Sealed letters folded in intricate patterns have gone unread for more than 300 years, but now researchers have been able to tease out their contents with a combination of X-ray imaging and unfolding algorithms Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269678-algorithm-reveals-contents-of-fragile-letters-sealed-for-300-years/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Tag: algorithm
Big data to model the evolution of the cosmic web
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has led an international team which has developed an algorithm called COSMIC BIRTH to analyze large scale cosmic structures. This new computation method will permit the analysis of the evolution of the structure of dark matter from the early universe until the formation of present day galaxies. This work was recently published in the…
Twitter’s Misinformation-Fighting Tool ‘Birdwatch’ Makes Mistakes
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school and research organization, analyzed Twitter’s 1,000-user pilot test of its Birdwatch fact-checking platform. Their conclusion? It makes mistakes. On February 5, Twitter flagged a post from controversial YouTuber Tim Pool that said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The platform noted that the claim was disputed and turned off engagement…
The Student and the Algorithm: How the Exam Results Fiasco Threatened One Pupil’s Future
Josiah Elleston-Burrell had done everything to make his dream of studying architecture a reality. But, suddenly, in the pandemic summer of 2020, he found his fate was no longer in his hands — and began a determined battle to reclaim his future. From a long read at The Guardian: The algorithm did what it was supposed to do. Humans, in the…
NVIDIA Limits RTX 3060 Crypto Speeds As it Introduces Mining Cards
Worried that the GeForce RTX 3060 will be sold out as cryptocurrency miners snap up every GPU in sight? NVIDIA thinks it has a simple way to help: make the new card unattractive to the crypto crowd. From a report: The company has revealed that it’s cutting the hash rate (mining efficiency) of the RTX 3060 in half for Ethereum miners….
Sharing your route in advance could cut electric car charging queue
As electric cars become more popular, drivers face long waits to charge – but if they upload their planned route in advance, an algorithm can slash waiting times by 97 per cent Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2268485-sharing-your-route-in-advance-could-cut-electric-car-charging-queue/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
The weirdest ways to measure a shop’s recycling efforts
A sea turtle’s worth of cardboard, plus an extremely unlikely virus and algorithm malfunctions, in Feedback’s weird weekly round-up Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-700-the-weirdest-ways-to-measure-a-shops-recycling-efforts/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
AI Is Being Used to Screen Job Applicants
The BBC reports on “the computers rejecting your job application,” noting that applicants are now being screened with AI-scored tests that involve counting dots in boxes and matching emotions to facial expressions: The questions, and your answers to them, are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker’s personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond…
Machines Are Inventing New Math We’ve Never Seen
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [A] group of researchers from the Technion in Israel and Google in Tel Aviv presented an automated conjecturing system that they call the Ramanujan Machine, named after the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who developed thousands of innovative formulas in number theory with almost no formal training. The software system has already conjectured several original…
Implementing a quantum approximate optimization algorithm on a 53-qubit NISQ device
A large team of researchers working with Google Inc. and affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S., one in Germany and one in the Netherlands has implemented a quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) on a 53-qubit noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) device. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics,, the group describes their method of studying the performance…