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    New Computing Architecture: Deep Learning with Light

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Artist’s rendering of a smart transceiver. The dark blue device has golden pathways and rectangles, which represent the wires that connect the smart transceiver chip to a circuit board. A light blue square covered with thin lines rises from the middle, to represent the smart transceiver chip. The thin lines represent an array of fibers that move light from lasers in and out of the chip.
    Caption:This rendering shows a novel piece of hardware, called a smart transceiver, that uses technology known as silicon photonics to dramatically accelerate one of the most memory-intensive steps of running a machine-learning model. This can enable an edge device, like a smart home speaker, to perform computations with more than a hundred-fold improvement in energy efficiency.
    Credits:Image: Alex Sludds. Edited by MIT New

    A new method uses optics to accelerate machine-learning computations on smart speakers and other low-power connected devices. The technique may enable self-driving cars to make decisions in realtime while only using a fraction of the energy that is currently demanded by their power-hungry on-board computers.

    Ask a smart home device for the weather forecast, and it...

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    Method for Decoding Asteroid Interiors could help Aim Asteroid-Deflecting Missions

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    3-D modeled illustration depicts the DART mission, and shows a boxy spacecraft with blue jets and solar panel wings approaching a bulky meteor.
    Caption:MIT astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth. The tool may improve the aim of future asteroid-targeting missions like the recent DART mission.
    Credits:Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

    Astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth. NASA hit a bullseye in late September with DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which flew a spacecraft straight at the heart of a nearby asteroid. The one-way kamikaze mission smashed into the stadium-sized space rock and successfully reset the asteroid’s orbit...

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    SSRIs and CBT lead to Changes in Brain

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    SSRIs and CBT lead to changes in brain

    Neurochemical changes in the brain differ among patients with social anxiety treated using both SSRIs and CBT, compared to those treated using only CBT. While the combined treatment involving the medicine blocked the serotonin transporters, availability of such transporters increased in patients who only received CBT.

    Treatment using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, is effective for depression and anxiety and can be even more effective when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. However, it has not been established which mechanisms in the brain clarify the clinical improvement.

    In a double-blind positron emission tomography (PET) study, researchers at Uppsala University investigated people with social anxiety and looked at how serotonin and dopamin...

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    Blocking the buzz: MXene Composite could Eliminate Electromagnetic Interference by Absorbing it

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    A MXene polymer composite being developed in Drexel’s College of Engineering could help to curtail the ever-increasing electromagnetic interference that comes with the proliferation of electronics devices.

    Drexel Materials science researchers demonstrate MXene polymer coating can block and absorb interference. A recent discovery by materials science researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering might one day prevent electronic devices and components from going haywire when they’re too close to one another. A special coating that they developed, using a type of two-dimensional material called MXene, has shown to be capable of absorbing and disbursing the electromagnetic fields that are the source of the problem.

    Buzzing, feedback or static are the noticeable manifestation...

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