Google's AI "co-scientist" is based on the firm's Gemini large language models Google has unveiled an experimental artificial intelligence system that "uses advanced reasoning to help scientists synthesize vast amounts of literature, generate novel hypotheses, and suggest detailed research plans", according to its press release. "The idea with [the] 'AI co-scientist' is to give scientists superpowers," says Alan Karthikesalingam at Google. The tool, which doesn't have an official name yet, builds on Google's Gemini large language models. When a researcher asks a question or specifies a goal – to find a new drug, say – the tool comes up with initial ideas within 15 minutes. Several Gemini agents then "debate" these hypotheses with each other, ranking them and improving them over the following hours and days, says Vivek Natarajan at Google. During this process, the agents can search the scientific literature, access databases and use tools such as Google's AlphaFold system for predicting the structure of proteins.

Fox News' Eben Brown reports on how more companies are using A.I. technology to set retail prices based on data-driven supply-and-demand. Oncologists in the U.K. have developed an AI model to help predict whether aggressive forms of breast cancer will spread based on changes in a patient's lymph nodes. The research was published Thursday in the Journal of Pathology by Breast Cancer Now and funded by scientists at King's College of London. Secondary or "metastatic breast cancer" refers to when breast cancer cells spread to other parts of the body. Although treatable, it can't be cured.

The past may be a fixed and immutable point, but with the help of machine learning, the future can at times be more easily divined. Using a new type of machine learning method called next generation reservoir computing, researchers at The Ohio State University have recently found a new way to predict the behavior of spatiotemporal chaotic systems – such as changes in Earth's weather – that are particularly complex for scientists to forecast. The study, published today in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, utilizes a new and highly efficient algorithm that, when combined with next generation reservoir computing, can learn spatiotemporal chaotic systems in a fraction of the time of other machine learning algorithms. Researchers tested their algorithm on a complex problem that has been studied many times in the past – forecasting the behavior of an atmospheric weather model. In comparison to traditional machine learning algorithms that can solve the same tasks, the Ohio State team's algorithm is more accurate, and uses 400 to 1,250 times less training data to make better predictions than its counterpart. Their method is also less computationally expensive; while solving complex computing problems previously required a supercomputer, they used a laptop running Windows 10 to make predictions in about a fraction of a second – about 240,000 times faster than traditional machine learning algorithms.

NASA's Perseverance rover has switched from photographing the Ingenuity helicopter's test flights, to searching for signs of long gone Martian life. The US space agency confirmed that the SUV-sized rover has started to test the ancient lakebed in the Jezero crater by focusing its science instruments on rocks. A camera called WATSON on the end of the rover's robotic arm has taken detailed shots of the rocks, with extra data coming from a pair of zoomable cameras. The Perseverance team tweeted: 'The time has come: I'm switching from on-scene photographer to science investigator. Did this ancient lakebed ever have life? The tools I brought will help begin the hunt.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Mars 2020 rover is heading to the Red Planet armed with a high-powered laser to assist in its search for fossils. The technology, called SuperCam, is fitted at the robot's mast and shoots pulses capable of vaporizing rocks from up to 20 feet away. The laser beam heats the target to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to transform the solid rock into plasma that can be imaged by a camera for further analysis. Using this instrument will help researchers identify minerals that are beyond the reach of the rover's robotic arm or in areas too steep for the rover to go. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Mars 2020 rover is heading to the Red Planet armed with a high-powered laser to assist in its search for fossils. The technology, called SuperCam, is fitted at the robot's mast and shoots pulses capable of vaporizing rocks from up to 20 feet away NASA is set to launch the Mars 2020 rover in July with the goal of finding signs of ancient microbial life.

NASA's digging probe on the InSight Mars lander is finally making progress again after assistance from the lander's robotic arm helped it gain purchase in the soil. The probe -- dubbed'the Mole' -- began hammering its way into the soil of the Red Planet in March, but after digging a few inches it found itself unable to go deeper. Experts believe that the probe encountered an unexpected layer of cemented soil that wasn't falling into the hole the device had dug. The result was that there wasn't enough purchase between the probe and the surrounding soil for the Mole to push down any deeper. After first trying to compact the surrounding soil with InSight's instrument arm, engineers tried pushing the mole sideways against its hole.

Google's goal has always been to organize the world's information, and its first target was the commercial web. Now, it wants to do the same for the scientific community with a new search engine for datasets. The service, called Dataset Search, launches today, and will be a companion of sorts to Google Scholar, the company's popular search engine for academic studies and reports. Institutions that publish their data online, like universities and governments, will need to include metadata tags in their webpages that describe their data, including who created it, when it was published, how it was collected, and so on. This information will then be indexed by Dataset Search and combined with input from Google's Knowledge Graph.

It will be one of NASA's most ambitious missions and, to prove its prowess, the space agency has released footage of it Mars 2020 rover flexing its proverbial muscles - by performing heavyweight bicep curls. In a time-lapse video taken at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, earlier this month, the rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms') worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration. This is no mean feat considering it's fitted with five heavy electrical motors and five joints - known as the shoulder azimuth joint, shoulder elevation joint, elbow joint, wrist joint and turret joint. Buff: The rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms') worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration The turret itself includes HD cameras, a scanning instrument, X-ray technology and a coring mechanism for digging into the red planet. On Mars, the arm and turret will work together, allowing the rover to work as a human geologist would: by reaching out to interesting geologic features, abrading, analysing and even collecting them for further study. This will be done via the Mars 2020's Sample Caching System, which will collect samples of Martian rock and soil that will be returned to Earth by a future mission.

Can computers solve all our problems? Well, when combined with the creative power of humans, the answer is… maybe. Every day, we get closer to solving some of the most complex and serious problems facing humanity through use of new technologies including big data and artificial intelligence (AI). Modelling climate changes on a global scale remains a very complex and complicated proposition, but AI and big data are making it a bit easier for scientists to understand and predict the effects of climate change. AI might also help scientists and lawmakers make the best decisions based on the best information today.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2015 file photo, Sahara, a rare red-haired female Hamadryas Baboon holds 3 weeks old dark-furred baby in the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel. A new study in France shows that baboons can make human-like vowel sounds, and its authors say the discovery could help scientists better understand the evolution of human speech. The study was published in the journal Plos One on Wednesday Jan. 11, 2017 by a team of scientists. FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2015 file photo, Sahara, a rare red-haired female Hamadryas Baboon holds 3 weeks old dark-furred baby in the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel. A new study in France shows that baboons can make human-like vowel sounds, and its authors say the discovery could help scientists better understand the evolution of human speech.