When I talk about artificial intelligence (AI), the usual images that come to mind are from fiction: Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the cyborg from The Terminator, or perhaps the gloomy world of The Matrix. Since March 2016, however, the poster child for real-world AI has become AlphaGo, the computer program developed by Google Deepmind …
The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) and the CSN
You’ve probably heard of the Human Genome Project (HGP), which was a collaborative international research program to map and understand all the genes of human beings. The HGP was declared complete in April 2003 and gave us the amazing ability to read the complete genetic blueprint for a human being, leading to a new era …
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Nano-Crystalline Metals and Sustainability
You’ve read a lot on this blog about how nanoparticles provide amazing opportunities for developing new materials. Over the next few years, we will have incredible advances in sustainable energy, biology, and more based on these new substances that never existed before. But what about the old, structural materials used in our buildings and cars? …
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Explainer: How does an LED work?
An acronym you have probably seen a whole lot of in recent years is LED, or Light Emitting Diode. Long used only for low-intensity illumination (think of the blinking lights on the front of your computer), the new generations of LEDs are being used to replace all sorts of light sources from car head lights …