A new design for a nuclear battery that generates electricity from the radioactive decay of americium is unprecedentedly efficient

Imagine a world without Facebook. For just half an hour. A group of AI leaders get together but don’t seem to invite Elon Musk. Amazon takes data centres nuclear. A new competitor for ChatGPT and Google. And public trust in AI is declining.  All this and more on the “just breath, Facebook will be back” […]

Scientists in New Mexico conducted several experiments and learned that asteroids can be deflected from Earth using explosions of nuclear warheads above the space rock's surface.

NASA has released the clearest view of Mars seen thus far, with a field of blue rocks seen on the Martian landscape on top of an ancient lake.

Two pioneers of artificial intelligence have won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.

Finished chips coming in from the foundry are subject to a battery of tests. For those destined for critical systems in cars, those tests are particularly extensive and can add 5 to 10 percent to the cost of a chip. But do you really need to do every single test?

Engineers at NXP have developed a machine-learning algorithm that learns the patterns of test results and figures out the subset of tests that are really needed and those that they could safely do without. The NXP engineers described the process at the IEEE International Test Conference in San Diego last week.

NXP makes a wide variety of chips with complex circuitry and advanced chip-making technology, including inverters for EV motors, audio chips for consumer electronics, and key-fob transponders to secure your car. These chips are tested with different signals at different voltages and at different temperatures in a test process called continue-on-fail. In that process, chips are tested in groups and are all subjected to the complete battery, even if some parts fail some of the tests along the way.

Chips were subject to between 41 and 164 tests, and the algorithm was able to recommend removing 42 to 74 percent of those tests.

“We have to ensure stringent quality requirements in the field, so we have to do a lot of testing,” says Mehul Shroff, an NXP Fellow who led the research. But with much of the actual production and packaging of chips outsourced to other companies, testing is one of the few knobs most chip companies can turn to control costs. “What we were trying to do here is come up with a way to reduce test cost in a way that was statistically rigorous and gave us good results without compromising field quality.”

A Test Recommender System

Shroff says the problem has certain similarities to the machine learning-based recommender systems used in e-commerce. “We took the concept from the retail world, where a data analyst can look at receipts and see what items people are buying together,” he says. “Instead of a transaction receipt, we have a unique part identifier and instead of the items that a consumer would purchase, we have a list of failing tests.”

The NXP algorithm then discovered which tests fail together. Of course, what’s at stake for whether a purchaser of bread will want to buy butter is quite different from whether a test of an automotive part at a particular temperature means other tests don’t need to be done. “We need to have 100 percent or near 100 percent certainty,” Shroff says. “We operate in a different space with respect to statistical rigor compared to the retail world, but it’s borrowing the same concept.”

As rigorous as the results are, Shroff says that they shouldn’t be relied upon on their own. You have to “make sure it makes sense from engineering perspective and that you can understand it in technical terms,” he says. “Only then, remove the test.”

Shroff and his colleagues analyzed data obtained from testing seven microcontrollers and applications processors built using advanced chipmaking processes. Depending on which chip was involved, they were subject to between 41 and 164 tests, and the algorithm was able to recommend removing 42 to 74 percent of those tests. Extending the analysis to data from other types of chips led to an even wider range of opportunities to trim testing.

The algorithm is a pilot project for now, and the NXP team is looking to expand it to a broader set of parts, reduce the computational overhead, and make it easier to use.

"You’ve taken this idea way too far," a mentor told Prof. Fei-Fei Li.

The California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies published research this week that showed China has constructed a prototype nuclear reactor that could fit aboard a large surface vessel - a sign that China is making progress toward building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

The post Report: China Builds ‘Prototype’ Nuclear Reactor for Aircraft Carrier appeared first on Breitbart.

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for August 23rd, 2024. It’s the end of another week, and …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Thermonuclear’, ‘Magnus Trilogy’, Plus Today’s Other New Releases and Sales"

TV personality responded to rumours that she is exempt from some challenges

A Canada Border Services Agency superintendent is speaking out after being targeted by the Indian government with allegations of murder and terrorism — allegations Canadian authorities say are not backed by any evidence.

