At Lubrizol, the quest for better skincare has taken a decidedly high-tech turn, culminating in the recent opening of a new Beauty Research Institute in Shanghai. This facility will serve as a global hub for in-vivo beauty testing. It will also aid the company in developing next-generation ingredients designed to cater to the specific needs…
Scientists explore intelligent biocomputing for neurological disease treatment
What if the combination of stem cell research, bioengineering and biocomputing could help patients with neurological damage? Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and the University of Southern California (USC) are embarking on a research initiative to explore that very possibility. With a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers…
Where Harris and Trump stand on the future of American science
[Adobe Stock] Updated on October 20, 2024 with new details The current Biden-Harris administration and potential Republican approaches offer different visions for the future of American science. While the Biden-Harris team emphasizes investments in climate change mitigation and clean energy, conservative approaches have historically focused on deregulation and achieving energy independence through traditional energy sources.…
Argonne scientists probe structure of molten plutonium oxide at extreme temperatures
The 2011 Fukushima disaster sent shockwaves through the nuclear industry, sparking a global quest for safer reactor designs. At Argonne National Laboratory, scientists are tackling this challenge head-on by exploring the extreme behavior of nuclear fuels at unimaginable temperatures. Researchers at Argonne successfully measured and analyzed the structure of molten plutonium oxide (PuO2) at temperatures…
This week in AI: Musk unveils world’s largest AI cluster, OpenAI eyes premium subscriptions
From accelerating drug discovery to automating patent searches, AI is popping up in a growing number of R&D contexts. Two of the top stories this week had a direct NVIDIA connection — first, Elon Musk’s announced what he terms the world’s largest GPU cluster, featuring 100,000 of its H100 GPUs, designed to power his new…
NIH backs novel spinal cord stimulation lead that is 10x thinner than the competition
For millions suffering from chronic pain, relief often comes with a host of complications. But a new generation of spinal cord stimulators aims to change that. The medical device company BackStop Neural has won a two-year, $485k Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the…
How open science, data champions, and ELNs are helping drive interdisciplinary science
Gone are the days when scientific progress was confined to individual disciplines, like swimmers rigidly adhering to their designated lanes in a pool. Today, breakthroughs increasingly occur at the intersection of fields, as researchers break free from these traditional boundaries and collaborate across disciplines to tackle complex challenges—from developing personalized cancer treatments based on genomic…
Robots run the lab, biologists design the experiments
Parallel Bio’s head of technology shares a vision for faster, cheaper, and better biological research with human organoids. Ari Gesher, Parallel Bio’s new head of technology, may be new to biotech, but that’s not stopping him from thinking big about disrupting the status quo in biological research. The biotech startup is betting on automation and…
Google: AI is more profound than fire and a key to the future of life science R&D
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has often highlighted the transformative impact of AI, stating that it’s a “more profound” tool than the human discoveries of fire or electricity. Shweta Maniar, Global Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Google, echoed this sentiment in a recent interview. AI’s applications in the life sciences are broad, and the…
Think it’s just tech? Layoffs up in several R&D-heavy industries
Apple, Dell, Intel… the tech layoff headlines keep coming. But don’t think for a second it’s just Silicon Valley feeling the pinch. A closer look reveals a surge in job cuts across multiple R&D-heavy industries. Tesla cut 14,000 workers in April 2024 (10% of its workforce). Other transportation companies making cuts include electric vehicle (EV)…
Coming soon to a computer near you — genAI that is actually good at math?
While the mathematical capabilities of large language models such as ChatGPT are steadily improving, math is clearly not their forté. Not only is it extremely computationally efficient to ask such a model a math question, it isn’t all that hard to find word problems that trip up even the latest LLMs — like ‘how many…
Meta’s Sapiens vision models bring 3D analysis of humans to the “wild”
“Facebook’s parent Meta AI has unveiled Sapiens, a family of high-performance vision models designed to excel in ‘in-the-wild’ environments, overcoming the limitations of traditional models often confined to controlled studio settings. The family of models focuses on ‘four fundamental human-centric vision tasks,’ as the arXiv paper on the tech noted. Those include 2D pose estimation,…
Could a pong-playing hydrogel help spare lab animals in heart research?
