A new AI program observed physical phenomena and uncovered relevant variables–a necessary precursor to any physics theory. But the variables it discovered were unexpected. Energy, Mass, Velocity. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing…
When communication lines are open, individual agents such as robots or drones can work together to collaborate and complete a task. But what if they aren’t equipped with the right hardware or the signals are blocked, making communication impossible? University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers started with this more difficult challenge. They developed a method to train multiple agents to work together using multi-agent reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence. “It’s easier when agents can talk to each other,” said…
Liquid film can function as optical memory, enabling new architectural horizons for nanoscale neuromorphic computing. Sunlight sparkling on water evokes the rich phenomena of liquid–light interaction, spanning spatial and temporal scales. While the dynamics of liquids have fascinated researchers for decades, the rise of neuromorphic computing has sparked significant efforts to develop new, unconventional computational schemes based on recurrent neural networks, crucial to supporting wide range of modern technological applications, such as pattern recognition and autonomous driving. As biological neurons…
International research team manipulates mobile devices with “Ghost Touch”. Touch screens on mobile devices can be attacked and manipulated via charging cables and power supply units. This is what researchers at the System Security Lab at TU Darmstadt have discovered together with a Chinese research team. Several smartphones and standalone touchscreen panels could be compromised in practical tests by simulated touches, the “ghost touches”. The results were presented at this year’s “IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.” The researchers from…
For decades computers have been synonymous with binary information – zeros and ones. Now a team at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, realized a quantum computer that breaks out of this paradigm and unlocks additional computational resources, hidden in almost all of today’s quantum devices. We all learn from early on that computers work with zeros and ones, also known as binary information. This approach has been so successful that computers now power everything from coffee machines to self-driving cars…
West Virginia is now on its way toward launching the state’s second small satellite. A team from West Virginia University and the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium is poised to turn that achievement into a massive boost for the aerospace industry statewide by taking the first steps toward opening the West Virginia Small Satellite Center of Excellence. The SmallSat Center will work with businesses and other organizations to develop West Virginia’s second small satellite and to help those partners offer services…
Many industries are ready to break new ground in production with lasers. To do this, users and suppliers must reconcile digitalization and sustainability, ecology and economy. As an important means to this end, lasers can be integrated into the emerging process chains so that they interact with the entire upstream and downstream processes, saving both time and money. The more than 520 participants at the AKL’22 International Laser Technology Congress in Aachen learned how the laser community is already proactively…
Discovery of a short-lived state could lead to faster and more energy-efficient computing devices. The Science For the first time, researchers have used ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), an ultrafast camera for detecting tiny atomic movements, to observe a quantum electronic device as it operates. The electronic device in this research is a custom-designed miniature switch made of vanadium dioxide. This material can switch between electrically insulating and conducting states. The researchers toggled the switches electrically while taking snapshots that showed…
Virtual spinal cord is continuously optimized. Like a newborn animal, a four-legged robot stumbles around during its first walking attempts. But while a foal or a giraffe needs much longer to master walking, the robot learns to move forward fluently in just one hour. A computer program acts as the artificial presentation of the animal’s spinal cord, and learns to optimize the robot’s movement in a short time. The artificial neural network is not yet ideally adjusted at the beginning,…
Researchers at Simon Fraser University have made a crucial breakthrough in the development of quantum technology. Their research, published in Nature today, describes their observations of over 150,000 silicon ‘T centre’ photon-spin qubits, an important milestone that unlocks immediate opportunities to construct massively scalable quantum computers and the quantum internet that will connect them. Quantum computing has enormous potential to provide computing power well beyond the capabilities of today’s supercomputers, which could enable advances in many other fields, including chemistry,…
Columbia Engineers build a robot that learns to understand itself, rather than the world around it. As every athletic or fashion-conscious person knows, our body image is not always accurate or realistic, but it’s an important piece of information that determines how we function in the world. When you get dressed or play ball, your brain is constantly planning ahead so that you can move your body without bumping, tripping, or falling over. We humans acquire our body-model as infants,…
… using the organic electro-optic polymer for visible light. [Highlights] – Development of an optical modulator using the organic electro-optic polymer operated in visible light – Significantly shorter wavelength and higher efficiency (smaller size and lower voltage) than conventional optical modulators for near-infrared light – Application to next generation display devices such as stereoscopic displays and smart glasses [Abstract] The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) has successfully developed a highly efficient optical modulator…
Quantum memories are one of the building blocks of the future quantum internet. Without them, it would be rather impossible to transmit quantum information over long distances and expand into a real quantum network. These memories have the mission of receiving the quantum information encoded in a photon in the form of qubits, store it and then retrieve it. Quantum memories can be realized in different material systems, for example ensembles of cold atoms or doped crystals. In order to…
Researchers develop user-friendly software system to optimize biological systems. Machine learning is transforming all areas of biological science and industry, but is typically limited to a few users and scenarios. A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology led by Tobias Erb has developed METIS, a modular software system for optimizing biological systems. The research team demonstrates its usability and versatility with a variety of biological examples. Though engineering of biological systems is truly indispensable in…
Data centers — dedicated spaces for storing, processing and disseminating data — enable everything from cloud computing to video streaming. In the process, they consume a large amount of energy transferring data back and forth inside the center. With demand for data growing exponentially, there is increasing pressure for data centers to become more energy efficient. Data centers house servers, high-powered computers that talk to each other through interconnects, which are physical connections that allow for the exchange of data….
The new frontier for self-driving vehicles and portable devices in a chip. ‘Light’ features a study by the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. A study by the Politecnico di Milano, conducted together with Stanford University, the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and the University of Glasgow and published in the prestigious journal Light: Science & Applications, has found a way to separate and distinguish optical beams even if they are superimposed and the…
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