Since the time our ancient human relatives began using stone tools to perform tasks, humans have harnessed new technology to advance our ability to feed ourselves, increase our health, expand the boundaries of our knowledge, and much more. From artificial intelligence and quantum computing, to optimizing the human body in pursuit of a long and healthy life, and much more—learn about these topics and more with our smart-but-digestible overviews and expert-curated resources.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
Three cube-shaped robots use electric fans to fly through the microgravity environment of the International Space Station. They are equipped with cameras and sensors that allow them to "see" and navigate their surroundings to take inventory, document experiments, and move cargo.
Instead of understanding the meaning of words, large language models break up sentences into words and subwords, assigning each a set of numbers called tokens. Grammar rules are then "learned" by finding associations between these sets of numbers.
The city boasts a strong talent pipeline from UCSB, established tech companies like Sonos and Procore and dozens of startups. Search for any company in Santa Barbara with this regularly-updated directory.
Rare earth metals are 17 elements in the periodic table critical for modern technologies like electronics and defense systems. Although the US once led in their production, it now faces significant challenges in competing with China’s lower costs and control of over 70% of the global output.
Dartmouth professor John McCarthy introduced the term during a summer workshop aimed at exploring how to make machines perform human-like tasks. Two years later, Perceptron Mark I became one of the first neural network machines.
Systems like ShakeAlert® use a network of hundreds of ground sensors to detect earthquakes moments after they begin. Since seismic waves travel about 5 km/s, individuals may be notified of earthquakes before they feel the seismic activity has reached them.
In the early days of X-ray crystallography, getting photos of a single sample could take dozens of hours, followed by months of mathematical analysis. Today, automation and computer software can complete such tasks in a few hours.
The extraction and processing of REEs requires significant amounts of water, and poorly regulated projects can contaminate groundwater with acids and heavy metals. Toxic waste spills have paused work in several US mines since the 1980s, despite growing REE demand.
In large language models, temperature adjusts the randomness in text generation by modifying how often words with lower probabilities are selected next in the sequence. Lower temperatures produce more obvious outputs while higher temperatures produce more creative responses.
The CEOs of top technology companies Nvidia and Meta recently revealed their visions for the metaverse of the future. As of 2021, both Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg were bullish on virtual world-building, although Huang seemed more focused on the metaverse's business implications than its social ones, which Zuckerberg prioritized.
