Interacting With Python

There are multiple ways of interacting with Python, and each can be useful for different scenarios. You can quickly explore functionality in Python’s interactive mode using the built-in Read-Eval-Print Loop (REPL), or you can write larger applications to a script file using an editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE). In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to: Use Python interactively by typing code directly into the interpreter Execute code contained in a script file from the command line Work within a […]

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Introducing Yasuyuki Matsushita: Tackling societal challenges with AI at Microsoft Research Asia – Tokyo 

Earlier this year, Microsoft Research announced (opens in new tab) its newest lab in Tokyo, Japan. Today, we are celebrating its grand opening, reinforcing Microsoft Research’s commitment to AI research across the Asia-Pacific region. This new lab will focus on embodied AI, well-being and neuroscience, societal AI, and industry innovation—all areas that align with Japan’s socioeconomic priorities. This initiative will enhance collaboration with local academic and industrial partners, contributing to global innovation and talent development.  We recently spoke with Yasuyuki […]

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BiomedParse: A foundation model for smarter, all-in-one biomedical image analysis

In cancer diagnosis or advanced treatments like immunotherapy, every detail in a medical image counts. Radiologists and pathologists rely on these images to track tumors, understand their boundaries, and analyze how they interact with surrounding cells. This work demands pinpoint accuracy across several tasks—identifying whether a tumor is present, locating it precisely, and mapping its contours on complex CT scans or pathology slides.  Yet, these crucial steps—object recognition, detection,  

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Using the Python zip() Function for Parallel Iteration

Watch Now This tutorial has a related video course created by the Real Python team. Watch it together with the written tutorial to deepen your understanding: Parallel Iteration With Python’s zip() Function Python’s zip() function combines elements from multiple iterables. Calling zip() generates an iterator that yields tuples, each containing elements from the input iterables. This function is essential for tasks like parallel iteration and dictionary creation, offering an efficient way to handle multiple sequences in Python programming. By the […]

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Quiz: Namespaces and Scope in Python

Interactive Quiz ⋅ 11 QuestionsBy Martin Breuss Share In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Python Namespaces and Scope. You’ll revisit how Python organizes symbolic names and objects in namespaces, when Python creates a new namespace, how namespaces are implemented, and how variable scope determines symbolic name visibility. The quiz contains 11 questions and there is no time limit. You’ll get 1 point for each correct answer. At the end of the quiz, you’ll receive a total score. The […]

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Quiz: Basic Input and Output in Python

Interactive Quiz ⋅ 5 QuestionsBy Martin Breuss Share In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of how to use Python’s built-in functions input() and print() for basic input and output operations. You’ll also revisit how to use readline to improve the user experience when collecting input, and how to format output using the sep and end keyword arguments of print(). The quiz contains 5 questions and there is no time limit. You’ll get 1 point for each correct answer. At […]

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Orca-AgentInstruct: Agentic flows can be effective synthetic-data generators

Our work on Orca and Orca 2 demonstrated the power of using synthetic data for the post-training of small language models and getting them to levels of performance previously found only in much larger language models. Orca-AgentInstruct is another step in this direction, where we explore using agentic flows to generate diverse and high-quality data at scale. Orca-AgentInstruct is an agentic solution for synthetic-data generation. By leveraging an agentic framework, AgentInstruct can generate tailored datasets, comprising both prompts and responses, […]

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Abstracts: November 14, 2024

TONG WANG: Thank you, Bonnie. KRUFT: Microsoft Research is one of the earliest institutions to apply AI in biomolecular simulation research. Why did the AI for Science team choose this direction, and—with this work specifically, AI2BMD—what problem are you and your coauthors addressing, and why should people know about it? WANG: So as Richard Feynman famously said, “Everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and the wigglings of atoms.” To study the mechanisms behind […]

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Using portable SIMD in stable Rust

In a previous post we saw that you can speed up code significantly on a single core using SIMD: Single Instruction Multiple Data. These specialized CPU instructions allow you to, for example, add 4 values at once with a single instruction, instead of the usual one value at a time. The performance improvement you get compounds with multi-core parallelism: you can benefit from both SIMD and threading at the same time. Unfortunately, SIMD instructions are specific both to CPU architecture […]

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