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Texas Instruments has announced a tranche of federal CHIPS Act funding worth up to $1.6 billion, a show of support for a semiconductor manufacturing industry that’s becoming more entrenched in North Texas.

Texas Instruments also expects to receive somewhere between $6 billion and $8 billion in U.S. Treasury tax credits for manufacturing investments, and up to $10 million to boost workforce development.

All told, the money will assist in funding three new Texas Instruments plants: two based in Sherman and one in Lehi, Utah, creating 2,000 new jobs. Separately, Samsung will receive as much as $4.75 billion in CHIPS Act money, a figure Bloomberg notes was below what was originally envisaged.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has detected a new grand-design spiral galaxy as part of the PANORAMIC survey. The newfound galaxy, named Zhúlóng, is extremely massive and appears to be the most distant spiral galaxy identified so far. The finding was detailed in a paper published December 17 on the pre-print server arXiv.

An important update on E5.


Here we look at an attempt to replicate the amazing results with E5 from Dr Katcher’s 2020 paper by an institute that has been set up in Brazil.
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Next in our New Year countdown, a study found that traumatic experiences during childhood may impair muscle function later in life.

Read more.


A University of Michigan study has shown that traumatic experiences during childhood may get “under the skin” later in life, impairing the muscle function of people as they age.

The study examined the function of skeletal muscle of older adults paired with surveys of adverse events they had experienced in childhood. It found that people who experienced greater childhood adversity, reporting one or more adverse events, had poorer muscle metabolism later in life. The research, led by University of Michigan Institute for Social Research scientist Kate Duchowny, is published in Science Advances.

Uber and Lyft drivers in Phoenix and Los Angeles are facing increasing challenges as driverless taxis, notably Waymo One, enter the market. These autonomous vehicles are making an already competitive ride-hailing industry even tougher for human drivers.

According to Jacob Zinkula’s report, driverless taxis are significantly impacting the ride-hailing landscape in key markets like Phoenix and Los Angeles. Jason D., a 50-year-old Uber driver based in Phoenix, attributes his decreasing earnings to the influx of Waymo One robotaxis. He notes that heightened competition and operational costs, along with reduced fares and tips, are exacerbating income challenges for both full-time and part-time drivers.

Waymo One, operating under Alphabet, has rolled out over 100,000 paid rides weekly across Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. With planned expansions to Atlanta and Austin, these vehicles are set to be integrated into the Uber app. Despite potential regulatory hurdles and safety considerations, experts in the ride-hailing field anticipate a gradual decline in Uber and Lyft drivers’ earnings as autonomous vehicles become more commonplace.