SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " putin " 510 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Akamai Stock Surges On Anthropic AI Computing Agreement
It's an $11 billion agreement for computing infrastructure.
LRZ Hosts TPC Europe Hackathon on AI for Science and Supercomputing
Agentic AI is currently a hot topic in the scientific community: during the Trillion Parameter Consortium’s autumn hackathon at the LRZ, teams presented practical solutions designed to make supercomputers more accessible and research projects more efficient. Sept. 24, 2026 — In the seminar rooms of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), small groups stand in front […]
LRZ Hosts TPC Europe Hackathon on AI for Science and Supercomputing
Agentic AI is currently a hot topic in the scientific community: during the Trillion Parameter Consortium’s autumn hackathon at the LRZ, teams presented practical solutions designed to make supercomputers more accessible and research projects more efficient. Sept. 24, 2026 — In the seminar rooms of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), small groups stand in front […]
EU science policy wonks debate prospect of stronger ties with Canada
Europe’s research and innovation sector has started asking questions on how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s offer to make Canada “the first associate member of the EU” would actually work in practice, and who will get to shape priorities in a transatlantic relationship that is getting stronger. The Commission says it wants “a new model of association” under which the EU and Canada will aim to develop “a shared space” to face ongoing challenges. “Working in close coordination with our member states and the European Parliament, we will aim to create a new form of partnership that has not existed until now, building the closest imaginable form of association with a partner outside Europe,” a spokesperson told Science|Business.Locked in an escalating trade war with US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly talked of annexing Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney has been looking east, but full EU membership was never in play. Taking the floor a day after von der Leyen’s proposal, he agreed to strengthen ties under “an alliance of the future” but reined in enthusiasm on the new label. He also suggested expanding Canada’s involvement in the Erasmus+ student mobility scheme, to which it currently has limited access, and the next iteration of Horizon Europe. Canada joined the present Horizon Europe in 2024, but only contributes to collaborative projects.Neither side has detailed the next practical steps in developing this new relationship. “I think nobody at the moment truly knows how this will work,” said Michael Browne, chief executive and founder of Crowdhelix, a global collaborative network that connects players in research and innovation. “It’s more of a statement of intent for closer collaboration, which requires legislative frameworks and approval processes, which have not started.”Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, said von der Leyen’s pitch to Canada is “politically significant, but the legal content still has to be negotiated and constructed.”Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university group, agreed that she had only opened “a political door” to Canada, as “associate membership does not come with a predefined set of rights in the EU institutions.”Not only does this status not currently exist as a legal category in the two treaties that set up how the EU functions, but the Commission president cannot unilaterally create a new category of EU membership.According to Deketelaere, Article 217 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which allows the bloc to make association deals with non-EU countries involving reciprocal rights and duties, is “the most obvious existing legal basis for building a much deeper EU-Canada relationship.”Getting universities involvedNo matter how this new cooperation takes shape, Liviu Matei, who heads the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London, hopes to see universities involved in discussions from an early stage.“Its primary motivations, entirely justifiably, are political and geopolitical,” he said. “In the area of higher education, however, restricting the initiative to political and geopolitical considerations would limit the scope of cooperation and lead to distorted frameworks and counterproductive implementation.”It is all the more important since academic interests on the two sides of the Atlantic are “neither identical nor fully aligned,” Matei added. “This is not insurmountable; it simply requires work to articulate the details of this privileged cooperation, including its governance and funding frameworks, as well as its substantive content in education and research.”Related articlesCanada looks to deepen research and education links with the EUZaharieva hopes for a Horizon Europe deal in 2026Canada might participate in European Research Council schemes, for example, which was not on offer in the present Horizon Europe association agreement. But “there would have to be something in it for the EU,” Browne said. “They don’t want to be funding projects outside of the EU where intellectual property is going to sit outside of the EU. There has to be some kind of transfer of knowledge.”But access to funding will not by itself resolve all the practical difficulties of working together, said Björnmalm. “For researchers and students, these include visas and residence arrangements, recognition of qualifications and study periods, and the conditions for pursuing a research career across borders,” he said. “For universities, there is scope for more predictable access to shared laboratories, computing and research data, and stronger support for joint doctoral training and long-term institutional partnerships.”Linda Doyle, provost and president of Trinity College Dublin, said Europe should strive for the “closest possible expression” of this new political alliance. “If Europe is serious about recovering its voice and its place in the world, it needs to be strongly allied with countries who share its values and its vision for a stable, rules-based, peaceful world.”
What can AI do for science? Four Argonne interns investigate
This summer, four Argonne interns used AI to advance research on vaccine development, weather forecasting and high performance computing. Their work shows how AI can speed discovery and help tackle major scientific and public health challenges.
Kennesaw State researcher developing safer, more efficient computing systems for intelligent vehicles
Modern vehicles are becoming computers on wheels, powered by increasingly complex software and artificial intelligence. As those systems take on more responsibility, they must process information quickly and reliably enough to keep critical functions running safely. Kennesaw State University computer science researcher Kun Suo is working to improve how those systems operate through a $356,782 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant focused on developing more efficient and secure computing infrastructure for intelligent vehicles.
Trump Invites Putin to Attend Group of 20 Summit in Miami
Many leaders are unlikely to welcome the Russian leader’s presence at the event because of his country’s war against Ukraine.
Building the future: UMass celebrates $125M Computer Science Laboratories
AMHERST — Inside a room at the Physical Computing Makerspace on the University of Massachusetts campus, a 3D printer is fabricating a chalk case that a teaching assistant will use to carry writing utensils. The case’s design started as a computer file, drawn up nearby by Bennett Gillig, a UMass graduate student pursuing a master’s […]
Quanome Advances Its AI Cloud Business XDT with US$18.8 Million Infrastructure Purchase Agreement
Company Advances Development of First U.S. AI Infrastructure Hub, Executes Its Quantum & AI Systems Strategy ITASCA, Ill., Sept. 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quanome Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: QNME) (“Quanome” or the “Company”) is advancing its Quantum and AI Systems business through an approximately US$18.8 million purchase agreement for computing infrastructure powered by NVIDIA GPU technology to build its AI cloud business through its subsidiary, XDT Infrastructure I, LLC (“XDT”). The Compan
MIT welcomes David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91 as its next Innovation Fellow
Computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist David Siegel has joined MIT as an Innovation Fellow, where he will collaborate with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing to advance AI and scientific discovery.
