Turkey has recently begun using a new type of drone in its military operations, which constitutes a new addition to its fleet of unmanned aircraft systems operating in the field.
The past few days witnessed the entry of the Alpine helicopter into its military operations against terrorist organizations for the first time.
Video footage from the Turkish army's operational areas showed the Alpine drone being used as it performed logistical support roles for the operating forces.
It is known that the Turkish army has acquired Alpine drone systems, but this is the first time they are being used on the battlefield, which constitutes a new addition to Turkey's fleet of unmanned aircraft systems.
In this context, Turkish defense industry researcher Kadir Dogan points out that Turkey's medium- and high-altitude aircraft products have become among the best in the world.
Dogan adds that Turkey has begun to be interested in two basic types of unmanned aircraft systems, namely systems with rotary wings and unmanned systems "under the clouds", especially since the role of both types is noticeably increasing in the military field.
While Turkey has a number of companies that produce “under the clouds” drone systems, Dogan notes that the rotary-wing drone systems sector does not have this number of companies, and Tetra, which produces Alpine systems, is one of these companies.
Researcher Dogan points out that rotary-wing systems are distinguished by several advantages, most notably the ease of taking off and landing from mobile and fixed platforms, high payload capacity, in addition to mobility in difficult weather conditions.
He adds that these features clearly appear when used at sea and on marine platforms, as fixed-wing drones do not have the flexibility of rotary-wing systems.
Google : Creates an artificial intelligence tool that predicts the risk of millions of genetic mutations
The vice president of research at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, has unveiled a tool that predicts whether genetic mutations can cause diseases, a breakthrough in research related to rare diseases.
Researchers from a Google subsidiary that specializes in artificial intelligence have unveiled a tool that predicts whether genetic mutations will cause diseases or not, in an achievement related to research related to rare diseases.
Pushmeet Kohli, Vice President of Research at DeepMind, said during a press conference on Tuesday that this innovation is “a new step towards understanding the effects that artificial intelligence technology has on natural sciences.”
The tool dealt with mutations called “missense” because they represent a change in only one letter of the genetic code, which makes them capable of changing the function of proteins, knowing that every cell accomplishes its function with the help of proteins that constantly provide their instructions.
An individual has about 9,000 of these mutations, most of which are benign, according to the company, but some of them can cause diseases, including cystic fibrosis.
To date, four million of these mutations have been observed in humans, but only 2% of them are classified as either disease-causing or benign.
In total, DeepMind's AlphaMessence tool reviewed 71 million possible mutations, and it was able to predict 89% of them.
The tool gave each mutation a score between 0 and 1 to indicate its likelihood of being disease-causing. The result was that 57% of the mutations were likely to be benign and 32% to be disease-causing. The nature of the remaining mutations is uncertain.
The database was made available to the public and various scientists, while a study was published Tuesday in the prestigious journal Science to present this data.
"Superior performance"
In an article published in Science magazine, experts Joseph Marsh and Sarah Tishman confirmed that "Alpha Messens" outperforms existing tools.
Scientist Jin Cheng from DeepMind explained that the tool does not determine what type of disease the mutations will cause, adding: “But we believe that our predictions are useful for raising the diagnosis rate of rare diseases, and perhaps to help us find new genes associated with diseases.”
The researchers noted that this could indirectly lead to new treatments, but they cautioned against using the tool exclusively to make diagnoses.
The AlphaMessence tool was based on AlphaFold, another machine learning program that DeepMind introduced more than two years ago, which has made it possible to publish the largest protein database.