Technology

Projection mapping is widely known as a lighting technique that overlays images onto buildings or objects to create visual effects. In fields such as extended reality (XR) and vision science, however, researchers have suggested that projection could go beyond simple overlays, potentially allowing the color, pattern, or even the perceived... Read more

The pixels in phone screens and other OLED displays appear to provide a uniform glow, but a team of University of Michigan Engineering researchers has discovered the light actually originates from nanoscale hotspots, some of which flicker. This might be hurting device lifespans.... Read more

What if electronic circuits could be created simply by drawing lines with a pencil on paper or leaves—and then immediately applied to soft robots or skin-attached health monitoring devices? Korean researchers have developed an electronic materials technology that forms electrically conductive liquid metal in a fine powder form, allowing circuits... Read more

A research team led by Professor Jae Eun Jang and Dr. Goeun Pyo from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has developed "dual-modulated vertically stacked transistors" that operate stably without current leakage even in two-dimensional nanoscale channel structures. A study on this work is published in... Read more

Among the biggest complaints inhibiting growth in the electric vehicle market is the limited lifespan and range of lithium-ion batteries. Consumers fear being stranded far from home with long wait times at recharging stations. A promising area of research has focused on layer-structured metal oxide cathodes. Specifically, a material known... Read more

Do you want to know how much noise there is on a construction site? You want to measure the sound of the excavator or the hammer drill, but you don't want to measure seagulls, traffic noise or a helicopter flying by. Now a new sound measurement service can do just... Read more

Cobalt and nickel are vital components for batteries, superalloys and catalysts, used in technologies ranging from smartphones to jet engines. But when it comes to recycling, they are notoriously difficult to separate because they are chemically nearly identical. To solve this, a team led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University... Read more

More than 500 years ago, Michelangelo spent four years painting "The Creation of Adam" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, struggling with paint dripping onto his face. He described the process as "closer to torture than painting." Now, researchers at KAIST have developed a technology that can effectively "hold... Read more

A joint research team has reported for the first time that the resistive switching behavior of ion-motion-mediated volatile memristors, which are emerging as promising next-generation semiconductor devices, originates from a combined mechanism comprising multiple conductive filaments coupled with electrothermal effects.... Read more

Inspired by the infrared sensory organs of snakes, which allow them to detect prey in complete darkness, researchers at UNIST have harnessed artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a sensor material that significantly enhances thermal detection capabilities. This advancement promises to elevate the performance of next-generation infrared cameras, night-vision systems for... Read more

Both image photodetector arrays and retinas are pixelated sensors that dynamically extract various features from the visual scene—e.g., color, brightness, and contrast—before transmitting electrical signals to either a graphical interface of a display or the brain. Image sensors rely on solid state semiconductor technology, whereas retinas rely on photoreceptor cells... Read more

Tiny electronic devices, called microelectronics, may one day be printed as easily as words on a page, thanks to new research from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Building on years of progress in printed electronics, the team has shown how to create durable, low-power... Read more

Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that a hydrogen-absorbing material shrinks in one direction upon heating, so-called negative thermal expansion (NTE). They found that this NTE is driven by a phase transition in the alignment of magnetic moments, an entirely different mechanism from its hydrogen-free counterpart. The research is... Read more

Aerospace engineering and materials science researchers at Texas A&M University and the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory have developed a "super foam" that can absorb up to 10 times more energy than conventional padding.... Read more

POSTECH's (Pohang University of Science and Technology) Professor Inseok Hwang's team has developed ArithMotion, a mobile virtual reality (VR) system that enables anyone to express a wide range of avatar motions with ease. Using simple arithmetic-like controls, users can scale an avatar's motion up or down and reverse it into... Read more

You're probably used to the sight of smartwatches on people's wrists. But what about smart clothes? Researchers at the University of Georgia are exploring how the clothes people wear can potentially track and protect their health. Smart textiles are fabrics that can monitor the body's vitals and movement in real... Read more

