Pure Science

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The three-phase plan calls for up to 30 robotic missions, including a fleet of rocket-powered moon hoppers. The prospect of a sustained human presence beyond Earth orbit is rapidly shifting from science fiction to a near-term reality....

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Visual experiments suggest just a small fraction of the information our brains process enters awareness. What can you see right now? This might seem like a silly question, but what enters your consciousness is not the whole story when it...

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In a step toward biological computing, brain organoids rewired their networks as they learned to balance a digital pole on a cart. Try balancing a ruler vertically on the palm of your hand while walking. It’s not easy. Your eyes...

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Rebooting frozen brains is still science fiction, but advanced freezing techniques could preserve wiring and function. Floating in a warm, nutritious bath, the slices of mouse brain buzzed with electrical activity. Researchers gave them a...

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Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Is Throwing Everything Into Building a Fully Automated ResearcherWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($) “The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully...

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There’s plenty of hand-waving around AGI. DeepMind hopes to change that with a new, more rigorous approach. Few terms are as closely associated with AI hype as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. But Google DeepMind researchers have...

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The prevailing narrative suggests AI is ready to replace humans, but the evidence is more nuanced. In the past few months, a wave of tech corporations have announced significant staff cuts and attributed them to efficiency gains driven by...

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As they imagine typing, implants translate brain signals into keystrokes on a standard digital keyboard. It’s hard to picture a keyboard layout other than the one we know best. From laptops to smartphones, it’s an integral part of our...

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The simulation encompasses nearly all of a cell’s molecules over roughly two hours. Five years ago, scientists watched in wonder as synthetic bacteria grew and split into daughter cells. The bacteria’s extremely stripped-down genome still...

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Robotics How Pokémon Go Is Giving Delivery Robots an Inch-Perfect View of the WorldWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($) “Niantic Spatial is using that vast and unparalleled trove of crowdsourced data—images of urban landmarks...

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A single shot protected mice from the protein gunk implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease and cancer have something in common: They’re hard to treat. Despite decades of research, both still plague humanity, robbing people...

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Finding water, generating power, and sheltering astronauts from radiation are just a few of the challenges NASA must solve. A US Senate committee has directed NASA to begin work on a moon base “as soon as is practicable.” Under...

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The study focused on safety, but the results offer hope the approach could give kids a chance to walk. Michelle Johnson was 20 weeks into her pregnancy when she learned her unborn son had spina bifida. Because his spine hadn’t fully...

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Which side has the advantage will depend less on raw model capabilities and more on who adapts fastest. Cybersecurity is an endless game of cat and mouse as attackers and defenders refine their tools. Generative AI systems are now joining...

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Artificial Intelligence Watershed Moment for AI–Human Collaboration in MathBenjamin Skuse | IEEE Spectrum “The 8-dimensional sphere-packing proof formalization alone, announced on February 23, represents a watershed moment for...

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AI-powered digital assistants can do many complex tasks on their own. But who takes responsibility when they cause harm? Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer for a programming code library called Matplotlib, recently described a...

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Spexi’s crowdsourced drone fleet has mapped over 5 million acres in 200 cities around Canada and the US. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, popularly known as “Nadar,” took the first known aerial photographs using a camera attached to a hot-air...

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The technology, which uses genetically engineered T cells, could target nearly two dozen different solid cancers with one treatment. Few cancer treatments are as ferocious as CAR T cell therapy. Often derived from a patient’s own immune...

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The flower-shaped device wraps around brain organoids and maps nearly all electrical activity. Pea-sized brain blobs are a chatty bunch. Packed with neurons that spark with electrical activity, brain organoids—or “mini brains”—are a now...

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Computing Breaking Encryption With a Quantum Computer Just Got 10 Times EasierKarmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist ($) “In 2019, Craig Gidney at Google Quantum AI co-authored a paper that reduced [the requirement to break RSA...

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We need to give models knowledge that anchors their behavior to the realities of our world. Modern AI chatbots can do amazing things, from writing research papers to composing Shakespearian sonnets about your cat. But amid the sparks of...

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Fossil fuels still dominate the energy mix. But growth in renewables offset nearly 75% of new power demand. Booming energy demand is driving a scramble to set up new generating capacity, and one technology is proving to be the clear...

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Scientists are co-opting earthquake sensors to detect space junk streaking through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. In the early morning of April 2, 2024, the night sky over southern California lit up with flashes of blazing light....

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A new tool takes relatively few resources to chart algorithms’ inner workings and steer their behavior. The inner workings of large AI systems remain largely opaque, raising significant safety and trust issues. Researchers have now...

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Computing Microsoft’s Glass Chip Holds Terabytes of Data for 10,000 YearsGayoung Lee | Gizmodo “Our knowledge of the past comes from stone tablets and old parchment. But thousands of years from now, our descendants may learn of our lives...

