Computer science

A new idea is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.

A tiny self-organized mesh full of artificial synapses recalls its experiences and can solve simple problems. Its inventors hope it points the way to devices that match the brain’s energy-efficient computing prowess.

Computer scientists are finding ways to code curiosity into intelligent machines.

The theoretical computer scientist behind the influential Unique Games Conjecture delights in the wonders of New York’s Washington Square Park, where he ponders the impossible.

The evolutionary biologist Jessica Flack seeks the computational rules that groups of organisms use to solve problems.

The computational immunologist Purvesh Khatri embraces messy data as a way to capture the messiness of disease. As a result, he’s making elusive genomic discoveries.

A new paper claims that a common digital security system could be tweaked to withstand attacks even from a powerful quantum computer.

To avoid garbled messages, mathematicians might translate them into geometric form.

Just five days after posting a retraction, László Babai announced that he had fixed the error in his landmark graph isomorphism algorithm.