Wind and solar power are increasingly popular sources for renewable energy. But intermittency issues keep them from connecting widely to the U.S. grid: They require energy-storage systems that, at the cheapest, run about $100 per kilowatt hour and function only in certain locations. Now MIT researchers have developed an "air-breathing" battery that could store electricity for very long durations for about one-fifth the cost of current technologies, with minimal location restraints and zero emissions.

A year-long project to determine how high-performance computers can perform in space has just cleared a major hurdle -- successfully booting up on the International Space Station (ISS). This experiment conducted by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NASA aims to run a commercial off-the-shelf high-performance computer in the harsh conditions of space for one year -- roughly the amount of time it will take to travel to Mars.

We’ve reached a significant point in time where the interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning have gained huge amounts of traction - why? We are moving into an era where science fiction is now becoming fact and reality. AI and machine learning are not new concepts; Greek mythology is littered with references of giant automata such as Talos of Crete and the bronze robot of Hephaestus. However, the ‘modern AI’ idea of thinking machines that we all have come to understand was founded in 1956 at Dartmouth College.

In the two decades since Sun Microsystems declared “the network is the computer,” cloud computing has established itself as the de-facto model. The economic benefits of a near infinite, elastic infrastructure that customers don’t need to manage themselves have assured that. Storing information centrally has made it possible to deliver information wherever it’s needed, to any device, supporting the explosion in remote work, smartphone apps, social networks and more.

Someone encountering an “Analytical Engine” today would probably think it was part of a mechanical system for some bizarre car—or perhaps an obscure telegraph machine or some kind of eccentric musical instrument. We probably would not recognize this jumble of pins and cogwheels as the world’s first computer. Although a working model was never completed, English mathematician Charles Babbage’s design, first described in 1837, was extraordinary. And it had parallels with the modern computer, such as its “mill”—what we would now call a central processing unit.

Regina Barzilay, a professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who does research in natural language processing and machine learning, is a recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes referred to as a “genius grant.” The fellowships carry a five-year, $625,000 prize, which recipients are free to use as they see fit. Twenty-one current MIT faculty members and three staff members have won MacArthur Fellowships, which were established in 1981 and are usually given out to roughly 25 people each year.

With the naked eye, a roll of paper towels doesn't seem too complicated. But look closely enough, and you'll see it's made up of layers of fibers with thousands of intricate structures and contact points. These fluffy fibers are squeezed together before they are printed in patterns, and this resulting texture is key to the paper's performance.

Researchers have developed a new computer-aided approach that streamlines the design process for origami-based structures, making it easier for engineers and scientists to conceptualize new ideas graphically while simultaneously generating the underlying mathematical data needed to build the structure in the real world.

With emerging exascale supercomputers, researchers will soon be able to accurately simulate the ground motions of regional earthquakes quickly and in unprecedented detail, as well as predict how these movements will impact energy infrastructure—from the electric grid to local power plants—and scientific research facilities.

What would you do with a supercomputer that is at least 50 times faster than today’s fastest machines? For scientists and engineers, the emerging age of exascale computing opens a universe of possibilities to simulate experiments and analyze reams of data — potentially enabling, for example, models of atomic structures that lead to cures for disease.

The need for basic computer science education has never been greater. Software and computers drive the economy, aiding mines and farms, as well as retail stores, banks, and healthcare. There are 500,000 computer science job openings in the U.S., spanning every industry and state. That’s more than 10 times the number of students who graduated with computer science degrees last year, according to the nonprofit Code.org, which has been working tirelessly to establish and expand CS access in schools.

If you think technology has shaken up the news media—just wait, you haven't seen anything yet. The next wave of disruption is likely to be even more profound, according to a study presented Saturday to the Online News Association annual meeting in Washington. News organizations which have struggled in the past two decades as readers moved online and to mobile devices will soon need to adapt to artificial intelligence, augmented reality and automated journalism and find ways to connect beyond the smartphone, the report said.

Primary brain tumors encompass a wide range of tumors depending on the cell type, the aggressiveness, and stage of tumor. Quickly and accurately characterizing the tumor is a critical aspect of treatment planning. It is a task currently reserved for trained radiologists, but in the future, computing, and in particular high-performance computing, will play a supportive role.

The Aurora machine, which had an uncertain future this year when its budgetary and other details were thrown into question. We understood the deal was being restructured and indeed it has been. The system was originally slated to appear in 2018 with 180 petaflops of peak performance at double precision floating point. Now it is 1,000 petaflops, an exascale capable machine, and will be delivered in 2021—right on target with the projected revised plans for exascale released earlier this year.

