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Artificial intelligence tools hold promise for applications ranging from autonomous vehicles to the interpretation of medical images. However, a new study finds these AI tools are more vulnerable than previously thought to targeted attacks that effectively force AI systems to make bad decisions.

At issue are so-called “adversarial attacks,” in which someone manipulates the data being fed into an AI system in order to confuse it. For example, someone might know that putting a specific type of sticker at a specific spot on a stop sign could effectively make the stop sign invisible to an AI system. Or a hacker could install code on an X-ray machine that alters the image data in a way that causes an AI system to make inaccurate diagnoses.

“For the most part, you can make all sorts o...

Artistic illustration of the thick dust torus thought to surround supermassive black holes and their accretion disks. [ESA / V. Beckmann (NASA-GSFC)] Credit: Durham University

A new study reveals that supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, known as quasars, can sometimes be obscured by dense clouds of gas and dust in their host galaxies.

Artistic illustration of the thick dust torus thought to surround supermassive black holes and their accretion disks. [ESA / V. Beckmann (NASA-GSFC)] Credit: Durham University

This challenges the prevailing idea that quasars are only obscured by donut-shaped rings of dust in the close vicinity of the black hole.

Quasars are extremely bright objects powered by black holes gorging on surrounding material...

Infections with cytomegalovirus (CMV) are extremely common and often pose no major threat to the vast majority of people. They can however be deadly for people whose immune system is weakened, e.g., after bone marrow transplantation. Current treatments against CMV infections are very limited and can have severe side effects. Researchers led by Prof...

Researchers have identified two ion channel switches that regulate the release of dopamine in the brain, a first step that might one day lead to therapeutics for a wide range of diseases and disorders that currently have few solutions.

The switches help regulate learning and motivational state in mice. Humans also have hundreds of these channels, which govern many chemical and hormonal processes that influence behavior and mood. The University of Washington School of Medicine research team hopes to identify drugs to target these channels. Those drug candidates could then be tested in clinical trials.

“The ability to precisely mani...