Albert Einstein once said, “You have to learn the rules of the game, and then you have to play better than anyone else.” That could well be the motto at DeepMind, as a new report reveals it has developed a program that can master complex games without even knowing the rules.

DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, has previously made groundbreaking strides using reinforcement learning to teach programs to master the Chinese boardgame Go and the Japanese strategy game Shogi, as well as chess and challenging Atari video games. In all those instances, computers were given the rules of the game.

But Nature reported today that DeepMind’s MuZero has accomplished the same feats—and in some instances, beat the earlier programs—without first learning the rul...

As Chile and Argentina witnessed the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020, unbeknownst to skywatchers, a little tiny speck was flying past the Sun — a recently discovered comet.

This comet was first spotted in satellite data by Thai amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod on the NASA-funded Sung...

Dual-acting immuno-antibiotics block an essential pathway in bacteria and activate the adaptive immune response. Wistar Institute scientists have discovered a new class of compounds that uniquely combine direct antibiotic killing of pan drug-resistant bacterial pathogens with a simultaneous rapid immune response for combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These finding were published today in Nature.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats against humanity. It is estimated that by 2050, antibiotic-resistant infections could claim 10 million lives each year and impose a cumulative $100 trillion burden on the global economy...

Rapid, accurate communication worldwide is possible via fiber optic cables, but as good as they are, they are not perfect. Now, researchers from Penn State and AGC Inc. in Japan suggest that the silica glass used for these cables would have less signal loss if it were manufactured under high pressure.

“Signal loss means that we have to use amplifiers every 80 to 100 kilometers (50 to 62 miles),” said John C. Mauro, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. “After that distance, the signal wouldn’t be detected properly. Across continents or across oceans that becomes a big deal.”

Glass fibers lose signal strength because of Rayleigh scattering — scattering of light that comes from fluctuations in the glass’s atomic structure.

“Glass, on an atomic scale, is he...