Move over, neural networks. Scientists at the University of Reading have taught a simple hydrogel to play the 1970s game Pong, which, for those unfamiliar, is something like an uber-simple game of table tennis (pingpong). The discovery, published in Cell Reports Physical Science, could pave the way to a new era of ‘smart’ materials that…
AI’s expanding role in mpox research spans digital staining to skin lesion classification
A more deadly strain of mpox is spreading across Africa, with more than 17,000 suspected cases and a death toll already surpassing last year’s total. With the more severe Clade I variant driving the uptick, mpox continues to pose a significant threat to global health with the World Health Organization (WHO) classifying it as…
What are the applications of spectrophotometer?
A spectrophotometer is an instrument that measures the interaction of light with matter across different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. It works by passing a beam of light through a sample and comparing the intensity of the light before and after it interacts with samples including”solutions, transparent or opaque solids, such as polished glass, or…
ISS National Lab and NASA partner to accelerate disease research in microgravity
Humanity has long looked to the stars for answers, but why would you want to conduct research in space, especially when it comes to curing diseases here on Earth? The International Space Station (ISS), orbiting roughly 250 miles above us, can help unravel medical mysteries. “The ISS National Lab offers unique opportunities for scientific and…
Slip and slide into reinforcement learning with the Frozen Lake challenge
Remember when DeepBlue mastered chess and AlphaGo conquered the game of Go, the board game with more moves than particles in the known universe? Or what about when cars learned to drive themselves? Reinforcement learning (RL) plays an essential role in each of these examples. RL is having a significant impact on R&D across an…
AMD’s $4.9B move to rival NVIDIA in graphs
In August 2024, AMD made a significant move to challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in the AI chip market with the acquisition of ZT Systems, a cloud architecture solution provider, for $4.9 billion. This acquisition, projected to close in the first half of 2025, is part of AMD’s strategy to bolster its position in the AI infrastructure…
Recursive fact-checking tool addresses gaps in genAI fact checking
What if you could ask a large language model a research question and get back a definitive, contextually relevant answer with verifiable sources? Or trace a scientific claim back through a century of research to uncover the foundations of a modern theory? In a talk at the AI4 conference in Las Vegas, Daniel Schauer, an…
Think AI is just fancy software? Or do you think you know better? Take this quiz to find out.
Let’s face it: Half the people spouting off about AI couldn’t tell a neural network from an Einstein-inspired crochet pattern, even if it came with a step-by-step YouTube tutorial. Sure, ChatGPT might have launched back in 2022, but many of us are still floundering in a sea of AI buzzwords more confusing than quantum physics.…
Take our quiz to test your cleanroom IQ, covering everything from ISO Classes to ULPA filtration
Imagine a world without smartphones or where modern cancer treatments and mRNA vaccines are just a dream, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope never left the ground. What about a world without pacemakers, where nanotechnology research was impractical, and high-precision camera lenses were so riddled with defects they were, well, not high precision. That would…
Deloitte AI expert urges businesses to dive deeper into generative AI
It is becoming increasingly apparent that peak generative AI hype is in the rearview mirror. In June, Goldman Sachs published a report titled “Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?” A growing number of AI users on social media are lamenting about the quality of prominent genAI systems — or are complaining about the…
Penn State receives $1.4M to boost semiconductor workforce in Pennsylvania
A $600,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to Penn State’s Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance (SCIA) aims to address the significant shortage of U.S.-based skilled workers in the rapidly growing semiconductor industry. This grant, combined with matching funds from industry partners and the university, totals more than $1.4 million over three years to support…
Probiotic-powered bandages generate electricity to fight infections
A novel wearable microbial fuel cell technology to reduce the risk of infection in wounds. The product of research at Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY), the living dressing also makes use of the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis, a probiotic and the chief microbe in the stringy fermented Japanese soybean dish, natto. By…
Thintronics secures Series A extension to advance high-performance insulators for next-gen electronics
Berkeley-based advanced materials startup Thintronics has secured an undisclosed Series A Extension, led by Maverick Capital and Translink Capital, to accelerate its mission of revamping insulator technology for high-performance electronics. The round, which includes strategic investments from M Ventures (Merck KGaA’s corporate venture capital (CVC) arm) and TGVP (Toppan Holdings’ U.S. CVC arm), will fuel…