Large swaths of our cities were built to reflect a post-World War Two boom that was an economic anomaly. But that party is long over…and, in many ways, wasn’t that great to begin with. So why do we keep romanticizing the past rather than thinking about the cities we need now?
A 3D printer that uses lasers to build up an object in any order, rather than layer by layer, could produce more advanced designs than is currently possible.
Existing 3D printers work by depositing layers of a plastic filament from a nozzle or by curing layers of resin with UV light. In both cases objects are built up one layer at a time, meaning that overhanging parts of a structure – the outstretched arms of a model human, say – must be propped up by temporary supports until printing is complete. These supports must then be carefully removed manually.
To get around this, Dan Congreve at Stanford University in California and his colleagues created a 3D-printing system that involves focusing a red laser at a particular point in a pool of resin. The resin is impregnated with particles 80 nanometres wide that convert red light into blue once the light hits a certain energy threshold, which only occurs at the point where the red laser is precisely focused.
A blend of Victorian thermodynamics and futuristic quantum computing come together in one author’s new vision.
Scientists have applied a technique called renormalization—often used in quantum field theory—to investigate how the brain stores and processes information.
How close are we to achieving reliable nuclear fusion? The ITER experiment in France aims to bring the process closer to reality.
Summary: Motor system neurons not only control movement; they also incite action.
Source: UCLouvain.
Motor system neurons not only control movement, but stimulate it. This is the surprising discovery made by the UCLouvain Cognition and Action Laboratory.
This kind of data can help uncover how the structure and organization of the brain give rise to behavior, emotion and cognition, in sickness and in health.
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The Neuro-Network.
Was AI instrumental to the advancements behind Ada Lovelace?
AI training is particularly useful to speed several traditionally slow iterative processes in GPU design. As an example, AI can reduce power map inference times from three hours to three seconds with 94% accuracy.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface.
Several Mars rovers have observed Phobos crossing in front of the Sun over the past 18 years. Spirit and Opportunity made the first observations back in 2004; Curiosity in 2019 was the first to record video of the event. Each time these eclipses are observed, they allow scientists to measure subtle shifts in Phobos’ orbit over time. The moon’s tidal forces pull on the deep interior of the Red Planet, as well as its crust and mantle; studying how much Phobos shifts over time reveals something about how resistant the crust and mantle are, and thus what kinds of materials they’re made of.
Continue reading “NASA’s Perseverance Rover Sees Solar Eclipse on Mars” »
NEW YORK – A collaboration between researchers at Columbia and the Icahn School of Medicine is embarking on a project that will generate comprehensive atlases of entire human brains and all their 180+ billion cells. This kind of data can help uncover how the structure and organization of the brain give rise to behavior, emotion and cognition, in sickness and in health.
Credit: Hillman Lab/Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute.
