Software

Representing a group of successful biocontrol agents for various pest fruit flies, a parasitic wasp genus remains largely overlooked. While its most recent identification key dates back to 1969, many new species have been added since then. As if to make matters worse, this group of visually identical species most likely contains many species yet…

The selection of a first-line chemotherapy drug to treat many types of cancer is often a clear-cut decision governed by standard-of-care protocols, but what drug should be used next if the first one fails? That’s where Georgia Institute of Technology researchers believe their new open source decision support tool could come in. Using machine learning…

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory is launching a four-year, $3.2 million project to develop software that will bring the power of exascale computers to the computational study and design of catalytic materials. Ames Laboratory scientist Mark Gordon, also the Francis M. Craig Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University, will lead the laboratory’s…

Selecting a landing site for a rover headed to Mars is a lengthy process that normally involves large committees of scientists and engineers. These committees typically spend several years weighing a mission’s science objectives against a vehicle’s engineering constraints, to identify sites that are both scientifically interesting and safe to land on. For instance, a…

Is that circle green or gray? Are the center lines straight or tilted? Optical illusions can be fun to experience and debate, but understanding how human brains perceive these different phenomena remains an active area of scientific research. For one class of optical illusions, called contextual phenomena, those perceptions are known to depend on context.…

A new computer program can analyze images of patients’ lung tumors, specify cancer types, and even identify altered genes driving abnormal cell growth, a new study shows. Led by researchers at NYU School of Medicine and published online in Nature Medicine, the study found that a type of artificial intelligence (AI), or “machine learning” program, could…

Solutions to many real-world scientific and engineering problems—from improving weather models and designing new energy materials to understanding how the universe formed—require applications that can scale to a very large size and high performance. Each year, through its International Scalable Computing Challenge (SCALE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognizes a project that…

Watch a movie backwards and you’ll likely get confused – but a quantum computer wouldn’t. That’s the conclusion of researcher Mile Gu at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University and collaborators. In research published 18 July in Physical Review X, the international team show that a…

Metallic glasses — alloys lacking the crystalline structure normally found in metals — are an exciting research target for tantalizing applications, including artificial joints and other medical implant devices. However, the difficulties associated with predicting how much energy these materials release when they fracture is slowing down development of metallic glass-based products. Recently, a pair…

Water, H2O. In its molecular form, it’s about as simple as it gets: two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, joined by a chemical bond. Yet, few question that this seemingly simple molecule may be the most important substance on Earth, vital for life and critical for the planet’s geology and climate. As testimony…