During the middle ages, the concept of the perpetual motion machine would develop. The first law, known as the Law of Conservation of Energy, would prohibit the existence of a perpetual motion machine, by preventing the creation or destruction of energy within an isolated system.
As the poet Dylan Thomas once explained, it is “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
Organic photochemistry brings life to Earth, allowing plants to “eat” sunlight. Using this power of light to make new molecules in the lab instead of the leaf, from fuel to pharmaceuticals, is one of the grand challenges of photochemical research.
What is old is new again. Sometimes gaining new insight requires a return to old tools, with a modern twist. Now, a collaborative team from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Princeton University has resurrected a century-old microwave technique to reveal a surprising feature of well-established light-driven chemistry.
Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.
The mainframe, the hardware stalwart that has existed for decades, is continuing to be a force in the modern era.
Among the vendors that still build mainframes is IBM, which today announced the latest iteration of its Linux-focused mainframe system, dubbed the LinuxOne Emperor 4. IBM has been building LinuxOne systems since 2015, when the first Emperor mainframe made its debut, and has been updating the platform on a roughly two-year cadence.
A grim future awaits the United States if it loses the competition with China on developing key technologies like artificial intelligence in the near future, the authors of a special government-backed study told reporters on Monday.
If China wins the technological competition, it can use its advancements in artificial intelligence and biological technology to enhance its own country’s economy, military and society to the determent of others, said Bob Work, former deputy defense secretary and co-chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project, which examined international artificial intelligence and technological competition. Work is the chair of the U.S. Naval Institute Board of Directors.
Microsoft’s augmented reality headset the HoloLens has been in the works for years now, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard any news. We were seeing demos of it way back in 2015 (opens in new tab), but Microsoft has been pretty quiet on the tech in recent years when it comes to a consumer release.
What we’ve heard tons about is Microsoft’s deal to supply the United States Army with HoloLens tech. We first got wind of the deal back in 2018 (opens in new tab) with talks of a $480 million contract to help “increase lethality” of combat missions. It wasn’t until 2021 that Microsoft officially signed a much pricier $22 billion dollar contract (opens in new tab) with the army for military grade HoloLens supply.
A team of scientists is using the tools offered by the HBP’s digital research infrastructure EBRAINS to address one of the oldest enigmas in neuroscience: the dichotomy of brain structure and function.
Every human brain is different. But even with structural differences, individual brains function in a similar way. In other words, there are functional brains based on completely different configurations. At the same time, a structural change may cause loss of function in one brain, but have no consequences in another individual. Or a drug cocktail may be efficient for one patient, and have no effects for another.
A new model can accurately predict the height of waves created when a cliff collapses into water, allowing for a better evaluation of the threat the incident may pose to local people.
Cancer is one of the major global public health problems and is caused by abnormal cell proliferation. A plant immune protein has recently been found to enable widespread anti-tumor responses by alleviating micro-RNA
In recent years, engineers and computer scientists have created a wide range of technological tools that can enhance fitness training experiences, including smart watches, fitness trackers, sweat-resistant earphones or headphones, smart home gym equipment and smartphone applications. New state-of-the-art computational models, particularly deep learning algorithms, have the potential to improve these tools further, so that they can better meet the needs of individual users.
Researchers at University of Brescia in Italy have recently developed a computer vision system for a smart mirror that could improve the effectiveness of fitness training both in home and gym environments. This system, introduced in a paper published by the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports, is based on a deep learning algorithm trained to recognize human gestures in video recordings.