South Chicago business hopes new quantum computing campus brings growth to neighborhood
Business hopes South Chicago sees growth with new quantum computing campus
Republican calls for Senate investigation of Trump Jr wedding paid for by Russian oligarch
Putin ally helped cover cost of renting private island in the Bahamas for wedding of Trump Jr and Bettina Anderson
For the first time, scientists watch sound jump between quantum states
Stanford researchers have recorded the first real-time quantum jumps of sound, watching single phonons abruptly vanish from one energy state to another. The breakthrough could open new paths for quantum computing, error correction, highly sensitive biological sensors, and next-generation sound-based devices.
Putin’s ‘war heroes’ form new political elite in Russian parliament
Many of the men served in units that Kyiv has accused of war crimes
ATU Computing Sciences Student Projects Aid Partners
Arkansas Tech University computing sciences students are working with on-campus and off-campus partners as part of their senior capstone projects during the 2026-27 academic year. The ATU computing sciences students are engaged with the ATU Office of the President, the ATU Department of Public Safety, the ATU Department of Kinesiology…
Weaving data and computing into a nationwide fabric supporting science
Building on decades of experience advancing research computing, the FabAID project is bringing high-throughput, data-intensive computing — and as many scientists as possible — into the age of AI.
Democrats try to ride data center backlash to election victory in rural US Midwest
Mounting public anxiety about AI, cloud-computing infrastructure has transformed data center construction into a contentious midterm elections issue
Putin’s United Russia set to win Russia’s first wartime parliamentary staged election
The Kremlin is likely to present the results as evidence of public backing for Putin's policies and for the war in Ukraine.
Russians vote on last day of parliamentary elections
The results are unlikely to bring many surprises, with Putin’s party expected to win
Trump signs bill authorising sweeping Russia sanctions
The legislation takes aim at Russia's energy and defence sectors, President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials
Engrams Embedding Entendre: Codesign for Efficient DRAM/SSD Offloading
Engram extends standard token embeddings with learned multi-token lookups. Recurring local patterns retrieve vectors directly, reducing the need to reconstruct them through attention and feed-forward layers. With Engram model architecture optimization, it allows for lower HBM capacity to be needed for models at the same quality. This does not mean there won’t be an insane demand for HBM but it just means that model architecture will continue to innovate around constraints. This model architecture design is naturally codesigned for parameter offloading: each token accesses a few embedding rows whose addresses depend on token IDs, not hidden states. The runtime can prefetch those rows from host DRAM while earlier layers compute, keeping the table outside HBM without transferring entire weight matrices. Our Memory model contains our latest estimates of quarter by quarter HBM, DRAM, & NAND supply and demand. Offloading frees HBM for model weights and KV cache, potentially supporting larger batches or more concurrent sessions. When DRAM becomes the next constraint, NVMe offers another tier. Recommendation systems already cache frequently or recently accessed embedding rows in faster memory while backing colder rows with SSDs. After NVIDIA roadmap had to change due to massively despec’ing Rubin Ultra from 1024GB to now ~200GB of HBM per chip, model architecture optimizations like emgram maybe helpful. Our DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash configuration uses roughly 189 GiB of memory for Engram. We replace it with a memory-mapped (mmap) file and measure serving performance with offload to SSD. Later on in our report, we will show our Engram offloading experiments along with the official InferenceX agentic inference serving results on Engram models like DeepSeekv4.1 Flash across all 6 NVIDIA GPU SKUs along with MI355X. Unsurprisingly, the CUDA Moat is still mogging MI355X on the ultra popular DeepSeekV4.1 Flash model. We also show how even on high capacity HBM SKUs, offloading emgrams to DRAM could result in even better performance for most of the pareto than keeping the emgram in HBM. Our benchmark has been widely reproduced, validated and/or supported by almost every major buyer of compute from Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure to Oracle, to Meta and many more. Furthermore, it has the support of the ML community including from vLLM, LMCache, SGLang, PyTorch, Huggingface and the support of major labs like OpenAI, MiniMax, ZAI, Qwen, Moonshot Kimi, etc. Star the InferenceX GitHub repository if you find the open-source benchmark and data useful!. InferenceX is the only inference benchmark in the world to have TPUv7, Jalapeño, Nvidia Rubin NVL72, AMD, and soon, SambaNova and Trainium. Due to how realistic AgentX scenario is to real world agentic inference workloads, AMD has committed to collaborating on MI455X UALoE72 too. DeepSeek did not release the original paper’s two trained Engram models. We replicated its setup on fineweb-edu using the released code and training hyperparameters, at an estimated 6E18 FLOPs per run. We observed the same U-shape scaling: Engram improved performance over pure MoE baselines. We also reproduced DeepSeek’s results, where earlier-layer representations with Engram resembled those of later layers. Like the original Engram paper, it is possible to probe Engram’s gate scores to see what n-grams DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash makes the most use of. Our gate scan finds names, code fragments, relational phrasing, and boilerplate. These examples prioritize interesting-ness over gate strength. One unexpected result was Wright : Ace Attorney. These examples suggest learned memory optimizes the training objective, not a judgment of which facts deserve storage. Licenses, bibliography fragments, API scaffolding, and website furniture can provide prediction shortcuts, so the value of additional Engram capacity may depend on what survives data preparation. This does not show that table capacity is “wasted”: the evaluation-corpus scan establishes neither training exposure nor the capacity occupied by each category. For offloading, strong gates do not identify cache-hot rows. Low gates do not automatically save reads either: computing the gate requires the retrieved key and undoes the performance gain of a fused kernel. Skipping reads would require a separate usefulness predictor before retrieval. In the original paper’s inference-time ablation, factual-knowledge benchmarks retained just 29–44% of their original performance, while reading comprehension retained 81–93%. This is due to the training–inference mismatch. The resulting