Seeing Objects through Clouds and Fog

A three-dimensional reconstruction of the reflective letter “S,” as seen through the 1-inch-thick foam. (Image credit: Stanford Computational Imaging Lab)

Using a new algorithm, researchers have reconstructed the movements of individual particles of light to see through clouds, fog and other obstructions. Like a comic book come to life, researchers at Stanford University have developed a kind of Xray vision — only without the X-rays. Working with hardware similar to what enables autonomous cars to “see” the world around them, the researchers enhanced their system with a highly efficient algorithm that can reconstruct three-dimensional hidden scenes based on the movement of photons. In tests, detailed in a paper published Sept...

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AI used to show how Hydrogen becomes a Metal inside Giant Planets

Bingqing Cheng et al. ‘Evidence for supercritical behaviour of high-pressure liquid hydrogen.’ Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2677-y.

Dense metallic hydrogen – a phase of hydrogen which behaves like an electrical conductor – makes up the interior of giant planets, but it is difficult to study and poorly understood. By combining artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics, researchers have found how hydrogen becomes a metal under the extreme pressure conditions of these planets.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, IBM Research and EPFL, used machine learning to mimic the interactions between hydrogen atoms in order to overcome the size and timescale limitations of even the most powerful supercomputers...

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Insomnia Identified as a new Risk Factor for type 2 Diabetes in new study which also confirms many other Risk and Protective Factors

A new ‘global atlas’ study published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]) is the first to identify insomnia as a risk factor associated with increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D). The study identifies 34 risk factors that are thought to increase (19) or decrease risk (15), as well as a further 21 ‘suggestive’ risk factors where evidence was not quite as strong.

The study by Associate Professor Susanna Larsson and by Shuai Yuan of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, used a technique called ‘Mendelian Randomisation’ (MR), which uses genetic variation as a natural experiment to investigate the causal relations between potentially modifiable risk factors and health outcomes in observational data...

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New Glove-like Device Mimics Sense of Touch

A diagram shows how the new finger sensor device works
This diagram illustrates how the new soft skin stretch device (SSD), developed by UNSW Engineering researchers, works. Image: UNSW Engineering

Engineers have invented a soft wearable device which simulates the sense of touch and has wide potential for medical, industrial and entertainment applications. What if you could touch a loved one during a video call — particularly in today’s social distancing era of COVID-19 — or pick up and handle a virtual tool in a video game?

Pending user tests and funding to commercialise the new technology, these ideas could become reality in a couple of years after UNSW Sydney engineers developed a new haptic device which recreates the sense of touch.

Haptic technology mimics the experience of touch by stimulating localised areas of the skin in way...

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