Greetings, Guardians! The moment we've all been waiting for is finally here—Spirit of the North 2 is officially out now on Steam! Whether you've been with us since the first game or joined along the way, we can't thank you enough for your support, your feedback, and your patience. Now, it's your turn to step into this beautiful, mysterious world once again—this time, with new powers, new companions, and a world that's bigger and more alive than ever before.

You've followed us through development, shared our excitement, and kept the spirit alive—now it's time to experience the magic for yourself. Launch day is just the beginning. We'll be keeping an eye out for your thoughts, feedback, and favorite moments. Don't forget to share your screenshots, theories, and discoveries in the Community Hub! From all of us—at Infuse Studio, and Merge Games—thank you, and we hope you enjoy the journey.

Quantum networks—where entanglement is distributed across distant nodes—promise to revolutionize quantum computing, communication, and sensing. However, a major bottleneck has been scalability, as the entanglement rate in most existing systems is limited by a network design of a single qubit per node. A new study, led by Prof. A. Faraon at Caltech and conducted by A. Ruskuc et al., recently published in Nature (ref: 1-2), presents a groundbreaking solution: multiplexed entanglement using multiple emitters in quantum network nodes. By harnessing rare-earth ions coupled to nanophotonic cavities, researchers at Caltech and Stanford have demonstrated a scalable platform that significantly enhances entanglement rates and network efficiency. Let's take a closer look at the two key challenges they tackled—multiplexing to boost entanglement rates and dynamic control strategies to ensure qubit indistinguishability—and how they overcame them.

Breaking the Entanglement Bottleneck via Multiplexing
One of the biggest challenges in scaling quantum networks is the entanglement rate bottleneck, which arises due to the fundamental constraints of long-distance quantum communication. When two distant qubits are entangled via photon interference, the rate of entanglement distribution is typically limited by the speed of light and the node separation distance. In typical systems with a single qubit per node, this rate scales as c/L (where c is the speed of light and L is the distance between nodes), leading to long waiting times between successful entanglement events. This severely limits the scalability of quantum networks.

Scientists from Beijing University have developed the world's first two-dimensional gate-all-around field-effect transistor (GAAFET), establishing a new performance benchmark in domestic semiconductor design. The design, documented in Nature, represents a difference in transistor architecture that could reshape the future of Chinese microelectronics design. Given the reported characteristic of 40% higher performance and 10% improved efficiency compared to the TSMC 3 nm N3 node, it looks rather promising. The research team, headed by Professors Peng Hailin and Qiu Chenguang, engineered a "wafer-scale multi-layer-stacked single-crystalline 2D GAA configuration" that demonstrated superior performance metrics when benchmarked against current industry leaders. The innovation leverages bismuth oxyselenide (Bi₂O₂Se), a novel semiconductor material that maintains exceptional carrier mobility at sub-nanometer dimensions—a critical advantage as the industry struggles to push angstrom-era semiconductor nodes.

"Traditional silicon-based transistors face fundamental physical limitations at extreme scales," explained Professor Peng, who characterized the technology as "the fastest, most efficient transistor ever developed." The 2D GAAFET architecture circumvents the mobility degradation that plagues silicon in ultra-small geometries, allowing for continued performance scaling beyond current nodes. The development comes during China's intensified efforts to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency, as trade restrictions have limited access to advanced lithography equipment and other critical manufacturing technologies. Even with China developing domestic EUV technology, it is still not "battle" proven. Rather than competing directly with established fabrication processes, the Beijing team has pioneered an entirely different technological approach—what Professor Peng described as "changing lanes entirely" rather than seeking incremental improvements, where China can not compete in the near term.

OLED is the future of flat screen displays, as they provide superior color reproduction, dynamic range, response-times, and energy efficiency, over LCD. The latest crop of OLED panels powering notebooks and desktop monitors, however, have a problem that wasn't as prevalent with OLED-based televisions—burn-in. This is what happens when an OLED panel displays a static image for too long, causing regions of the panel to permanently discolor. Some PC monitor makers are jumping in to offer extended warranties against burn-in to their customers, as they realize that they just sold an expensive, exotic piece of technology that could potentially degrade within- or not long after their standard warranty periods. Scientists at the University of Cambridge think they have found a breakthrough solution against OLED burn-in.

Scientists discovered that the main culprit behind OLED burn-in is the blue diode. The blue LED has been an elusive technology that only came into existence several decades after green and red. It's only with the arrival of the blue LED that white could be made, turning LED into mankind's primary lighting source, and eventually the OLED panel. Blue is a relatively higher energy diode, and uses more exotic GaN substrate. The Cambridge scientists discovered that jacketing the blue diode alkylene straps would cut down burn-in, and make the manufacturing process more efficient. They have published their method in the Nature magazine. Unfortunately, it will be a while before display manufacturers take an interest in the new method, and re-tool their OLED production lines to incorporate it—we imagine at least a couple of years.