Nvision Biomedical Technologies and Invibio Biomaterial Solutions have announced that the FDA has granted clearance of the first 3D-Printed PEEK Interbody System made from PEEK-OPTIMA.

The outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election could reshape policies from health care at home to nuclear proliferation abroad

The proposed American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) has taken its first step U.S. House legislative process with several issue disagreements becoming more evident. On May 23, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Data, Innovation and Commerce approved the updated APRA, advancing the bill to full committee consideration. Just prior to the […]

By Arthur O. Tzianabos, PhD, CEO of Lifordi Immunotherapeutics, as part of the From the Trenches feature of LifeSciVC As the biotech industry continues to pick up steam, I have been getting a number of phone calls from folks in

The post Stars and Scars… Some Lessons Learned About Leadership appeared first on LifeSciVC.

Cochlear implants—the neural prosthetic cousins of standard hearing aids—can be a tremendous boon for people with profound hearing loss. But many would-be users are turned off by the device’s cumbersome external hardware, which must be worn to process signals passing through the implant. So researchers have been working to make a cochlear implant that sits entirely inside the ear, to restore speech and sound perception without the lifestyle restrictions imposed by current devices.

A new biocompatible microphone offers a bridge to such fully internal cochlear implants. About the size of a grain of rice, the microphone is made from a flexible piezoelectric material that directly measures the sound-induced motion of the eardrum. The tiny microphone’s sensitivity matches that of today’s best external hearing aids.

Cochlear implants create a novel pathway for sounds to reach the brain. An external microphone and processor, worn behind the ear or on the scalp, collect and translate incoming sounds into electrical signals, which get transmitted to an electrode that’s surgically implanted in the cochlea, deep within the inner ear. There, the electrical signals directly stimulate the auditory nerve, sending information to the brain to interpret as sound.

But, says Hideko Heidi Nakajima, an associate professor of otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear, “people don’t like the external hardware.” They can’t wear it while sleeping, or while swimming or doing many other forms of exercise, and so many potential candidates forgo the device altogether. What’s more, incoming sound goes directly into the microphone and bypasses the outer ear, which would otherwise perform the key functions of amplifying sound and filtering noise. “Now the big idea is instead to get everything—processor, battery, microphone—inside the ear,” says Nakajima. But even in clinical trials of fully internal designs, the microphone’s sensitivity—or lack thereof—has remained a roadblock.

Nakajima, along with colleagues from MIT, Harvard, and Columbia University, fabricated a cantilever microphone that senses the motion of a bone attached behind the eardrum called the umbo. Sound entering the ear canal causes the umbo to vibrate unidirectionally, with a displacement 10 times as great as other nearby bones. The tip of the “UmboMic” touches the umbo, and the umbo’s movements flex the material and produce an electrical charge through the piezoelectric effect. These electrical signals can then be processed and transmitted to the auditory nerve. “We’re using what nature gave us, which is the outer ear,” says Nakajima.

Why a cochlear implant needs low-noise, low-power electronics

Making a biocompatible microphone that can detect the eardrum’s minuscule movements isn’t easy, however. Jeff Lang, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT who jointly led the work, points out that only certain materials are tolerated by the human body. Another challenge is shielding the device from internal electronics to reduce noise. And then there’s long-term reliability. “We’d like an implant to last for decades,” says Lang.

In tests of the implantable microphone prototype, a laser beam measures the umbo’s motion, which gets transferred to the sensor tip. JEFF LANG & HEIDI NAKAJIMA

The researchers settled on a triangular design for the 3-by-3-millimeter sensor made from two layers of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), a biocompatible piezoelectric polymer, sandwiched between layers of flexible, electrode-patterned polymer. When the cantilever tip bends, one PVDF layer produces a positive charge and the other produces a negative charge—taking the difference between the two cancels much of the noise. The triangular shape provides the most uniform stress distribution within the bending cantilever, maximizing the displacement it can undergo before it breaks. “The sensor can detect sounds below a quiet whisper,” says Lang.

