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Category: robotics/AI – Page 66

Scientists unlock key manufacturing challenge for next-generation optical chips

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde have developed a new method for assembling ultra-small, light-controlling devices, paving the way for scalable manufacturing of advanced optical systems used in quantum technologies, telecommunications and sensing.

The study, published in Nature Communications, centers on photonic crystal cavities (PhCCs), micron-scale structures that trap and manipulate light with extraordinary precision. These are essential components for high-performance technologies ranging from quantum computing to photonic artificial intelligence.

Until now, the creation of large arrays of PhCCs has been severely limited by the tiny variations introduced during fabrication. Even nanometer-scale imperfections can drastically shift each device’s optical properties, making it impossible to build arrays of identical units directly on-chip.

Microrobots shaped and steered by metal patches could aid drug delivery and pollution cleanup

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created a new way to build and control tiny particles that can move and work like microscopic robots, offering a powerful tool with applications in biomedical and environmental research.

The study, published in Nature Communications, describes a new method of fabrication that combines high-precision 3D printing, called two-photon lithography, with a microstenciling technique. The team prints both the particle and its stencil together, then deposits a thin layer of metal—such as gold, platinum or cobalt—through the stencil’s openings. When the stencil is removed, a metal patch remains on the particle.

The particles, invisible to the naked eye, can be made in almost any shape and patterned with surface patches as small as 0.2 microns—more than 500 times thinner than a human hair. The metal patches guide how the particles move when exposed to electric or magnetic fields, or chemical gradients.

Pretrained jet foundation model successfully utilized for tau reconstruction

Simulating data in particle physics is expensive and not perfectly accurate. To get around this, researchers are now exploring the use of foundation models—large AI models trained in a general, task-agnostic way on large amounts of data.

Just like how language models can be pretrained on the full dataset of internet text before being fine-tuned for specific tasks, these models can learn from large datasets of particle jets, even without labels.

After the pretraining, they can be fine-tuned to solve specific problems using much less data than traditional approaches.

AI reveals astrocytes play a ‘starring’ role in dynamic brain function

Long overlooked and underestimated, glial cells—non-neuronal cells that support, protect and communicate with neurons—are finally stepping into the neuroscience spotlight. A new Florida Atlantic University study highlights the surprising influence of a particular glial cell, revealing that it plays a much more active and dynamic role in brain function than previously thought.

Using sophisticated computational modeling and , researchers discovered how astrocytes, a “star” shaped glial cell, subtly—but significantly—modulate communication between neurons, especially during highly coordinated, synchronous brain activity.

“Clearly, are significantly implicated in several brain functions, making identifying their presence among neurons an appealing and important problem,” said Rodrigo Pena, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor of biological sciences within FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science on the John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter, and a member of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.

Scientists create biological ‘artificial intelligence’ system

Australian scientists have successfully developed a research system that uses ‘biological artificial intelligence’ to design and evolve molecules with new or improved functions directly in mammal cells. The researchers said this system provides a powerful new tool that will help scientists develop more specific and effective research tools or gene therapies.

Named PROTEUS (PROTein Evolution Using Selection) the system harnesses ‘directed evolution’, a lab technique that mimics the natural power of evolution. However, rather than taking years or decades, this method accelerates cycles of evolution and natural selection, allowing them to create molecules with new functions in weeks.

This could have a direct impact on finding new, more effective medicines. For example, this system can be applied to improve gene editing technology like CRISPR to improve its effectiveness.

AI model transforms blurry, choppy videos into clear, seamless footage

A research team, led by Professor Jaejun Yoo from the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence at UNIST has announced the development of an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model, “BF-STVSR (Bidirectional Flow-based Spatio-Temporal Video Super-Resolution),” capable of simultaneously improving both video resolution and frame rate.

This research was led by first author Eunjin Kim, with Hyeonjin Kim serving as co-author. Their findings were presented at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2025) held in Nashville June 11–15. The study is posted on the arXiv preprint server.

Resolution and frame rate are critical factors that determine . Higher resolution results in sharper images with more detailed visuals, while increased frame rates ensure smoother motion without abrupt jumps.

AI cloud infrastructure gets faster and greener: NPU core improves inference performance by over 60%

The latest generative AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 require not only high memory bandwidth but also large memory capacity. This is why generative AI cloud operating companies like Microsoft and Google purchase hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs.

As a solution to address the core challenges of building such high-performance AI infrastructure, Korean researchers have succeeded in developing an NPU (neural processing unit) core technology that improves the inference performance of generative AI models by an average of more than 60% while consuming approximately 44% less power compared to the latest GPUs.

Professor Jongse Park’s research team from KAIST School of Computing, in collaboration with HyperAccel Inc., developed a high-performance, low-power NPU core technology specialized for generative AI clouds like ChatGPT.

Man with no programming skills wins 200 IT hackathons thanks to AI

Rene Turcios, 29, from San Francisco, has won 200 IT hackathons in two years, an ambitious achievement for someone with no programming skills.

René is a professional Yu-Gi-Oh! player, cannabis enthusiast, and reseller of Labubu toys, but he devotes most of his time to participating in IT hackathons. Since 2023, he has attended more than 200 events and won cash prizes and software credits.

The craziest thing about all this is that Tursios has no programming skills and is a representative of a new generation of programmers — the so-called web coders, i.e. people who write code with the help of AI chatbots.

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