Scientists are using light waves to accelerate supercurrents and access the unique properties of the quantum world, including forbidden light emissions that one day could be applied to high-speed, quantum computers, communications and other technologies.

The scientists have seen unexpected things in supercurrents – electricity that moves through materials without resistance, usually at super cold temperatures – that break symmetry and are supposed to be forbidden by the conventional laws of physic...

By studying the chemical elements on Mars today — including carbon and oxygen — scientists can work backwards to piece together the history of a planet that once had the conditions necessary to support life.

Weaving this story, element by element, from roughly 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away is a painstaking process. But scientists aren’t the type to be easily deterred...

A Duke University research team has found a small area of the brain in mice that can profoundly control the animals’ sense of pain.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this brain center turns pain off, not on. It’s also located in an area where few people would have thought to look for an anti-pain center, the amygdala, which is often considered the home of negative emotions and responses, like the fight or flight response and general anxiety.

“People do believe there is a central place to relieve pain, that’s why placebos work,” said senior author Fan Wang, the Morris N...

Novel training method could shrink carbon footprint for greener deep learning. Engineers have found a way to train deep neural networks for a fraction of the energy required today. Their Early Bird method finds key network connectivity patterns early in training, reducing the computations and carbon footprint for training deep learning.

Early Bird is an energy-efficient method for training deep neural networks (DNNs), the form of artificial intelligence (AI) behind self-driving cars, inte...