"Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in the development of artificial intelligence by using light instead of electricity to perform computations," reports the Independent.

"The new approach significantly improves both the speed and efficiency of machine learning neural networks..." A paper describing the research, published this week in the scientific journal Applied Physics Reviews, reveals that their photon-based (tensor) processing unit (TPU) was able to perform between 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than an electric TPU.

"We found that integrated photonic platforms that integrate efficient optical memory can obtain the same operations as a tensor processing unit, but they consume a fraction of the power and have higher throughput," said Mario Miscuglio, one of the paper's authors.

"When opportunely trained, [the platforms] can be used for performing inference at the speed of light."

Glacial viruses are understudied, and climate change may keep it that way. From a report: 15,000 years ago, some water froze atop the Tibetan Plateau and became part of a glacier. While humans were busy domesticating dogs, the ice entrapped millions of microscopic organisms per square inch. Many of the tiny life forms died, and their genomes -- the only proof that they had been there in the first place -- slowly degraded. Then, in 2015, scientists from the U.S. and China drilled down 50 meters into the glacier to see what they could find. Five years later, these researchers have recovered evidence of ancient viruses in the glacier ice, including 28 viral groups that are new to science. Their study detailing the discovery was posted online as a pre-print on Tuesday. Records of ancient microbes, like those found in glacier ice, give scientists a glimpse into Earth's evolutionary and climate history. As our planet undergoes climate change, these frozen records can inform predictions about which microorganisms will survive, and what the resulting environment will look like.

"Glacier ice harbors diverse microbes, yet the associated viruses and their impacts on ice microbiomes have been unexplored," the authors wrote in the paper. The group declined to comment on the paper, as it has not yet been peer-reviewed -- "This is an exciting new area of research for us," co-author Lonnie Thompson said in an email. Viruses found in glacial samples known as ice cores are especially understudied because of how small they are, said Scott O. Rogers, a professor at Bowling Green State University and an author of the book Defrosting Ancient Microbes: Emerging Genomes in a Warmer World.

skywire writes: We've all followed the recent story of AlphaGo beating a top Go master. Now IBM researchers Tayfun Gokmen and Yurii Vlasov have described what could be a game changer for machine learning — an array of resistive processing units that would use stochastic techniques to dramatically accelerate the backpropagation algorithm, speeding up neural network training by a factor of 30,000. They argue that such an array would be reliable, low in power use, and buildable with current CMOS fabrication technology. "Even Google's AlphaGo still needed thousands of chips to achieve its level of intelligence," adds Tom's Hardware. "IBM researchers are now working to power that level of intelligence with a single chip, which means thousands of them put together could lead to even more breakthroughs in AI capabilities in the future."

sciencehabit writes "A project to drill deep into the heart of a 'supervolcano' in southern Italy has finally received the green light, despite claims that the drilling would put the population of Naples at risk of small earthquakes or an explosion. Yesterday, Italian news agency ANSA quoted project coordinator Giuseppe De Natale of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology as saying that the office of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris has approved the drilling of a pilot hole 500 meters deep. The project’s organizers originally intended to bore a 4-kilometer-deep well in the area of the caldera late in 2009, but the plan was put on hold by then-mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino after scientists expressed concerns about the risks."