While no billion-dollar rounds led this week's list, we nonetheless saw a variety of startups in industries ranging from semiconductors to aerospace to biotech raise sizable rounds. The week's biggest deal was $400 million for SiFive, a semiconductor startup challenging incumbent Arm Holdings with chip designs built on an open rather than proprietary standard. 1. SiFive, $400M, semiconductors: San Mateo, California-based semiconductor startup SiFive raised a $400 million Series G round led by Atreides Management. SiFive makes the blueprints used by companies such as Alphabet to develop their own internal chip designs, on an open standard called RISC-V. CEO Patrick Little told Reuters he expects the raise to be SiFive's last funding round before an IPO, though didn't say when an offering would take place. 2. Hermeus, $200M, aviation: Hermeus, an El Segundo, California-based startup developing autonomous military aircraft, raised $200 million in equity in a Khosla Ventures-led round. The company, which is developing what it says will be the fastest unmanned defense aircraft, also raised $150 million in debt as part of the round, which pushes its valuation to $1 billion. Other investors in the deal include Socium Ventures, RTX Ventures, Karman Ventures, Founders Fund, IQT and Cox Enterprises....

Chronic wound infections are notoriously difficult to manage because some bacteria can actively interfere with the body's immune defenses. In wounds, Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) is particularly resilient ' it can survive inside tissues, alter the wound environment, and weaken immune signals at the injury site. This disruption creates conditions where other microbes can easily establish themselves, resulting in multi-species infections that are complex and slow to resolve. Such persistent wounds, including diabetic foot ulcers and post-surgical infections, place a heavy burden on patients and health care systems, and sometimes lead to serious complications such as amputations. Now, researchers have discovered how E. faecalis releases lactic acid to acidify its surroundings and suppresses the immune-cell signal needed to start a proper response to infection. By silencing the body's defenses, the bacterium can cause persistent and hard-to-treat wound infections. This explains why some wounds struggle to heal, even with treatment, and why infections involving multiple bacteria are especially difficult to eradicate....

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In theory, criminal conviction in the US legal system is by the unanimous vote of a jury. In practice, the overwhelming majority of felony convictions are due to plea bargaining, the defendant pleading guilty in exchange for reduced charges or an agreement by the prosecutor to ask for a lower sentence. I have criticized the system in the past, mostly on the grounds that a prosecutor can make it in the interest of an innocent defendant to plead guilty by charging him with additional offenses, not because the prosecutor believes he is guilty of them and can be convicted but to persuade him to plead guilty of the lesser offense whether or not he committed it. The prosecutor has charged a hundred defendants. He correctly believes that ninety are guilty, does not know which. A trial will tell him whether a defendant is guilty with certainty ' this is a toy model ' but trials are expensive. The penalty for conviction is a hundred units ' dollars, weeks in prison, lashes. The prosecutor offers each defendant a penalty of ninety units if he pleads guilty. The defendants know whether they are guilty, know that if they are guilty and go to trial they will be convicted (toy model), so all the guilty defendants accept the offer. The remaining defendants go to trial and are acquitted. That is the same result as if all hundred defendants went to trial at a tenth the cost. The system is leveraging the private information of the defendants, whether they are guilty or innocent, making it in their interest to reveal it....