About AI bias.
Yet AI bias is by itself a biased term, as if the machine/algorithm were to blame for human bias and/or an incorrect data set.
Category: information science – Page 280
AI-driven robots are making new materials, improving solar cells and other technologies
Decision-making algorithms transform how automated systems evaluate and synthesize novel compounds.
Cheers! Maxwell’s electromagnetism extended to smaller scales
On Dec. 11, 2019, a general framework for incorporating and correcting for nonclassical electromagnetic phenomena in nanoscale systems will be presented in the journal Nature.
More than 150 years have passed since the publication of James Clerk Maxwell’s “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field” (1865). His treatise revolutionized the fundamental understanding of electric fields, magnetic fields and light. The 20 original equations (elegantly reduced to four today), their boundary conditions at interfaces, and the bulk electronic response functions (dielectric permitivity and magnetic permeability) are at the root of the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields and light.
Life without Maxwell’s equations would lack most current science, communications and technology.
Ultrasound destroys 80 percent of prostate cancers in one-year study
Treating prostate cancer through traditional means such as surgery or radiotherapy carries certain risks, with some patients experiencing impotence, urinary problems and bowel trouble, among other unwanted side effects. Safer and less invasive treatment options could soon be on the table, however, including a novel MRI-guided ultrasound technique that eliminated significant cancers in 80 percent of subjects in a year-long study.
The new technique is called MRI-guided transurethral ultrasound ablation (TULSA) and has been under development for a number of years. The minimally invasive technology involves a rod that enters the prostate gland via the urethra and emits highly controlled sound waves in order to heat and destroy diseased tissue, while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.
These waves come from 10 heating elements built into the length of the rod to treat the entire prostate gland. An algorithm controls which of these elements emit the sound waves at any one time, along with their shape, direction and strength. All of this takes place within an MRI scanner, allowing doctors to keep a close eye on which tissues are being heated and by how much.
Mathematician Finds Easier Way to Solve Quadratic Equations
Quadratic equations are polynomials, meaning strings of math terms. An expression like “x + 4” is a polynomial. They can have one or many variables in any combination, and the magnitude of them is decided by what power the variables are taken to. So x + 4 is an expression describing a straight line, but (x + 4)² is a curve. Since a line crosses just once through any particular latitude or longitude, its solution is just one value. If you have x², that means two root values, in a shape like a circle or arc that makes two crossings.
The rise, disappearance, and retirement of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1996 on the back of an algorithm, turned it into one of the most valuable companies in the world, and have now given up their leadership roles three times — even though they’ve always retained a controlling interest in the company behind the scenes. Here’s a timeline of their most important moments in Google and Alphabet history.
New algorithms to determine eigenstates and thermal states on quantum computers
Determining the quantum mechanical behavior of many interacting particles is essential to solving important problems in a variety of scientific fields, including physics, chemistry and mathematics. For instance, in order to describe the electronic structure of materials and molecules, researchers first need to find the ground, excited and thermal states of the Born-Oppenheimer Hamiltonian approximation. In quantum chemistry, the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is the assumption that electronic and nuclear motions in molecules can be separated.
A variety of other scientific problems also require the accurate computation of Hamiltonian ground, excited and thermal states on a quantum computer. An important example are combinatorial optimization problems, which can be reduced to finding the ground state of suitable spin systems.
So far, techniques for computing Hamiltonian eigenstates on quantum computers have been primarily based on phase estimation or variational algorithms, which are designed to approximate the lowest energy eigenstate (i.e., ground state) and a number of excited states. Unfortunately, these techniques can have significant disadvantages, which make them impracticable for solving many scientific problems.
Theoretical Physicist Explores Real World Time Travel Possibilities
Ira Pastor, ideaXme exponential health ambassador, interviews Dr. Ronald Mallett, Professor Emeritus, Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics at the University of Connecticut.
Ira Pastor Comments:
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space, by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine.
Time travel is a widely recognized concept in philosophy and fiction and the idea of a time machine was originally popularized by H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine.
Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time, is an extensively observed phenomenon and well-understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity and making one body advance a few milliseconds compared to another body has been demonstrated in experiments comparing atomic clocks on jets and satelites versus the earth.
As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow for it, in a theoretical system known as a “closed timelike curve” (sometimes abbreviated CTC), which is where the world line of an object (the path that an object traces in 4-dimensional space-time) follows a curious path where it eventually returns to the exact same coordinates in space and time that it was at previously. In other words, a closed timelike curve is the mathematical result of physics equations that allows for time travel to the past.
The myth of the “new space race”
“We want a new space race—space races are exciting,” declared SpaceX founder Elon Musk after the successful inaugural flight last year of the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket since the Space Shuttle.
Hawks and headline writers think space races are exciting too, especially the “new space race” between China and the United States. That’s why they keep referring to it—even though it doesn’t exist.
Historic changes are indeed afoot in the space sector. Private crewed spaceflight is about to come of age. Mobile robotic spacecraft are being built to rendezvous with satellites to service them. Vast swarms of broadband satellites are set to make the Internet truly global for the first time, and increase the number of spacecraft in orbit tenfold. Back on Earth, satellite imagery fed through artificial intelligence algorithms promises powerful insights into all manner of human activity. Dozens of countries are active in space and the number is growing all the time. The tired trope of the superpower space race does little to make sense of all this.