Technology

Breathing clean air is essential for human health, making air filters indispensable in homes, hospitals, workplaces and industrial settings. However, despite decades of advances in filter materials and design, a major challenge remains. Capturing airborne particles is only half the battle; keeping them securely trapped is equally important.... Read more

Wireless charging is nothing new for our phones, watches, earbuds and other tech. Now, researchers want to bring wireless power to the skies—recharging drones in flight by beaming a laser under their wings.... Read more

In an increasingly audio-driven world, the University of Houston's Product Experience Design (PXD) Lab is creating new pathways to Braille literacy for blind and low-vision learners. With a new two-device learning system called LUCID, PXD Lab designers aim to make tactile literacy more accessible, engaging and self-directed.... Read more

A total of 265 couples have married after meeting on an AI-powered dating app launched by the Tokyo government in 2024 to lift Japan's low birth rate, according to official data.... Read more

IMDEA Materials Institute has developed an acoustic imaging method that overcomes some of the fundamental limitations of technologies like ultrasound imaging.... Read more

A KAIST research team has developed a next-generation world model, an internal model an AI builds to understand and predict the world, that learns executable theories from observation alone.... Read more

Since the first practical organic light-emitting diode (OLED) was developed in 1987 by Ching W. Tang and Steven A. VanSlyke at Eastman Kodak Company in the U.S., OLED technology has come a long way. The original device used two thin organic layers to produce green light when electricity was applied,... Read more

Building next-generation semiconductors and low-power electronic devices requires precisely stacking materials with different functions. In this process, it is essential to preserve each material's intrinsic properties, as well as the interface where the two materials meet, without damage. Layered van der Waals materials, including transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), have attracted... Read more

A new type of 3D-printable material developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin mimics human tissue's ability to sort and filter, allowing certain molecules to pass through while keeping others out. This broad functionality means the material can be used in a variety of applications across medicine,... Read more

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists successfully demonstrated a dual-use laser system capable of wirelessly transmitting power over long distances and rapidly transitioning to defensive missions, advancing expeditionary energy and defense capabilities for future warfighters.... Read more

Researchers have found a way to speed up components that control light polarization in optical communication and computing. Polarization is a property of light that can carry additional information along with the primary signal, enabling higher data throughput. State-of-the-art components that control polarization in optical circuits have to be physically... Read more

A Seoul National University College of Engineering research team, led by Professor Joo Hwan Oh of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Myung Hwan Bae of the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), has developed a new elastic metamaterial platform that enables the free design... Read more

Researchers at the Universities of Konstanz and Stuttgart have demonstrated a new approach to computation: a computer made from a few hundred microscopic particles oscillating in a liquid. Instead of processing information through carefully fabricated electronic circuits, their system performs computations by harnessing the complex collective dynamics of interacting particles.... Read more

Shiso, a ring-necked parakeet, can't speak English, but she knows how to make her preferences known. She has screaming fights with the dogs and cats in her household, snorts for attention and food, and perches on her human to interact with her.... Read more

A new study from the University of Toronto finds that people perceive their bodies as larger in virtual reality than in the physical world—and that effect doesn't end when the headset comes off.... Read more

Inspired by the cracked, water-trapping skin of elephants, Penn researchers have developed a low-cost cement tile that cools buildings by capturing and slowly evaporating water—turning a structural flaw into a climate solution.... Read more

Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) presented two papers at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. One paper introduces new methods for texturing highly deformable surfaces, and the other proposes a faster, more precise way to compute geometric properties of shapes. Both show how to boost graphics accuracy... Read more

The same class of chemical additive that makes plastic wrap pliable and vinyl flooring soft could be the key to unlocking the next generation of wearable displays. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have discovered that blending a common plastic softener into light-emitting... Read more

Along the vast ocean floor lives a species of glass sponge known as Venus' flower basket. Though delicate-looking, its exterior belies an exceptionally strong, lightweight skeleton that has intrigued scientists for the past 185 years.... Read more

In the current issue of the journal Nature Methods, siibra is introduced as a software suite that integrates data from different multimodal sources into a comprehensive atlas of the human brain and makes the data easily accessible—for interactive exploration and automated, reproducible data analyses, simulations and AI applications. siibra is... Read more

Researchers in China have unveiled a new robotic exosuit driven entirely by soft artificial muscles instead of traditional motors. This technology could make it easier for older adults, injured patients or factory workers to walk with much less effort. Current exosuits that aid walking use heavy motors, gearboxes and noisy... Read more

Semi-transparent solar cells that could be added to windows to efficiently harvest energy from indoor light as well as the sun have been developed by an international team led by UCL researchers.... Read more

China's leading technology companies showcased hundreds of cutting-edge products at the World AI Conference in Shanghai—from advanced robotics to artificial intelligence systems.... Read more

No wires. No actuators. Shine light on the metal surface, and it rises like a button. KAIST researchers have developed a metal structure that changes shape using light, without any light-absorbing coating. This technology could open new possibilities for tactile interfaces with physical pop-up buttons, shape displays, next-generation wearable devices... Read more

Metasurfaces are ultrathin optical components engineered with arrays of nanoscale structures that can control light in ways that are difficult for conventional optics. Unlike traditional optical components, which typically rely on their shape and thickness, metasurfaces manipulate light using carefully designed nanostructures patterned on a flat surface.... Read more

Underwater environments are among the harshest operating conditions for electronic devices. Divers and underwater robots depend on sensors to navigate, communicate and handle objects, but conventional sensors are fragile, reliant on an external power source and unable to recover when damaged. A punctured sensor underwater typically means lost functionality with... Read more

