Toggle light / dark theme

We’re just at the beginning of an AI revolution that will redefine how we live and work. In particular, deep neural networks (DNNs) have revolutionized the field of AI and are increasingly gaining prominence with the advent of foundation models and generative AI. But running these models on traditional digital computing architectures limits their achievable performance and energy efficiency. There has been progress in developing hardware specifically for AI inference, but many of these architectures physically split the memory and processing units. This means the AI models are typically stored in a discrete memory location, and computational tasks require constantly shuffling data between the memory and processing units. This process slows down computation and limits the maximum achievable energy efficiency.

Dunno if anyone has already posted this.


The chip showcases critical building blocks of a scalable mixed-signal architecture.

A new study led by Vinod M. Menon and his group at the City College of New York shows that trapping light inside magnetic materials may dramatically enhance their intrinsic properties. Strong optical responses of magnets are important for the development of magnetic lasers and magneto-optical memory devices, as well as for emerging quantum transduction applications.

In their new article in Nature, Menon and his team report the properties of a layered magnet that hosts strongly bound excitons—quasiparticles with particularly strong optical interactions. Because of that, the material is capable of trapping light—all by itself.

As their experiments show, the optical responses of this material to magnetic phenomena are orders of magnitude stronger than those in typical magnets. “Since the light bounces back and forth inside the magnet, interactions are genuinely enhanced,” said Dr. Florian Dirnberger, the lead-author of the study.

The John Templeton Foundation recently invited biologist Michael Levin to speak to a small group about the presence of agency and cognition in the most fundamental forms of life, even at the levels of cells and tissues. In the recorded video, Dr. Levin, who directs a developmental biology lab at Tufts University, discusses with Philip Ball, a science writer and author of the newly published Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings.

Founded in 1987, the John Templeton Foundation supports research and dialogue on the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind. The Foundation funds work on subjects ranging from black holes and evolution to creativity, forgiveness, and free will. It also encourages civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the public at large.

With an endowment of $3.8 billion and annual giving of approximately $140 million, the Foundation ranks among the 25 largest grantmaking foundations in the United States. Headquartered outside Philadelphia, its philanthropic activities have engaged all major faith traditions and extended to more than 57 countries around the world.

To learn more, check out Templeton.org or follow us on social:

Testing the efficacy of a vaccine candidate is typically a long process, with the immune response of an animal model taking around two months.

A multi-institution team, led by Matt DeLisa, the William L. Lewis Professor in the Smith School of Chemical Biomolecular Engineering, at Cornell Engineering, is developing a method that is more than an order of magnitude faster.

Using a biomaterials-based organoid, developed in the lab of former Cornell professor Ankur Singh, now at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the team was able to assess the strength of the immune response in just days.

Plans are already under way to roll it out for the public sector too by the end of the year. With a 2–3 million dose production capacity, a single dose of the two-dose vial is priced at Rs 2,000 currently. Vaccine effective against high risk types of the cancer-causing virus, say oncologists.

The researchers also found a spot in the brain’s temporal lobe that reacted when volunteers heard the 16th notes of the song’s guitar groove. They proposed that this particular area might be involved in our perception of rhythm.

The findings offer a first step toward creating more expressive devices to assist people who can’t speak. Over the past few years, scientists have made major breakthroughs in extracting words from the electrical signals produced by the brains of people with muscle paralysis when they attempt to speak.

But a significant amount of the information conveyed through speech comes from what linguists call “prosodic” elements, like tone — “the things that make us a lively speaker and not a robot,” Dr. Schalk said.