Bionics
Highly efficient in energy usage and exceptionally precise – A novel frequency comb has been developed by researchers at Stanford University
Researchers at Stanford University have introduced a novel frequency comb, a highly accurate measurement tool. This device exhibits distinctive characteristics such as its compact size, great energy efficiency, and remarkable accuracy. Through ongoing advancements, this revolutionary “microcomb,” as outlined in a paper published in Nature, has the potential to serve as the foundation for widespread implementation of these devices in common electronic gadgets.
Frequency combs are laser devices designed to produce lines of light that are uniformly distributed, resembling the teeth of a comb or, more accurately, the tick marks on a ruler. Over the course of around 25 years, these “rulers for light” have brought about significant advancements in several fields of precise measurement, ranging from timekeeping to molecule detection through spectroscopy. However, due to the need for huge, expensive, and energy-intensive equipment, the usage of frequency combs has primarily been restricted to laboratory environments.
The researchers found a solution to these problems by combining two distinct methods for reducing the size of frequency combs onto a single, readily manufactured, microchip-style platform. The researchers anticipate a range of uses for their adaptable technology, including the development of sophisticated handheld medical diagnostic gadgets and the implementation of ubiquitous greenhouse gas monitoring sensors.
According to Hubert Stokowski, a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Amir Safavi-Naeini and the primary author of the paper, the design of our frequency comb incorporates the most advantageous aspects of emerging microcomb technology within a single device. “Our new frequency microcomb has the potential to be scaled up for compact, low-power, and cost-effective devices that can be deployed in virtually any location.”
Safavi-Naeini, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and senior author of the study, expressed great enthusiasm regarding the recently showcased microcomb technology. This technology has shown promise in developing innovative precision sensors that are compact and highly efficient, potentially suitable for integration into mobile devices in the future.
The process of manipulating light
An Integrated Frequency-Modulated Optical Parametric Oscillator, commonly referred to as FM-OPO, is a novel device.
The tool’s intricate nomenclature suggests that it integrates two methodologies for generating the spectrum of unique frequencies, or hues of light, that comprise a frequency comb. One approach, known as optical parametric oscillation, entails the reflection of laser light beams within a crystal medium, resulting in the formation of coherent and stable wave pulses. The second method uses laser light to enter a cavity, then modifies the phase of the light. This modulation is accomplished by applying radio-frequency signals to the device, resulting in the generation of frequency repetitions that function as light pulses.
The utilization of these two microcomb methods has been limited due to their inherent limitations. The aforementioned concerns encompass energy inefficiency, restricted capacity to modify optical parameters, and inferior comb “optical bandwidth” characterized by the gradual fading of comb-like lines as the distance from the comb’s center rises.
The researchers adopted a novel method to address the difficulty by focusing on a very promising optical circuit platform utilizing thin film lithium niobate as a material. The material possesses favorable characteristics in comparison to silicon, which is the prevailing material in the industry. Two advantageous characteristics of this material are its “nonlinearity,” which enables the interaction of light beams of different hues to produce new colors or wavelengths, and its ability to transmit a wide variety of light wavelengths.
The components of the new frequency comb were fabricated by the researchers through the utilization of integrated lithium niobate photonics. These technologies for controlling light are based on advancements made in the well-established field of silicon photonics, which focuses on the production of optical and electronic integrated circuits on silicon microchips. Both lithium niobate and silicon photonics have built upon the semiconductors used in traditional computer processors, which originated in the 1950s.
According to Safavi-Naeini, lithium niobate possesses distinct characteristics that are not present in silicon, rendering it indispensable for the fabrication of our microcomb device.
Remarkably exceptional performance
Subsequently, the researchers integrated components from optical parametric amplification and phase modulation methodologies. The researchers held specific performance expectations about the new frequency comb system on lithium niobate chips; nonetheless, the observed outcomes beyond their initial expectations.
In general, the comb generated a consistent output instead of brief pulses, allowing the researchers to decrease the necessary input power by roughly ten times. The device also produced a comb that was comfortably flat, indicating that the comb lines located further away from the center of the spectrum did not diminish in intensity. This characteristic enhances the accuracy and applicability of the device in many measurement applications.
