news 2022

Silvia Massini, Mabel Sanchez-Barrioluengo, Xiaoxiao Yu have published a report exploring the key findings from ADiTS survey, in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce. High costs and a lack of access to people with the relevant skills are significant barriers to businesses adopting digital technologies across Greater Manchester, according to a major new AMBS report.

Cambridge researchers have developed a method for measuring overall fitness accurately on wearable devices - and more robustly than current consumer smartwatches and fitness monitors - without the wearer needing to exercise.

A global open-source dataset of high-resolution images of Earth - the most extensive and detailed of its kind - has been developed by experts led by UCL with data from the European Space Agency (ESA). The free dataset, WorldStrat, will be presented at the NeurIPS 2022 conference in New Orleans. It includes nearly 10,000km² of free satellite images, showing every type of location, urban area and land use from agriculture, grasslands and forests to cities of every size and polar ice caps.

Researchers have created a laser system based on a network like a spider's web, which can be precisely controlled to produce different light colours. The system, invented by a team led by researchers at Imperial College London with partners in Italy and Switzerland, could be used in new sensing and computing applications.

Imperial and chemical company BASF will reveal new techniques for optimising experimental design at leading machine learning conference NeurIPS. Three papers outlining new machine learning techniques that address important needs in the chemical industry have been judged ground-breaking enough to win acceptance at the NeurIPS conference, one of the most competitive international venues for research in machine learning.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace optical and mechanical components, researchers have designed a tiny spectrometer that breaks all current resolution records. We see light and colours around us every day. However, to analyse the information it carries, we must analyse light using spectrometers, in the lab.

Quantum computing systems could be made more stable and efficient thanks to a discovery about the way some atomic particles behave. The University of Leeds' Theoretical Physics Research Group has come up with a new way of making quantum particles defy the rules of statistical physics by utilising a special quantum computing device.

Computer security experts have developed a system capable of guessing computer and smartphone users' passwords in seconds by analysing the traces of heat their fingertips leave on keyboards and screens. Researchers from the University of Glasgow developed the system, called ThermoSecure, to demonstrate how falling prices of thermal imaging cameras and rising access to machine learning are creating new risks for 'thermal attacks.' Thermal attacks can occur after users type their passcode on a computer keyboard, smartphone screen or ATM keypad before leaving the device unguarded.

A new system capable of reading lips with remarkable accuracy even when speakers are wearing face masks could help create a new generation of hearing aids. An international team of engineers and computing scientists developed the technology, which pairs radio-frequency sensing with artificial intelligence for the first time to identify lip movements.

Is AI our only hope for the future of humankind? Professor Sami Kaski explores how this powerful tool could help meet the challenges facing our world. But how do we ensure that the human is present in the machine? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us. From the smart watches we wear everyday collecting our personal biodata to helping medical professionals prescribe to patients, this technology has the potential to greatly advance global health services, to name just one area, in the future.

A new research project is setting out to help artificial intelligence systems make fairer choices by lending them a helping human hand. Researchers from the University of Glasgow and Fujitsu Ltd. have teamed up for the year-long collaboration, which is called 'End-users fixing fairness issues', or Effi.

Artificial intelligence models built to predict liver disease from blood tests are twice as likely to miss disease in women as in men, a new study by UCL researchers has found. The study, published in BMJ Health & Care Informatics and funded by UKRI, recreated four AI models documented in previous research as having a greater than 70% success rate in identifying liver disease from the results of blood tests.

New research from the Oxford Flight Group using computer simulations and Hollywood-style motion capture shows how birds optimise their landing manoeuvres for an accurate descent. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that hawks control their flight to ensure the safest landing conditions when perching, even if it takes longer and more energy to do so.

A cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) system that can accurately predict the areas of an image where a person is most likely to look has been created by scientists at Cardiff University. Based on the mechanics of the human brain and its ability to distinguish between different parts of an image, the researchers say the novel system more accurately represents human vision than anything that has gone before.

New research uses multiple polarisation channels to carry out parallel processing - enhancing computing density by several orders over conventional electronic chips. In a paper published in Science Advances , researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a method using the polarisation of light to maximise information storage density and computing performance using nanowires.

The science behind your Netflix viewing habits could soon be used to guide doctors in managing cancer, according to new research co-led by UCL scientists and funded by Cancer Research UK and Cancer Grand Challenges. In the study an international team of scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to investigate and categorise the size and scale of DNA changes across the genome - a cell's complete genetic code - when cancer starts and grows.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can track the health of coral reefs by learning the "song of the reef", finds new research involving a UCL scientist. Coral reefs have a complex soundscape - and even experts have to conduct painstaking analysis to measure reef health based on sound recordings. In the new study, published in Ecological Indicators, scientists trained a computer algorithm using multiple recordings of healthy and degraded reefs, allowing the machine to learn the difference.

A new method that could automatically detect and kill cyberattacks on our laptops, computers and smart devices in under a second has been created by researchers at Cardiff University. Using artificial intelligence in a completely novel way, the method has been shown to successfully prevent up to 92 per cent of files on a computer from being corrupted, with it taking just 0.3 seconds on average for a piece of malware to be wiped out.

A new approach to solving the Travelling Salesperson Problem - one of the most difficult questions in computer science - significantly outperforms current approaches. We're highly reliant on this kind of infrastructure to be more efficient - and our solution could help with that Amanda Prorok A notorious theoretical question that has puzzled researchers for 90 years, the Travelling Salesperson Problem also has real relevance to industry today.

A new method of identifying gravitational wave signals using quantum computing could provide a valuable new tool for future astrophysicists. A team from the University of Glasgow's School of Physics & Astronomy have developed a quantum algorithm to drastically cut down the time it takes to match gravitational wave signals against a vast databank of templates.