How Close Are Computers to Automating Mathematical Reasoning?
In the 1970s, the late mathematician Paul Cohen, the only person to ever win a Fields Medal for work in…
Category: Tech
Symbolic mathematics finally yields to neural networks
More than 70 years ago, researchers at the forefront of artificial intelligence research introduced neural networks as a revolutionary way…
A table tennis table that will up your game
Zhong Lin Wang started playing table tennis only four years ago. But last year, he and other researchers came up…
Can CRISPR deliver?
SCIENTISTS HAVE SPENT DECADES mapping the tens of thousands of genes encoded in human DNA. They want to understand how genes…
How math makes movies like Doctor Strange so otherworldly
For wild chase scenes, it’s hard to beat Doctor Strange. In this 2016 film, the fictional doctor-turned-sorcerer has to stop villains who want…
Blockchain beyond Bitcoin
In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to Bitcoin, a volatile digital currency that’s untethered to any specific institution or…
Riding a Wave of Sound
One way to get drugs through the blood-brain barrier: smuggle them across using sound waves. The blood-brain barrier, a name…
The Patient Stays in the Picture
IN JUNE 2014, oncologist Fabrice Denis of the Jean Bernard Center, a cancer hospital in Le Mans, France, began approaching people…
Rise of the botnets
Armies of zombie computers caused a lot of mayhem in 2018. In January, one cluster of infected, connected machines attacked…
Can self-driving cars make roads safer and less congested?
Pedestrians in downtown Miami one weekday last November might have noticed something unusual about the blue Ford Fusions threading their…