quarter 2022. Meanwhile, cuNumeric is aimed at accelerating NumPy workloads, scaling from one GPU to multi-node clusters.

Nvidias new Quantum-2 interconnect (which has nothing to do with quantum computing) is a 400 Gb/sec InfiniBand platform that comprises the Quantum-2 switch, the ConnectX-7 SmartNIC, the BlueField 3 DPU, and features like performance isolation, a telemetry-based congestion-control system and 32X higher in-switch processing for AI training. In addition, nanosecond timing will enable cloud datacenters to get into the telco space by hosting software-defined 5G radio services.

Quantum-2 is the first networking platform to offer the performance of a supercomputer and the shareability of cloud computing, Huang said. This has never been possible before. Until Quantum-2, you get either bare-metal high-performance or secure multi-tenancy. Never both. With Quantum-2, your valuable supercomputer will be cloud-native and far better utilized.

The 7 nanometer InfiniBand switch chip holds 57 billion transistors similar to Nvidias A100 GPU and has 64 ports running at 400 Gb/sec or 128 ports running at 200 Gb/sec. A Quantum-2 system can connect up to 2,048 ports, as compared to the 800 ports with Quantum-1. The switch is sampling now and comes with options for the ConnectX-7 SmartNIC sampling in January or BlueField 3 DPU, which will sample in May.

BlueField DOCA 1.2 is a suite of cybersecurity capabilities that Huang said will make BlueField an even more attractive platform for building a zero-trust architecture by offloading infrastructure software that is eating up as much as 30 percent of CPU capacity. In addition, Nvidias Morpheus deep-learning cybersecurity platform uses AI to monitor and analyze data from users, machines and services to detect anomalies and abnormal transactions.

Cloud computing and machine learning are driving a reinvention of the datacenter, Huang said. Container-based applications give hyperscalers incredible abilities to scale out, allowing millions to use their services concurrently. The ease of scale out and orchestration comes at a cost: east-west network traffic increased incredibly with machine-and-machine message passing and these disaggregated applications open many ports inside the datacenter that need to be secured from cyberattack.

Nvidia has bolstered its Triton Inferencing Server with new support for the Arm architecture; the system already supported Nvida GPUs and X86 chips from Intel and AMD. In addition, version 2.15 of Triton also can run multiple GPU and multi-node inference workloads, which Huang called arguably one of the most technically challenging runtime engines the world has ever seen.

As these models are growing exponentially, particularly in new use cases, theyre often getting too big for you to run on a single CPU or even a single server, Ian Buck, vice president and general manager of Nvidias Tesla datacenter business, said during a briefing with journalists. Yet the demands [and] the opportunities for these large models want to be delivered in real time. The new version of Triton actually supports distributed inference. We take the model and we split it across multiple GPUs and multiple servers to deliver that to optimize the computing to deliver the fastest possible performance of these incredibly large models.

Nvidia also unveiled NeMo Megatron, a framework for training large language models (LLMs) that have trillions of parameters. NeMo Megatron can be used for such jobs as language translation and compute program writing, and it leverages the Triton Inference Server. Nvidia last month unveiled Megatron 530B, a language mode with 530 billion parameters.

The recent breakthrough of large language models is one of the great achievements in computer science, Huang said. Theres exciting work being done in self-supervised multi-modal learning and models that can do tasks that it was never trained on called zero-shot learning. Ten new models were announced last year alone. Training LLMs is not for the faint of heart. Hundred-million-dollar systems, training trillion-parameter models on petabytes of data for months requires conviction, deep expertise, and an optimized stack.

A lot of time at the event was spent on Nvidias Omniverse platform, the virtual environment introduced last year that the company believes will be a critical enterprise tool in the future. Skeptics point to avatars and the like in suggesting that Omniverse is little more than a second coming of Second Life. In responding to a question, Buck said there are two areas where Omniverse is catching on in the enterprise.

The first is digital twins virtual representations of machines or systems that recreate an environment like the work were doing in embedded and robotics and other places to be able to simulate virtual worlds, actually simulate the products that are being built in a virtual environment and be able to prototype them entirely with Omniverse. A virtual setting allows the product development to happen in a way that has been before remotely, virtually around the world.

The other is in the commercial use of virtual agents this is where the AI-based avatars can come in to help with call centers and similar customer-facing tasks.

