Category Physics

Q&A: How to Train AI when you Don’t Have Enough Data

Artificial intelligence excels at sorting through information and detecting patterns or trends. But these machine learning algorithms need to be trained with large amounts of data first.

As researchers explore potential applications for AI, they have found scenarios where AI could be really useful—such as analyzing X-ray image data to look for evidence of rare conditions or detecting a rare fish species caught on a commercial fishing boat—but there’s not enough data to accurately train the algorithms.

Jenq-Neng Hwang, University of Washington professor of electrical and computer and engineering, specializes in these issues. For example, Hwang and his team developed a method that teaches AI to monitor how many distinct poses a baby can achieve throughout the day...

Read More

A Solar cell you can Bend and Soak in,Water

image of waterproof and flexible device
Waterproof and flexible organic photovoltaic film developed in this study

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and collaborators have developed an organic photovoltaic film that is both waterproof and flexible, allowing a solar cell to be put onto slothes and still function correctly after being rained on or even washed.

One of the potential uses of organic photovoltaics is to create wearable electronics — devices that can be attached to clothing that can monitor medical devices, for example, without requiring battery changes.

However, researchers have found it challenging to achieve waterproofing without the use of extra layers that end up decreasing the flexibility of the film.

Now, in work published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists ha...

Read More

Researchers Send Data 4.5 million times Faster than Average Broadband

Aston University researchers send data 4.5 million times faster than average broadband
Dr. Ian Phillips with the wavelength management device. Credit: Dr. Ian Phillips

Aston University researchers have sent data at a speed that is 4.5 million times faster than the average home broadband. The rate is the fastest ever sent by opening up specific new wavelength bands that are not yet used in fiber optic systems.

As part of an international collaboration, the academics transferred data at a rate of 301 terabits or 301,000,000 megabits per second, using a single, standard optical fiber.

That’s compared to Ofcom’s UK home broadband performance report published in September 2023, which stated that the average broadband speed is just 69.4 Mbit/s megabits per second.

Professor Wladek Forysiak from Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies and Dr...

Read More

AI Generates High-Quality Images 30 times faster in a Single Step

Three by two grid of AI-generated images, with small black illustrated robots peeking from behind. The images show a scenic mountain range; a unicorn in a forest; a vintage Porsche; an astronaut riding a camel in a desert; a sloth holding a cup, dressed in a turtleneck sweater; and a red fox in a spacesuit against a starry background.
Caption: With their DMD method, MIT researchers created a one-step AI image generator that achieves image quality comparable to StableDiffusion v1.5 while being 30 times faster.
Credits:Illustration by Alex Shipps/MIT CSAIL using six AI-generated images develped by researchers.

In our current age of artificial intelligence, computers can generate their own “art” by way of diffusion models, iteratively adding structure to a noisy initial state until a clear image or video emerges.

Diffusion models have suddenly grabbed a seat at everyone’s table: Enter a few words and experience instantaneous, dopamine-spiking dreamscapes at the intersection of reality and fantasy...

Read More