Emma Wawrzynek, a graduate student at MIT, says that working with PVDF is tricky because it loses its piezoelectric properties at high temperatures, and most fabrication techniques involve heating the sample. “That’s a challenge especially for encapsulation,” which involves encasing the device in a protective layer so it can remain safely in the body, she says. The group had success by gradually depositing titanium and gold onto the PVDF while using a heat sink to cool it. That approach created a shielding layer that protects the charge-sensing electrodes from electromagnetic interference.

The other tool for improving a microphone’s performance is, of course, amplifying the signal. “On the electronics side, a low-noise amp is not necessarily a huge challenge to build if you’re willing to spend extra power,” says Lang. But, according to MIT graduate student John Zhang, cochlear implant manufacturers try to limit power for the entire device to 5 milliwatts, and just 1 mW for the microphone. “The trade-off between noise and power is hard to hit,” Zhang says. He and fellow student Aaron Yeiser developed a custom low-noise, low-power charge amplifier that outperformed commercially available options.

“Our goal was to perform better than or at least equal the performance of high-end capacitative external microphones,” says Nakajima. For leading external hearing-aid microphones, that means sensitivity down to a sound pressure level of 30 decibels—the equivalent of a whisper. In tests of the UmboMic on human cadavers, the researchers implanted the microphone and amplifier near the umbo, input sound through the ear canal, and measured what got sensed. Their device reached 30 decibels over the frequency range from 100 hertz to 6 kilohertz, which is the standard for cochlear implants and hearing aids and covers the frequencies of human speech. “But adding the outer ear’s filtering effects means we’re doing better [than traditional hearing aids], down to 10 dB, especially in speech frequencies,” says Nakajima.

Plenty of testing lies ahead, at the bench and on sheep before an eventual human trial. But if their UmboMic passes muster, the team hopes that it will help more than 1 million people worldwide go about their lives with a new sense of sound.

The work was published on 27 June in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.

Learn how to take simple x/y coordinates, and create map polygons shaped like holiday images, that can be plotted using SAS/Graph's PROC GMAP.

Dec 5, 2023

David W. Kearn argues that deployment of nuclear weapons cannot rectify a perceived imbalance in conventional forces in the western Pacific.

The Indian civil nuclear bureaucracy understands it is "essential" to advance cooperation with the U.S., but claims progress is stymied by the inability of U.S. firms to share sensitive technical information pending the authorizations required under U.S. licensing regulations.

Jun 30, 2022

The Learning Agenda is an unprecedented effort by the Department to institutionalize evidence-based learning and implement the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (“Evidence Act”). The Evidence Act requires federal agencies to develop a “learning agenda” – a systematic plan to answer a set of policy-relevant questions critical to achieving the agency’s strategic objectives. It will guide the Department’s efforts over the next four years across eight questions to increase the impact of U.S. foreign policy and bolster the Secretary of State’s modernization efforts.

This event featured a keynote address followed by a panel of foreign policy and evidence-building experts for a thoughtful discussion on addressing Learning Agenda Questions 1 and 2: How can the State Department improve the effectiveness of its diplomatic interventions to better advance foreign policy objectives? How can the Department improve the effectiveness and sustainability of its foreign assistance efforts?

