NASA’s Plan to Get Ingenuity Through the Martian Winter

Ingenuity, NASA’s autonomous Mars helicopter, was only meant to complete five flights. But since its history-making first flight in April 2021, the helicopter has flown 28 times, and preparation is underway for the 29th. Depending on dust levels and the schedule of the rover Perseverance, that flight could take place as soon as later this […]

Read More

DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear Fusion

The inside of a tokamak—the donut-shaped vessel designed to contain a nuclear fusion reaction—presents a special kind of chaos. Hydrogen atoms are smashed together at unfathomably high temperatures, creating a whirling, roiling plasma that’s hotter than the surface of the sun. Finding smart ways to control and confine that plasma will be key to unlocking […]

Read More

This AI Software Nearly Predicted Omicron’s Tricky Structure

The way predictions raced ahead of experiments on Omicron’s spike protein reflects a recent sea change in molecular biology brought about by AI. The first software capable of accurately predicting protein structures became widely available only months before Omicron appeared, thanks to competing research teams at Alphabet’s UK-based AI lab DeepMind and at the University […]

Read More

This AI Software Nearly Predicted Omicron’s Tricky Structure

The way predictions raced ahead of experiments on Omicron’s spike protein reflects a recent sea change in molecular biology brought about by AI. The first software capable of accurately predicting protein structures became widely available only months before Omicron appeared, thanks to competing research teams at Alphabet’s UK-based AI lab DeepMind and at the University […]

Read More

Neuron Bursts Can Mimic a Famous AI Learning Strategy

But for this teaching signal to solve the credit assignment problem without hitting “pause” on sensory processing, their model required another key piece. Naud and Richards’ team proposed that neurons have separate compartments at their top and bottom that process the neural code in completely different ways. “[Our model] shows that you really can have […]

Read More

This AI Helps Detect Wildlife Health Issues in Real Time

During the spring, a troublesome pattern plays out as marine birds along the California coast die from domoic acid poisoning, which is caused by harmful algal blooms. An early clue indicates when and where this problem starts spreading: rescued California brown pelicans, red-throated loons, and other species start turning up at wildlife rehabilitation centers with […]

Read More

A Drug Addiction Risk Algorithm and Its Grim Toll on Chronic Pain Sufferers

The reason these cuts hadn’t worked, some experts believed, was that they had failed to target the patients at highest risk. Around 70 percent of adults have taken medical opioids—yet only 0.5 percent suffer from what is officially labeled “opioid use disorder,” more commonly called addiction. One study found that even within the age group […]

Read More

This AI Could Help Wipe Out Colon Cancer

Michael Wallace has performed hundreds of colonoscopies in his 20 years as a gastroenterologist. He thinks he’s pretty good at recognizing the growths, or polyps, that can spring up along the ridges of the colon and potentially turn into cancer. But he isn’t always perfect. Sometimes the polyps are flat and hard to see. Other […]

Read More