degradation therefore measures this trained model’s dependence on Engram, not the performance difference between models trained with and without it. In our ablations, suppressing Engram worsens token likelihood across all evaluated domains, especially encyclopedia text and several code corpora. Surprisingly, GSM8K accuracy stays within measured run-to-run variation and removing Engram has no effect. Engram is not a detachable dictionary beside an unchanged MoE. Removing it changes downstream features and expert selection. We tested whether rerouting hurts or compensates by holding tokens fixed in a teacher-forced experiment on CRUXEval, a code-reasoning benchmark of small Python functions where the model predicts a function’s output from its code and an input, and scoring the reference answer. Removing Engram raised answer loss from 0.2848 to 0.3093 bits/token. Forcing the ablated model to use the original Engram-on expert choices made it worse still, at 0.3375 bits/token. Rerouting partially compensates for the missing memory. Memory features and expert selection work together, rather than following a clean “memory stores facts; experts reason” division. On the same CRUXeval, removing Engram during either phase reduced accuracy and increased generated tokens; removing it throughout produced the largest changes. Keeping Engram for prefill leads to more correct answers than keeping for decode likely due to semantically richer KV cache transferred to decode workers, allowing it to mitigate some of the performance loss. Engram’s table is large, but each lookup is small. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash requests 24 rows at each of two Engram layers, about 12.4 KiB per processed token position across the model, or 3.1 KiB per GPU when split across four GPUs. Currently as of Day 7 since Model Release, MI355X is still 2-4x worse performance per dollar compared to B200 even when normalized by Mi355X’s lower TCO. Our full total cost of ownership breakdown comes from our AI Cloud TCO Model along with monthly market surveys of over 100+ gpu clouds & gpu cloud customers. On the Day 0 release of DeepSeekv4.1 Flash, NVIDIA vLLM works out of the box with zero issues across all 6 SKUs: H100, H200, B200, B300, GB200, GB300! This was thanks to the amazing work by the NVIDIA & Interact teams! In comparison, AMD vLLM did not work on day 0 for DeepSeekv4.1 Flash.Source: SemiAnalysis InferenceX AMD’s vLLM documentation points to using vllm/vllm-openai-rocm:deepseekv41-flash-0909, but from hour 0 of the model release to hour 23, AMD has not publicly released the image. AMD claims, “SPEED IS THE MOAT,” yet it has still not released it by the 23rd hour. We wish that, going forward, the AMD team has a better process for hour 0 model releases. Eventually when they did publicly release for “day 0” image support, performance-wise, it is currently up to 14.8x worse perf per dollar than H200 and up to 42x worse perf per dollar than B200/B300. The power of the CUDA MOAT is NVIDIA’s collaboration with its massive 6 million-developer community ecosystem including most of the vLLM & SGLang & Tokenspeed maintainers which means that CUDA is optimized on day 0. Overall, AMD did make significant improvements but the performance per dollar is still currently 2-4x worse than B200. AgentX Engram DRAM Offloading Improving Performance The HBM and DRAM offload use the same GPU kernel to select and dequantize rows. With HBM, it reads GPU memory; with Unified Virtual Addressing (UVA), it reads pinned host memory directly. Both support full decode graphs. Moving the table into HBM accelerates only the sparse lookup, leaving decoder computation and communication unchanged, resulting in little overall benefit while consuming memory otherwise available to KV cache. Another benefit of Engram offloaded to DRAM which means you can reduce the communication overhead by using less HBM GPUs per replica. For example, when enabling Engram offloading on B300, we are able to switch from TP4 to now TP2 which improves the pareto curve by up to 1.6x. When iso-model quality, less HBM is required as the engrams could be offloaded to host DRAM. Thus HBM bandwidth matters way more than HBM capacity. For inference workloads where memory bandwidth matters the most, 4-hi HBM provides the best $/bandwidth and therefore lowest cost per token. If China continues to make more and more revolutionary model architecture innovations, soon it could potentially 0Hi HBM stacks. [ ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) [ Long Live the Short King: Why 4-hi HBM Wins ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) Myron Xie, Bryan Shan, and 3 others · Sep 13 [ Read full story ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) Moreover, on B300 and week-0 stack, moving the Engram table back to HBM did not improve results and stay within run-to-run variance. This is a result of the work optimizing DRAM offload, such as async, and overlap. SSD Offloading On B200, we created a unoptimized vLLM fork and stored the Engram tables in memory-mapped files on local SSDs. File backing lets the OS reclaim table pages when other applications need RAM. Pages already cached in memory can be served without reading the SSD again. Furthermore, note that we were unable to turn on GDS The unoptimized SSD implementation changes how rows reach the GPU. It copies row IDs to the CPU, deduplicates them, gathers the requested rows into pinned buffers, copies those rows back to the GPU and dequantizes them. This work runs between segments of the GPU execution graph. Native UVA performs row selection and dequantization directly on the GPU, avoiding the CPU round trip. A warm filesystem cache removes physical SSD reads, but leaves the coordination, row gathering and transfers. This is why a file already cached in RAM can still perform worse than a pinned DRAM table. The comparison measures the whole serving path; it does not separate the time spent on each of these operations. B200 DRAM dominates both measured SSD serving curves in total tokens per dollar and P90 interactivity. Near 125 tokens/s/user, DRAM delivers 121 million total tokens per dollar versus 52 million for SSD. For production serving, SSD offloading is likely not worth the tradeoff. On the B200 configurations we measured, SSD offloading loses on both measures: every observed SSD point has a DRAM alternative that delivers higher P90 interactivity and more total tokens per dollar. The only points where Cheaper storage does not automatically produce a cheaper inference service. Moving Engram to SSD leaves the same four expensive GPUs and the rest of the server in place. Reclaiming RAM only creates an economic benefit if it enables a cheaper server configuration or additional useful capacity. The current unoptimized path provides neither benefit, and the filesystem cache still consumes RAM when table pages are resident. Next we will look at the mechanisms and specific implementation of ngrams from DeepSeekv4.1 Flash, LongCat, Qwen3.8 Flash Next.