Nov 26, 2020

• Elbe Group Discusses Strategic Stability, Hybrid Warfare and Terrorism.
• Mowatt-Larssen’s Book Details Lessons He Learned While Tracking Al-Qaida’s WMD Programs.
• Experts on New START Extension and Other Nuclear Priorities of Biden Presidency.
• Kazakhstan’s Last HEU Eliminated.
• William Potter Joins Russian Academy of Sciences.
• COVID, Nuclear Security On Agenda of IAEA’s 64th General Conference.
• Mayak Aims to Process Entire range of SNF.
• Atomguard Reports Foiling Unauthorized Access.
• Allison: US Vital Interest in Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism Will Continue to Guide Its North Korea Policy.
• Learning from COVID-19 to Prepare for Nuclear Attack.
• Hecker, Kassianova Encourage Young US and RF Professionals to Explore Lessons of Nuclear Accidents.
• Experts Weigh in on 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing.
• A New Look at IAEA’s Nuclear Security Recommendations.
• Azerbaijan Has Threatened to Strike Armenia’s NPP With Missiles.
• IAEA Notified of 189 Incidents Of Material Being Out Of Regulatory Control in 2019.
• Russia To Retrieve More Radioactive Debris from Bottom of Ocean.
• Researchers Propose Fast Way to Detect Weapons Grade Materials.
• Keeping Nuclear Power Plants Out of Reach of Terrorists During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
• Bunn, Tobey and Roth Testify on Prevention of Nuclear Theft, Call for Cooperation With Russia.
• Budapest Memorandum Parsed.
• IAEA Holds A Ministerial on Nuclear Security.
• Assessing Progress on Nuclear Security.
• 12^th GUMO Officer On Trial for Embezzlement.
• Lukashenko: Pompeo Alerted Me to Nuclear Materials at Border.
• US and Russia Reported HEU and Plutonium to IAEA.
• IAEA Bank Receives LEU.
• GICNT Hosted 8 Multilateral Activities in 2019.

Dec 10, 2021

• U.S.-Russia Elbe Group Maintains Focus on Threat of Nuclear Terrorism.
• Former Chernobyl Plant Manager Bryukhanov Dies.
• Matthew Bunn on Threat to Nuclear and Radiological Transports.
• On 9/11 Anniversary Russian Officials Call for Resumption of U.S.-Russian CT Cooperation.
• Experts Weigh in on 9/11 Anniversary.
• U.S. and Norway Agree to Eliminate All of Norway’s HEU.
• Two Soviet Nuclear Submarine Reactors Located.
• Russian Security Council: Terrorists Remain Interested in NBC.
• IAEA Adopts Resolutions on Nuclear Security, NS Center Planned.
• Allison on Risk of Mega-terrorist Attack After U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan.
• Arbatov Warns of Enduring Threat of Nuclear Terrorism to Russia in His New Volume.
• Russia’s New Security Strategy Drops References to CT Partnership With U.S.
• NNSA’s Non-Proliferation Budget to Decrease in ’22, Provides for US and Russian Visits.
• Should U.S.-Russian Interaction in Cyberspace Involve CT? 
• Russia’s NPP Operator Conducts Emergency Preparedness Exercise.
• Putin and Biden Discuss Terrorist Threat Emanating from Afghanistan, but No Deal.
• U.S. Experts on Ensuring Access to Neutrons While Reducing Nuclear Terrorism Risks.
• Beebe Weighs in on U.S.-Russian CT Interaction.
• Duo Detained for Alleged Attempt to Sell Americium-241.
• 12th GUMO Guard’s Sentence Upheld.
• NDAA-Mandated Group to Identify Nuclear Terrorism Risks.
• Belfer’s MTA Hosts Conference on Lessons of Fukushima and Chernobyl.
• Russia Withdraws from Uranium Hexafluoride Transportation Deal with U.S.
• Bell: U.S. Needs to Convince Russia on Contending With Nuclear Terrorism Threat.
• U.S. and Canada Complete Repatriation of HEU Material.
• Siegfried Hecker Outlines his Vision of Future for Nuclear Security Cooperation.
• Hackers Breach U.S. Nuclear Agency.
• Tobey on Assassinations of Nuclear Scientists and Terrorists.
• Rosatom Has Checked Nuclear Sites, Following a Tip on Terrorism from U.S.

Jun 21, 2022

Simon Saradzhyan was invited to publicly brief the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee addressing the adequacy of strategies to prevent, counter, and respond to nuclear terrorism, and identify technical, policy, and resource gaps. The consensus study is a congressionally mandated analysis included in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (Section 1299I) sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy).  Nearly 60 stakeholders concerned about this topic from the Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, State Department, National Security Council, US Congress, the National Labs, and many non-governmental organizations were in attendance. The briefings are available at the NAS event website. Video of the presentation can be found here.

