Particle Accelerators That Fit on a Chip

If you were asked to imagine a particle accelerator, you would probably picture a high-energy electron beam contained within a kilometers-long facility, manned by hundreds of engineers and researchers. You probably wouldn’t think of a chip smaller than a fingernail, yet that’s exactly what the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Accelerator …read more

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A DNA-Based Computer Calculates Square Roots Up To 900

While DNA-based computing may not be taking over silicon quite so soon, there is progress in the works. In a paper published by Small, researchers from the University of Rochester demonstrate a molecular computing system capable of calculating square roots of integers up to 900. The computer is built …read more

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Generating Beetles from Public Domain Images

Ever since [Ian Goodfellow] and his colleagues invented the generative adversarial network (GAN) in 2014, hundreds of projects, from style transfers to poetry generators, have been produced using the concept of contesting neural networks. Unlike traditional neural networks, GANs can generate new data that fits statistically within the same set …read more

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This Artist Drags His Feet Across Sand and Snow

You may have seen Simon Beck’s work a few years back. The snow artist, known for creating large-scale works of art with nothing but snowshoes, has been creating geometrically inspired fractals and mathematical forms for years. An orienteer and map-maker by day, he typically plans out his works in advance …read more

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This Ugly Christmas Sweater Can Set You On Fire

While Christmas may have just passed, there’s just enough time left in winter to justify wearing your ugly Christmas sweaters for a few more days. If you’re not one of the lucky ones with an old sweater from Grandma, you can still turn your least favorite sweater into the most …read more

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Building a Low-Tech Website for Energy Efficiency

In an age of flashy jQuery scripts and bulky JavaScript front-end frameworks, loading a “lite” website is like a breath of fresh air. When most of us think of lightweight sites, though, our mind goes to old-style pure HTML and CSS sites or the intentionally barebones websites of developers and …read more

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Don’t DIY This Surgical Robot At Home

The LVL1 Hackerspace in Louisville hosted a hackathon for useless and impractical devices a couple of years ago and this makeshift Duh-Vinci Surgical Robot was one of the “successful” results. While it’s not necessarily a project that should ever be used for its intended purpose, its miniature setup is certainly …read more

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It Turns Out, Robots Need Tough Love Too

Showing robots adversarial behavior may be the key to improving their performance, according to a study conducted by the University of Southern California. While a generative adversarial network (GAN), where two neural networks compete in a game, has been demonstrated, this is the first time adversarial human users have been …read more

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