ThE PhENomEnAUTs

You’re looking at a real big deal.

Because in a nanotechnology lab, big deals come in smaller and smaller packages. What you see above is an extreme close-up of a 5 nanometer transistor. In an industry-first, the IBM Research Alliance developed nanosheet transistors that will enable a 5 nm chip. What’s so big about that? Well, by achieving a scale of 30 billion switches on a fingernail sized chip, it can deliver significant enhancements over today’s state-of-the-art 10 nm chips. This not only improves the performance of current technologies but also provides the fuel for the future demands of AI, VR, quantum and mobile technologies to run on. Plus, it could also make things like smartphone batteries last 2-3x longer between charges, so it may also be a real lifesaver too. 

Watch: The trailer for ‘Hidden Figures’ is here — and it looks incredible.

Backstage with Bill Nye

PhotogrÃphy by JERM COHEN

Feeling personally offended when your engineering friend uses j instead of i for imaginary numbers.

This week was a revolutionary week in the sciences - not because we discovered a new fundamental particle or had a new breakthrough in quantum computing - but because some of the most prominent world leaders announced an initiative which asserts that European scientific papers should be made freely available to all by 2020.

This would legally only impact research supported by public and public-private funds, which are a vast portion of the papers produced annually; however, the goal is to make all science freely available.

Using a series of sensors, Dua’s bot detects when a person is about to run into something and beeps to them. The project took her a total of four days to build. Her prize is every Marvel fan’s dream.