Aug 31, 2015

There is growing evidence that the Chinese economic miracle is a consequence of the rural entrepreneurship which started in the 1980s. This contradicts classical interpretations that focus on state-led enterprises and receptiveness to foreign direct investment....The lesson from China's experience is that development must be viewed as an expression of human potentialities, not as a product of external interventions.

Sep 20, 2016

"South Africa is the continent's largest chicken producer. According to the South African Poultry Association, chicken imports from Brazil, the European Union and the US are destroying the domestic sector....This has led to oversupply and price reduction. This may benefit consumers, but it undercuts incentives for local production."

Mar 15, 2024

Europe after the Russo-Ukrainian War must develop a new security structure to defend against any Russian aggression. The safest option is a non-offensive, confidence-building defense. This option includes proposals such as the “spider in the web” strategy and the “porcupine” strategy to provide for European security in a region threatened by Russian expansion—without relying on the threat of nuclear war.

Mar 25, 2024

Bystander video feeds show scenes of fire and destruction, flames engulfing pipelines and smoke billowing from oil tank farms. In one clip, a twin-tailed aircraft flies slowly over a burning refinery. It loiters, banks, and then plunges precisely into the top of a tall, hydrocarbon filled distillation tower followed by explosions and more fire.

Kyiv is turning the tables on Russia by striking at its hydrocarbon lifeblood. Ukraine’s justified and effective homegrown response to Putin’s two-year campaign of attacks on the nation’s energy infrastructure shows Russia that what goes around comes around.

Apr 3, 2024

Only a small handful of people in the world have sat at the negotiating table with the North Koreans and extensively interacted with them. Yet, this knowledge is fragmented and has not been collected or analyzed in a systematic manner. This report captures the findings from in-depth, one-on-one interviews with former senior negotiators from the United States and South Korea, who gained unique knowledge about North Korean negotiating behavior by dealing directly with their high-level North Korean counterparts. 

These negotiators collectively represent a body of negotiation experience and expertise starting from the early 1990s to late 2019, when North Korea ceased all negotiations with the United States. During that time, the conditions for productive negotiation changed dramatically – indeed, the conditions for the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework negotiations were much more favorable than during the Six-Party Talks of the mid-2000s or the Season of Summits during 2018-2019. For the “Negotiating with North Korea: Key Lessons Learned from Negotiators’ Genesis Period” project, a spotlight was placed on former senior negotiators’ early-stage experience preparing for and engaging in negotiations with the North Koreans. In doing so, tacit knowledge was captured to serve as a resource for future negotiators to inform and accelerate their own genesis period.

Jun 5, 2024

When asked whether the U.S. government works, most Americans say no. According to recent polling by Ipsos, more than two-thirds of adults in the United States think the country is going in the wrong direction. Gallup reports that only 26 percent have confidence in major U.S. institutions, such as the presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 25 say that they believe either that democracy or dictatorship “makes no difference” or that “dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances.” As a recent Economist cover story put it: “After victory in the Cold War, the American model seemed unassailable. A generation on, Americans themselves are losing confidence in it.”

Mar 14, 2024

David Kearn argues that the idea that the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945 would be by the United States in the defense of Taiwan against a conventional Chinese invasion would have significant, negative, and long-lasting, diplomatic ramifications. It is difficult to fathom the myriad potential consequences, but U.S. nuclear weapon use would almost certainly shatter the non-proliferation regime as a functioning entity, incentivize states (including China) to acquire or improve their existing nuclear arsenal, and damage America's standing globally.