Computer vision technologies are artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems that can capture, analyze, and interpret visual data captured from real-world environments. While these systems are now widely used, many of them perform poorly under some lighting conditions and when the light in captured scenes changes abruptly.... Read more

A cross-disciplinary team at Rice University has developed a new type of electric heating element—one that looks less like a traditional metal coil and more like a high-performance thread. In a study published in Small, the researchers demonstrated that wires and fabrics made from carbon nanotube fibers (CNTFs) can deliver... Read more

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has developed an ultrasonic sensor technology that applies a waveguide to detect defects in all directions without directly attaching sensors to the inspection target. By enabling remote ultrasonic excitation and reception, the technology is expected to help prevent industrial accidents and... Read more

Robots are becoming increasingly capable in vision and movement, yet touch remains one of their major weaknesses. Now, researchers have developed a miniature tactile sensor that could give robots something much closer to a human sense of touch.... Read more

Researchers have developed photonic computing chips that overcome key limitations for a type of neural network known as a photonic spiking neural system. By enabling fast learning and decision making using purely light-based processes—no electronics-based computation required—the new chips could improve autonomous driving technologies and enable robotic systems that learn... Read more

From hypersonic aircraft to nuclear-powered submarines, many of today's most advanced defense systems rely on a special class of materials known as refractory alloys. This class refers to metals that do not melt or weaken easily, even in extreme heat.... Read more

A research team has developed a technology to precisely control the concentration of anion defects in eco-friendly quantum dots through joint research. Through this technology, the research team achieved world-class solar hydrogen production efficiency in the field of heavy-metal-free eco-friendly quantum dot photoelectrodes. The team was led by Professor Jiwoong... Read more

A new machine learning model, TweetyBERT, automatically segments and classifies canary vocalizations with expert-level accuracy, offering a scalable platform for neuroscience, providing insights into the neural basis of how the brain learns and produces language, and offering potential applications for understanding animal vocalization more broadly. The study by University of... Read more

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are becoming increasingly common on roadways, but making them as safe as possible may entail going beyond the particular specs of the vehicles themselves to upgrading the roadway infrastructure. EyeDAR, a low-power millimeter-wave radar sensor roughly the size of an orange, could provide radar-equipped AVs with critical... Read more

BYU engineers had so much fun working with Mark Rober to create the "world's smallest Nerf blaster," they continued the work to see how big they could make it. The micro ant-blaster has become a mega launcher with the same flexible, single-body design.... Read more

Traditional industrial tomographs reach their physical limits when it comes to large volumes and high radiography requirements. Fraunhofer IIS's XXL CT system, built in 2013, is considered the world's only publicly accessible facility capable of scanning entire vehicles and freight containers, but this system requires complex handling of the test... Read more

Roughly 270 years ago, Dr. Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost from Germany observed a peculiar behavior of water droplets on heated metal surfaces. In his manuscript, "A Tract About Some Qualities of Common Water," he described how water skated over superheated metal surfaces as though friction had ceased to exist. This occurs... Read more

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has created a magnetostrictive transducer (MST) probe that uses ultrasonic guided wave technology to detect corrosion in storage tanks, a process that normally requires emptying the tank and checking for corrosion manually. SwRI's probe attaches to the outside of a storage tank, resulting in a more... Read more

Emergency evacuations during natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis increasingly rely on advanced technology to effectively assess real-time crowd movement and points of congestion. Disaster-preparedness involves the development of an optimized technology that is easy to use and interpret.... Read more

A new material can store energy from sunlight and convert it into hydrogen days later. The material, jointly developed by researchers from Ulm and Jena, can do this even in the dark. The process is reversible and can be reactivated several times using a pH switch. The results are published... Read more

E pluribus unum—"out of many, one"—is not only a motto for the United States; it's a good credo for microrobots. A research collaboration between Cornell and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has shown how a swarm of microrobots spinning on a water surface can together generate the fluidic... Read more

Pyrochlore oxides—a class of advanced dielectric materials—represent a promising next-generation approach to efficient energy storage. Their structural flexibility and tunable chemical composition make them prime candidates for dielectric energy storage applications.... Read more

