Category Physics

‘Raw’ data show AI Signals Mirror how the Brain Listens and Learns

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have measured brain waves in participants and artificial intelligence systems — a comparison they say provides a window into what is considered a black box of AI. (Photo courtesy iStock)

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have measured brain waves in participants and artificial intelligence systems – a comparison they say provides a window into what is considered a black box of AI.

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that artificial intelligence (AI) systems can process signals in a way that is remarkably similar to how the brain interprets speech, a finding scientists say might help explain the black box of how AI systems operate.

Using a system of electrodes placed on participants’ heads,...

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Nifty Nanoparticles help ‘Peel back the Curtain’ into the world of Super Small Things

Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) are using nanoparticles to develop new sources of light that will allow us to “peel back the curtain” into the world of extremely small objects – thousands of times smaller than a human hair – with major gains for medical and other technologies.

The findings, published in Science Advances, could have major implications for medical science by offering an affordable and effective solution to analyse tiny objects that are too small for microscopes to see, let alone the human eye. The work could also be beneficial for the semiconductor industry and improving quality control of the fabrication of computer chips.

The ANU technology uses carefully engineered nanoparticles to increase the frequency of light that cameras and ...

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Engineers ‘Grow’ Atomically Thin Transistors on Top of Computer Chips

Engineers 'grow' atomically thin transistors on top of computer chips
Uniformity characterization of the 200 mm monolayer MoS2 synthesized at low temperature. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-023-01375-6

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult.

However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips...

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Using Quantum Physics to Secure Wireless Devices

Using quantum physics to secure wireless devices
Physically unclonable function (PUF) based cryptographic keys generated by the PT-symmetric electronic system. a Illustration of the PUF-enabled secure radio-frequency (RF) authentication and communication. b Generation of the challenge-response pair (CRP) and the cryptographic key in the proposed PUF system. Our experiments utilize the pulse excitation shown in the left panel of b, and the response, represented by the transient voltage signal measured across the reader’s capacitor, and its discretized form are shown in the middle and right panels of b, respectively. After proper sampling and processing, the analog response is converted to a digital key composed of a bitstring. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36508-x

From access cards and key fobs to Blu...

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