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Category: innovation – Page 20

Intel’s 18A Process Reportedly Comes With SRAM Density On-Par With TSMC’s N2; Team Blue Gearing Up For A Phenomenal Comeback

Intel’s 18A is said to report an SRAM density equal to that of TSMC’s N2 process, signaling a massive breakthrough for the IFS and its semiconductor ambitions.

Intel’s 18A Process Is a “Special” One, Credits To Implementations Such As BSPDN Along With Years of R&D Behind It

Well, it seems like now might be the time to be bullish on the future of Intel’s chip plans, since the latest reports are clearly indicating that the momentum is shifting towards Team Blue. Following the political backing of the Trump administration, it is now disclosed via ISSCC sessions (via Ian Cutress) that both TSMC and Intel’s cutting-edge processes are rivaling each other in SRAM densities, showing that the gap has been narrowed down significantly, at least in one of the important aspects.

Can You Hear a Virus? Scientists Use Light To Listen to the Sounds of Life

Elad Harel is used to shining a light on the mysteries of the natural world.

Working at the cutting edge of ultrafast spectroscopy—the use of short laser pulses to analyze molecular dynamics—the Michigan State University associate professor seeks to uncover how microscopic phenomena impact large complex systems.

One promising frontier Harel has been working on is the development of new methods of microscopy that will allow researchers to observe molecular and atomic landscapes in motion rather than through static imagery. Such work has earned Harel MSU’s 2023 Innovation of the Year award, as well as MSU’s first-ever grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Scientists Uncover a Tiny Gene That Could End Dangerous Heart Arrhythmias

The key breakthrough? Finding a gene small enough to fit inside a viral delivery system. Early results in lab models suggest this therapy could be a game-changer, but further research is needed before it reaches clinical trials.

The Urgent Need for Better Arrhythmia Treatments

Cardiac arrhythmias affect millions worldwide and contribute to one in five deaths in the Netherlands. Current treatment options range from lifelong medication to invasive surgeries. However, new research from Amsterdam UMC and Johns Hopkins University, published today (February 20) in the European Heart Journal, marks a significant step toward a potential one-time gene therapy that could enhance heart function and prevent arrhythmias.

Breakthrough in Interstellar Travel: Scientists Plan to Reach Alpha Centauri in 40 Years!

Will the dream of interstellar travel soon become reality? Experts have been working for some time on concepts that will one day enable us to enter foreign star systems. Until now, the vast expanses of space have always thwarted this ambitious desire – after all, even the Alpha Centauri system, which is only 4.34 light-years away, is tens of thousands of travel years away with our current means! But now NASA has presented a revolutionary propulsion technology that should get us to the star system of our dreams in just 40 years! But how does the groundbreaking Sunbeam drive work? What technical tricks will make the vast distances of the cosmos seem forgotten – and when will the first interstellar research probe leave Earth?

UChicago Medicine offering breakthrough treatment for cancer patients

It’s a breakthrough in cancer treatment, and UChicago Medicine is one of the first hospitals to offer it.

It’s not just one treatment, but can eventually become a whole new way to treat cancer.

Alla Pinzour has been fighting skin cancer for around 15 years—but not anymore.

View a PDF of the paper titled The Danger of Overthinking: Examining the Reasoning-Action Dilemma in Agentic Tasks, by Alejandro Cuadron and 15 other authors

Abstract: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) represent a breakthrough in AI problem-solving capabilities, but their effectiveness in interactive environments can be limited. This paper introduces and analyzes overthinking in LRMs. A phenomenon where models favor extended internal reasoning chains over environmental interaction. Through experiments on software engineering tasks using SWE Bench Verified, we observe three recurring patterns: Analysis Paralysis, Rogue Actions, and Premature Disengagement. We propose a framework to study these behaviors, which correlates with human expert assessments, and analyze 4,018 trajectories. We observe that higher overthinking scores correlate with decreased performance, with reasoning models exhibiting stronger tendencies toward overthinking compared to non-reasoning models. Our analysis reveals that simple efforts to mitigate overthinking in agentic environments, such as selecting the solution with the lower overthinking score, can improve model performance by almost 30% while reducing computational costs by 43%. These results suggest that mitigating overthinking has strong practical implications. We suggest that by leveraging native function-calling capabilities and selective reinforcement learning overthinking tendencies could be mitigated. We also open-source our evaluation framework and dataset to facilitate research in this direction at this https URL.

From: Alejandro Cuadron [view email].

Oral arsenic trioxide for leukemia has a 97% cure rate: Hong Kong’s prescription medicine enters international arena

Researchers at the LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) have invented an oral formulation of arsenic trioxide (Oral-ATO; ARSENOL) for the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), a blood cancer that once had a high fatality rate.

The invention and use of oral-ATO is of historic importance for medicine in Hong Kong. It is the first-ever prescription medication wholly invented and manufactured in Hong Kong, and also the first to obtain U.S., European and Japanese patents.

After more than two decades of dedicated work, the HKU research team successfully translated this Hong Kong invention into by incorporating oral-ATO into the treatment plan of APL patients. Extensive clinical studies of oral-ATO have demonstrated its high efficacy and safety in curing APL patients, with an overall survival (OS) rate exceeding 97%, along with a significant reduction in side-effects and treatment burden.