Researchers specialising in astrophysics and cosmology, particle physics and nuclear physics at Durham University and from across the UK can now take advantage of an extended HPC service. The DiRAC Data Centric HPC system installed at Durham University has been enhanced by the deployment of COSMA6, a machine with 8,000 Intel Sandy Bridge cores and 4.3 petabytes of storage ‘upcycled’ from another system previously located at the Hartree Centre in Daresbury. This additional resource was needed to maintain the international competitiveness of the research community served by DiRAC for the next 12 months.

The product design process has undergone a significant transformation with the availability of supercomputing power at traditional workstation prices. With over 100 threads available to an application in compact 2 socket servers, scalability of applications that are used as part of the product design and development process are just a keyboard away for a wide range of engineers.

Theoretical physicists have dispelled the idea we are living in a Matrix-style computer simulation, calculating that not all aspects of our reality can be simulated efficiently using computers. The simulation theory has been a staple of science fiction for decades and was detailed in a 2003 paper by the philosopher Nick Bostrom. On the basis of this paper, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated there is a 99.99 percent chance that the universe we inhabit is a computer simulation, while physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says that is is “very likely.”

Many manufacturing jobs require a physical presence to operate machinery. But what if such jobs could be done remotely? This week researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) presented a virtual-reality (VR) system that lets you teleoperate a robot using an Oculus Rift headset. The system embeds the user in a VR control room with multiple sensor displays, making it feel like they are inside the robot's head. By using gestures, users can match their movements to the robot's to complete various tasks.

A group of major companies led by the technology industry announced plans Tuesday to commit more than $300 million over five years to boost computer science programs among younger students. Amazon.com, Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com announced in Detroit they are committing $50 million for kindergarten through 12th grade educational efforts, the Internet Association, a trade group representing tech companies that helped organize the effort said. Lockheed Martin agreed to commit $25 million, Accenture more than $10 million, General Motors $10 million and Pluralsight $10 million, the group said.

Last year, Amina (not real name), a prospective computer programmer who participated in the Andela boot camp decided that her four-year-old son will not attend a Nigerian tertiary institution. She is grooming him to become a software developer and believes he will be better off spending four years as an Andela fellow rather than schooling in a regular university. Clara (not real name) on the other hand, recently registered her 16-year-old son to study computer science at one of the private universities in Nigeria. However, she has grown worried as she has had a lot of people question this decision.

It’s not easy to teach a subject in which you have no training. But Kristen Haubold, a computer science teacher at James Whitcomb Riley High School in South Bend, Indiana, was up for the challenge. Haubold arrived at Riley 5 years ago as a math teacher after graduating from Indiana University in Bloomington. A year later, Indiana began developing a new computer science requirement for elementary and high school students, and Haubold signed up for the course that the state was offering.

In the classrooms at Georgia Tech, among the laptops and notebooks and lines of code, senior computer science major Marguerite Murrell likes to play a game she's dubbed "Count the Girls." "If I can keep it under two hands, then I win," Murrell said. "There are certainly some girls, probably more than some other computer science programs in the nation. But it's a lot of guys." Women earn only 18% of computer science bachelor's degrees in the United States. And leaders such as Apple CEO Tim Cook have stated that if the US tech industry doesn't solve its gender imbalance issues then America will lose its lead in tech.

Neuropsychologists of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum let video gamers compete against non-gamers in a learning competition. During the test, the video gamers performed significantly better and showed an increased brain activity in the brain areas that are relevant for learning. Prof Dr Boris Suchan, Sabrina Schenk and Robert Lech report their findings in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has created the most functional flexible transistor in the world—and with it, a fast, simple and inexpensive fabrication process that's easily scalable to the commercial level. It's an advance that could open the door to an increasingly interconnected world, enabling manufacturers to add "smart," wireless capabilities to any number of large or small products or objects—like wearable sensors and computers for people and animals—that curve, bend, stretch and move.

President Donald Trump will soon direct the Department of Education to commit $200 million every year to K-12 computer science education, which Code.org is marking as a victory for its nonprofit organization. As Recode reported earlier today, Trump’s memorandum calls on the Department of Education to commit at least $200 million of its grant funds to STEM education. “Today’s $200M per year commitment to computer science education marks a victory for Code.org, and for the movement we started four years ago to expand access to computer science and increase participation by women and underrepresented minorities,” Code.org founder and CEO Hadi Partovi said.