The ecosystem around NVIDIA's technologies has always been verdant—but this is absurd. After a stunning premiere at the World Economic Forum in Davos, immersive artworks based on Refit Anadol Studio's Large Nature Model will come to the U.S. for the first time at NVIDIA GTC. Offering a deep dive into the synergy between AI and the natural world, Anadol's multisensory work, "Large Nature Model: A Living Archive," will be situated prominently on the main concourse of the San Jose Convention Center, where the global AI event is taking place, from March 18-21.

Fueled by NVIDIA's advanced AI technology, including powerful DGX A100 stations and high-performance GPUs, the exhibit offers a captivating journey through our planet's ecosystems with stunning visuals, sounds and scents. These scenes are rendered in breathtaking clarity across screens with a total output of 12.5 million pixels, immersing attendees in an unprecedented digital portrayal of Earth's ecosystems. Refik Anadol, recognized by The Economist as "the artist of the moment," has emerged as a key figure in AI art. His work, notable for its use of data and machine learning, places him at the forefront of a generation pushing the boundaries between technology, interdisciplinary research and aesthetics. Anadol's influence reflects a wider movement in the art world towards embracing digital innovation, setting new precedents in how art is created and experienced.

Intel, in collaboration with QuTech, today published a paper in Nature demonstrating the successful control of "hot" qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, at temperatures greater than 1 kelvin. The research also highlighted individual coherent control of two qubits with single-qubit fidelities of up to 99.3%. These breakthroughs highlight the potential for cryogenic controls of a future quantum system and silicon spin qubits, which closely resemble a single electron transistor, to come together in an integrated package.

"This research represents a meaningful advancement in our research into silicon spin qubits, which we believe are promising candidates for powering commercial-scale quantum systems, given their resemblance to transistors that Intel has been manufacturing for more than 50 years. Our demonstration of hot qubits that can operate at higher temperatures while maintaining high fidelity paves the way to allow a variety of local qubit control options without impacting qubit performance," said Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware, Intel Labs.

DNA, the most prominent genetic material, was successfully used as an end-to-end digital data storage medium. Nature reports that a team of biotechnologists led by Christopher N. Takahashi, Bichlien H. Nguyen, Karin Strauss & Luis Ceze with the University of Washington at Seattle, sponsored by DARPA and Microsoft, have succeeded in encoding and decoding digital information into DNA strands. With it, the team has developed an end-to-end DNA-based data storage device, which consists of an encoder that writes ones and zeroes into DNA sequences that are written into oligonucleotides; a liquid physical storage media in which the DNA is literally stored free from contamination and thermal hazards; and a decoder that consists of a nanopore sequencer.

The researchers have developed a protocol on how to convert 1s and 0s to A-G, C-T base-pairs, including error-correction. A 5-byte message "HELLO" was successfully encoded, stored, and decoded without data loss over a period of 21 hours. DNA-based storage unlocks innumerable possibilities. For starters, in the future, humans will be able to grow storage devices, store foreign information within their genome, and transmit digital information through plasmid agents such as purpose-built viruses. 007 writers must be rubbing their hands.

Today, "Nature" published a research paper on the next generation of logic devices authored by researchers from Intel, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The paper describes a magneto-electric spin-orbit (MESO) logic device, invented by Intel. MESO devices have the potential to lower voltage by 5 times and energy by 10-30 times when combined with ultralow sleep state power, as compared to today's complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS). While Intel is pursuing CMOS scaling, the company has been working on computing logic options that will emerge in the next decade for the beyond-CMOS era, driving computing energy-efficiency and allowing performance to grow across diverse computing architectures.

"We are looking for revolutionary, not evolutionary, approaches for computing in the beyond-CMOS era. MESO is built around low-voltage interconnects and low-voltage magneto-electrics. It brings together quantum materials innovation with computing. We are excited about the progress we have made and are looking forward to future demonstrations of reducing the switching voltage even further toward its potential," said Ian Young, Intel Senior Fellow and director of the Exploratory Integrated Circuits group in the Technology and Manufacturing Group.

A team of scientists at the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), unveiled a fully functional single-atom transistor, which they predict will go on to become a critical building block of tomorrow's high-performance computing devices. The new transistor design was described in a paper, published by Nature. The active component of this transistor is a single phosphorous atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and control gates.

