The data center boom meets resistance in Maine as lawmakers pass a yearlong freeze

Maine’s legislature has passed the nation’s first statewide moratorium on energy-hungry data centers. It's an expansion of political opposition to tech giants’ massive artificial intelligence data ...
Phys.org

Physicists create laser tornado in miniature structures using synthetic magnetic field

Can light behave like a whirlwind? It turns out it can—and such "optical tornadoes" have now been created in an extremely small structure by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of ...
Wired

Senators Demand to Know How Much Energy Data Centers Use

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican senator Josh Hawley are urging the US’s central energy information agency to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually ...
CNET

AI Data Centers: What to Know About Their Water and Energy Use

OpenAI's Sam Altman says AI's water concerns are "totally fake." The truth about AI's impact on natural resources is more complicated. Macy is a writer on the AI Team. She covers how AI is changing ...
AZ Central

We estimated data centers' water and power use. Here's how

Data center operators and utilities often do not disclose facility-specific energy and water usage data. The Republic built a database to estimate data centers' energy capacity by analyzing air ...
Reuters

Microsoft rolls out initiative to limit data-center power costs, water use impact

Jan 13 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab on Tuesday unveiled an initiative to curb water usage at its U.S. data centers and limit the impact on the general population from any potential ...
Forbes

The Data Dilemma: The Hurdles C-Suite Faces In Drive To Win On AI

If AI models are the engine of business transformation, quality data is their fuel. Rich, well-structured data enables algorithms to identify patterns, predict outcomes and uncover insights that would ...
Ars Technica

Senators count the shady ways data centers pass energy costs on to Americans

Senators launched a probe Tuesday demanding that tech companies explain exactly how they plan to prevent data center projects from increasing electricity bills in communities where prices are already ...
ConsumerAffairs

What is a ‘data center’ and how much electricity does it use?

Dominion Energy says its upcoming $11-a-month rate hike is driven by grid upgrades and inflation — not Virginia’s rapidly growing data-center industry. Critics note that Virginia hosts one of the ...
The New York Times

On the Labor and Delivery Floor, a Reporter Sees a Solution

C-sections can be lifesaving, but sometimes the procedure can be overused. Data helped show how a hospital decreased its rates of the operation in healthy first-time mothers. By Sarah Kliff Times ...
C&EN

Overcoming Small Data Limitations in Materials Informatics: Interpretable Predictive Modeling of Optical Limiting Efficiency Using the CORRELATO Algorithm

Russian Academy of Sciences, FSBIS Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1, Severny Proezd, Chernogolovka 142432, Russian Federation Russian Academy of ...
Government Technology

What Is Synthetic Data, and How Is Government Using It?

As AI becomes more common and decisions more data-driven, a new(ish) form of information is on the rise: synthetic data. And some proponents say it promises more privacy and other vital benefits. Data ...