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June 1871: Maxwell and His Demon

This month in 1,871, James Clerk demonstrated entropy with a thought experiment now known as’s Demon.


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Emerging memristive artificial neuron and synapse devices for the neuromorphic electronics era

Growth of data eases the way to access the world but requires increasing amounts of energy to store and process. Neuromorphic electronics has emerged in the last decade, inspired by biological neurons and synapses, with in-memory computing ability, extenuating the ‘von Neumann bottleneck’ between the memory and processor and offering a promising solution to reduce the efforts both in data storage and processing, thanks to their multi-bit non-volatility, biology-emulated characteristics, and silicon compatibility. This work reviews the recent advances in emerging memristive devices for artificial neuron and synapse applications, including memory and data-processing ability: the physics and characteristics are discussed first, i.e., valence changing, electrochemical metallization, phase changing, interfaced-controlling, charge-trapping, ferroelectric tunnelling, and spin-transfer torquing. Next, we propose a universal benchmark for the artificial synapse and neuron devices on spiking energy consumption, standby power consumption, and spike timing. Based on the benchmark, we address the challenges, suggest the guidelines for intra-device and inter-device design, and provide an outlook for the neuromorphic applications of resistive switching-based artificial neuron and synapse devices.

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| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Physics meets machine learning.


The Progress and Promise for Science in Indonesia Regional Special Feature focuses on biodiversity and climate change, highlighting research based on the unique geology and biology of a nation comprising more than 17,600 islands, containing about 10 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests, and home to over 300,000 species of wildlife.

Rajendra Gupta On Tired Light and the REAL Age of the Universe [Ep. 431]

Join my mailing list https://briankeating.com/list to win a real 4 billion year old meteorite! All.edu emails in the USA 🇺🇸 will WIN!Is the universe twice as old as we thought?Current estimates suggest that the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago. But today, we’re joined by Rajendra Gupta, a luminary in the field of cosmology who claims that the universe is actually 26.7 billion years old. I’ve invited him on the show so he can make a case for his claims!Professor Gupta is a theoretical physicist currently teaching astrophysics to senior undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, the dynamics of the universe under evolutionary physical constants beyond the standard model, CMB, JWST, BAO, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the large-scale structure and formation of galaxies, dark matter, and dark energy. To say I am thrilled to have him on the show for the second time would be an understatement. So, without further ado, let’s jump right in! Key Takeaways:

00:00 Intro.

01:50 Judging Rajendra’s paper.

China launches Sino-French astrophysics satellite, debris falls over populated area

Hausjärvi, FINLAND— A Chinese launch of the joint Sino-French SVOM mission to study Gamma-ray bursts early Saturday saw toxic rocket debris fall over a populated area.

A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 3:00 a.m. Eastern (0700 UTC) June 22, sending the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission satellite into orbit.

The launch was declared successful by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) a short time after liftoff.

New Simulation Explains how Supermassive Black Holes Grew so Quickly

One of the main scientific objectives of next-generation observatories (like the James Webb Space Telescope) has been to observe the first galaxies in the Universe – those that existed at Cosmic Dawn. This period is when the first stars, galaxies, and black holes in our Universe formed, roughly 50 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang. By examining how these galaxies formed and evolved during the earliest cosmological periods, astronomers will have a complete picture of how the Universe has changed with time.

As addressed in previous articles, the results of Webb’s most distant observations have turned up a few surprises. In addition to revealing that galaxies formed rapidly in the early Universe, astronomers also noticed these galaxies had particularly massive supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers. This was particularly confounding since, according to conventional models, these galaxies and black holes didn’t have enough time to form. In a recent study, a team led by Penn State astronomers has developed a model that could explain how SMBHs grew so quickly in the early Universe.

The research team was led by W. Niel Brandt, the Eberly Family Chair Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. Their research is described in two papers presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS224), which took place from June 9th to June 13th in Madison, Wisconsin. Their first paper, “Mapping the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes as a Function of Galaxy Stellar Mass and Redshift,” appeared on March 29th in The Astrophysical Journal, while the second is pending publication. Fan Zou, an Eberly College graduate student, was the lead author of both papers.