Read more:

Nvidia Declares That It Is A Full-Stack Platform - The Next Platform

One of the most exciting areas in machine learning right now is reinforcement learning. Its application is found in a diverse set of sectors like data processing, robotics, manufacturing, recommender systems, energy, and games, among others.

What makes reinforcement learning (RL) different from other kinds of algorithms is that it does not depend on historical data sets. It learns through trial and error like human beings.

Understanding its importance, the last few years have seen an accelerated pace in understanding and improving RL. Think of any big name in tech- be it Facebook, Google, DeepMind, Amazon, or Microsoft, they are all investing significant time, money and effort in bringing out innovations in RL.

For robots to be useful to mankind, they need to perform a variety of tasks. But, even training for one task using offline reinforcement learning will take a massive amount of time and huge computational expenditure.

To work on this issue, Google came out with MT-Opt and Actionable Models. While the first one is a multi-task RL system for automated data collection and multi-task RL training, the latter is a data collection mechanism to collect episodes of various tasks on real robots and demonstrates a successful application of multi-task RL. They also help robots to learn new tasks more quickly.

A leader in the reinforcement learning space, DeepMind gave us some unique innovations this year. It released RGB-stacking as a benchmark for vision-based robotic manipulation. Here, DeepMind used reinforcement learning to train a robotic arm to balance and stack objects of different shapes.

The diversity of objects used and the number of empirical evaluations performed made this reinforcement learning-based project unique. The learning pipeline was divided into three stages- training in simulation by using an off-the-shelf RL algorithm, training a new policy simulation with only realistic observations, and lastly, collecting data using this policy on real robots and bringing out an improved policy from this.

The implementation of sequential decision processes is crucial for those working in reinforcement learning. In order to simplify such a process, social media giant Facebook (now Meta) came out with SaLinA just a month back. It is built as an extension of PyTorch and can work in both supervised and unsupervised situations with compatibility options with multiple CPUs and GPUs. Such a method will see usage in systems where large-scale training use cases are involved.

IBM, too, has been active in the reinforcement learning segment in 2021. It released the text-based gaming environment called TextWorld Commonsense (TWC) to work on the problem of infusing RL agents with commonsense knowledge. This method was used to train and evaluate RL agents with a specific commonsense knowledge about objects, their attributes, and affordances. It worked on the issue of sequential decision making by introducing several baseline RL agents.

In the self-supervised learning area, we saw new methodologies coming out. Google released an approach called Reversibility-Aware RL, which adds a separate reversibility estimation component to the self-supervised RL procedure. Google said this method increases the performance of RL agents on several tasks, including the Sokoban puzzle game.

As reinforcement learning has a significant impact on games, in the middle of 2021, we saw DeepMind training agents playing games without intervention with the help of reinforcement learning mechanisms. Though previous innovations by DeepMind like AlphaZero beat world champion programs in Chess, Shogi and Go, they still trained separately on each game, unable to learn a new one without repeating the RL procedure from the beginning.

Through this method, however, the agents were able to react to new conditions with adaptation flexibility to new environments. The core part of this research relied on how deep RL can play a role in training neural networks of the agents.

Google has been working on using RL in the gaming domain. In early 2021, it released Evolving Reinforcement Learning Algorithms, which showed how to learn analytically interpretable and generalisable RL algorithms by using a graph representation and applying optimisation techniques from the AutoML community.

It used Regularized Evolution to evolve a population of the computational graphs over a set of simple training environments. This helped to better RL algorithms in complex environments with visual observations like Atari games.

With so much happening in the RL space, interest in this area is bound to grow among students and the professional community. To cater to the growing demand, Microsoft organised the Reinforcement Learning (RL) Open Source Fest to introduce students to open source reinforcement learning programs and software development.

Researchers from DeepMind teamed up with the University College London (UCL) to offer students a comprehensive introduction to modern reinforcement learning. It intended to give students a detailed understanding of topics like Markov Decision Processes, sample-based learning algorithms, deep reinforcement learning, etc.

Reinforcement learning and its advancements still have a long way to go, but there has been major progress in the last couple of years. Its usage can be a game-changer for certain industries. With more and more research coming in RL, we can expect to see major breakthroughs in the near future.

