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Quantum Dot DBR Lasers Monolithically Integrated on Silicon Photonics by In-Pocket Heteroepitaxy

Monolithically integrated lasers on silicon photonics enable scalable, foundry-compatible production for data communications applications. However, material mismatches in heteroepitaxial systems and high coupling losses pose challenges for III-V integration on silicon. We combine three techniques: recessed silicon pockets for III-V growth, two-step heteroepitaxy using both MOCVD and MBE, and a polymer facet gap-fill approach to develop O-band InAs quantum dot lasers monolithically integrated on silicon photonics chiplets. Lasers coupled to silicon ring resonators and silicon nitride distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) demonstrate single-mode lasing with side-mode suppression ratio up to 32 dB. Devices lase at temperatures up to 105 °C with an extrapolated operational lifetime of 6.2 years at 35 °C.

‘Universal cancer vaccine’ trains the immune system to kill any tumor

Following on from their breakthrough human trial that successfully reprogrammed the immune system to overpower glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor, the same scientists have now further developed the mRNA vaccine to fight not one but any cancer. It has the potential to do away with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatment.

University of Florida (UF) scientists have developed an experimental vaccine that dramatically boosts the immune system’s ability to fight tumors – even without targeting a specific cancer type. This “general purpose” mRNA jab works in a similar way to a Covid-19 vaccine but with a different target; it instructs the body’s immune cells to rally and hit any kind of tumor in the same way they would attack a viral spike protein.

“This paper describes a very unexpected and exciting observation: that even a vaccine not specific to any particular tumor or virus – so long as it is an mRNA vaccine – could lead to tumor-specific effects,” said Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist and principal investigator at the RNA Engineering Laboratory at UF. “This finding is a proof of concept that these vaccines potentially could be commercialized as universal cancer vaccines to sensitize the immune system against a patient’s individual tumor.”

NVIDIA Brings Reasoning Models to Consumers Ranging from 1.5B to 32B Parameters

Today, NVIDIA unveiled OpenReasoning-Nemotron, a quartet of distilled reasoning models with 1.5B, 7B, 14B, and 32B parameters, all derived from the 671B-parameter DeepSeek R1 0528. By compressing that massive teacher into four leaner Qwen‑2.5-based students, NVIDIA is making advanced reasoning experiments accessible even on standard gaming rigs, without the need to worry about hefty GPU bills and cloud usage. The key is not some elaborate trick but raw data. Using the NeMo Skills pipeline, NVIDIA generated five million math, science, and code solutions, and then fine-tuned each one purely with supervised learning. Already, the 32B model hits an 89.2 on AIME24 and 73.8 on the HMMT February contest, while even the 1.5B variant manages a solid 55.5 and 31.5.

“Rethinking What Silicon Can Do” — New Way To Control Electricity at the Tiniest Scale Discovered

Electrons can travel through silicon as waves, paving the way for smaller and more advanced devices. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered a method to control how electricity moves through crystalline silicon, a key material in today’s electronic technologies. By

Gabe Newell thinks AI tools will result in a ‘funny situation’ where people who don’t know how to program become ‘more effective developers of value’ than those who’ve been at it for a decade

Even if you’re just a pure tool user you’re going to find that the gains to utilising those tools are very, very high.