Google Brain's discovery that the Internet is full of cat videos provoked a flurry of jokes from journalists. But it was also a landmark in the resurgence of deep learning: a three-decade-old technique in which massive amounts of data and processing power help computers to crack messy problems that humans solve almost intuitively, from recognizing faces to understanding language.
New Fluorescent Protein Permanently Marks Neurons that Fire
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- Parent Category: Imaging
- Category: Techniques
A new tool developed at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus lets scientists permanently mark neurons that are active at a particular time.
A new tool developed at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus lets scientists shine a light on an animal's brain to permanently mark neurons that are active at a particular time. The tool -- a fluorescent protein called CaMPARI -- converts from green to red when calcium floods a nerve cell after the cell fires. The permanent mark frees scientists from the need to focus a microscope on the right cells at the right time to observe neuronal activity.
Read more: New Fluorescent Protein Permanently Marks Neurons that Fire
Ugandan village has a new well and clean water
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- Parent Category: Engineering
- Category: News
Thanks to Georgia Tech students!
Two years of nights and weekends devoted to planning and design. Two years of writing reports, making presentations and getting official approval. Two years of raising money. Two trips to the remote community of Oloo, Uganda.
An Engineers Without Borders-Georgia Tech team traveled to Oloo, Uganda, in December to install a new hand-pump and well for the community. The travel group, from left to right: Colin Kelsall, Jessie Spruill and Meghan Reid.
And it all came down to this: connecting a chain to a hand pump and drawing up clean water for a village in desperate need of it.
Computer science: The learning machines
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- Category: Virtual Mentor
Using massive amounts of data to recognize photos and speech, deep-learning computers are taking a big step towards true artificial intelligence.
Three years ago, researchers at the secretive Google X lab in Mountain View, California, extracted some 10 million still images from YouTube videos and fed them into Google Brain — a network of 1,000 computers programmed to soak up the world much as a human toddler does. After three days looking for recurring patterns, Google Brain decided, all on its own, that there were certain repeating categories it could identify: human faces, human bodies and … cats.
Solar Cells - Chemistry Explained
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- Parent Category: Chemistry
- Category: Environmental
Just what makes a solar cell?
A solar cell is, in principle, a simple semiconductor✶ device that converts light into electric energy. The conversion is accomplished by absorbing light and ionizing crystal atoms, thereby creating free, negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. If these ions are created from the basic crystal atoms, then their ionized state can be exchanged readily to a neighbor from which it can be exchanged to another neighbor and so forth; that is, this ionized state is mobile; it behaves like an electron, and it is called a hole. It has properties similar to a free electron except that it has the opposite charge.
✶ Solar cells can be made from single crystals, crystalline and amorphous semiconductors. For simplicity this article begins with a description of crystalline material.
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