Machine learning & AI

Tech giants jockey for position at dawn of AI age

Whether they sell smartphones, ads or computer chips, the heavyweights of Silicon Valley have everything to prove to investors looking to see who is best placed in the race to dominate the generative artificial intelligence ...

Software

New tool automates the formal verification of systems software

Formal systems verification, which mathematically proves that code is secure in all circumstances, is a relatively new technology. Software is getting more complex and harder to get right using traditional software testing ...

Business

Alibaba plans to list logistics arm in Hong Kong IPO

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said Tuesday it intends to spin off its logistics arm Cainiao through an initial public offering in Hong Kong as the firm undergoes a massive restructuring.

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Cloud

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. A cloud is also a visible mass attracted by gravity, such as masses of material in space called interstellar clouds and nebulae. Clouds are studied in the nephology or cloud physics branch of meteorology.

On Earth the condensing substance is typically water vapor, which forms small droplets or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths. They thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the gases, hence the gray or even sometimes dark appearance at the base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may appear colored accordingly. In the near-infrared range, clouds look darker because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA