There may be a new artificial intelligence-driven tool to turbocharge scientific discovery: virtual labs.
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What’s the lifetime of a Dyson megaswarm?
In 2015, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and colleagues announced the discovery of unusual light fluctuations coming from a star about 1,500 light-years away. It came to be known as “Tabby’s star” or “Boyajian’s star,” and the peculiar alterations in the light transmitted to Earth quickly drew attention.
A bolt is born: Atmospheric events underpinning lightning strikes explained
Though scientists have long understood how lightning strikes, the precise atmospheric events that trigger it within thunderclouds have remained a perplexing mystery. The mystery may now be solved, thanks to a team of researchers led by Victor Pasko, professor of electrical engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, that has revealed the powerful chain reaction that triggers lightning.
AI-powered headgear promises sharper focus from the comfort of home
A personalized brain stimulation system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can safely enhance concentration from home has been developed by researchers from the University of Surrey, the University of Oxford and Cognitive Neurotechnology. Designed to adapt to individual characteristics, the system could help people improve focus during study, work, or other mentally demanding tasks.
Published in npj Digital Medicine, the study is based on a patented approach that uses non-invasive brain stimulation alongside adaptive AI to maximize its impact.
The technology uses transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS)—a gentle and painless form of electrical brain stimulation—and an AI algorithm that learns to personalize stimulation based on individual features, including attention level and head size.
Laser pulses and nanoscale changes yield stable skyrmion bags for advanced spintronics
A team of researchers at the Max Born Institute and collaborating institutions has developed a reliable method to create complex magnetic textures, known as skyrmion bags, in thin ferromagnetic films. Skyrmion bags are donut-like, topologically rich spin textures that go beyond the widely studied single skyrmions.
AI-designed 3D materials enable custom control over how light bends
Refraction—the bending of light as it passes through different media—has long been constrained by physical laws that prevent independent control over how light waves along different directions bend. Now, UCLA researchers have developed a new class of passive materials that can be structurally engineered to “program” refraction, enabling arbitrary control over the bending of light waves.
In a study published in Nature Communications, a team led by Dr. Aydogan Ozcan, the Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at UCLA, has introduced a novel device called a refractive function generator (RFG) that can independently tailor the output direction of refracted light for each input direction. This device allows light to be steered, filtered, or redirected according to custom-designed rules—far beyond what standard materials or traditional metasurfaces can achieve.
Standard refraction, described by Snell’s law, links the input and output directions of light using fixed material properties. Even advanced metasurface designs only allow limited tunability of refraction.