Mar 15, 2024

On March 13, President Vladimir Putin granted an interview, in which he again delved into the conditions under which he says he would initiate the use of nuclear weapons. His remarks were so ambiguous that it caused mainstream Western media organizations—which tend to agree on what to emphasize in news out of the Kremlin—to put divergent headlines on the news stories that they ran about this particular interview. “Putin, in Pre-Election Messaging, Is Less Strident on Nuclear War. The Russian leader struck a softer tone about nuclear weapons in an interview with state television,” was the NYT’s headline. In contrast, the FT’s headline was “Russia ‘prepared’ for nuclear war, warns Vladimir Putin. President resumes bullish rhetoric over use of atomic arsenal if west threatens Moscow’s sovereignty,” while CBS News ran with “Putin again threatens to use nuclear weapons, claims Russia's arsenal ‘much more’ advanced than America's” and WSJ led with “Putin Rattles Nuclear Saber Ahead of Presidential Elections; Raising specter of nuclear confrontation.” So, which is it? Has Putin just struck a softer tone about nuclear weapons or has he rattled his nuclear saber yet again? The answer is both.

Apr 1, 2024

Report by Trevor Findlay about recent politics surrounding the Iranian Nuclear Program.

Apr 17, 2024

Mariana Budjeryn presents "Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and Its Impact on the Global Nuclear Order" at the DOE/NNSA Administrator's Strategy Forum

Apr 18, 2024

Assaf Zoran argues that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may have the opposite result of prompting an escalation in Iran’s nuclear developments, a pattern previously observed in response to kinetic actions attributed to Israel.

Jun 4, 2024

Would the world be safer if the United States pledged to never use nuclear weapons first? Supporters say a credible pledge would strengthen crisis stability, decrease hostility, and bolster nonproliferation and arms control. But reactions to no-first-use pledges by the Soviet Union, China, and India suggest that adversaries perceive pledges as credible only when the political relationship between a state and its adversary is already relatively benign, or when the state’s military has no ability to engage in nuclear first use against the adversary. 

Jun 20, 2024

Matthew Bunn argues that governments need help from scientists and engineers both in understanding the dangers that nuclear weapons continue to pose and in finding paths to reduce them.

Jun 20, 2024

Stephen Walt argues that Americans who are deeply worried about China's rise should reflect on what Beijing has done well and what Washington has done poorly.

Mar 5, 2024

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

Mar 12, 2024

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine illuminated the long profound shadow of nuclear weapons over international security. Russia's nuclear threats have rightfully garnered significant attention because of the unfathomable lethality of nuclear weapons. However, the use of such weapons in Ukraine is only one way—albeit the gravest— that Russia could challenge the global nuclear order. Russia's influence extends deep into the very fabric of this order—a system to which it is inextricably bound by Moscow's position in cornerstone institutions such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). From withdrawing from key treaties to stymieing resolutions critical of misconduct, Moscow has demonstrated its ability to challenge the legitimacy, relevance, and interpretations of numerous standards and principles espoused by the West.

Jun 14, 2024

China produces more than half of the world’s coal and employs more coal workers than any other country. China will need to develop alternative economic opportunities for workers displaced by the transition away from coal. This report examines the experiences of Tongchuan, Shaanxi, and Wuhai, Inner Mongolia in addressing unemployment problems and diversifying their economies, offering lessons for how other coal-producing cities and regions around the world can ensure a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers. 

John Sculley introduces his new multimedia business learning series �How to Build a Successful Business�

Kids on Spending and Saving

InComm Incentives takes the stress out of planning and executing rewards and promotions with an easy-to-use, B2B e-commerce portal.

Get a sneak peak at the industry�s smallest and smartest bone conduction sound processor. Now the first hearing implant with Made for iPhone� technology.

Partner With STEM Learning to Sponsor a Mini Science Centre

Bayer MSMS �Say TkU� Campaign

There is an ancient and proud tradition of people finding spiritual resonance within the captivating riddle of their own sexuality. That tradition has little or nothing to do with carnies eating junk food... or does it???

We recently launched a completely reimagined version of Machine Learning Crash Course.

Amazon's Children's Day Store is now open, featuring an array of products specially discounted for the occasion, including top-selling Android tablets ideal for e-learning. With price reductions of up to 75% on select items such as headphones, tablets, and kids' smartwatches,