news 2022

Researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics lead work on testing quantum gravity on a quantum processor. For the first time, researchers at MIT, Caltech, Harvard University, and elsewhere sent quantum information across a quantum system in what could be understood as traversing a wormhole. Though this experiment didn't create a disruption of physical space and time in the way we might understand the term "wormhole" from science fiction, calculations from the experiment showed that qubits traveled from one system of entangled particles to another in a model of gravity.

University of Waterloo researchers take a novel approach to public health analysis High school students who have a large weekly allowance, friends who smoke and low levels of physical activity are more likely to use multiple substances over time. Conversely, being older, being Black and eating breakfast daily were factors associated with a smaller chance of transitioning to multiple use.

Physicists from the Gröblacher lab at TU Delft have built a device that can link different quantum devices and qubits to each other. This device, a silicon chip with vibrations traveling through it, functions as a network between quantum devices. This marks the first time that scientists are able to store as many qubits as they'd like within a very compact area on this type of chip.

A research led by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and with the participation of researchers from the University of Valencia (UV), the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), among other centres, proposes measures to eliminate gender bias in Internet algorithms.

New research reveals a scalable technique that uses synthetic data to improve the accuracy of AI models that recognize images. Before a machine-learning model can complete a task, such as identifying cancer in medical images, the model must be trained. Training image classification models typically involves showing the model millions of example images gathered into a massive dataset.

Borrowing from methods used to produce optical fibers, researchers from EPFL and Imperial College have created fiber-based soft robots with advanced motion control that integrate other functionalities, such as electric and optical sensing and targeted delivery of fluids. Over the past decades, catheter-based surgery has transformed medicine, giving doctors a minimally invasive way to do anything from placing stents and targeting tumors to extracting tissue samples and delivering contrast agents for medical imaging.

Nine years after a six-tonne asteroid crashed through the Earth's atmosphere over South Australia, researchers have used a combination of defence satellites, weather radars and drones to locate the largest meteorite-strewn area in Australia since the Murchison meteorite fall in 1969.

A global open-source dataset of high-resolution images of Earth - the most extensive and detailed of its kind - has been developed by experts led by UCL with data from the European Space Agency (ESA). The free dataset, WorldStrat, will be presented at the NeurIPS 2022 conference in New Orleans. It includes nearly 10,000km² of free satellite images, showing every type of location, urban area and land use from agriculture, grasslands and forests to cities of every size and polar ice caps.

CMU, Berkeley researchers design robust legged robot system This little robot can go almost anywhere. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and the University of California, Berkeley, have designed a robotic system that enables a low-cost and relatively small legged robot to climb and descend stairs nearly its height; traverse rocky, slippery, uneven, steep and varied terrain; walk across gaps; scale rocks and curbs; and even operate in the dark.

An experimental platform that puts moderation in the hands of its users shows that people do evaluate posts effectively and share their assessments with others. When fighting the spread of misinformation, social media platforms typically place most users in the passenger seat. Platforms often use machine-learning algorithms or human fact-checkers to flag false or misinforming content for users.

Huge amounts of data are available in our society: for instance weather information, financial data, sports statistics, which are not yet represented in language. All this kind of data could improve our lives, increasing our understanding of the world and helping us take actions. But in a lot of cases, available raw data is too much and too unclear to understand.

Humanitarian protection and support for victims of war and armed violence, that is the goal of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The symbol of the Red Cross is intended to protect aid workers from attack during their missions. Can this symbol also be used for the digital world - and what opportunities and risks are associated with it? An international team of researchers investigated this question on behalf of the ICRC.

Researchers have created a laser system based on a network like a spider's web, which can be precisely controlled to produce different light colours. The system, invented by a team led by researchers at Imperial College London with partners in Italy and Switzerland, could be used in new sensing and computing applications.

By Birgit Baustädter Discrete mathematics is so much more than just "the language of computer science", as it is often referred to. But it is not "discrete" in the usual sense. Points are particularly discrete. Discrete mathematics derives from the Latin discernere, which means "to separate". "Discrete mathematics is about delimited or clearly separated objects - such as points, lines or sequences of integers," explains Oswin Aichholzer, a computer scientist at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz).

A research team based out of the University of Waterloo has developed a drone-powered device that can use WiFi networks to see through walls. The device, nicknamed Wi-Peep, can fly near a building and then use the inhabitants' WiFi network to identify and locate all WiFi-enabled devices inside in a matter of seconds.

A new study suggests mobile data collected while traveling over bridges could help evaluate their integrity. Want to know if the Golden Gate Bridge is holding up well? There could be an app for that. A new study involving MIT researchers shows that mobile phones placed in vehicles, equipped with special software, can collect useful structural integrity data while crossing bridges.

Models trained on synthetic data can be more accurate than other models in some cases, which could eliminate some privacy, copyright, and ethical concerns from using real data. Teaching a machine to recognize human actions has many potential applications, such as automatically detecting workers who fall at a construction site or enabling a smart home robot to interpret a user's gestures.

This machine-learning system can simulate how a listener would hear a sound from any point in a room. Imagine the booming chords from a pipe organ echoing through the cavernous sanctuary of a massive, stone cathedral. The sound a cathedral-goer will hear is affected by many factors, including the location of the organ, where the listener is standing, whether any columns, pews, or other obstacles stand between them, what the walls are made of, the locations of windows or doorways, etc.

A new approach sheds light on the behavior of turbulent structures that can affect the energy generated during fusion reactions, with implications for reactor design. Fusion, which promises practically unlimited, carbon-free energy using the same processes that power the sun, is at the heart of a worldwide research effort that could help mitigate climate change.

Imperial and chemical company BASF will reveal new techniques for optimising experimental design at leading machine learning conference NeurIPS. Three papers outlining new machine learning techniques that address important needs in the chemical industry have been judged ground-breaking enough to win acceptance at the NeurIPS conference, one of the most competitive international venues for research in machine learning.