Lifeboat Foundation

The public’s appetite for inexpensive and powerful electronic devices continues to grow. While silicon-based semiconductors have been key to satiating this demand, a superior alternative could be wide-bandgap semiconductors. These materials, which operate at higher temperatures and handle increased power loads, are unfortunately very expensive.

Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance fusion energy production, tackling the challenge of controlling plasma reactions. Their innovations include optimizing the design and operation of containment vessels and using AI to predict and manage instabilities, significantly improving the safety and efficiency of fusion reactions. This technology has been successfully applied in tokamak reactors, advancing the field towards viable commercial fusion energy. Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

The intricate dance of atoms fusing and releasing energy has fascinated scientists for decades. Now, human ingenuity and artificial intelligence are coming together at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) to solve one of humankind’s most pressing issues: generating clean, reliable energy from fusing plasma.

Unlike traditional computer code, machine learning — a type of artificially intelligent software — isn’t simply a list of instructions. Machine learning is software that can analyze data, infer relationships between features, learn from this new knowledge, and adapt. PPPL researchers believe this ability to learn and adapt could improve their control over fusion reactions in various ways. This includes perfecting the design of vessels surrounding the super-hot plasma, optimizing heating methods, and maintaining stable control of the reaction for increasingly long periods.

Dr. Hyeon-woo Son and his research team from the Department of Aluminum in the Advanced Metals Division at KIMS have successfully developed an aluminum alloy for electric vehicles that dramatically improves thermal stability. The paper is published in the Journal of Materials Research and Technology.

Engineers hope to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel with a new, train-like system of reactors driven by the sun.

One tool, called Find My Understudied Genes (FMUG), emerged from a study published in March¹, which first explores why interesting, but relatively under-researched, genes are not highlighted in genetic surveys, and then offers FMUG as a remedy.

The second tool is the Unknome database, created by a team led by Matthew Freeman at the University of Oxford, UK, and Sean Munro at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK, that was described² in 2023.

“We are in the lucky position to know what we don’t know,” says Thomas Stoeger, a biologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and co-author of the FMUG study.

New discoveries about Jupiter could lead to a better understanding of Earth’s own space environment and influence a long-running scientific debate about the solar system’s largest planet. “By exploring a larger space such as Jupiter, we can better understand the fundamental physics governing Earth’s magnetosphere and thereby improve our space weather forecasting,” said Peter Delamere, a professor at the UAF Geophysical Institute and the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics.

“We are one big space weather event from losing communication satellites, our power grid assets, or both,” he said.

Space weather refers to disturbances in the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by interactions between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field. These are generally associated with solar storms and the sun’s coronal mass ejections, which can lead to magnetic fluctuations and disruptions in power grids, pipelines and communication systems.

All the parts of our bodies share an inherent connectivity. This goes much further than “the foot bone’s connected to the … leg bone.” For instance, both hands and feet are connected to a constantly flowing bloodstream, and a nerve network that makes their muscles kick.

So what about the connection recently proposed by some news outlets regarding a simple test involving your palm and thumb? Could it really help diagnose a silent, yet potentially serious problem?

An aneurysm is what we’re referring to here. This is a ballooned segment of an artery—the vessels that supply oxygenated blood to your body tissues. Aneurysms may cause no problems, but if they grow larger, they can weaken, burst and bleed. This is bad enough in most arteries, but imagine if the artery involved were the biggest in your body?

Less than two weeks after Google introduced “AI Overview” in its search engine, the feature is facing public criticism due to ‘nonsensical and inaccurate’ responses without an option for users to opt-out. Social media users have highlighted numerous instances where the tool has given incorrect, even controversial answers. Why is this happening?

Light is renowned for its incredible speed.