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To Invent a Quantum Internet
Fifty years after the current internet was born, the physicist and computer scientist Stephanie Wehner is planning and designing the next internet — a quantum one.
To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight
A brain circuit that suppresses distracting sensory information holds important clues about attention and other cognitive processes.
On Your Mark, Get Set, Multiply
The way you learned to multiply works, but computers employ a faster algorithm.
Artificial Intelligence Takes On Earthquake Prediction
After successfully predicting laboratory earthquakes, a team of geophysicists has applied a machine learning algorithm to quakes in the Pacific Northwest.
Math Reveals the Secrets of Cells’ Feedback Circuitry
Maintaining perfect stability through negative feedback is a basic element of electrical circuitry, but it’s been a mystery how cells could do it — until now.
Computers and Humans ‘See’ Differently. Does It Matter?
In some ways, machine vision is superior to human vision. In other ways, it may never catch up.
Origin-of-Life Study Points to Chemical Chimeras, Not RNA
Origin-of-life researchers have usually studied the potential of pure starting materials, but messy mixtures of chemicals may kick-start life more effectively.
Long-Lived Stellar Blast Kindles Hope of a Supernova We’ve Never Seen Before
A giant star’s death throes may offer the first evidence of a pair-instability supernova, and a glimpse of the first stars in the universe.
Physicists Finally Nail the Proton’s Size, and Hope Dies
A new measurement appears to have eliminated an anomaly that had captivated physicists for nearly a decade.