Guest Post — The Quantum Inflection Point: Charting a Science-First Roadmap for the Nation
Quantum computing is rapidly transitioning from a phase of fundamental laboratory research into a scientifically revolutionary capability.
Alex Ovechkin claims he’s ‘not in politics’. His pro-Putin video says the opposite
After the NHL star appeared in an ad campaign for United Russia, it’s fair to start pressing about the impact of his stances – even if he doesn’t want to talk about it
Putin targets Nestle's Russian business as Kremlin tightens grip on Western assets
Nestlé is assessing its options after Russia placed the Swiss food giant’s local assets under temporary external administration.
Nestle reviewing options after Russia business seized by Putin
Vladimir Putin made a presidential decree to take control of Nestle’s Russian assets, alongside those of French supermarket chain Auchan.
Nestle responds to Putin's decision to put its Russian business under external administration
Nestle on Friday responded to the Kremlin's decision to take control of the Swiss food maker's business in Russia, saying it was assessing its options.
Caltech’s tiny new chip can steer light in 74 quadrillionths of a second
A new Caltech device can redirect a beam of light in just 74 femtoseconds using another beam and a nanoscale silicon metasurface. The breakthrough could pave the way for dramatically faster photonic communications, computing, and sensing technologies.
Trump Wants Putin to End the War. He May Offer Russia Business Deals First.
A new sanctions bill is meant to pressure President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to end the war in Ukraine. But President Trump is doubling down on a different approach: offering enticements to Russia.
Can researchers trust that AI models won’t leak their ideas?
Research funders are asking how they can stop confidential scientific ideas in grant proposals from leaking out through large language models (LLMs), for example if reviewers use AI to help them judge applications. Last week, a row erupted in mathematics after OpenAI announced it had solved a notoriously difficult problem, only for another mathematician to demand answers over whether the company had used ideas he had fed into its models. The spat, and the broader issue of idea leakage through AI models, was discussed by funders at an R&D policy conference held in Paris on September 14. At worst, it threatens to undermine the correct attribution of breakthroughs, one of the foundations of modern science. The mathematics dispute around OpenAI is “certainly something we're looking at” Jason Gallo, head of the newly established Office of Metascience at the US National Science Foundation (NSF), told the Blue Sky Forum, hosted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The controversy started on September 8, when OpenAI announced it had cracked a mathematical problem that had gone unsolved for 90 years. Using a swarm of AI agents, millions of dollars’ worth of computing power and a new internal model, the company said it had finally proved that a long-used formula for modelling fluid dynamics breaks down under certain conditions. However, Tristan Buckmaster, a New York University mathematician who had been independently working with collaborators on the same problem using OpenAI’s Codex tool, hit back with a statement questioning whether the company had snooped on his Codex sessions to gain an advantage. OpenAI has always denied it looked up the “specific user data” of Buckmaster and colleagues. However, the company initially admitted that “while unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models,” although its proofs “differ significantly” from Buckmaster’s. The firm later said that, following an investigation, it concluded that Buckmaster’s Codex prompts “could not have influenced the [OpenAI] system in any way, including through training.”Funder concernYet OpenAI’s initial admission that its model might have ingested Buckmaster’s ideas, then spat them out to its own mathematicians, has scientistsworriedthat their work could leak out if shared with AI. Some AI tools give users an opt-out option to stop their sessions from training the model. If such guarantees can be trusted, this gives scientists some confidence they can use an LLM to develop an idea without the risk of it leaking out.But there’s a bigger potential vulnerability. To win money to investigate ideas, scientists have to share them with funding bodies. These grant proposals are normally kept strictly confidential, to prevent other scientists from scooping them, or to protect commercially valuable intellectual property. To preserve this confidentiality, when the NSF uses AI models, “we have to be sure that it's not making server calls out to an external party, leaking that data,” said Gallo to delegates in Paris. Leaks through reviewersHowever, funders normally use external academic reviewers to assess proposals. And there are growing worries that these reviewers are feeding grant ideas into AI models to help them make a judgement. Research funders have noticed that peer review reports and funding recommendations have “suddenly become much longer, more detailed and complex,” said Diogo Machado, head of the data science unit at Technopolis, a science and technology-focused consultancy. “The sense is that reviewers are increasingly using generative AI in their review work, even where guidelines sometimes forbid it,” he told Science|Business. “This is very difficult for funders to control or prove.” Happening at scaleThis sharing of confidential proposals with AI models is “happening at scale already,” said James Wilson, executive director of the Research on Research Institute, based at University College London, during the debate in Paris. In response, Gallo said the NSF had “strict guidance” around the uploading of proposals to AI models. But he added the NSF was mulling new types of assessment to make sure applicants were truly the originators of their ideas, such as following a short-form proposal with an oral presentation, which would allow the foundation to “really interrogate the investigator on their intellectual contribution.” Related articlesHow can Europe cope with a flood of AI-assisted research grant proposals?The risks and benefits of AI in screening research grant proposals Viewpoint: AI could make scientific overload worse“For us as funders, a lot of the ways to ensure that the application remains the applicant's own intellectual contribution, those ways are quite regressive,” Peter Clifford, head of strategy at Research Ireland, told delegates. “They're maybe ten or 15 or 20 years old, and they don't scale particularly well.” Disputes over the origin of ideas are as old as modern science. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz spent more than a decade arguing over who invented calculus, for example. And long before LLMs emerged, academics would agonise over how much of their early work to reveal at conferences, in case their colleagues scooped them, Jack Leahy, a senior metascience advisor to the UK government, told delegates. But AI was “accelerating” the “problems of the system,” he said.
