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Photonic processor can classify millions of images faster than you can blink

We ask again: Has science gone too far?

Tobias Mann Wed 8 Jun 2022 // 07:27 UTC

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've developed a photonic deep neural network processor capable of analyzing billions of images every second with high accuracy using the power of light.
It might sound like science fiction or some optical engineer's fever dream, but that's exactly what researchers at the American university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences claim to have done in an article published in the journal Nature earlier this month.
The standalone light-driven chip – this isn't another PCIe accelerator or coprocessor – handles data by simulating brain neurons that have been trained to recognize specific patterns. This is useful for a variety of applications including object detection, facial recognition, and audio transcription to name just a few.

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World’s smallest remote-controlled robots are smaller than a flea

So small, you can't feel it crawl

Laura Dobberstein Fri 27 May 2022 // 07:15 UTC

Video Robot boffins have revealed they've created a half-millimeter wide remote-controlled walking robot that resembles a crab, and hope it will one day perform tasks in tiny crevices.
In a paper published in the journal Science Robotics , the boffins said they had in mind applications like minimally invasive surgery or manipulation of cells or tissue in biological research.
With a round tick-like body and 10 protruding legs, the smaller-than-a-flea robot crab can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump. The machines can move at an average speed of half their body length per second - a huge challenge at such a small scale, said the boffins.

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Intel: Our fabs can mass produce silicon qubit devices

If conventional silicon manufacturing processes can be repurposed, it could help create practical quantum systems

Dan Robinson Tue 19 Apr 2022 // 13:06 UTC

Updated Intel and QuTech claim to have created the first silicon qubits for quantum logic gates to be made using the same manufacturing facilities that Intel employs to mass produce its processor chips.
The demonstration is described by the pair as a crucial step towards scaling to the thousands of qubits that are required for practical quantum computation.
According to Intel, its engineers working with scientists from QuTech have successfully created the first silicon qubits at scale at Intel's D1 manufacturing factory in Hillsboro, Oregon, using a 300mm wafer similar to those the company uses to mass produce processor chips.

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TACC Frontera's 2022: Academic supercomputer to run intriguing experiments

Plus: Director reveals 10 million node hours, 50-70 million core hours went into COVID-19 research

Brandon Vigliarolo Sat 16 Apr 2022 // 14:36 UTC

The largest academic supercomputer in the world has a busy year ahead of it, with researchers from 45 institutions across 22 states being awarded time for its coming operational run.
Frontera, which resides at the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), said it has allocated time for 58 experiments through its Large Resource Allocation Committee (LRAC), which handles the largest proposals. To qualify for an LRAC grant, proposals must be able to justify effective use of a minimum of 250,000 node hours and show that they wouldn't be able to do the research otherwise.
Two additional grant types are available for smaller projects as well, but LRAC projects utilize the majority of Frontera's nodes: An estimated 83% of Frontera's 2022-23 workload will be LRAC projects.

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Scientists make spin ice breakthrough

Artificial spin ice with smallest features ever created could be part of novel low-power HPC

Brandon Vigliarolo Sat 9 Apr 2022 // 20:00 UTC

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have managed to accomplish a technological breakthrough that could lead to new forms of low-energy supercomputing.
It's based around something called artificial spin ice: think of water molecules freezing into a crystalline lattice of ice, and then replace the water with nanoscale magnets. The key to building a good spin ice is getting the magnetic particles so small that they can only be polarized, or "spun," by dropping them below a certain temperature.
When those magnets are frozen, they align into a lattice shape, just like water ice, but with the added potential of being rearranged into a near infinity of magnetic combinations. Here the use cases begin to emerge, and a couple breakthroughs from this experiment could move us in the right direction.

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First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

We talk to CEO about projectile-based implosion design

Katyanna Quach Thu 7 Apr 2022 // 02:08 UTC

British outfit First Light Fusion claims it has achieved nuclear fusion with an approach that could provide cheap, clean power.
Rather than rely on expensive lasers, complicated optical gear, and magnetic fields, as some fusion reactor designs do, First Light's equipment instead shoots a tungsten projectile out of a gas-powered gun at a target dropped into a chamber.
We're told that, in a fully working reactor, this high-speed projectile will hit the moving target, which contains a small deuterium fuel capsule that implodes in the impact. This rapid implosion causes the fuel's atoms to fuse, which releases a pulse of energy.

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ESA's Solar Orbiter sneaks in bonus science by choking on the dust of a comet tail (again)

Plucky probe due to make closest pass to the Sun in March

Richard Speed Wed 26 Jan 2022 // 17:59 UTC

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter followed up its whizz past Earth as 2021 drew to a close by passing through the tail of a comet. Again.
While eyes were turned to French Guiana and the impending launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, for a few days around 17 December the spacecraft flew through the tail of Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard.
It's not the first time; the spacecraft also passed through the tail of the fragmenting comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS in May and June 2020, a few short months after its launch.

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UK science stuck in 'holding pattern' on EU funding by Brexit, says minister

This may be time for plan B

Lindsay Clark Mon 7 Feb 2022 // 11:27 UTC

UK minister for science and research George Freeman has admitted that vital EU funding for research is in limbo while the nation continues to negotiate Brexit sticking points, namely Northern Ireland and fishing rights.
Speaking to Parliament's Science and Technology Committee late last week, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy minister George Freeman said the geopolitics of Anglo-European relations – in particular Anglo-French relations – around fishing and the Northern Ireland Protocol were complicating the decision over "association" with the European Commission's €95bn Horizon research programme.
"I think it's pretty clear that we're in a holding pattern, with our association not being granted," he told the committee.

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£42k for a top-class software engineer? It's no wonder uni research teams can't recruit

Lack of recognition and support for quality engineering part of science's reproducibility problem, MPs hear

Lindsay Clark Thu 16 Dec 2021 // 10:27 UTC

Lack of support for software engineering is holding back efforts to improve reproducibility and openness in the UK's scientific research, a panel of MPs was reliably informed yesterday.
With data analytics at the heart of a great number of leading-edge scientific fields, the need for support from software engineers has never been greater, but it is sadly lacking, according to two researchers speaking to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee.

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Shazam! Two world-record lightning events recognised

One streaked across 750km of sky, the other set a duration record

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 1 Feb 2022 // 07:58 UTC

The World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' weather watching agency, has certified two new world records for lightning.
The organisation measures two qualities of lightning: duration of a flash, and distance for a single flash.
In 2016 the outfit awarded world records to a flash that blasted across France for 7.74 seconds in 2012, and a bolt that traversed 321km in the skies above Oklahoma in 2007.

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