A Fake Infection.

Edith Piaf, re-imagined.

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1. Inside a vast data center on the outskirts of Chicago, the most powerful supercomputer in the world is coming to life. The machine will be able to analyze connections inside the brain and help design batteries that charge faster and last longer. Called Aurora, the supercomputer’s high-performance capabilities will be matched with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Together they will be used by scientists researching cancer, nuclear fusion, vaccines, climate change, encryption, cosmology and other complex sciences and technologies. Housed at the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, Aurora is among a new breed of machines known as “exascale” supercomputers. In a single second, an exascale computer can perform one quintillion operations—a billion billion, or a one followed by 18 zeros. Aurora is the size of two tennis courts, weighs 600 tons and is expected to be the world’s first supercomputer capable of two quintillion operations a second at peak performance, scientists at Argonne said. (Sources: wsj.com, anl.gov/aurora, anl.gov)

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2. Artificial intelligence could be used to predict if a person is at risk of having a heart attack up to 10 years in the future, a study has found. The technology could save thousands of lives while improving treatment for almost half of patients, researchers at the University of Oxford said. The study, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), looked at how AI might improve the accuracy of cardiac CT scans, which are used to detect blockages or narrowing in the arteries. Prof. Charalambos Antoniades, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the BHF and director of the acute multidisciplinary imaging and interventional centre at Oxford, said: “Our study found that some patients presenting in hospital with chest pain – who are often reassured and sent back home – are at high risk of having a heart attack in the next decade, even in the absence of any sign of disease in their heart arteries. Here we demonstrated that providing an accurate picture of risk to clinicians can alter, and potentially improve, the course of treatment for many heart patients.” (Source: theguardian.com)

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