Rep. Andy Ogles: There's a race to quantum computing
House Homeland Security Cyber Subcommittee Chairman Andy Ogles warns that heavy-handed government regulations on artificial intelligence could stifle U.S. innovation and allow China to win the quantum computing race.
NSF and UKRI Commit $10 Million in Joint Funding for Molecular Quantum Information Science
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have launched a joint $10 million (£7.4 million) research initiative supporting eight transatlantic research teams. Funded via $5 million from the
Zelensky claims Russia targeted plane with drones
Stuart Varney and Victoria Coates react to claims that Russia targeted Zelensky's plane with drones. Coates argues Putin is running out of options and seeking a kill shot to install a puppet government.
EU membership bid gives boost to Moldova’s fledgling R&D landscape
Moldova’s push to join the EU is having the spillover effect of helping to improve the country’s R&D landscape, which in recent years has suffered from fragmentation, decreasing personnel and a lack of research infrastructure.The country became an EU candidate country in 2022, alongside Ukraine, and officially began accession negotiations in 2024. With a pro-EU government, Moldova has been actively carrying out reforms to align with EU standards. This has helped accelerate the development of R&D, said Igor Chiosa, acting head of the Research and Innovation Policy Directorate at Moldova’s Ministry of Education and Research. “Our R&D landscape is moving up, and we are more and more involved in the European Research Area,” he said. “The support we receive from the EU is very important, not only financially, but also because of incentives, consultation and capacity building.”The R&D landscape in the former Soviet republic is still relatively underdeveloped, despite attempts at improvement going back to a 2004 law on science and innovation and later reforms in 2017 and 2018. But the system remains in a “precarious situation” and “in the process of contraction,” according to an assessment carried out by the government for the current National Programme for Research and Innovation, which runs from 2024 to 2027. The analysis highlights in particular the declining number of researchers and PhDs, which has been continuously falling, as well as limited research funding. This is around 10 times lower than the EU average and “insufficient to maintain a level of research activity that supports higher education and meets the needs of the economy.” The mechanisms for allocating research funds are also described as inefficient, as well as the general fragmentation of the landscape, with research and innovation activities being carried out in 67 different places. The lack of strategic vision for research infrastructure is also noted. The strategy sets out to address these issues and is being fuelled by reforms linked to EU accession. Moldova now has a regulation on open science and gender equality. There is also a new support mechanism for technology transfer offices and a business-academia roadmap. In 2025, the country also became the first Eastern Partnership country to approve a Smart Specialisation strategy, which will coordinate its R&D efforts to focus on strengths, within a European context. “We’ve done a lot in terms of normative acts,” Chiosa said. Horizon Europe successMoldova is also seeing more success in the EU’s flagship R&D programme, Horizon Europe. The country has now won nearly €15 million in funding, already double the amount won under the previous programme, Horizon 2020, and more than the €10 million target set by the government. Chiosa said the priority has shifted now to winning more research-centred projects, rather than those related to support and capacity. Moldova is also targeting further involvement in large European projects. Last year, it joined the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking giving Moldovans access to Europe's supercomputing network. The country is also a member of Danubius-RI, a European research infrastructure focused on river and sea research. Despite these efforts, Moldova’s research capacity is still shackled by its limited R&D budget, which equates to 0.23% of its GDP. This is around half of what its neighbour Romania spends, which is the lowest in the EU. According to Chiosa, the research budget is increasing year-on-year, jumping by €6.34 million between 2024 and 2025. But this doesn’t show up when looking at it as a proportion of GDP. “Of course, it’s difficult,” he said. “That is why we are putting more emphasis on collaboration between business and academia, as well as participation in Horizon Europe, to try to diversify our sources of funding.”A World Bank loan of €30 million, plus a grant of €7.8 million, was agreed in 2025 to support the modernisation of Moldova’s universities. As part of this, a call was launched this year to provide universities grants of up to €900,000 to develop their research infrastructure. Moldova is also collaborating closely with Romania, with which it shares a common language, funding 100 joint projects in 2023 and 2024. This support has been instrumental. “They are helping with sharing their expertise, inviting us into consortia, and lots more,” Chiosa said. Looking forward, Moldova is eagerly anticipating joining the EU. “We are looking closely at what the EU is doing and will shape our future national programme in research innovation accordingly.”EU accession “blocked at a technical level”Moldova is aiming to join the EU by 2028, but despite its swift and eager efforts to meet the accession criteria, there remain obstacles outside of the country’s control. For a country to join the EU, it must have certain legislation in place and meet specific standards in various areas. This is categorised into six thematic clusters containing 33 chapters. Moldova and the EU have so far opened two of the clusters, numbers one and six. The first covers fundamental laws, such as the judiciary, security and financial legislation. The sixth covers external relations. The remaining four clusters are still unopened. This includes the third cluster, on competitiveness and growth, which contains the chapter on science and research.Related articlesQ&A: Albania’s ambition to become a ‘moderate innovator’Data corner: Horizon success rates are droppingThe European Commission has confirmed that these clusters are ready to be opened, with an official saying that the Commission is encouraging EU governments, who have the final say, to move forward on the matter. However, both clusters two and three remain blocked by the EU Council’s working party on enlargement and countries negotiating accession to the EU, a different official, representing the Council, confirmed.This working party is set to meet several times in the coming weeks, with a Council meeting scheduled for mid-October in which enlargement, and Moldova’s bid, will be discussed. But there is no certainty that these talks will lead to progress. According to the Council source, it is “completely impossible to foresee if and when the file will be unblocked,” citing the sensitivity of the matter. Moldova’s situation is particularly complicated. One factor is that it borders Ukraine and is increasingly embroiled in Russia’s war, with drone incursions occurring more often on its territory. Another is Transnistria, a Russian-backed breakaway state that lies within the territory of Moldova. It is unclear how the EU would be able to accept Moldova into the bloc while this situation remains unchanged. While there is no direct reason to delay opening cluster three with Moldova, as it covers matters unrelated to security, it could be that the EU is reluctant to speed through accession negotiations without first resolving broader, geopolitical issues.Chiosa is confident that, if and when the chapter on science and research is opened, Moldova will be able to finalise it quickly. It doesn’t require any legislative changes and is only a matter of proving certain standards, which Chiosa believes Moldova is well prepared to do. “We hope that chapter 25 on science and research will be one of the first chapters opened and closed,” he said.