Safavi-Naeini expressed astonishment at the comb’s unexpected nature. “Despite our initial intuition that we would observe comb-like behaviors, our intention was not to create a comb of this exact nature. It took us several months to create the simulations and theory that elucidated its primary characteristics.”
In order to get additional understanding of their surpassing device, the researchers sought the expertise of Martin Fejer, who holds the esteemed positions of J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics, as well as a professor of applied physics at Stanford University. Fejer, in collaboration with his colleagues at Stanford University, has made significant contributions to the advancement of contemporary thin film lithium niobate photonics technologies and the comprehension of the crystal characteristics of this material.
Fejer (year) established a significant correlation between the fundamental physical principles that underlie the microcomb and the concepts explored in scientific literature during the 1970s. This connection is particularly relevant to the ideas put forth by Stephen Harris, a retired professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at Stanford University.
With additional refinement, the novel microcombs may be easily produced at traditional microchip foundries and have numerous practical uses, including sensing, spectroscopy, medical diagnostics, fiber-optic communications, and wearable health-monitoring systems.
“Our microchip has the capability to be integrated into any device, and the overall size of the device is contingent upon the size of the battery,” stated Stokowski. “The technology we have showcased has the capability to be integrated into a compact personal device, comparable in size to a phone or even smaller, and can be utilized for various practical functions.”
Artificial Intelligence
Google DeepMind Shows Off A Robot That Plays Table Tennis At A Fun “Solidly Amateur” Level
Have you ever wanted to play table tennis but didn’t have anyone to play with? We have a big scientific discovery for you! Google DeepMind just showed off a robot that could give you a run for your money in a game. But don’t think you’d be beaten badly—the engineers say their robot plays at a “solidly amateur” level.
From scary faces to robo-snails that work together to Atlas, who is now retired and happy, it seems like we’re always just one step away from another amazing robotics achievement. But people can still do a lot of things that robots haven’t come close to.
In terms of speed and performance in physical tasks, engineers are still trying to make machines that can be like humans. With the creation of their table-tennis-playing robot, a team at DeepMind has taken a step toward that goal.
What the team says in their new preprint, which hasn’t been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal, is that competitive matches are often incredibly dynamic, with complicated movements, quick eye-hand coordination, and high-level strategies that change based on the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Pure strategy games like chess, which robots are already good at (though with… mixed results), don’t have these features. Games like table tennis do.
People who play games spend years practicing to get better. The DeepMind team wanted to make a robot that could really compete with a human opponent and make the game fun for both of them. They say that their robot is the first to reach these goals.
They came up with a library of “low-level skills” and a “high-level controller” that picks the best skill for each situation. As the team explained in their announcement of their new idea, the skill library has a number of different table tennis techniques, such as forehand and backhand serves. The controller uses descriptions of these skills along with information about how the game is going and its opponent’s skill level to choose the best skill that it can physically do.
The robot began with some information about people. It was then taught through simulations that helped it learn new skills through reinforcement learning. It continued to learn and change by playing against people. Watch the video below to see for yourself what happened.
“It’s really cool to see the robot play against players of all skill levels and styles.” Our goal was for the robot to be at an intermediate level when we started. “It really did that, all of our hard work paid off,” said Barney J. Reed, a professional table tennis coach who helped with the project. “I think the robot was even better than I thought it would be.”
The team held competitions where the robot competed against 29 people whose skills ranged from beginner to advanced+. The matches were played according to normal rules, with one important exception: the robot could not physically serve the ball.
The robot won every game it played against beginners, but it lost every game it played against advanced and advanced+ players. It won 55% of the time against opponents at an intermediate level, which led the team to believe it had reached an intermediate level of human skill.
The important thing is that all of the opponents, no matter how good they were, thought the matches were “fun” and “engaging.” They even had fun taking advantage of the robot’s flaws. The more skilled players thought that this kind of system could be better than a ball thrower as a way to train.
There probably won’t be a robot team in the Olympics any time soon, but it could be used as a training tool. Who knows what will happen in the future?
The preprint has been put on arXiv.
Artificial Intelligence
Eric Lefkofsky, the billionaire founder of Groupon, has launched another initial public offering (IPO),tempus is an artificial intelligence (AI) health technology company
Eric Lefkofsky is no stranger to the world of public listings, and he’s gearing up to embark on his fourth venture. With a net worth of nearly $4 billion, this serial entrepreneur has successfully taken three of his own businesses public.
