Scientists in China have unveiled a new AIchip called LightGen that is 100 times faster and 100 times more energy efficient than NVIDIA chips, the leading supplier of AI chips worldwide. Instead of using electricity to move information, this new optical chip relies on light to perform complex generative tasks.

Traditional general AI models, such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, run on everyday silicon chips and require massive amounts of computing power and electricity, which can generate significant heat. For particularly complex tasks, these chips can struggle with the workload, resulting in slow processing times.

Mimicking the human brain
Photons of light are already kno...

Temporal lobe epilepsy, which results in recurring seizures and cognitive dysfunction, is associated with premature aging of brain cells.

A new study by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center found that this form of epilepsy can be treated in mice by either genetically or pharmaceutically eradicating the aging cells, thereby improving memory and reducing seizures as well as protecting some animals from developing epilepsy.

The study appears in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Current challenges and hopes for treatment
“A third of individuals living with epilepsy don’t achieve freedom from seizures with current medications,” says senior author Patrick A. Forcelli, Ph.D...

Starlight and stardust are not enough to drive the powerful winds of giant stars, transporting the building blocks of life through our galaxy. That’s the conclusion of a new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, of red giant star R Doradus. The result overturns a long-held idea about how the atoms needed for life are spread.

The study, “An empirical view of the extended atmosphere and inner envelope of the asymptotic giant branch star R Doradus II...

The rapid accumulation of plastic waste is currently posing significant risks for both human health and the environment on Earth. A possible solution to this problem would be to recycle plastic waste, breaking it into smaller molecules that can be used to produce valuable chemicals.

Researchers at Nanjing Forestry University and Tsinghua University recently introduced a new approach to convert polystyrene (PS), a plastic widely used to pack some foods and other products, into toluene, a hydrocarbon that is of value in industrial and manufacturing settings. Their proposed strategy, outlined in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, entails heating polystyrene waste in hydrogen and breaking it down into smaller vapor molecules, a process known as hydro-pyrolysis.

Life-cycle a...