Single atom transistor designs have been attempted in the past, but those designs have had an error of about 10 nanometres in positioning of the atoms, which is big enough to affect their functionality. Professor Michelle Simmons, group leader of this study, said that this is the first time "anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy," adding that "Several groups have tried this, but if you want to make a practical computer in the long-term you need to be able to put lots of individual atoms in."A video presentation by the group follows.

A multi-purpose optical chip which generates, manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture - two quantum phenomena which are essential driving forces for tomorrow's quantum computers - has been developed by researchers from the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics. This work represents an important step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.

The fundamental resource that drives a quantum computer is entanglement - the connection between two distant particles which Einstein famously called 'spooky action at a distance'. The Bristol researchers have, for the first time, shown that this remarkable phenomenon can be generated, manipulated and measured entirely on a tiny silica chip. They have also used the same chip to measure mixture - an often unwanted effect from the environment, but a phenomenon which can now be controlled and used to characterize quantum circuits, as well as being of fundamental interest to physicists.

Nokia promised a little while ago to "go green", and today it seems they are living up to their promise. Nokia recently announced plans to halve the power consumption of battery chargers to their various devices, including cell phones and PDAs. Since you obviously don't get something for nothing, the secret behind this decrease in power consumption lies in increasing the power efficiency of the original units. Nokia has already done quite a few things to help with the eco-friendly movement, including make several handsets out of recycled materials. They've also devised AC adapters that are 94% more efficient than EPA standards require.

Greenpeace, as the name suggests, seeks to make the natural world a better place for everyone. They recently noticed that console manufacturers certainly aren't doing a good job of helping the environment. And so, they started up the "Clash of the Consoles" website, which jests at the environmental unfriendliness of a typical console. The campaign's main purpose is to raise awareness of the toxic chemicals inside the typical console (such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)), and entice manufacturers to make better consoles. Please read the source article for a detailed list of the exact problems each console has, and what each manufacturer is doing about the alleged toxicity of each console.

IBM today announced an innovative new semiconductor wafer reclamation process pioneered at its Burlington, Vermont manufacturing facility. The new process uses a specialized pattern removal technique to repurpose scrap semiconductor wafers -- thin discs of silicon material used to imprint patterns that make finished semiconductor chips for computers, mobile phones, video games, and other consumer electronics -- to a form used to manufacture silicon-based solar panels. The new process was recently awarded the "2007 Most Valuable Pollution Prevention Award" from The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR).

As Dailytech so eloquently puts it, Sony wants their stuff back - but only if you're done with it. Sony recently announced the start of the Sony Take Back Recycling Program. On September 15th, you can take your old Sony hardware to any of 75 Waste Management drop-off locations, where it will be recycled for absolutely no fee. As the program expands, Sony aims to have a recycling center within 20 miles of 95% of American households. Sony's ultimate goal of this program is to get 1 pound of old goods recycled for every 1 pound of merchandise shipped out. When asked for a comment on this new recycling program, Sony president and CEO Stan Glasgow says "Providing the highest level of service and support doesn't stop once a purchase is made. We believe it is Sony's responsibility to provide customers with end-of-life solutions for all the products we manufacture."

While recent recalls suggest that the current type of laptop batteries are dangerous, an alternative power source seems to be screaming "you ain't seen nothing yet": The Direct Methanol Fuel Cell. Samsung recently showed off a prototype of their Q35 laptop powered solely by a fuel cell. Samsung claims that the laptop can run eight hours a day for a month (about 240 hours) without needing a recharge. The most recent prototype of the Q35 even solved some noise problems previously associated with fuel cell powered laptops. Samsung is currently putting the Q35 through some strict safety testing, and it might even be available by the end of this year. A retail price is yet to be confirmed.

Back in April, Dell started the "Plant A Tree For Me" fund, which is basically a gigantic charity based around planting trees to offset the carbon dioxide surplus in our world. Now, Dell is taking further steps to actively protect and help the environment. Two of Dell's latest notebooks, the D430 and Precision M4300, have been certified with the stringent Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star 4.0. Ten of Dell's desktop models have already been certified compliant with Energy Star 4.0, which Dell claims makes it "the greenest technology company". Dell also launched cooler-running servers that are more efficient and require less energy to run. Dell is also working hard to make SSD storage available in as many of it's computers as possible.

If competitors decide that they want to steal the crown of "the greenest technology company" from Dell, we may finally see companies striving to make computers more powerful while reducing their impact on the environment.

Intel Corporation and Google joined with Dell, EDS, the Environmental Protection Agency, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Pacific Gas and Electric, World Wildlife Fund, and more than a dozen additional organizations today announcing their intent to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The goal of the new broad-based environmental effort is to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promoting the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide.

