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Blog – Page 198

A groundbreaking study showcases the creation of sustainable hydrophobic paper, enhanced by cellulose nanofibres and peptides, presenting a biodegradable alternative to petroleum-based materials, with potential uses in packaging and biomedical devices.

Researchers aimed to develop hydrophobic paper by leveraging the strength and water resistance of cellulose nanofibers, creating a sustainable, high-performance material suitable for packaging and biomedical applications. This innovative approach involved integrating short protein chains, known as peptide sequences, without chemically altering the cellulose nanofibers. The result is a potential alternative to petroleum-based materials, with significant environmental benefits.

The study, titled “Nanocellulose-short peptide self-assembly for improved mechanical strength and barrier performance,” was recently featured on the cover of the Journal of Materials Chemistry B. The research was conducted by the “Giulio Natta” Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Aalto University, the VTT-Technical Research Centre of Finland, and the SCITEC Institute of the CNR.

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face_with_colon_three year 2022 This photonic chip can transmit all the internet data every second.

A microcomb source based on a silicon nitride ring resonator is shown to support petabit-per-second data transmission over a multicore optical fibre.

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Now millions of developers are building with Gemini. And it’s helping us reimagine all of our products — including all 7 of them with 2 billion users — and to create new ones. NotebookLM is a great example of what multimodality and long context can enable for people, and why it’s loved by so many.

Over the last year, we have been investing in developing more agentic models, meaning they can understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision.

Today we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality — like native image and audio output — and native tool use, it will enable us to build new AI agents that bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant.

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NVIDIA and TSMC have developed a silicon photonics-based chip prototype, according to a report in the Taiwanese press. TSMC is the world’s leading contract chip manufacturer, and with Intel’s troubles, it has also established itself as the most advanced chip manufacturer on the planet. Silicon photonics is an emerging chip manufacturing technology that blends photonic circuits with traditional circuits to overcome physical limitations with semiconductor fabrication. According to the report, the prototype was developed late last year, with NVIDIA and TSMC also working on optical packaging technologies to improve AI chip performance.

NVIDIA & TSMC Are Working On Advanced Packaging Technologies, Says Report

TSMC’s latest chip manufacturing technology, the 2-nanometer node, is believed to have a minimum gate and metal pitches of 45 and 20 nanometers, respectively. In semiconductor fabrication, a gate pitch measures the distance between two gates on a chip, while a metal pitch measures the distance between two metal interconnects. A gate controls the flow of electrons on a transistor, while an interconnect ensures inter-transistor communication on a chip.

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Our brain’s memory center bears a sleek design.

A peek into living tissue from human hippocampi, a brain region crucial for memory and learning, revealed relatively few cell-to-cell connections for the vast number of nerve cells. But signals sent via those sparse connections proved extremely reliable and precise, researchers report December 11 in Cell.

One seahorse-shaped hippocampus sits deep within each hemisphere of the mammalian brain. In each hippocampus’s CA3 area, humans have about 1.7 million nerve cells called pyramidal cells. This subregion is thought to be the most internally connected part of the brain in mammals.

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Scientists have developed an advanced swarm navigation algorithm for cyborg insects that prevents them from becoming stuck while navigating challenging terrain.

Published in Nature Communications, the new algorithm represents a significant advance in . It could pave the way for applications in , search-and-rescue missions, and infrastructure inspection.

Cyborg insects are real insects equipped with tiny electronic devices on their backs—consisting of various sensors like optical and infrared cameras, a battery, and an antenna for communication—that allow their movements to be remotely controlled for specific tasks.

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