Why does Covid-19 present itself more severe in some patients but not in others? The question has puzzled researchers and clinicians since the start of the pandemic, but now new research from the EPFL Blue Brain Project may have found a major clue to solving the mystery thanks to machine learning. Analyzing data extracted from 240,000 open access scientific papers, the findings of a paper published in Frontiers revealed the previously undiscovered roles elevated blood glucose levels have in the severity of Covid-19. What makes one person more at risk of developing severe Covid-19 than someone else? While it is widely accepted that elderly people are the most at-risk during the current pandemic, many young, seemingly healthy people have also been hospitalized by the disease.

Using mathematics in a novel way in neuroscience, the Blue Brain Project shows that the brain operates on many dimensions, not just the three dimensions that we are accustomed to. For most people, it is a stretch of the imagination to understand the world in four dimensions but a new study has discovered structures in the brain with up to eleven dimensions – ground-breaking work that is beginning to reveal the brain's deepest architectural secrets. Using algebraic topology in a way that it has never been used before in neuroscience, a team from the Blue Brain Project has uncovered a universe of multi-dimensional geometrical structures and spaces within the networks of the brain. The research, published today in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, shows that these structures arise when a group of neurons forms a clique: each neuron connects to every other neuron in the group in a very specific way that generates a precise geometric object. The more neurons there are in a clique, the higher the dimension of the geometric object.

This past year has seen a number of remarkable technological advancements in several arenas, AI not the least among them. In particular, it has been both an exciting and busy year at HPE, with advancements made in AI and supercomputing that have already benefited several industries. Take a look through this 2018 AI review to discover more about HPE's recent advancements in the AI space. One of the most prominent beneficiaries of these AI advances is the U.S. military. Back in February 2018, HPE announced it had been selected by the US Department of Defense (DoD) to provide supercomputers for its High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

Artificial brains are man-made machines that are just as intelligent, creative, and self-aware as humans. No such machine has yet been built, but it is only a matter of time. This website tracks the latest scientific and technological progress. SyNAPSE is a DARPA-funded program to develop neuromorphic microprocessor systems that match the intelligence, physical size, and low power consumption of animal brains. Their approach is to first test neural networks in simulation on a supercomputer.