Informatics

GreyB on Wednesday rolled out Slate, an AI search tool that promises to collapse the grunt work of patent and literature hunts into a single query. The firm says early pilots cut document-finding time “from hours to minutes.” Slate’s index reaches across more than 160 million patents filed in 100-plus jurisdictions and roughly 264 million…

“If you are not having a conversation with your research data, you’re still operating in analog mode.” That’s the stark assessment from Mikael Hagstroem, CEO of LabVantage. While many labs possess vast amounts of data, more isn’t always better if scientists struggle to access and contextualize it effectively. For Hagstroem, the ability to converse with…

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, commonly referred to as the “Third Pole,” is undergoing significant environmental changes. Its alpine wetlands, crucial for regional biodiversity and water regulation, exhibit signs of distress, including diminishing water resources and degradation of meadows. However, persistent cloud and snow cover complicate consistent, long-term monitoring of these ecosystems. Researchers from South China Normal…

Maintaining large-scale infrastructure is becoming increasingly challenging as urban populations expand and extreme weather events occur more frequently. Waste landfill facilities, in particular, present difficulties for managers with limited on-site access, resulting in various issues, including environmental pollution. Tapping into free satellite data, the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) has developed…

If you read much about AI, you’ve likely noticed the growing number of models capable of “reasoning” and acting autonomously. This isn’t just about chatbots; it’s transforming scientific discovery. Google DeepMind recently launched a 15-day weather forecasting agent, bringing new levels of accuracy to complex atmospheric modeling. OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, o1, has demonstrated potential…

In 1959, John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” redefined what was possible in jazz. Its unprecedented chord progression (later known as “Coltrane changes”) and relentless tempo pushed boundaries, challenging even seasoned musicians like Tommy Flanagan. The track eventually developed a reputation for being the “most feared song in jazz” for its fiendishly difficult improvisational demands. Today, genomics…

Every year, thousands of groundbreaking ideas emerge from research labs and universities, brimming with the potential to reshape industries. Yet, a significant number of these innovations never see the light of day. They fall into the abyss ominously termed the “Valley of Death,” which, as a paper in Science Direct puts it, “is an unfavorable…

Gone are the days when scientific progress was confined to individual disciplines, like swimmers rigidly adhering to their designated lanes in a pool. Today, breakthroughs increasingly occur at the intersection of fields, as researchers break free from these traditional boundaries and collaborate across disciplines to tackle complex challenges—from developing personalized cancer treatments based on genomic…

Ari Gesher, a veteran technologist who helped shape SourceForge in its heyday and was a key player at Palantir, the publicly-traded big data analytics company, wants to build a fully automated “lights-off” lab for drug discovery at Parallel Bio. “I’m using our biologists to prototype what the scientific processes are, then we’re going to build…

In the high-stakes product development race, R&D teams are facing relentless pressure. Every day, every experiment, is a tightrope walk between painstaking research and the need for speed to outpace the competition. But what if the very data that underpins your R&D efforts is actually putting you in the slow lane? R&D is an expedition…