Today, he is the founder of Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company that is preparing to go public. However, he gained significant recognition as one of the co-founders of Groupon, a daily deal pioneer. Groupon made headlines in 2011 when it went public with a valuation of nearly $13 billion, marking one of the most notable debuts of that year.
Groupon’s initial public offering (IPO) and the subsequent years were notoriously challenging. However, the public listings of Lefkofsky’s other two companies, InnerWorkings in 2006 and Echo Global Logistics in 2009, didn’t cause major concerns for investors and performed successfully. InnerWorkings, a supply chain startup that was founded in 2001, was recently sold to private equity for a significantly lower amount than its initial public offering market capitalization.
Throughout its 11-year tenure as a publicly traded company, the stock of Echo Global Logistics experienced a consistent increase in value. Eventually, a private equity firm bought it for a significant 50% premium over its closing trading price in 2021.
There were some controversies surrounding Groupon, including a situation where Lefkofsky allegedly took a significant amount of money from the company’s pre-IPO round. This left the company with limited working capital and resulted in a significant decrease in reported revenue after regulators examined the financials. This unconventional decision has also revealed another transaction based on his previous experiences. He successfully sold his dot-com-era business, Starbelly.com, in 2000, but regrettably, the company that bought it filed for bankruptcy a year later, according to some sources.
Lefkofsky has gained a reputation for having a knack for success, although it may not always translate to long-term gains for investors in his companies.
Tempus is Lefkofsky’s latest endeavor in building a company that will stand the test of time and provide significant value. His wife’s successful breast cancer treatment reportedly inspired him to establish Tempus in 2015.
He expressed his surprise at the lack of data involved in her care during an interview with Forbes last year. “I became obsessed with the notion that there existed a wealth of technology designed for various industries that could be utilized in cancer care to empower physicians to make informed decisions based on data.”
He resigned as Groupon’s CEO in 2015, at a time when the company’s value had dropped to $2.6 billion. Groupon currently has a market capitalization of approximately $600 million. During that period, Lefkofsky directed his attention towards Lightbank, an early-stage venture firm.
It is worth noting that, according to the Tempus S-1 filing, he has not received any salary in the past two years. Unfortunately, the S-1 did not disclose more than two years’ worth of executive compensation for any named officer. Additionally, the filing states that he is entitled to receive a payment of $800,000 and a $800,000 bonus commencing in 2025. Furthermore, despite not receiving a salary, he received a substantial $5.3 million dividend from company stock this year, as indicated in the prospectus. In addition, the filing revealed that Tempus has taken care of the expenses related to $7.5 million worth of preferred shares and has also covered his private plane costs, amounting to $200,000.
Tempus saw a significant increase in revenues, with a growth of 66% from $321 million in 2022 to $531 million in 2023. However, the company continues to experience significant financial losses, with net losses of $290 million in 2023 and $214 million in 2022. Despite the challenging financials, there is a positive development in the operating loss margin, which has decreased from 83% in 2022 to 37% in 2023, as stated in the S-1 filing.
Additionally, Lefkofsky-founded Pathos AI and Tempus have a partnership. Pathos AI is a drug discovery platform that was established in 2020. Pathos compensates Tempus for the privilege of licensing its data. Meanwhile, Ryan Fukushima, the COO of Tempus, also takes on the role of CEO at Pathos and divides his time between the two companies.
There are additional signs that suggest Lefkofsky has a greater level of influence at Tempus than is typically seen.
Tempus has not yet disclosed its principal stockholder’s chart, but it is evident that Lefkofsky, a billionaire, is among them and owns a minimum of 5% of the company. It is clear that he is determined to maintain complete control of the company once it becomes publicly traded. Tempus has given his shares an impressive 30 votes per share. It is not uncommon to have super voting shares, but typically 10 votes per share is more common, while 20 votes is considered to be on the higher side. It is noteworthy that the CEO of a healthcare company has a significantly high level of shareholder influence. It remains to be seen if this influence will be diminished in future S-1s, which would indicate potential investor concerns.
However, Tempus’ S-1 filing makes it abundantly clear that Lefkofsky plays a crucial role in the company’s future. According to a healthcare VC interviewed, Tempus owes much of its growth and success in raising capital to Lefkofsky’s impressive marketing and fundraising abilities.
