Nature.

In an experiment, I don't know yet.

Why is Blight so far?

Like, it sounds so simple.

They had no idea.

But now the data's...

I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding.

Nature.

Welcome back to the Nature podcast.

This week we'll be finding out how computers can predict the properties of materials and hearing about the environmental impacts of sand mining.

I'm Benjamin Thompson and I'm Nick out.

First up, I want to talk about making stuff.

Material science is a field all about creating the cutting edge, combining existing compounds

and discovering new ones. But with so many different ways of going about it, it could be

hard to know where to start. To discover an original material or even repurpose an old one with new

properties requires a lot of experimentation,

with a little bit of luck. But this week in nature, researchers have been applying a machine learning

algorithm known as word to veck to try and streamline the discovery process of finding materials

with new properties.

This algorithm is known as unsupervised, meaning that it has no knowledge of what anything might mean.

It discovers that through associations.

In this case, the algorithm scanned millions of research paper abstracts to try and find meaning.

...