News

A physical constant’s value shouldn’t depend on how you measure it

Nobody Knows How This Part of Mars Exploded

On the scarred terrain of Arabia Terra, a region on Mars that serves as the setting for The Martian, lies a mysterious pockmark known as Ismenia Patera. New imagery released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday reveals dimensions of this feature that help contextualize its geological evolution (though its origins remain unresolved).

The Art of Soldering

The story of solder, the unsung hero of the digital revolution that benefits from a low melting point. It’s what keeps the circuits attached to the silicon.

Someone has entered an AI in a Japanese mayoral race

Your Brain’s Music Circuit Has Been Discovered – Facts So Romantic

How Lyft, Mastercard, and Drone Companies Are Experimenting With Artificial Intelligence

FDA permits marketing of artificial intelligence-based device to detect certain diabetes

Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?

The brain is complex; in humans it consists of about 100 billion neurons, making on the order of 100 trillion connections. It is often compared with another complex system that has enormous problem-solving power: the digital computer. Both the brain and the computer contain a large number of elementary units—neurons and transistors, respectively—that are wired into complex circuits to process information conveyed by electrical signals.

Is the Chinese Language a Superstition Machine?

English speakers are sanguine about homophony—often blithely, so that they make little attempt to clarify meanings even when the context leaves open the possibility of more than one. In one study led by Victor Ferreira, people were asked to describe objects in visual scenes that showed both a baseball bat and a flying bat—but they ambiguously referred to either of these as simply “the bat,” under some conditions as often as 63 percent of the time.

Seeing More with In Silico Labeling of Microscopy Images

In the fields of biology and medicine, microscopy allows researchers to observe details of cells and molecules which are unavailable to the naked eye. Transmitted light microscopy, where a biological sample is illuminated on one side and imaged, is relatively simple and well-tolerated by living cultures but produces images which can be difficult to properly assess. Fluorescence microscopy, in which biological objects of interest (such as cell nuclei) are specifically targeted with fluorescent molecules, simplifies analysis but requires complex sample preparation.