Sreejani Bhattacharyya is a journalist with a postgraduate degree in economics. When not writing, she is found reading on geopolitics, economy and philosophy. She can be reached at sreejani.bhattacharyya@analyticsindiamag.com

View original post here:

What Happened in Reinforcement Learning in 2021 - Analytics India Magazine

Lost films reappear from time to time and receive their critical due, places in the canon and, occasionally, a measure of popular acclamation. But seldom do we see a cinematic resurrection as astonishing and impressive as that of Mohammad Reza Aslanis Chess of the Wind. Met with critical hostility and audience indifference when it premiered in Tehran in 1976, the ravishing period drama was banned by the Islamic Republic and considered lost until 2014, when the directors son discovered a can containing a print of the film in a junk shop. Now restored under the aegis of Martin Scorseses World Cinema Project, it enters theaters this week as that unlikeliest of revelations:a nearly 50-year-old masterpiece virtually unknown till now.

A poet and production designer who had made short documentaries, Aslani was just 32 when he launched his narrative feature debut with Chess of the Wind (it was shown at last years New York Film Festival as Chess Game of the Wind, a title that makes a bit more sense). Perhaps if hed been older and more established, the film would have received a more attentive and appreciative reception, but its lack of contemporary renown still surprises, because even measured against the Iranian and international cinematic treasures of the 70s, Aslanis vision is still breathtakingly distinctive, an incisively devastating social critique embedded in a complex tale of intrigue, greed, oppression, and murder. The film is also, and perhaps most strikingly, a stylistic tour de force.

The story is set in the early 1920s, the last years of the Qajar dynasty, which had ruled Iran since the 18th century and set new standards of decadence as its end approached. Aslanis film premiered three years before the end of the dynasty that succeeded the Qajars, the Pahlevis, and no doubt Iranian audiences would have understood that the earlier era was meant to implicate the decadence of the current monarchy. In fact, many Iranian films of the 1970s were rife with feelings of gloom, discontent, and dissidence; the shadow of a widely unpopular Shah seemed to loom over the most engaged and daring of his realms artists.

To conjure the Qajars world, the former production designer made the inspired decision to set the films story in a mansion which is almost a character itself, one of the films most important. Sand-colored, with high columns, doors, and windows decorated with bright stained glass, this archetypal Persian pile is not only where the drama occurs; its also, in a sense, what its aboutsince the family inside is in a state of rapid collapse, the house represents both an ungraspable vision of stability as well as the wealth that all crave.

Significantly, that family is without a paterfamilias when the tale begins. The person ostensibly in charge is a tall, dark-haired paraplegic, Lady Aghdas (a stunning performance by Fakhri Khorvash), who spends much of the drama in a large, very mobile wooden wheelchair. Aside from a sympathetic maid servant (the debut film performance of Shohreh Aghdashloo, who later starred in Kiarostamis The Report and won an Oscar nomination for House of Sand and Fog), the Lady is encircled by several human vultures due to the large fortune she has recently inherited from her mother. Chief among these predators is the imposing Hadji Amoo (Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz, the star of Kiarostamis Through the Olive Trees), the Ladys stepfather, who must contend with other male interlopers.

The world Chess of the Wind describes is a hierarchy, typical of sclerotic monarchies, as stratified as a layer cake. At the top are the formality-encased aristocrats, Lady Aghdas circle, including a group of ladies who look like wide-eyed exotic birds perched on a branch at a zoo. Beneath them are peoplemainly mentrying to boost their social status by any means necessary; they are the desperate, driven, thoughtlessly amoral prototypes of many middle-class climbers to come. At the bottom of the scale are servants, musicians, and laborers. Repeatedly throughout the film we see a group of washerwomen laundering clothes in a fountain in front of the mansion and commenting, Greek chorus-style, on the lives in their world; they seem as unhappy as their nominal betters, only for different reasons.

These scenes of the washerwomen are symmetrical compositions, filmed in static unbroken takes from a middle distance, with the mansions faade in the background. When were inside the mansion a similar visual strategy is employed. Aslanis camera often gazes straight-on at the mansions capacious entrance hall with its dual staircases. But however indebted these recurrent symmetrical compositions may be to traditional Persian painting, they also serve an ingenious purpose cinematic purpose since they offset and balance the elegant camera movements that evoke Alsanis admitted admiration for Max Ophls.