The Dell Plant a Tree for Me fund has just gotten a large benefactor: AMD. AMD is donating $1 for every employee they have, which just so happens to be 16,000 people. This means that Dell will have $16,000 worth of trees to plant. The Plant a Tree for Me fund is a fund-raiser that tries to negate the environmental impact of their computers. By donating two to six dollars with your desktop or laptop purchase, Dell will plant a tree that will properly negate the environmental impact of your new computer.

While we do focus on our computers a lot, most of us have something to remind us how much we love our technology while on the road: a cell phone. And this cell phone is turning into quite the issue. Driving distractions aside, cell phones do add one very negative effect to society: a huge pile of toxic waste. When people upgrade to the latest phone, they frequently throw away their old one. And these old cell phones contain such nasty chemicals as copper, nickel, antimony, and zinc. As time moves on, and phones decompose, the phone turns into a pile of toxic, hazardous mush. And when 700 million tiny piles of toxic mush make their way to the landfill, at an increasing rate of 130 million phones a year, we get several thousand pounds of toxic mush lying around in landfills everywhere. We really ought to find a better way to dispose of cell phones.

Intel has added two ultra low voltage Core 2 Duo processors to its product portfolio. The new 1.06GHz U7500 and the 1.2GHz U7600 models, are based on the Merom core with 533MHz FSB and 2MB L2 cache. Both CPUs will be targeting mini notebooks, tablet PCs and ultra-portable notebooks. The U7500 and U7600 are introduced as part of the currently shipping "Napa refresh" platform, but will also be available for the upcoming Santa Rosa platform with a slight change in pinout. The new Merom ULV CPUs will be replacing the Core Duo U2500 processor over the coming months. One of the first manufacturers offering the U7500/U7600 will be Gateway who said that its E-100M notebook will be available with the two processors beginning on May 3 of this year.

Greenpeace has produced a new report in which it ranks Chinese-based computer manufacturer Lenovo as the world's most eco-friendly electronics firm, beating other environmentally friendly companies such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Dell and Samsung. Out of the fourteen different companies detailed in the report, Apple Inc. came last. The companies are ranked according to the amount of toxic chemicals that are used when producing their electronics, not how energy efficient the devices themselves are, something that is beginning to become a major problem in countries such as China where many of these electronic devices are manufactured. Unsurprisingly, Apple responded by saying "We disagree with Greenpeace's rating and the criteria" as part of a statement.

Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate. Shutdown your personal computer tomorrow and see if you can stand for 24 hours without a PC. Click here to find out more.

Owners of AMD laptops know that AMD is working very hard to extend laptop battery life while maintaining a nice performance. Intel has been working just as hard to beat AMD at their own game, and with the Santa Rosa platform, it looks like Intel is becoming a serious threat to the battery life crown. And so, AMD will be updating the Kite platform, which hosts the Turion processors. The new Kite platform will support DDR2 RAM, 65nm "Hawk" processors, and socket S1. The new Kite platform will be based on the AMD RS690T chipset, which is a low power variant of the AMD RS690 desktop chipset. The graphics will be provided by an integrated solution not unlike the X700 series. The southbridge chipset will be an SB700, which will provide the various IO functions. We should see the new Kite sometime this year. AMD will further their work in saving power sometime in 2008, by applying some K10 architecture ideas to the "Griffen" architecture. As I said before, AMD is aiming to break the five-hour barrier for battery life, and not by buying a bigger battery.

Further demonstrating its commitment to lead the world to energy-efficient computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced strong ecosystem support for DTX, the open standard specification driven by AMD to enable the broad development of small form factor (SFF) PCs. DTX has been developed to empower industry stakeholders to deliver innovative, energy-efficient small form factor solutions that are smaller, quieter, and desktop-friendly, all while delivering rich visual experiences. Companies including Akasa, Albatron, ASUS, Asetek, Compucase, ECS, Founder, FSP, Gigabyte, Hedy, NVIDIA, Shuttle, SilverStone Technology, Thermaltake, and Tongfang have expressed support for DTX, as well as their intent to develop and bring innovative solutions to market designed that benefit both businesses and consumers.

You are bored by the glossy plastic notebooks from Apple or these shiny metal covered laptops which you have to polish everytime you put a finger onto the surface? Then you might be the type of a person who prefers a wooden texture. The people at c|net got the opportunity to play with the Asus EcoBook which you can buy sometime next year. I was really amazed by the details of the wooden panels. These panels are changeable in case they get scratched and of course they are biodegradable.