Redefining the transistor: The ideal building block for artificial intelligence
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Jul-2025 10:11 ET (21-Jul-2025 14:11 GMT/UTC)
The team led by Associate Professor Mario Lanza from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has just revolutionised the field of neuromorphic computing by inventing a new super-efficient computing cell that can mimic the behaviour of both electronic neurons and synapses. They found an ingenious way to reproduce the electronic behaviours characteristic of neurons and synapses in a single conventional silicon transistor.
This discovery is revolutionary because it allows the size of electronic neurons to be reduced by a factor of 18 and that of synapses by a factor of 6. Considering that each artificial neural network contains millions of electronic neurons and synapses, this could represent a huge leap forward in computing systems capable of processing much more information while consuming far less energy.
How gravity causes a perfectly spherical ball to roll down an inclined plane is part of elementary school physics canon. But the world is messier than a textbook.
Scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have sought to quantitatively describe the much more complex rolling physics of real-world objects. Led by Professor L. Mahadevan, they combined theory, simulations, and experiments to understand what happens when an imperfect, spherical object is placed on an inclined plane.
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers have created a new method for studying protein degradation within immune cells that uses engineered microparticles to track and analyze degradation processes more effectively than traditional methods.
The work, which was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, has important implications for treating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and autoimmune disorders.
Clothes that can mimic the feeling of being touched, touch displays that provide haptic feedback to users, or even ultralight loudspeakers. These are just some of the devices made possible using thin silicone films that can be precisely controlled so that they vibrate, flex, press or pull exactly as desired. And all done simply by applying an electrical voltage. The research teams at the Center for Mechatronics and Automation Technology in Saarbrücken (ZeMA) headed by Professors Stefan Seelecke and Paul Motzki (Saarland University) and John Heppe (htw saar – University of Applied Sciences Saar) will be at the international trade fair Hannover Messe, where they will be demonstrating how their smart film actuator technology is being made even more efficient, stable, sensitive and responsive (31 March to 4 April, Hall 2, Saarland Innovation Stand B10).
A team of researchers from Arizona State University, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Lehigh University and Louisiana State University has developed a groundbreaking high-temperature copper alloy with exceptional thermal stability and mechanical strength.
The research team’s findings on the new copper alloy, published in prestigious journal Science, introduce a novel bulk Cu-3Ta-0.5Li nanocrystalline alloy that exhibits remarkable resistance to coarsening and creep deformation, even at temperatures near its melting point.