Visually, the film is a sumptuous feast from first frame till last. Inspired by Kubricks Barry Lyndon, Houshang Baharlous exquisitely nuanced color cinematography renders the luxurious interiors of the mansions upper floors solely by candlelight or natural light; here, the hues of polished woods, tan walls and expensive fabrics dominate. No less significant in the drama, the houses basement, the lair of crimes and secrets, is painted in hellish reds, purples and blacks. In all of these settings, Alsani uses the devicesuggesting a debt to Bressonof focusing closely on various objects like guns, pearls, or glass jars as they are handled by the characters. The technique, which seems to imbue the inanimate with its own spiritual potency, stresses the materiality of the forces that drive this family tragedy.

Although the twists and turns of the films story sometimes seem opaquethough repeated viewings bring out the dramas complexity and richnessone writer aptly noted that Chess of the Wind is image-driven rather than plot-driven. And the expressiveness of the films visual elements extends to its aural dimension. While the sound design brings a kind of materiality to the breaking of glass, the cawing of crows, and the ticking of clocks, the inventive score by noted composer Sheyda Gharachedaghi embeds hints of traditional Persian music within a startlingly modernistic sonic framework.

Chess of the Wind, which meditates on a society where traditional spiritual and social values are being displaced by a corrosive materialism, emerged from a remarkable decade of moviemaking, 1969-79, known as the Iranian New Wave (a term sometimes erroneously used to refer to more recent Iranian cinema). As Aslanis debts to Luchino Visconti and other Western filmmakers indicate, Iranian auteurs of that era were very aware of the most sophisticated currents in world cinema, even as they strove to develop their own individual and distinctively Persian vernaculars. Despite the brilliance of their work, they are still too little known outside Iran. Perhaps the surprise appearance of Chess of the Wind can lead to the rediscovery of a whole era of little-known masterpieces.

Now playing in select theaters.

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

93 minutes

The rest is here:

Chess of the Wind movie review (2021) - Roger Ebert

The Soul of Chess is the title of a new episode of FBI: International airing tonight (November 2) on CBS. Heres how the episode is described; some photos and a list of guest stars can be found below.

The team investigates an American journalists death by poison after his attempt to meet with an anonymous source in Poland. Also, Kellett takes Forrester to task for being overprotective with her during the mission, on the CBS Original series FBI: INTERNATIONAL, Tuesday, Nov. 2 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

Picture 1 of 15

"The Soul of Chess" - The team investigates an American journalist's death by poison in after his attempt to meet with an anonymous source in Poland. Also, Kellett takes Forrester to task for being overprotective with her during the mission, on the CBS Original series FBI: INTERNATIONAL, Tuesday, Nov. 2 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.Pictured (L-R) Luke Kleintankas Special Agent Scott Forrester and Heida Reed as Special Agent Jamie KellettPhoto: Katalin Vermes CBS2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FBI: International stars Luke Kleintank (Special Agent Scott Forrester), Heida Reed (Special Agent Jamie Kellett), Carter Redwood (Special Agent Andre Raines), Vinessa Vidotto (Special Agent Cameron Vo), and Christiane Paul (Europol Agent Katrin Jaeger).

Guest stars in The Soul of Chess include Magdalena Korpas (Alina Nowak), Aaron Serotsky (Michael Rafferty), Pawel Szajda (Alesky Zielinski), Toni Belafonte (Julianna Blake), Alexander Sokovikov (Piotr Efremov), Tom Hendryk (Henryk Galacki), Kumbi Mushambi (Philip Blake), Nicholas Gauci (Dasha), Jzsef Kovcs Molnr (Choir Director), and Lucas Kristf Halper (Polish Pedestrian).

Read this article:

FBI: International Tonight: "The Soul of Chess" - KSiteTV

There are thousands of games that can be played with a simple deck of cards, but Rob Halifax has found a way to make 52 cards even more versatile with a redesign that lets you play games like chess, checkers, and even d ominoes with the same deck that entertains you for hours on end with Solitaire.

The first thing you notice about the One Deck Game Cards is that the traditional suits and numbers have been pushed to the four corners of the cards. This makes room for additional graphics and symbols in the middle that allow them to be used for far more than just poker. There are small pip markings for dominoes, and chess piece symbols centered in red and black colored dots that also allows the cards to be used to play games like c heckers and backgammon.

