OER Resources
Paris Museums Put 100,000 Images Online for Unrestricted Public Use
Paris Musées, a collection of 14 museums in Paris have recently made high-res digital copies of 100,000 artworks freely available to the public on their collections website. Artists with works in the archive include Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Cézanne, and thousands of others. From Hyperallergic:
Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.
“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” reads a press release shared by Paris Musées
https://kottke.org/20/01/paris-museums-put-100000-images-online-for-unrestricted-public-use
The Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million Images in the Public Domain
The archive includes hi-res images of Muhammad Ali's boxing gear, 15th-century manuscripts, and data that could help surface untold stories of women in science.
A Charlie Parker alto sax. The original patent model for the Singer sewing machine. Around 75,000 specimens of bees. All of these live in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution, the sprawling cultural organization that comprises 19 museums, nine research centers, and one 163-acre zoo. As of this week, images of these artifacts, part of a trove of 2.8 million digital pictures and 3-D models, will be in the public domain for the first time under the Smithsonian's new Open Access program.
NASA's new image library consolidates imagery spread across 60 collections into one searchable locations.
Robots and AI
IBM wants to make computers fluent in human
New York (CNN Business)
IBM is commercializing a new technology that makes it easier for computers to understand human communication.
Artificial intelligence systems have taken on a growing role in business as their abilities to process and learn from large quantities of data have improved. But they have struggled to understand the kinds of nuances that appear in everyday communication among people.
IBM (IBM) is adding new tools to its AI system, Watson, which can address that problem and better understand human language. The "natural language processing" technology was developed for IBM Research's Project Debater, the AI machine that became the first to compete against a world class human debater last year.
To hold its own in a debate, Project Debater needed to have the ability to listen to its opponent, understand his or her argument and formulate a response rapidly, all without internet access. That meant the computer needed to be able to identify and make sense of colloquialisms and idioms — as well as certain dialects or industry-specific terms — such as "open a can of worms" or "hardly helpful" (previously, an AI system might think someone was actually opening a can of worms).
Scientists Develop World’s First ‘Living Robot’ Using Frog Cells & AI
Researchers have managed to create mobile living robots using enhanced stem cells extracted from a frog’s embryos.
The Xenobots measure 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) and can move freely, pick up small objects, and even heal themselves after inflicting an injury, according to the study.
Scientists repurposed the cells from the frog’s skin and assembled them into bodies designed by a supercomputer running evolutionary AI.
While these Xenobots will have uses way beyond the medical field, the researchers hope to use living robots for transporting medicines inside a patient’s body and learn more about cellular communication.
“These are novel living machines…They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism,” said researcher Joshua Bongard, a robotics expert from the University of Vermont.
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