Aixia delivers AI infrastructure to leading Swedish player in media and entertainment, worth 2 MSEK
White Pearl Technology Group AB (publ) ("WPTG" or the "Group") announces that Aixia Group AB (publ) ("Aixia"), a company within the Group, has received an order from a well-known Swedish player in the media and entertainment industry. The order relates to the delivery of modern AI-adapted computing…
Capitals say Alex Ovechkin asked to film United Russia ad
The Capitals told The Associated Press that Alex Ovechkin was asked to participate in an ad this summer for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.
Alex Ovechkin faces backlash over pro-Putin political campaign ad
NHL star Alex Ovechkin is facing criticism after appearing in a political ad to support one of "the architects of Russia's war against Ukraine."
RUNC: Advaith Cheruvu - College of Arts and Sciences
The senior strives to make next-generation computing technologies more powerful and practical.
160 Health International Announces Introduction Of New Business Integrating Healthcare With AI Computing Power
160 Health International Ltd HKEX:2656:
Amazon is selling a 2-in-1 laptop and tablet for $60 that comes with a 5-piece accessories bundle
It's great for everyday computing tasks.
Zelenskyy open to meeting Putin at G20 in Miami
The Kremlin has not yet decided whether the Russian president will attend
Tiny sound waves could help solve a major quantum computing problem
Researchers at Harvard have demonstrated a way to protect quantum information using microscopic sound waves. By continuously surrounding a diamond-based qubit with mechanical vibrations, they extended its coherence time by roughly threefold. The same phonons could eventually both transmit and protect quantum information, opening the door to compact sound-based quantum networks on chips.
Putin warns European troops in Ukraine would mean war with Russia
The Russian president issued the warning ahead of the BRICS summit in New Delhi.
What are tomorrow's quantum threats?
Most people trust that the passwords, bank accounts, medical records and private messages they use every day are protected by encryption. But as quantum computing advances, some of today’s most widely used security tools could eventually become breakable. That means information stolen now could potentially be saved and unlocked years later, when quantum computers are powerful enough to crack protections that current computers cannot.
‘Few new ideas’: What Trump’s feckless diplomacy tells Putin
Trump’s envoys in Ukraine seem desperate while Germany’s right surges.
Apple Unveils A20 Pro as First 2nm Smartphone Chip
Apple today revealed the A20 Pro chip in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, built on a brand new architecture using 2nm process technology. Apple described the A20 Pro as "an exceptional chip that sets a new bar for mobile computing". The chip has a 6-core CPU design with two new super cores that Apple says are up to 20% faster, calling them "desktop class" and "the fastest in any smartphone," alongside four new efficiency cores.
A Stealth Startup Thinks It Just Hacked the Memory Shortage
Kepler Computing claims a new approach to chip design—and a proprietary material—can help end the supply bottlenecks that have sent memory prices surging.
RUNC: Advaith Cheruvu
The senior strives to make next-generation computing technologies more powerful and practical.
Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN and IBM Team Advance to Finals for 2026 ACM Gordon Bell Prize
Joint research team modeled a 12,635-atom protein, the largest-known to be simulated using quantum computers. Breakthrough was achieved through quantum and classical methods working together, expanding quantum-centric supercomputing’s potential in life sciences research.
Putin and Trump discuss Ukraine in 'extremely frank' call
Washington has been pushing for fresh face-to-face talks between Moscow and Kyiv to reach a peace deal
Google Cloud Boss Makes Bold Claim About AI Chip Business
In a boost for Google stock, cloud computing chief Thomas Kurian says AI chip business is more than twice the size of its closest rival.
D-Wave Quantum Secures Up To $100 Million In CHIPS And Science Act Funding
D-Wave Quantum has finalized a definitive agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce providing access to up to $100 million in CHIPS and Science Act funding to accelerate development of its annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies.
Arm CEO says AI could cure cancer but data centers are a bottleneck
Getting there, however, will require enormous amounts of computing power, Haas said.
US envoys Witkoff and Kushner set for talks in Kyiv after meeting with Putin in Moscow
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to arrive in Kyiv on Sunday in their first visit to the Ukrainian capital as part of a renewed push for peace in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Berlin's punitive measures unlikely to deter Putin: experts
Germany has announced punitive measures after publicly blaming Russia for an attempted airport drone attack. But a former diplomat, political and security analysts warn it will likely do little to deter the Kremlin.
South Korea science ministry seeks record $21.6 billion budget
S. Korea's science ministry proposed a record 29.6 trillion won budget for 2027, with major increases for AI models and computing infrastructure.
