Big Data

The R&D World Index climbed modestly this week thanks to Intel’s substantial gains and strategic expansions in Asia. At the same time, automotive heavyweight Honda faced significant setbacks, highlighting a week of contrasting fortunes in the R&D landscape. The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending November 8, 2024, closed at 3,918.29 for the…

NVIDIA’s dominance in the AI hardware landscape is undeniable. The company has a solid IP strategy, too, with a portfolio of 273 granted AI patents across seven internationally jurisdictions as of late October 2024. NVIDIA’s stock has soared 187.6% so far this year, driving its market capitalization to $3.43 trillion. In addition, data center segment,…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending November 1, 2024, closed at 3,855.65 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -2.70% (or -107.16 basis points). Eight RDWI members gained value last week from 0.16% (Alibaba) to 8.36% (AbbVie). Seventeen RDWI members lost value the previous from -0.43% (Cisco) to…

A 2016 survey by Nature found that over 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own. One significant challenge contributing to this crisis is the difficulty scientists face in understanding experimental parameters across studies. “The basic problem was massive amounts of…

Alphawave Semi has been awarded a research grant from the UK’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA), to remove networking bottlenecks that are limiting AI’s growth. Data from Meta indicates that AI processors can be idle roughly two-fifths of the time waiting for data from the network, wasting costly resources. ARIA is driving a shift toward…

Every year, thousands of groundbreaking ideas emerge from research labs and universities, brimming with the potential to reshape industries. Yet, a significant number of these innovations never see the light of day. They fall into the abyss ominously termed the “Valley of Death,” which, as a paper in Science Direct puts it, “is an unfavorable…

At its Honeywell Users Group event in Dallas, Honeywell and Chevron revealed a strategic alliance that would use AI to streamline operator decision-making in refining processes, aiming to enhance both efficiency and safety. “The focus of the partnership is to use AI to build real, impactful solutions that will set new standards for operational efficiency,”…

The web is facing a deluge of AI-generated content, with an explosive 8,362% surge from November 2022 to March 2024, according to a study by Copyleaks. From Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, the volume of AI-detected content jumped 2,848% based on an analysis of more than a million web pages per period using data from…

After nearly a year of rumors surrounding OpenAI’s “Q*” (later “Strawberry“) project and its potential for advanced reasoning, the company has finally unveiled its new “o1” AI models that mirror humans’ ability to think before speaking. These models allocate more processing power to reasoning before generating output, significantly improving accuracy on complex tasks across science,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Can a machine truly understand? AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, Ph.D. believes the answer is a firm yes when it comes to large language models (LLMs), and it’s precisely this understanding that has him deeply concerned. “It’s very clear that we understand language in much the same way as these large language models,” Hinton said in…

For six decades, the R&D 100 Awards have been a benchmark of achievement in science and technology, often referred to informally as “The Oscars of Innovation.” This year, we’re offering a new interactive experience, allowing you to explore the remarkable work of both winners and finalists across diverse fields. From advances in mechanical and material…

[Updated August 8, 2024] The global R&D map is being redrawn, caught between forces of nationalism and the undeniable pull of international collaboration. While the aftershocks of the pandemic and shifting political winds have led some nations to turn inward, the race for innovation is driving a surprising surge in cross-border investment. For instance, South…

R&D World has announced the winners of the 2024 R&D 100 Professional Awards. The honorees were selected by a panel of 56 prestigious industry experts from around the globe. The list of 2024 winners follows, along with highlights from their nomination letters. These winners will be formally awarded at the R&D 100 Awards Banquet at…

NTT Research is playing the long game, tackling challenges that others shy away from. While many R&D labs focus on a relatively near-term ROI for research, NTT is more patient, taking a page from storied labs like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC that prioritize bigger, riskier but potentially more transformative bets. Its website declares: “Our…

Picture a gymnast like Simone Biles, who during a routine, performs a series of flips, twists, and complex maneuvers. Judges must capture every nuance of these routines — from the exact number of rotations to the subtle angle of a pointed toe — a task fraught with difficulty. Consistently interpreting the Code of Points, which…

While corporate researchers in the pharmaceutical, material, and chemical industries hail AI as a game-changer for accelerating knowledge discovery and transforming industries, they are not blind to its potential downsides, according to a new research study from Elsevier. This apprehension centers largely on AI’s capacity to fuel misinformation, a concern 96% of respondents shared. That’s…

Silicon Valley is still where it’s at in terms of R&D. Yes, the region has cut roughly 45,000 tech jobs since 2022, but its dominance in research and development remains unchallenged, based on data from The 2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. And despite the layoffs, many tech companies have reported significant revenue growth. NVIDIA…

The global automation firm Emerson (NYSE: EMR) had announced a major update to its Ovation automation platform. Ovation 4.0 introduces a software-defined architecture designed to empower utilities in the power and water industries to tap data, new technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI) for enhanced operational excellence, reliability, affordability, and sustainability. Ovation 4.0 integrates and delivers…

Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI are joining forces to conduct the world’s first real-world evaluation of AI’s potential role in biological threats. The partnership between OpenAI and Los Alamos goes beyond previous text-based assessments of AI in biological contexts. OpenAI highlighted two aspects that set this research apart, noting the “research will involve real…

One of the unsung heroes of the recent explosion in interest in AI — especially in terms of large language models and natural language processing — is the word embedding. Representing a vector of real numbers, embeddings have been around in one or another since for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers explored a…