There is a promising new drug for the rare disease mastocytosis, which is associated with skin lesions, among other things. Researchers at the University of Basel have now been able to use artificial intelligence to quantitatively measure for the first time the extent to which it reduces skin lesions.

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) will present AI & Filmmaking Week 2026, a four-day programme from 17 to 20 March 2026. Organised by the School of Future Media, the event will convene pioneering filmmakers, leading technologists, and global industry figures to examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping every facet of cinema—from storytelling and acting to production, ethics, and governance.

Chinese scientists proposed an anti-interference diffractive deep neural network (AI D²NN) designed for object recognition in multi-object scenarios. Unlike conventional optical neural networks built for single-object classification, AI D²NN achieves robust target recognition while effectively suppressing interference from other objects. By incorporating optical multi-dimensional multiplexing, the system enables flexible, high-capacity parallel recognition of multiple targets. This approach is expected to accelerate the practical deployment of optical neural networks in autonomous driving, medical diagnostics, and security monitoring.

Using machine learning regression models, we predict porosity (measure of potential storage volume) and permeability (measure of fluid flow property in porous media) based on petrographic thin section analysis. Histogram-based Gradient Boosting algorithms successfully predict porosity (RMSE=2.23%) and permeability (RMSE=0.64 (orders of magnitude)) based on textural mineralogical properties recorded in petrographic samples. This may in the future allow to reduce the amount of resource- and time-intensive retrieval of core material in certain use cases, as the same methods can be applied to cuttings, produced as a by-product of any drilling operation worldwide.

Optical neural networks (ONNs) offer a pathway toward low-latency, energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI); however, their scalability in terms of parameter count remains constrained. Addressing this challenge, a research team from The Chinese University of Hong Kong has developed a metasurface-based optical learning machine that integrates 41 million parameters, achieving performance comparable to state-of-the-art AI models. This approach experimentally enables highly scalable machine vision, thereby offering a practical pathway toward large-scale, high-performance optical AI computing.