Enzymatic biofuel cells can act as self-powered wearable biosensors by converting chemicals in body fluids into electricity; however, manufacturing challenges have prevented their widespread adoption. Now, researchers from Japan have developed water-based 'enzyme inks' that enable single-step screen printing of complete biofuel cells onto paper substrates. The printed electrodes demonstrated... Read more

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed a multi-source co-evaporation recipe that markedly enhances the crystal quality of vacuum-deposited perovskite films. This advance brings all vacuum-deposited single-junction perovskite cells as well as perovskite-on-silicon tandem solar cells closer to scalable production. The research has been... Read more

A team from the Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Seville (US), has developed a new hybrid device that allows energy to be captured from both the sun and rain simultaneously. A thin film created... Read more

DNA, the genetic blueprints in every living organism, is nature's most efficient storage mechanism, capable of storing about 215 million gigabytes of data per gram. That storage capacity, if applied to electronics, could enable significantly more efficient data centers, speedier data processing and the ability to process far more complicated... Read more

The problem with many types of modern batteries is that they rely on harsh chemicals to work. Not only can these corrosive liquids damage internal parts over time, but they can also leach into soil and water when disposed of, contaminating it. But researchers from the City University of Hong... Read more

Superhydrophobic surfaces—those famously "never-wet" materials that make water bead up and roll away—have a stubborn weakness: hot water. Once temperatures climb above roughly 40 degrees Celsius, many superhydrophobic coatings abruptly lose their magic. Instead of skittering off, hot droplets start sticking, soaking into the surface texture and leaving behind wet... Read more

In everyday life, designing spaces that both let air flow and absorb sound can be a tricky balancing act. Usually, materials that allow air to pass through—like vents—also let sound escape, making it hard to reduce noise effectively. Conversely, sound-absorbing materials like foam often block airflow, limiting their use in... Read more

Hydrogen fuel is a promising alternative to fossil fuels that only emits water vapor when used and could thus help to lower greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. In the future, it could potentially be used to fuel heavy-duty transport vehicles, such as trucks, trains, and ships, as well as industrial... Read more

Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, has received considerable attention in engineering. By applying paper-folding principles, researchers have created compact structures that are flexible, lightweight, and reconfigurable across aerospace, medicine, and robotics.... Read more

An international research team has demonstrated how conventional radiative cooling coatings can be optimized to further reduce building surface temperatures, cutting energy consumption, while also improving fire safety.... Read more

Researchers have developed a solar cell system that uses mirrors to concentrate solar energy. In addition to electricity, it produces heat for a plant that will capture carbon from industrial emissions. The solar cells in the large pilot plant are a full 5 meters high and consist of many mirrors... Read more

Thousands of years from now, what will remain of our digital era? The ever-growing vastness of human knowledge is no longer stored in libraries, but on hard drives that struggle to last decades, let alone millennia.... Read more

From tracking the trajectory and speed of a footballer's strike to monitoring a Tour de France rider's real-time power output, performance athlete data is deepening its reach in sports, with specialized firms eyeing to score big business.... Read more

Farmer Bir Virk tapped the iPad mounted beside his tractor's steering wheel and switched the vehicle to automatic mode. The machine moved forward and began harvesting potatoes on its own in the fields of Karnal, a city in northern India.... Read more

The days of dropping a thermal imaging camera and replacing an expensive lens are coming to an end with a new repairable lens developed by Flinders University scientists. The high-performance lens for infrared cameras invented by Flinders researchers is emerging as a lower cost, more sustainable option for industries which... Read more

Up to now, it has only been possible to deduce indirectly why high-temperature batteries lose efficiency and durability while in use. For the first time, a team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now used operando X-ray radiography to look directly into a sodium-zinc molten salt battery at approximately 600... Read more

High-altitude flight is getting increasing attention from sectors ranging from telecommunications to emergency response. To make that airspace more accessible, NASA is developing an air traffic management system covering those altitudes and supplementing its work with real-time data from a research balloon in Earth's stratosphere.... Read more