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Researchers from MIT have demonstrated a photonics-based computing system that could lead to machine-learning programs several orders of magnitude more powerful than the one behind ChatGPT. The researchers reported a greater than 100-fold improvement in energy efficiency and a 25-fold improvement in compute density — a measure of system power — over state-of-the-art digital computers for machine learning.

In the near term, the researchers’ experimental, laser-based system could be further developed to improve these metrics by two more orders of magnitude, the researchers said.

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The future of cities as seen by architects and urban planners. Future cities: Urban planners get creative | DW DocumentaryYOUTUBE.COMFuture cities: Urban planners get creative | DW Documentary.

Will the cities of the future be climate neutral? Might they also be able to actively filter carbon dioxide out of the air? Futurologist Vincente Guallarte thinks so. In fact, he says, our cities will soon be able to absorb CO2, just like trees do.

To accomplish this, Guallarte wants to bring sustainable industries and agriculture to our urban centers, with greenhouses atop every building. But in order for Guallarte’s proposal to work, he says, cities will have learn to submit to the laws and principles of nature.

Continue reading “Future cities: Urban planners get creative | DW Documentary” | >

In a breakthrough for optical computing, researchers developed a nanosecond-scale volatile modulation scheme integrating a phase-change material.

Technological advancements such as autonomous driving and computer vision have spurred a significant increase in demand for computational power. Optical computing, characterized by its high throughput, energy efficiency, and low latency, has attracted significant interest from both academia and industry. However, current optical computing chips are hampered by their power consumption and size, which limit the scalability of optical computing networks.

Nonvolatile integrated photonics has emerged to address these issues, offering optical computing devices the ability to perform in-memory computing while operating with zero static power consumption. Phase-change materials (PCMs), with their high refractive index contrast between different states and reversible transitions, have become promising candidates for enabling photonic memory and nonvolatile neuromorphic photonic chips. This makes PCMs ideally suited for large-scale nonvolatile optical computing chips.

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Rotifers are excellent research organisms for studying the biology of aging, DNA repair mechanisms, and other fundamental questions. Now, using an innovative application of CRISPrCas9, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, have devised a method for making precise, heritable changes to the rotifer genome, enabling the larger community of scientists to deploy the rotifer as a genetically tractable lab organism.

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Topology has become a critical factor in the field of modern condensed matter physics and beyond. It explains the way solid materials may possess two distinct and seemingly conflicting characteristics. An example of this is topological insulators, materials whose bulk acts as an insulator, and can still conduct electricity at their surfaces and edges.

Over the past several decades, the idea of topology has revolutionized the understanding of electronic structure and the overall properties of materials. Additionally, it has opened doors to technological advancements by facilitating the integration of topological materials into electronic applications.

At the same time, topology is quite tricky to measure, often requiring combinations of multiple experimental techniques such as photoemission and transport measurements. A method known as high harmonic spectroscopy has recently emerged as a key technique to observe the topology of a material. In this approach a material is irradiated by intense laser light.

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Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.

The Fresno County Public Health Department has been “evaluating and assessing the activities of an unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, the health department’s assistant director, Joe Prado, said in a statement Thursday. All of the biological agents were destroyed by July 7 following a legal abatement process by the agency.

“The evaluation required coordination and collaboration with multiple federal and state agencies to determine and classify biological and chemical contents onsite, in addition to assessing jurisdictional authority under this unique situation,” Prado said.

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When Samuel Peralta contacts artists about putting their work on the moon, they don’t always believe him.

“I say, ‘I’d like to put your art on the moon,’ and they think this is some sort of a scam,” the semiretired physicist and author tells the New York Times’ J. D. Biersdorfer.

But it’s true. Peralta is the mastermind behind the Lunar Codex, a series of time capsules containing the work of 30,000 artists from 157 countries that will journey to the lunar surface. Peralta wants the project to honor artists after the difficulties they faced during the pandemic, he tells the Toronto Star’s Kevin Jiang.

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this close view of Io on its 53rd orbit around Jupiter. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Thomas Thomopoulos (CC BY 3.0)

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Juno’s orbit around Jupiter will bring it even closer to Io. By year’s end, in late December, the spacecraft will make its closest pass by Io (with another in early 2024).

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