Tempus secured an impressive $1.42 billion in funding from a range of investors, including Lightbank, NEA, Revolution Growth, T. Rowe Price, Novo Holdings, Franklin Templeton, and Baillie Gifford. The company’s most recent valuation was $8.1 billion in October 2022. Tempus’ S-1 filing disclosed a recent $200 million investment from SoftBank.
No matter the amount of capital raised in its IPO, Tempus’ prospectus clearly states that the company is still a long way from reaching breakeven and will require additional capital in the future. Typically, unprofitable companies make sure to include this information in their prospectuses. However, it is important to note that investors may anticipate Tempus to have a follow-on public offering in the future, which could potentially impact their share price negatively.
Despite generating only $5.5 million in revenue from AI, which represents approximately 1% of its total revenue in 2023, Tempus is actively positioning itself as an AI company.
“Tempus is taking a risk by betting on their growth and the opportune moment for AI in the life sciences industry. However, the company’s current offering has yet to demonstrate its effectiveness,” commented the healthcare investor.
The company stated in its S-1 filing that its AI product line is still in its early stages, but it intends to incorporate AI, including generative AI, into all of its diagnostic tools. Tempus has chosen not to provide any additional comments beyond the information stated in the S-1.
There is a new outbreak of a rare but deadly autoimmune disorder in the north of England. New research suggests that the outbreak may be linked to COVID-19. Anti-MDA5-positive dermatomyositis is the name of the disease. It was mostly found in Asian people before the pandemic, but now it’s becoming more common among white people in Yorkshire.
Antibodies that target the MDA5 (melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5) enzyme are what cause the illness. It is linked to progressive interstitial lung disease, which scars lung tissue. Between 2020 and 2022, doctors in Yorkshire reported 60 cases of MDA5 autoimmunity, which was the highest number ever. Eight people died as a result.
What the researchers found when they looked at this sudden rise in cases is that it happened at the same time as the main waves of COVID-19 infections during the pandemic’s peak years. This caught their attention right away because MDA5 is an RNA receptor that is very important for finding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The study authors write, “This is to report a rise in the rate of anti-MDA5 positivity testing in our region (Yorkshire) in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was noteworthy because this entity is not commonly found in the UK.” They say this is likely a sign of “a distinct form of MDA5+ disease in the COVID-19 era.” They have named it “MDA5-autoimmunity and Interstitial Pneumonitis Contemporaneous with COVID-19” (MIP-C).
The researchers used tools that look for shared traits among people in the same medical cohort to figure out how this newly discovered symptom works. In this way, they found that people who had MDA5 autoimmunity also tended to have high levels of interleukin-15 (IL-15), a cytokine that causes inflammation.
The author of the study, Pradipta Ghosh, said in a statement that IL-15 “can push cells to the brink of exhaustion and create an immunologic phenotype that is very, very often seen as a hallmark of progressive interstitial lung disease, or fibrosis of the lung.”
Overall, only eight of the 60 patients had tested positive for COVID-19 before. This means that a lot of them may have had infections that didn’t cause any symptoms that they weren’t aware of. This means that even mild infections with no early symptoms might be enough to cause MDA5 autoimmunity.
The researchers say, “Given that the highest number of positive MDA5 tests happened after the highest number of COVID-19 cases in 2021 and at the same time as the highest number of vaccinations, these results suggest an immune reaction or autoimmunity against MDA5 after exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and/or vaccines.”
Ghosh says that the event probably isn’t just happening in Yorkshire. Reports on MIP-C are now coming in from all over the world.
The study was written up in the eBioMedicine journal.
- Gadgets10 years ago
Why the Nexus 7 is still a good tablet in 2015
- Mobile Devices10 years ago
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 vs Galaxy Note 5: is there room for improvement?
- Editorials10 years ago
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 – How bad updates prevent people from enjoying their phones
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Nexus 5 2015 and Android M born to be together
- Gaming10 years ago
New Teaser For Five Nights At Freddy’s 4
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Google not releasing Android M to Nexus 7
- Gadgets10 years ago
Moto G Android 5.0.2 Lollipop still has a memory leak bug
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Nexus 7 2015: Huawei and Google changing the game