A clearer understanding of how a type of brain cell, astrocytes function and can be emulated in the physics of hardware devices, may result in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that autonomously self-repairs and consumes much less energy than the technologies currently do, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

Astrocytes are named for their star shape and are a type of glial cell, which are support cells for neurons in the brain. They play a crucial role in brain functions such as memory, learning, self-repair and synchronization.

“This project stemmed from recent observations in...

Physicists looking for signs of primordial gravitational waves by sifting through the earliest light in the cosmos – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – have reported their findings: still nothing.

But far from being a dud, the latest results from the BICEP3 experiment at the South Pole have tightened the bounds on models of cosmic inflation, a process that in theory explains several perplexing features of our universe and which should have produced gravitational waves shortly after the universe began.

“Once-promising models of inflation are now ruled out,” said Chao-Lin Kuo, a BICEP3 principal investigator and a physicist at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laborato...

For the first time, researchers have used human data to quantify the speed of different processes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease and found that it develops in a very different way than previously thought. Their results could have important implications for the development of potential treatments.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, found that instead of starting from a single point in the brain and initiating a chain reaction which leads to the death of brain cells, Alzheimer’s disease reaches different regions of the brain early. How quickly the disease kills cells in these regions, through the production of toxic protein clusters, limits how quickly the disease progresses overall.

The researchers used post-mortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s pat...

Passive technology on roofs and facades could greatly reduce HVAC energy consumption. Engineers have developed smart material technology that, with the flip of a switch, can alternate between harvesting heat from sunlight and allowing an object to cool. The window-like device has no moving parts and could be a boon for HVAC savings, potentially cutting energy usage by nearly 20% in the United States alone.

As anyone who has ever parked a car in t...