The second thing youll notice is that the One Deck cards are no longer rectangular. Theyve instead been cropped to perfect squares (although remain the same width as regular cards), which allows them to be laid out in perfect grids for games like c hess and c heckers. The backs of each card feature a solid black design that can be used to fill in the missing squares of the checkered game board you create. (The white squares are simply the negative space left over.)

G/O Media may get a commission

$59 Off

AirPods Pro With MagSafe

Hear the difference The newly refreshed, 2021 AirPods Pro with MagSafe charging get their first big price cut.

The decks four Joker cards offer instructions on how to lay out and use the other cards for the games you dont typically play with a deck, including measurements so you know how big an area youll need to clean off on a table to accommodate each game. Backgammon could get a little tricky unless youre willing to draw your own game board to use beneath the cards, but the deck also features three sets of six-sided dice which can be endlessly shuffled and used in lieu of regular three-dimensional die.

Halifax has opted for a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help bring his unique One Deck design to gamers, with a modest funding goal of less than $3,000. The campaign has already well surpassed that. Pre ordering one of the decks requires a contribution of about $16 to the campaign with delivery expected sometime in April of next year. But the more decks you preorder, the cheaper the per deck cost gets, and it also expands the number of games you can potentially play.

The usual risks and caveats with crowdfunded products applies here, even for a game made from nothing but printed paper, but this is actually Halifaxs fourth Kickstarter product, and their second one based on playing cards, so they already have good relationships with printers and understand the risks and challenges that go along with it. Theyre also completely up front about the fact were still in the middle of a pandemic, with supply chain and shipping headaches getting worse. So consider the delivery date an ideal scenario, and be prepared for probable delays should you choose to back this Kickstarter.

Read this article:

This Cleverly Designed Deck of Cards Can Turn Into a Chess Board - Gizmodo

BEMIDJI -- The Bemidji Parks and Recreation Department will offer a three-session Chat from the Mat Yoga Class, with the first class to be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 3, at the Historic Carnegie Library.

Instructor Angie Clark will help participants build arm strength with chaturanga dandasana or four-limbed staff pose, and urdhva mukha svanasana, or upward facing dog, to gain confidence and balance for the peak pose, bakasana or crow.

Participating in an asana demos can help attendees find more comfort, stability and ease in postures that require upper body strength, a release said. After the 30-minute asana workshop, there will be a 60-minute flow class with centering, warm-ups, sun salutations, standing poses, backbends, twists, forward folds, warm-down, savasana, pranayama and meditation.

Related: More programs hosted by city of Bemidji Parks and Recreation Department

Additional classes will take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 10 and Nov. 17. The cost to participate is $47 per person for the three-week session.

The classes have a maximum of 10 participants. To register, visit http://www.ci.bemidji.mn.us. For more information, call (218) 333-1859.

Read the original post:
Parks and Rec offers Chat from the Mat yoga class series - Bemidji Pioneer

Rehoboth Beach Yoga announced that Sandy Mati Gilbertwill be teaching a 12-week yoga and meditation series from 3 to 4 p.m., Sundays, beginning Nov. 7, at the studio at20245 Bay Vista Road, Rehoboth Beach.

Each class will be 90 minutes and will include both asana poses and meditation. Masks are required unless one provides proof of vaccination.

Gilbert is a certified Svaroopa Yoga teacher and a certified Svaroopa Vidya Meditation teacher, trained under the leadership of Gurudevi Nirmalananda Saraswati, spiritual leader and master teacher at Svaroopa Vidya Ashram in Pennsylvania.

The goal of this style of class is to open participants spines and minds, and to take them into meditation. To accomplish this goal, the class is offered as a 12-week course and participants sign up for the entire program. The cost is $180 payable in full or two installments of $90 each. Register by Nov. 5 and pay only $165 - a $15 savings. To register, go to rby.punchpass.com/series/18109. For information, call Sandy at 302-381-2310 or email sandy@rehobothbeachyoga.com.

Since this is a series, continued attendance is important and it is mandatory to attend the first class. Each week builds on the poses and meditation instruction provided in previous weeks. Attending all classes will take each participant to a step deeper to experience the knowingness of their own inner essence.

In her teachings, Gilbert shares her enthusiasm and personal experience of the transformative power of Svaroopa Yoga and Svaroopa Vidya Meditation.

Follow this link:
Yoga and meditation series to start Nov. 7 - CapeGazette.com