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In recent years, "atmospheric river" has become used much more frequently in scientific papers and in media coverage. According to experts who study climate and weather, a few reasons may explain why.

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NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked the city of Dnipro with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.

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In a flurry of picks on Friday evening, Trump named three choices for top health jobs. Together they would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are key to public health.

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• MIT creates nanoscale transistors for efficient electronics
• Quantum tunneling delivers low-voltage, high-performance
• The technology has the potential to replace silicon

MIT researchers have developed a nanoscale transistor that could potentially pave the way for electronics more efficient than silicon-based devices.

Traditional silicon transistors, critical in most electronic devices, face a physical constraint known as “Boltzmann tyranny,” which prevents them from operating below a certain voltage.

This limitation restricts energy efficiency, especially as modern applications like AI push for faster and more powerful computation.

Nanowire heterostructures

To address these limitations, the MIT team created a new three-dimensional transistor using ultrathin semiconductor materials, including gallium antimonide and indium arsenide.

The design leverages a quantum mechanical phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, allowing electrons to travel through an energy barrier rather than over it. This structure, consisting of vertical nanowires just a few nanometers wide, allows these transistors to operate at much lower voltages while maintaining performance on par with state-of-the-art silicon transistors.

“This is a technology with the potential to replace silicon, so you could use it with all the functions that silicon currently has, but with much better energy efficiency,” Yanjie Shao, an MIT postdoc and lead author of the study, told MIT News. By relying on tunneling transistors, the device achieves a sharp transition between “off” and “on” states with lower voltage, something silicon transistors cannot do as efficiently.

The transistors are engineered using quantum confinement, where electrons are controlled within a tiny space, enhancing their ability to tunnel through barriers. MIT’s advanced facility, MIT.nano, allowed researchers to craft the precise 3D geometry necessary for this effect, creating vertical nanowire heterostructures with diameters as small as 6 nanometers, the tiniest 3D transistors reported to date.

“We have a lot of flexibility to design these material heterostructures so we can achieve a very thin tunneling barrier, which enables us to get very high current,” explains Shao. This design supports a steep switching slope, enabling the device to operate below the voltage limit of conventional silicon.

According to Jesús del Alamo, senior author and Donner Professor of Engineering, “With conventional physics, there is only so far you can go. The work of Yanjie shows that we can do better than that, but we have to use different physics. There are many challenges yet to be overcome for this approach to be commercial in the future, but conceptually, it really is a breakthrough.”

The research team, which includes MIT professors Ju Li, Marco Pala, and David Esseni, has now shifted focus to improving fabrication methods for greater uniformity across chips. Small inconsistencies, even at the nanometer level, can impact device performance, so they are exploring alternative vertical designs that could enhance consistency. The study, published in Nature Electronics, was funded in part by Intel Corporation, reflecting an industry interest in exploring solutions beyond traditional silicon technology.

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The storm arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before moving through Northern California.

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Florida's surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, cited developmental concerns from higher levels of fluoride than are found in most U.S. water supplies.

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Netflix has pulled a poster for season two of its popular show Arcane as fans noticed that AI had been used to make the promotional art. Arcane is made by Riot Games and French animation studio Fortiche for Netflix and is a critical darling for its visual artistry, combining digital and hand-drawn artwork.

That's why a fan thought a weirdly shaped hand on a poster when the show is paused seemed out of character for Arcane and asked people behind the show about it on X. Arcane brand lead Alex Shahmiri confirmed the AI origin of the art and that it was a mistake because Arcane has a strict rule against using AI art for the series.

"Appreciate you bringing this to our attention. we have a strict stance of no ai for anything relating to arcane cause it's disrespectful to the incredible artists who worked on the show. this image was a mistake and has since been removed. ty again for calling it out," Shahmri wrote on X in response to the AI art discovery. "I can only speak to what i work on. from a purely personal level, i'm not a fan of ai because what makes art so special is the human connection and feeling. be it through art, music, or any creative medium - it's something i never want to see replaced by ai."

appreciate you bringing this to our attention. we have a strict stance of no ai for anything relating to arcane cause it's disrespectful to the incredible artists who worked on the show. this image was a mistake and has since been removed. ty again for calling it outNovember 22, 2024

AI Art Fight

Netflix pulling the poster off of the show is fitting, but Arcane isn't unique in facing questions of AI art being used, with or without the permission of the creatives behind the show. Disney dealt with a similar issue when the Marvel show Secret Invasion used AI-generated art when displaying the credits for the show. Both fans and artists criticized Disney for the choice. Method Studios, who designed the credits, said at the time that the AI tools replaced no jobs, but it undoubtedly left a sour taste in many people who would otherwise enjoy the show.

Using AI to make images is often easier, faster, and cheaper than hiring human artists. That doesn't mean it's better, though. The debate over AI’s role in art crosses commercial, cultural, and aesthetic issues that are sometimes hard to quantify. How much money do you need to save by using AI to make up for turning off viewers? How degraded is a show using AI art, and is the speed of completion worth it not looking as good as it could have with humans designing it? AI tools like DALL-E and MidJourney may have opened new doors for creators, but what's fine for a marketing campaign or personal amusement is not always good enough for a project that seeks artistic integrity and commercial success.

That's before even addressing how AI image makers are often trained on existing artworks in a way that sometimes looks a lot like plagiarism. Amusingly, the backlash against AI art is producing its own market.

Digital art app Procreate explicitly declared against using generative AI in art and promised never to use it in its own features. AI art may still pop up from big companies like Netflix and Disney. Still, if creators stick to refusing to employ it in their projects for the big companies, it won't take over, just be a regular irritant in marketing and promotional material every so often. A cautionary tale about expediency over quality.

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