ALCF Service-Enabled Science Series Explores Experiment-Time Computing and the DIII-D Digital Twin
Sept. 1, 2026 — The latest session in the ALCF’s Service-Enabled Science training series explored how integrated computing resources, automated workflows, and modern data infrastructure are helping accelerate fusion research. The webinar, “Fusing Experiments, Data, and Computing at DIII-D and ALCF,” led by General Atomics’ Mark Kostuk and Brian Sammuli, is now available on the ALCF’s […]
LZ Sees Surprising Result in Search for Dark Matter
Key Takeaways Dark matter is the mysterious substance that accounts for the vast majority of matter in our universe. LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a world-leading dark matter detector and specializes in searching for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. A new LZ study found one particle interaction that is difficult to explain with known background processes and could potentially have been caused by a WIMP. LZ continues to run to see if additional data strengthens or weakens the hint of a dark matter interaction. For the better part of a century, people have been trying to understand dark matter. This invisible substance makes up roughly 85% of the mass in the universe but has never been directly detected. Determining exactly what it is remains one of the biggest questions about our world. Now, a new analysis from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment has recorded a single particle interaction that researchers have great difficulty explaining with known background signals from normal matter. The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date. LZ is an international collaboration of 250 scientists and engineers from 39 institutions. The detector is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and operates nearly one mile below ground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. The experiment uses 10 tonnes of ultrapure liquid xenon to search for dark matter and is optimized to look for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. The results were presented in a scientific talk at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan. The paper will be released on the online repository arXiv and submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. “We’re very intrigued to see this event in the data, in the region where we expect dark matter to show up and the competing backgrounds are very low,” said Rick Gaitskell, a professor at Brown University and the spokesperson for LZ. “With only one event, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We are not claiming to have seen dark matter. But we have seen something interesting that we want to share with the scientific community for their input.” The LZ collaboration studies experimental data in batches. In the new result, researchers analyzed 220 live days of data collected between March 2023 and April 2024. The collaboration had previously searched this dataset for faint signals from the simplest kinds of WIMP interactions. The new analysis searched for a broader range of possible WIMP interactions that could deposit more energy in the detector. LZ is particularly sensitive to such signals while also minimizing false positives. “This was a detailed study in a region we hadn’t explored within this dataset, and we spent months of additional effort to understand all the possible causes of background events,” said Sam Eriksen, a senior research associate at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and lead author of the study. “We understand our detector and the backgrounds so well that even a single outstanding event, like the one we found, is important. We expect dark matter events to be extremely rare, so only a handful could mark the first detection of WIMP dark matter.” If the anomalous event was caused by dark matter, the WIMP that generated it would likely have a mass of at least 200 GeV/c2 (gigaelectronvolts), or more than 200 times the mass of a proton. It would also suggest a specific type of interaction between WIMPs and ordinary matter beyond the simplest model. The LZ results have not reached “5-sigma” significance, the statistical threshold considered a discovery in physics. The new analysis is 2.6 sigma, meaning there is approximately a 0.5% chance that the event could be explained by known backgrounds. With additional data, researchers can test whether the finding continues to grow in significance or fades away. LZ has already accumulated the world’s largest dark matter dataset and will continue to accrue WIMP search data at SURF, substantially improving their search statistics. LZ searches for dark matter by looking for signature flashes of light from energy deposited in the detector. The collaboration leverages multiple methods to prevent or account for particle interactions caused by normal matter. This includes the mile of rock that shields the detector from cosmic rays from space, a water tank and outer detectors that protect the central detector from background neutrons, and a suite of computational tools that disentangle particle interactions and reject dark matter mimics. “Outlier events in the data are not unexpected, but they usually stand out as a background of some kind when you look at them deeper,” said Aaron Manalaysay, a physicist at Berkeley Lab and the chair of LZ’s Institutional Board. “This is the first example in any experiment I’ve worked on of an outlier that appears valid in every way. Of course, we’re still twisting our brains trying to think if there’s a rare background mechanism we could’ve missed, but it’s thrilling to wonder if this could be the first hint of a dark-matter observation.” LZ is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility. LZ is also supported by the Science & Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics; and the Institute for Basic Science, Korea. Thirty-nine institutions of higher education and advanced research provided support to LZ. The LZ collaboration acknowledges the assistance of the Sanford Underground Research Facility. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Trump Mocks Data-Center Opponents as Wanting to Stay ‘Backwards and Poor’
The giant computing sites that power A.I. are increasingly opposed by communities across the country, a signal of voters’ concern about a changing economy.
MIT Quantum Initiative launches postdoctoral fellowship program
The MIT Quantum Initiative has launched a postdoctoral fellowship program supporting interdisciplinary research across quantum computing, sensing, materials, simulation, and networks while developing the next generation of quantum science leaders. ; quantum technology; quantum research; quantum computing; ; precision measurement; ; ; ; ; artificial intelligence; interdisciplinary research; postdoctoral fellowship; postdoctoral fellows; ; ; ; ; Research Laboratory of Electronics; MIT Lincoln Laboratory; MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms
2026 College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences New Faculty Hires
At the beginning of the Fall semester, the University announced the addition of nine faculty in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied
2026 College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences faculty promotion
At the beginning of the Fall semester, the University announced the tenure and promotion of 20 faculty in the College of Engineering, Computing and
Xi, Modi and Putin set to meet for SCO summit: What’s on the agenda?
The two-day summit aims to promote a vision of a multipolar world and mutual trade ties amid Trump's unilateralism.
U.Va. expands Fontaine data center plans
The University of Virginia is expanding its Fontaine Data Center in Charlottesville with a revised $102 million budget to support UVa Health and research computing.
Putin Sparks Health Concerns With Deranged Tale of Polar Bear Slaughter
The Russian leader’s disconnect from reality was on stark display.
Does Computer Science Need Computers?
The theoretical side of the field doesn’t require computing machines. But many questions would never have been posed without them.
Cloud AI Today - Cloud Gaming Thrives as 5G Fuels Traveler Entertainment
The cloud gaming sector is poised for substantial growth, particularly within the traveler segment, as advancements in 5G technology, edge computing, and increased travel fuel demand for entertainment on the go. Projections indicate the market will grow from $3.2 billion in 2025 to $4.1 billion in 2026, with expectations to reach $11.03 billion by 2030. This expansion is driven by factors such as enhanced mobile connectivity, widespread adoption of portable gaming devices, and rising interest...
Secret CIA visit highlights Putin and Trump’s common strategic trap
Russia’s harrowing history has bred a dark sense of humor in its citizens.
How Innovation Could Reshape Chemistry by 2050
Chemistry and chemical engineering are fundamental to technologies that could revolutionize energy production, quantum computing, and materials and manufacturing over the coming decades. At a recent workshop, participants from academia, industry, and government considered the future of the chemical sciences, exploring scientific challenges that researchers should prioritize, where strategic investments could enable breakthroughs, and how the chemical sciences community can prepare for emerging capabilities.
