Home BlogWeekly News 10 Bits: The Data News Hotlist

10 Bits: The Data News Hotlist

by Morgan Stevens
by
Stained glass windows

This week’s list of top data news highlights covers March 4, 2023 to March 10, 2023 and includes articles on launching an autonomous drone delivery network and designing stained glass windows with augmented reality.

1. Generating Writing
Grammarly, a U.S.-based writing technology company, has announced that it will soon expand its AI-powered proofreading offerings to include tools that suggest AI-generated text. The tool will attempt to create text that matches users’ voices, styles, intents, and writing context.

2. Enhancing Park Operations
The Seoul Metropolitan Government has deployed three autonomous robots in Seoul Botanic Park to improve visitors’ experiences. The robots can offer information about the park and plants while traveling along a guided path, make announcements about when it is closing time, and relay live footage of the park to security personnel.

3. Creating a Municipal Budget
ClearGov, a U.S.-based government technology company, has launched a new ChatGPT-powered tool to help municipalities create budgets. The tool uses data on past budgets, future estimates, and current figures to craft a budget book that includes text annotations on spending.

4. Walking in a Fashion Show
Spot the robot dog, an autonomous quadruped robot created by U.S.-based robotics company Boston Dynamics, has performed in a fashion show centered on the coexistence of humans and machines. Spot walked alongside human models in French brand Coperni’s fashion week show.

5. Estimating Tree Carbon Density
An international team of researchers has estimated the amount of carbon held in trees in Africa’s Sahel, Saharan, and Sudanian dryland zones. The team used an AI system to analyze around 326,000 satellite images and found that the regions had more trees than previously expected but that the trees collectively held less carbon than past prediction models suggested.

6. Tracking Opioid Use Disorders
Ohio has launched a dashboard to track opioid use disorder, overdoses, and treatment in the state. Policymakers, public health officials, and researchers can use the dashboard to view data on 55 opioid-related measures, such as distribution of medications that reverse opioid overdoses, such as naloxone, and the number of overdoses treated in emergency departments.

7. Celebrating International Women’s Day
U.K.-based social media copywriter Francesca Lawson and software consultant Ali Fensome updated their AI system that quotes tweets from U.K.-based companies acknowledging International Women’s Day with data on their pay gap. For International Women’s Day this year, the AI system included data on how organizations’ pay gaps have changed since last year and took requests for specific companies that may not have posted a tweet.

8. Delivering Orders
Wing, a U.S.-based drone company, has announced plans to launch an autonomous drone delivery network. The company’s drones will pick up orders from stores’ curbsides, deliver goods to customers, and return to a nearby drone hub to recharge.

9. Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have created an AI system that can detect Alzheimer’s disease in brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs) with over 90 percent accuracy. The team trained the system with over 11,000 MRIs from over 2,300 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and nearly 27,000 MRIs from over 8,400 patients without Alzheimer’s disease.

10. Designing Stained Glass Windows
The Washington National Cathedral has created an augmented reality-powered app that lets users create their own stained glass windows. Users can sketch their windows on a piece of paper, take a picture of them with the app, and point their phone towards the National Cathedral’s stained glass windows. The app will then use augmented reality to display users’ windows on top of the current windows.

Image credit: Flickr user Richard BURGER

You may also like

Show Buttons
Hide Buttons