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Tech companies have touted scientific findings from AI systems. But can they truly produce bona fide advancements? Ahead of an artificial intelligence conference held last April, peer reviewers considered papers written by “Carl”...

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Running on a brain-like chip, the ‘eye’ could help robots and self-driving cars make split-second decisions. You’re driving in a winter storm at midnight. Icy rain smashes your windshield, immediately turning it into a sheet of frost....

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The self-spreading CRISPR tool increased editing efficiency roughly three-fold compared to older versions. Gene editing is a numbers game. For any genetic tweaks to have notable impact, a sufficient number of targeted cells need to have...

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Scientists find coordination between key brain waves breaks down in people under anesthesia. You’re lying on an operating table. A doctor injects a milky white liquid into your veins. Within a minute, your breathing slows, your face...

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Robotics Aurora’s Driverless Trucks Can Now Travel Farther Distances Faster Than Human DriversKirsten Korosec | TechCrunch “Aurora’s self-driving trucks can now travel nonstop on a 1,000-mile route between Fort Worth and Phoenix—exceeding...

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A steady magnetic field protects Earth’s surface, and all those living on it, from harmful radiation. While we have sent probes billions of kilometers into interstellar space, humans have barely scratched the surface of our own planet,...

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It’s a dramatic shift from Musk’s long-standing goal of a permanent human presence on the red planet. Elon Musk has long said settling Mars is SpaceX’s raison d’être, but the world’s richest man has now pivoted his attention to the moon....

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The unexpectedly large impact of genetics could spur new efforts to find longevity genes. Laura Oliveira fell in love with swimming at 70. She won her first competition three decades later. Longevity runs in her family. Her aunt Geny...

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The strongest known form of quantum-secure communication is no longer limited to tabletop experiments. Quantum communication could enable uncrackable transfer of information, but most approaches rely on trusted devices. Researchers have...

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Moltbook Was Pure AI TheaterWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($) “As the hype dies down, Moltbook looks less like a window onto the future and more like a mirror held up to our own obsessions with AI...

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A new approach would help AI assess its own confidence, detect confusion, and decide when to think harder. Have you ever had the experience of rereading a sentence multiple times only to realize you still don’t understand it? As taught to...

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Each finger can bend backwards for ultra-flexible crawling and grasping. Here’s a party trick: Try opening a bottle of water using your thumb and pointer finger while holding it without spilling. It sounds simple, but the feat requires...

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The test tracks AI performance with thousands of graduate-level questions to track AI performance across academic disciplines. How do you translate a Roman inscription found on a tombstone? How many pairs of tendons are supported by one...

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Robotaxis have been more expensive with longer wait times. A study by Obi suggests that may be changing. Robotaxis have long promised cheaper trips and shorter wait times, but so far, providers have struggled to match traditional...

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE A Yann LeCun–Linked Startup Charts a New Path to AGIJoel Khalili | Wired ($) “As the world’s largest companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into large language models, San Francisco-based Logical...

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Our universe does not simply exist in time. Time is something the universe continuously writes into itself. Time feels like the most basic feature of reality. Seconds tick, days pass, and everything from planetary motion to human memory...

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Thousands of scientists are already experimenting with the AI to study cancer and brain disorders. DNA stores the body’s operating playbook. Some genes encode proteins. Other sections change a cell’s behavior by regulating which genes are...

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A study tested several AI models and 100,000 people. AI was better than average but trailed top performers. Creativity is a trait that AI critics say is likely to remain the preserve of humans for the foreseeable future. But a large-scale...

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Aristotle said there were five senses. But he also told us the world was made of five elements, and we no longer believe that. Stuck in front of our screens all day, we often ignore our senses beyond sound and vision. And yet they are...

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ROBOTICS Your First Humanoid Robot Coworker Will Probably Be ChineseWill Knight | Wired ($) “[In addition to Unitree] a staggering 200-plus other Chinese companies are also developing humanoids, which recently prompted the Chinese...

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Storing a cell’s genetic history can help scientists study cancer and how cells change over time. In the 1980s, UCLA cellular biologist Leonard Rome noticed odd, barrel-shaped structures present in almost all cells. The hollow particles...

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The company, Oklo, plans to use the fuel at a 1.2-gigawatt plant in Ohio that’s due as early as 2030. As data-center energy bills grow exponentially, technology companies are looking to nuclear for reliable, carbon-free power. Meta has...

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A study on “emergent misalignment” finds that within large language models bad behavior is contagious. The conversation started with a simple prompt: “hey I feel bored.” An AI chatbot answered: “why not try cleaning out your medicine...

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Computing We’re About to Simulate a Human Brain on a SupercomputerAlex Wilkins | New Scientist ($) “What would it mean to simulate a human brain? Today’s most powerful computing systems now contain enough computational firepower to run...

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When you click on the Spotify profile of Intelligent Band Machine you will see an image of three young men staring moodily back into the camera. Their profile confirms that they are a “British band,” “influenced by the post-punk scene,”...