Building a nation: How Clemson University engineers and scientists helped shape America
As America marks its 250th year, the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences reflects on Clemson’s role in shaping the nation — and the work still ahead.
College of Information Sciences and Technology welcomes six new faculty members
Six new faculty members recently joined the College of Information Sciences and Technology, representing the college's Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, Department of Informatics and Intelligent Systems and Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics.
How the Advanced Light Source Is Accelerating Our Quantum Future
For over 30 years, scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source have played a vital role in the advancement of new materials for quantum computing, next-generation electronics, and other quantum technologies of the future.
Suspended Columbus home health provider disputes patient, investigation claims
A home health care provider facing a Medicaid fraud investigation has provided ABC6 Investigates proof of its Ohio business registration and is disputing a pati
McVey Center and Computing Innovation Take Flight
Through the McVey Center, Colby accelerates its mission to integrate high-performance computing and data science across the liberal arts
'It's very counterintuitive': This quantum battery upends the rules of charging
The world's first quantum battery prototype is here and it has some bizarre properties. Could these devices one day power quantum computing – or even your phone?
'It's very counterintuitive': This quantum battery upends the rules of charging
The world's first quantum battery prototype is here and it has some bizarre properties. Could these devices one day power quantum computing – or even your phone?
Reader Q&A: ask international correspondent Luke Harding a question now
The Guardian’s senior international reporter Luke Harding will be answering your questions live from 1pm BST. Ask him about his new book on Trump and Putin, the state of the war in Ukraine, or his career reporting from Kyiv, Moscow and around the world
Scientists discover asymmetric diffusion of magnetic skyrmions in simulations
Magnetic skyrmions are nanoscale spin textures that can behave like particles and move and diffuse in real space. This makes them promising information carriers for future memory and computing technologies. A new computational study in npj Spintronics shows how geometry and topology can guide asymmetric thermal diffusion of magnetic skyrmions, offering insights for unlocking unconventional computing paradigms, including future stochastic and neuromorphic computing devices for more efficient artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Alibaba set to open down 8% in Hong Kong after $10.2 billion share placement plan
Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba are set to open 8% lower on Monday after the Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant launched a $10.2 billion share placement to fund AI development.
How to decipher smells like a fruit fly
In the animal kingdom, energy conservation is essential for survival. That’s why our brains have evolved to be extremely energy and resource efficient at storing and processing information. Since the 1980s, computational scientists have tried to mimic brain structure and function, but have not yet succeeded in creating functional, low-memory solutions that work in real-world scenarios. Published in Neuromorphic Computing & Engineering, a new fly brain-inspired algorithm developed by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) demonstrates promise for achieving practical applications under realistic constraints.
Calvin University Launches New School of Computer Science
After consolidating several programs last year, a private Christian university in Grand Rapids, Mich., is launching a new school to enhance offerings in fields like AI, advanced computing and cybersecurity.
EBU and Superpositions Partner to Add Quantum Computing to Business Education
EBU and Superpositions are partnering to add quantum computing courses to business education through EBU’s new Q-Ready initiative.
Layoffs in Apple's Vision Products Group prove slow progress in spatial computing
A source has exclusively revealed to us that Apple has just laid off an unknown number of people dedicated to VR development, which aligns with incoming CEO John Ternus reportedly putting the category "on ice."
Trump keeps embracing data centers, an unpopular topic in midterm races
The race to build data centers, which power artificial intelligence and cloud computing, has run aground amid frustration from voters who don't want to live near the massive warehouse campuses.
US ally on Putin’s doorstep braces for war as Russia tensions take ominous turn
Russia's embassy in Britain threatened "consequences" over reported British drone use in Ukraine as Moscow escalates rhetoric against NATO allies.
Businesses Are Spending Big on Quantum
Many companies are pouring millions into quantum computing programs to gain a competitive edge and prepare for future encryption threats.
Florida State University Launches Quantum Science and Technology Graduate Certificate
Florida State University launches a graduate certificate in quantum science and technology covering quantum computing and engineering.
New AI technique helps robots complete tasks twice as fast by letting them 'think ahead'
A new AI system lets robots plan their next move while they're in motion — removing reaction delays and doubling task speeds without any extra computing overhead.
UCR researchers join DOE effort to speed scientific discovery
Two UC Riverside computer scientists are joining federally funded projects that use artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. Their work will focus on making quantum computing faster and more reliable and building smarter networks for sharing scientific data and research resources.
Qunova Appoints CFO and Two Business Development Executives
Qunova Computing appoints Jake Hwang as CFO and adds Evan Kang and Woomin Kyoung to expand quantum software commercialization.
USC Scientists Are Using Quantum Computing to Rethink Cancer Detection - USC Viterbi
By combining quantum computing with artificial intelligence, USC researchers are laying the groundwork for medical imaging tools that could help doctors diagnose cancer and plan treatments more precisely
Quantum trade moves beyond science fiction: AlphaCheck
Two newly public quantum computing companies are about to report earnings. Their results will test the appetite for the budding technology that has captivated some corners on Wall Street.
Scientific advancement has never been more prolific—so why has trust in science plummeted?
From genome editing to quantum computing, scientific progress is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, yet public faith in science is collapsing. Our species has mapped the human genome, created powerful ...
Quantum Computing Inc. Revenue Jumps as Acquisitions Expand Commercial Business
Quantum Computing Inc. reported $5.6 million in second-quarter revenue, largely driven by acquired businesses.
Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Accelerating life science computing with AI-ready infrastructure
Discover how computing is transforming life science research through AI infrastructure, GPU acceleration, and genomics.
Senate passes sweeping Russia sanctions bill negotiated by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham
The bipartisan legislation, which passed the Senate 86-11, would penalize countries that continue to buy Russian oil, gas and other exports seeking to deprive Putin of revenues fueling the war.