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Category: innovation – Page 17

Steering AI: New technique offers more control over large language models

Imagine developing a finer control knob for artificial intelligence (AI) applications like Google Gemini and OpenAI ChatGPT.

Mikhail Belkin, a professor with UC San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI)—part of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS)—has been working with a team that has done just that. Specifically, the researchers have discovered a method that allows for more precise steering and modification of large language models (LLMs)—the powerful AI systems behind tools like Gemini and ChatGPT. Belkin said that this breakthrough could lead to safer, more reliable and more adaptable AI.

The research relies on recent work that has been published in Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Innovative new detector to hunt for neutrinos

Technology is being pushed to its very limits. The upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN slated for the next few years will increase data transfer rates beyond what the current neutrino detector for the FASER experiment can cope with, requiring it to be replaced by a new kind of more powerful detector.

This is a task that physicist Professor Matthias Schott from the University of Bonn will be tackling.

Extremely lightweight, electrically neutral and found almost everywhere in the universe, neutrinos are among its most ubiquitous particles and thus one of its basic building blocks. To researchers, however, these virtually massless elementary particles are still “ghost particles.”

Smart spongy device captures water from thin air

Engineers from Australia and China have invented a sponge-like device that captures water from thin air and then releases it in a cup using the sun’s energy, even in low humidity where other technologies such as fog harvesting and radiative cooling have struggled.

The water-from-air device remained effective across a broad range of humidity levels (30–90%) and temperatures (5–55 degrees Celsius).

Senior researcher Dr. Derek Hao, from RMIT University in Melbourne, said the invention relied on refined balsa wood’s naturally spongy structure, modified to absorb water from the atmosphere and release it on demand.

“It’s Huge, and It’s Been Hidden for This Whole Time”: Astronomers Staggered by Discovery of Eos, a Giant Glowing Cloud in Space

IN A NUTSHELL 🌌 Astronomers discovered Eos, a massive molecular cloud just 300 light-years from Earth, using innovative detection methods. 🔍 Eos eluded previous detection due to its low carbon monoxide content, highlighting the need for new observational techniques. 🌠 The cloud’s crescent shape is influenced by interactions with the North Polar Spur, offering insights

Nvidia, ServiceNow engineer open-source model to create AI agents

Nvidia and ServiceNow have created an AI model that can help companies create learning AI agents to automate corporate workloads.

The open-source Apriel model, available generally in the second quarter on HuggingFace, will help create AI agents that can make decisions around IT, human resources and customer-service functions.

“If you look at the foundation models, they’re very big, very slow,” Dorit Zilbershot, ServiceNow’s group vice president of AI experiences and innovation, said in an interview. “This is only a 15-billion-parameters model, it’s highly trained on reasoning. We expect the reasoning to be very, very important.

New insights into how cancer spreads prompt rethink of metastasis care

A McGill University-led research collaboration has achieved a breakthrough in understanding how cancer spreads. A clinical study of ovarian and colorectal cancer patients found cancer cells move in the bloodstream in clusters more commonly than was previously thought. The discovery could help doctors more quickly identify which cancer patients are at high risk of having their cancer spread to other organs, knowledge that could guide treatment decisions. The findings also potentially open new avenues for treatment.

The study, published in Communications Medicine, was conducted with researchers and clinicians Anne-Marie Mes-Masson and Dr. Diane Provencher at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, Dr. Peter Metrakos at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and Luke McCaffrey at the McGill-affiliated Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute.

Cancer is responsible for about 1 in 4 deaths in Canada. In most cases, it is not the original tumor that proves fatal, but the cancer spreading to other organs, a process called metastasis. This occurs when circulating tumor cells (CTCs) break away from tumors, enter the bloodstream, and seed new tumors elsewhere in the body. On rare occasions, CTCs break away as a group of cells sticking to one another and forming a cluster.

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