The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) has developed NNCodec, a new software that allows compressing neural networks to a fraction of their size without loss of accuracy. For non-commercial use only, NNCodec is now available as a free download via the software development platform GitHub. NNCodec specifically addresses research groups and development teams in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it provides a powerful and standard-compliant solution. Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it provides a powerful and standard-compliant solution. NNCodec…
… of deep-ultraviolet laser diode at room temperature. A research group led by 2014 Nobel laureate Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University’s Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS) in central Japan, in collaboration with Asahi Kasei Corporation, has successfully conducted the world’s first room-temperature continuous-wave lasing of a deep-ultraviolet laser diode (wavelengths down to UV-C region). These results, published in Applied Physics Letters, represent a step toward the widespread use of a technology with the potential for a wide…
In severe epilepsies, surgical intervention is often the only remedy – usually with great success. While neuropsychological performance can recover in the long term after successful surgery, on rare occasions, unexpected declines in cognitive performance occur. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now been able to show which patients are at particularly high risk for this. Their findings have been published in the journal “Annals of Neurology.” They may help identify affected individuals for whom surgery should be avoided….
The existence of carbonic acid has long been the subject of debate: theoretically real, but practically impossible to detect. That is because the compound decomposes at the Earth’s surface. A German-Chinese team of researchers working at the FRM II Research Neutron Source at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now made the crystalline structure of carbonic acid molecules visible for the first time. Everyone believes that they know it, but it has remained one of the biggest secrets in…
Insights into a “hot” microbe that can grow on nitrogen while producing methane. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology have successfully enhanced cultivation of a microorganism that can fix nitrogen (N2) while producing methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) and investigated exciting details of its metabolism. Carbon and nitrogen are essential elements of life. Some organisms take up key positions for the cycling of both of them – among them Methanothermococcus thermolithotrophicus. Behind the complicated name hides a…
Researchers find new transport route for carbonaceous material from productive Arctic marginal seas to the deep sea. Every year, the cross-shelf transport of carbon-rich particles from the Barents and Kara Seas could bind up to 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the Arctic deep sea for millennia. In this region alone, a previously unknown transport route uses the biological carbon pump and ocean currents to absorb atmospheric CO2 on the scale of Iceland’s total annual emissions, as researchers from…
Researchers at The University of Queensland have used satellites with radar imaging sensors to see through clouds and map flooding and say the technique could provide faster, more detailed information to keep communities safe. Professor Noam Levin from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said the project combined images from optical satellites with information from imaging radar satellites. “Monitoring floods in towns and cities is challenging, with flood waters often rising and then receding in a few days,” Professor Levin said. “While…
Gadgets that emit small electrical pulses can drastically cut the number of sharks and stingrays caught accidentally on fishing lines, new research shows. A new device called SharkGuard attaches to longline fishing rigs to scare off sharks and rays. In the study, carried out on French boats fishing for tuna, lines fitted with SharkGuard reduced bycatch (accidental catching) of blue sharks by 91% and stingrays by 71%. Catch of the target species, bluefin tuna, also appeared to decline, but further…
Researchers from Dresden and Vienna reveal link between connectivity of three-dimensional structures in tissues and the emergence of their architecture to help scientists engineer self-organising tissues that mimic human organs. Organs in the human body have complex networks of fluid-filled tubes and loops. They come in different shapes and their three-dimensional structures are differently connected to each other, depending on the organ. During the development of an embryo, organs develop their shape and tissue architecture out of a simple group…
New study shows that particles from central South America were the main source of iron in the South Pacific during the last two glacial periods. Dust from the dry Puna Plateau in northwestern Argentina was an important source of iron for the nutrient-deficient South Pacific in the last two glacial cycles – especially at the beginning of these cycles. This was the key finding of a study presented in science journal PNAS by a team of researchers led by geochemist…
A multi-institution research team has developed an optical chip that can train machine learning hardware. THE SITUATION Machine learning applications skyrocketed to $165B annually, according to a recent report from McKinsey. But, before a machine can perform intelligence tasks such as recognizing the details of an image, it must be trained. Training of modern-day artificial intelligence (AI) systems like Tesla’s autopilot costs several million dollars in electric power consumption and requires supercomputer-like infrastructure. This surging AI “appetite” leaves an ever-widening…
… show potential for making larger structures. Researchers make progress toward groups of robots that could build almost anything, including buildings, vehicles, and even bigger robots. Researchers at MIT have made significant steps toward creating robots that could practically and economically assemble nearly anything, including things much larger than themselves, from vehicles to buildings to larger robots. The new work, from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), builds on years of research, including recent studies demonstrating that objects such…
550-million-year-old creatures’ message to the present. Earth is currently in the midst of a mass extinction, losing thousands of species each year. New research suggests environmental changes caused the first such event in history, which occurred millions of years earlier than scientists previously realized. Most dinosaurs famously disappeared 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. Prior to that, a majority of Earth’s creatures were snuffed out between the Permian and Triassic periods, roughly 252 million years…
Measuring the position and topography of the earth’s crust is critical for understanding earthquake risk. Now, researchers led by the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have developed a novel method for monitoring the position of the seafloor with a drone-based observation device that could revolutionize oceanographic observation. Changes in the earth’s surface occur as a result of tectonic forces accumulating in the crust, a process called crustal deformation. When forces that are exerted on the crust (stress)…
Theory-guided development of an easier, more versatile process for synthesizing unsymmetric ligands provides new avenues of exploration in transitional metal catalysis. Researchers at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have discovered the key to synthesizing a molecular tool that could greatly expand the variety of catalytic reactions possible with transition metals. The team has taken a well-established set of compounds that can be used to make transition metal catalysts and developed a simple, radical-based reaction for creating…
– from contact lenses to latex gloves. Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new technique for directly printing electronic circuits onto curved and corrugated surfaces. The work paves the way for a variety of new soft electronic technologies, and researchers have used the technique to create prototype “smart” contact lenses, pressure-sensitive latex gloves, and transparent electrodes. “There are many existing techniques for creating printed electronics using various materials, but limitations exist,” says Yong Zhu, corresponding author of…
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