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Europe will soon produce a strategically vital component in the modern global economy as US semiconductor giant Intel chooses the site for a new cutting-edge chip factory.

Recent problems in global supply chains have highlighted the fundamental importance of semiconductors, which are used in a growing number of products including cars, TVs and smartphones.

Keen demand and the closure of semiconductor plants, particularly in Asia, due to pandemic disruptions led to a global chip shortage and forced car manufacturers such as Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen to scale back production.

Australian researchers have struck a deal to commercialise a new next-generation graphene material they say could unlock cheaper and better performing lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), based at the University of Wollongong, say they have discovered a new form of graphene, called ‘Edge Functionalised Graphene’ (EFG), which is both highly conductive and processable for use in a range of electronics.

This includes lithium-ion batteries, with the innovative graphene material promising to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of battery technology used in energy storage devices and electric vehicles.

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

Now, researchers at Northwestern University and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have successfully applied to guide the synthesis of new nanomaterials, eliminating barriers associated with materials discovery. The highly trained algorithm combed through a defined dataset to accurately predict new structures that could fuel processes in clean energy, chemical and automotive industries.

All 18 COVID-19 patients hospitalized with moderate or severe symptoms who were administered the drug Amor-18 developed by Israeli biotech company Amorphical in a phase II clinical trial recovered and were discharged in a few days, the company announced Wednesday. Of the 19 individuals who were given a placebo, six had to be transferred to intensive care, and two died.


All 18 hospitalized individuals administered the treatment developed by Israeli biotech company Amorphical in a phase II trial recovered and were discharged in a few days.

When three is not enough.


Israel has announced a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to people older than 16. The additional dose will be given to senior citizens, medical workers, people with suppressed immune system.

#Israel #COVID #ImmuneSystem.

Artificial intelligence (AI) backed drug discovery company Insilico Medicine announced last week that it was dosing the first healthy volunteer in a microdose trial of ISM 001–005. Designed with the help of AI, the drug is a small-molecule inhibitor of a biological target that was discovered by Pharma. AI. The trial is being conducted in Australia.

The AI-designed drug will be used to treat chronic lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF usually leads to progressive and irreversible lung-function decline and affects 20 people out of over 100,000 globally.

Chief Scientific Officer of Insilico, Freng Ren, said in a press release that this drug discovery and trial marks a significant milestone in the AI-drug discovery space. This is because the said candidate is the first-ever AI-discovered novel molecule based on an AI-discovered target.