Klara and the Sun review: Ishiguro’s thought-provoking future for AI

Klara and the Sun by Nobel prizewinning author Kazuo Ishiguro is a fascinating tale about artificial intelligence, friendship and what it means to be human Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269338-klara-and-the-sun-review-ishiguros-thought-provoking-future-for-ai/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Quantum Computer Solves Decades-Old Problem Three Million Times Faster Than a Classical Computer

ZDNet reports: Scientists from quantum computing company D-Wave have demonstrated that, using a method called quantum annealing, they could simulate some materials up to three million times faster than it would take with corresponding classical methods. Together with researchers from Google, the scientists set out to measure the speed of simulation in one of D-Wave’s quantum annealing processors, and found that…

D-Wave demonstrates performance advantage in quantum simulation of exotic magnetism

D-Wave Systems Inc. today published a milestone study in collaboration with scientists at Google, demonstrating a computational performance advantage, increasing with both simulation size and problem hardness, to over 3 million times that of corresponding classical methods. Notably, this work was achieved on a practical application with real-world implications, simulating the topological phenomena behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. This…

Welcoming Morehouse College to the Coursera partner community

Morehouse College launches sports activism course taught by NBA All-Star Chris Webber By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera I’m excited to announce our partnership with Morehouse College as we continue to expand our engagement with leading institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. Morehouse College, a leading producer of […]
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Physicists observe competition between magnetic orders

They are as thin as a hair, only a hundred thousand times thinner—so-called two-dimensional materials, consisting of a single layer of atoms, have been booming in research for years. They became known to a wider audience when two Russian-British scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for the discovery of graphene, a building block of graphite. The special…

Edmund Clarke, 2007 Winner of the Turing Award, Dies of Covid-19

“Edmund M. Clarke, the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, has died of Covid-19,” writes Slashdot reader McGruber. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Professor Clarke was best known for his work in model checking, an automated method for detecting design errors in computer hardware and software. CMU president Farnam Jahanian said the world had “lost a…

If a planet has a lot of methane in its atmosphere, life is the most likely cause

The ultra-powerful James Webb Space Telescope will launch soon. Once it’s deployed and in position at the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 2, it’ll begin work. One of its jobs is to examine the atmospheres of exoplanets and look for biosignatures. It should be simple, right? Just scan the atmosphere until you find oxygen, then close your laptop and head to the pub:…