Rapidus is set to start the operations of a pilot line at its plant for advanced semiconductors in Chitose, Hokkaido, on Tuesday. The launch of the test line will be an important milestone in Rapidus' aim of beginning mass production at the factory in 2027. Securing domestic output bases for chips, a strategic item, is a pressing issue for Japan at a time when geopolitical risks such as a standoff between the United States and China are becoming more apparent. Rapidus was established in 2022 with investments from Toyota Motor, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and other Japanese companies. The Chitose plant is slated to produce cutting-edge semiconductors with a circuit line width of 2 nanometers, expected to be used in artificial intelligence technology and autonomous driving systems.

With an eerie, robot-like appearance and an otherworldly glow when worn, those LED masks all over your FYP give off a science-fiction vibe. Fittingly, it was researchers with NASA who discovered the potential for medical light therapy to treat wounds, arthritis, glaucoma and other ailments in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, that LED light therapy was growing in popularity at dermatology offices where patients donned an LED mask or used similar devices to slow aging and treat acne. And now that technology has trickled down to our homes. Brands like Omnilux and Dr. Gross have popularized direct-to-consumer LED masks that are safe to use regularly in the privacy of your own home, available at a range of price points (from under 100 to nearly 500).

We are living amid a technological revolution that is transforming the globe. Changes are visible in all aspects of our lives from transportation, health, and communications. As the adage states, yesterday's science fiction is today's science. We are now expanding our capabilities in every area of science, chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering. That includes heightened spae exploration, as well as building smart cities, new manufacturing hubs, and developing artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. The rapid pace of technological change is clearly visible, but much of what you may not see, the exceedingly small physical components of change called nanotechnologies, are catalyzing the revolution. While there are many nanotech uses, three areas of nanotech are paving the way to our future: Materials Science, Nanomedicine and Device Engineering.

The monochromatic black-and-green that defined night vision for decades is quickly receding into the past. The U.S. military already issues night-vision goggles that outline people and other objects in bright white, and researchers across the world are racing to develop even more advanced ways of seeing in the dark. A new proof-of-principle study offers intriguing hints about how the next generation of such technology might work. In a paper published Wednesday in the academic journal PLOS ONE, researchers demonstrate that a deep learning algorithm can build a full-color reconstruction of a scene using only infrared images the human eye can't see. These findings suggest an exciting new future for night-vision technology.

Night vision is typically monotone--everything the wearer can see is colored in the same hue, which is mostly shades of green. But by using varying wavelengths of infrared light and a relatively simple AI algorithm, scientists from the University of California, Irvine have been able to bring back some color into these desaturated images. Their findings are published in the journal PLOS ONE this week. Light in the visible spectrum, similar to an FM radio, consists of many different frequencies. Both light and radio are part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Most human diseases can be traced to malfunctioning parts of a cell -- a tumor is able to grow because a gene wasn't accurately translated into a particular protein or a metabolic disease arises because mitochondria aren't firing properly, for example. But to understand what parts of a cell can go wrong in a disease, scientists first need to have a complete list of parts. By combining microscopy, biochemistry techniques and artificial intelligence, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and collaborators have taken what they think may turn out to be a significant leap forward in the understanding of human cells. The technique, known as Multi-Scale Integrated Cell (MuSIC), is described November 24, 2021 in Nature. "If you imagine a cell, you probably picture the colorful diagram in your cell biology textbook, with mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum and nucleus. But is that the whole story? Definitely not," said Trey Ideker, PhD, professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center.

A traditional computer CPU (Central Processing Unit) is built of simple arithmetic and logical units. The tiniest component of a computer system is a transistor that works as an electric switch. It provides the current a passage to pass in the formation of electrons. It represents the state of a switch (ON/Off) or (0/1). The transistor combined form logical gates like AND, OR, and NOT which can manipulate these bits and give outputs like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and many more complex operations.

American innovation, from smartphones to search engines to gene sequencing, is built on a foundation of impossibly intricate, perfectly etched silicon. But few of those semiconductors are actually made in the US. Only 12 percent of chips sold worldwide were made in the US in 2019, down from 37 percent in 1990. For decades, that wasn't seen as a problem. US companies were world leaders in designing cutting-edge chips, the most valuable and important part of the process.

The historic Belgian city of Leuven is known for its centuries-old university and as the headquarters of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. Less so as the location of a semiconductor research organization that is now the center of both political and industry attention. The Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC) may be Belgium's best-kept secret, but it's in global demand for its work on the future of computer chips, with applications in areas from genome sequencing to autonomous driving. It's also increasingly in the sights of governments as chips become political weapons in the U.S.-China tech conflict. Crippling industry shortages during the pandemic have meanwhile set off a scramble for access to advanced research as the U.S., China, Japan and Europe all seek greater self-reliance in semiconductor production.

Intel's plans, announced Tuesday, to spend $20 billion to build new chip-making factories aimed to show that the company, and the US, are serious about regaining global leadership in a crucial technology. But the news also highlighted how far Intel, and the US, have fallen behind. As part of its plan, Intel said it would open its factories more widely to make chips for other companies, highlighting its manufacturing expertise and ambition. But at the same time, Intel said it would outsource production of some of its most advanced chips to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC is ahead of Intel in using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to put more computer power on a chip by squeezing transistors closer together.