Autonomous robot plays with NanoLEGO

Molecules are the building blocks of everyday life. Many materials are composed of them, a little like a LEGO model consists of a multitude of different bricks. But while individual LEGO bricks can be simply shifted or removed, ...

Agents probing drug site accused of taking online currency

Two former federal agents are accused of using their positions and savvy computer skills to siphon more than $1 million in digital currency from the online black market known as Silk Road while they and their agencies operated ...

How computers can learn better

Reinforcement learning is a technique, common in computer science, in which a computer system learns how best to solve some problem through trial-and-error. Classic applications of reinforcement learning involve problems ...

Programming computers to help computer programmers

Computer scientists from Rice University, the University of Pennsylvania and seven other institutions are teaming up to address one of the greatest ironies of the information age: While computers and robots have automated ...

Argumentative agents for online deal-making

(PhysOrg.com) -- Software agents that play devil's advocate and quarrel with each other may not sound like something you would want in your computer. But, say a team of European researchers, argumentative agents promise faster, ...