Over the past decades, technological advances have fueled great innovation in a wide range of fields. Emerging and rapidly developing technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) systems, three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) printing, digital twins (i.e., virtual representations of physical objects, systems or processes) and advanced robots, are set to... Read more

Termite mounds are remarkable structures that regulate temperature, balance airflow, and maintain structural stability in some of Earth's harshest climates. And like other irregular, disordered systems, they can be difficult to replicate with modern engineering techniques.... Read more

Paintings are often made up of thousands of tiny brushstrokes, each going in a certain direction, that are not easily observed by the viewer. A cross-disciplinary research team from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and Loughborough University in England has developed an image analysis method... Read more

It's been said that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Writing, or talking, about dancing can be similarly futile. A Cornell doctoral student has helped develop a tool that lets dancers use video and extended reality (XR) headsets to create an immersive environment for analyzing and refining their... Read more

Researchers have identified previously unknown materials, including a new form of a widely studied clean-energy material, by carefully controlling and tracking how molecular precursors break down during heating.... Read more

Researchers at Seoul National University have developed a new class of ultralight structural materials that combine the load-bearing strength of engineering materials with the weight of foam. Using a method called 3D node winding, the team created mesoscale carbon fiber lattices that achieve aluminum-level performance on a strength-to-weight basis while... Read more

There is no question that violin-making is an art form. It requires a musician's ear, a craftsperson's skill, and a historian's appreciation of lessons learned over time. Making a violin also takes trust: Violin makers (luthiers) often must wait until the instrument is finished before they can hear how all... Read more

Nature is replete with slender filaments that bend and coil—from climbing grape vines, to folded proteins, to elephant trunks that can pick up a peanut but also take down a tree.... Read more

A research team led by Dr. Nam Ki-Hun at the Battery Materials and Process Research Center of the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) has successfully developed a nano-tin (Sn) interlayer control technology to address interfacial instability between the lithium metal anode and solid electrolyte, a critical hurdle to the commercialization... Read more

A thermoelectric generator with a shape that no human designer would likely have imagined has now been created by a computer—and it performs more than eight times better than conventional designs. Rather than relying on intuition or repeated trial and error, the breakthrough was achieved through advanced computational optimization.... Read more

Perovskite solar cells are a rapidly advancing photovoltaic technology that has seen a dramatic rise in power conversion efficiency in recent years. A key driver of this progress is the use of molecular charge-selective contacts—ultrathin interlayers only a few nanometers thick—that replace conventional bulk transport materials. These molecular layers play... Read more

Scientists are advancing a promising solution to two of the world's biggest challenges—plastic pollution and clean energy—by transforming waste plastics into valuable fuels using sunlight.... Read more

Researchers have developed an ultra-thin optical film that improves the quality of the light used in LCD resin-based 3D printers. The advance helps ensure that tiny details are reproduced with precision, which could make it possible to 3D-print medical-grade or industrial-grade products at a lower cost.... Read more

A University at Buffalo-led team has found a way to help chiral semiconductors, electronic materials whose structures are left- or right-handed like many of life's building blocks, absorb visible light. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers chemically combined a chiral semiconducting material with a non-chiral molecule that more... Read more

DNA stores our genetic code. What if it could also be integrated with electronics to store and read other information? Scientists have been investigating how to store data in DNA, but retrieving the information remains a challenge.... Read more

Chinese tech firms WeRide and Lenovo will expand their partnership to deploy 200,000 autonomous vehicles globally over the next five years, a WeRide statement said on Monday.... Read more

As devices for wireless sensing systems become smaller and more complex, finding suitable power sources for them is becoming increasingly difficult. However, advances in low-power sensing technology may allow such systems to operate using small amounts of energy available in the environment, such as body heat.... Read more

Over the past decades, technological advances have opened remarkable possibilities for the detection and monitoring of various physiological signals associated with heart health (e.g., heart rate and ECG), sleep stages and physical activity. Most existing health and fitness trackers, however, are powered by a battery that needs to be recharged... Read more

The retina, the thin layer of tissue at the back of the eye, is made up of photoreceptor cells that convert visible light into electrical signals, which is essential for human vision. Some diseases, such as retinal degeneration, cause these photoreceptor cells to stop working, which results in blindness. Researchers... Read more

A team of Korean researchers has developed a lightweight elastic suit that can support the activities of various groups experiencing physical burdens in daily life, raising expectations.... Read more

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have succeeded in creating colored films with transparent cutouts, thereby producing realistic-looking designs on photovoltaic modules. In this way, roof tiles, for example, can be imitated. The film cutout patterns utilize MorphoColor technology, an invention of Fraunhofer ISE that creates... Read more

Metal-organic frameworks, better known as MOFs, are among the most intensely studied materials for addressing major environmental challenges. Their highly ordered, ultra-porous architecture enables applications ranging from CO2 capture and air or water purification to catalysis and hydrogen production. It is therefore no surprise that MOFs have drawn global attention... Read more

Princeton researchers have combined brain cells and advanced electronics into a single 3D device that can be programmed to recognize patterns using computational techniques. Past attempts at using brain cells to do computation have relied on 2D cultures grown in a petri dish or 3D clusters that are probed and... Read more

As quantum computers advance, they are expected to be able to break tried-and-true security schemes that currently keep most sensitive data secure from attackers. Scientists and policymakers are working to design and implement post-quantum cryptography to defend against these future attacks.... Read more