Hi Tech & Innovation news

Energy & Green Tech

Fungi turn shredded mattress foam into lightweight building insulation

Swinburne researchers have turned old, unwanted mattresses into safe and sustainable building insulation materials using fungi. The team grew a common fungus together with shredded mattress foam to create a new material that ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Extending optical fiber's ultralow loss performance to photonic chips

Caltech scientists have developed a way to guide light on silicon wafers with low signal loss approaching that of optical fiber at visible wavelengths. This accomplishment paves the way for a new generation of ultra-coherent ...

Hi Tech & Innovation

New AI system fixes 3D printing defects in real time

Additive manufacturing has revolutionized manufacturing by enabling customized, cost-effective products with minimal waste. However, with the majority of 3D printers operating on open-loop systems, they are notoriously prone ...

Engineering

Transparent windows can shield buildings from powerful electromagnetic pulses

Electromagnetic pulses (EMPs)—high-energy-density and ultra-wideband beams of electromagnetic radiation—are generated from sources such as nuclear explosions, high-power electromagnetic pulse devices, and intentional ...

Energy & Green Tech

Electric eel biology inspires powerful gel battery

Power sources used in devices found in or around biological tissue must be flexible and nontoxic, while still powerful enough to support demanding technologies such as medical devices or soft robotics. To achieve this balance, ...

Engineering

Origami-inspired ring lets users 'feel' virtual worlds

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in digital worlds or enhance their surroundings with computer-generated filters or images, respectively. Both these technologies ...

Software

This digital hand enables hands-free virtual reality

A digital, voice-controlled hand could improve the convenience and accessibility of virtual and augmented reality by enabling hands-free use of games and apps. The prototype software was developed by computer scientists at ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Textile nerves—a new thread in the future of wearable electronics

What if your clothes could sense, respond, and even help you move? That's the vision behind the doctoral project on "textile nerves"—conductive fibers designed for electronic and ionotronic textiles. Claude Huniade, who ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Prototype LED as thin as wallpaper can glow like the sun

Light bulbs come in many shapes and styles: globes, twists, flame-like candle tips and long tubes. But there aren't many thin options. Now, researchers report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they have created a ...

Energy & Green Tech

High-performance supercapacitor made from upcycled water bottles

Lots of single-use water bottles made from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) end up in landfills, but there's a growing interest in upcycling them instead. Researchers in Energy & Fuels report on new heat-based fabrication ...

Energy & Green Tech

Hybrid film boosts energy harvesting from motion by up to 450%

A new study led by (PI) Professor M. Jasim Uddin, Ph.D., Professor of Mechanical Engineering at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has been published in ACS Omega, advancing the frontier of sustainable, self-powered technologies.

Energy & Green Tech

Concrete 'battery' now packs 10 times the power

Concrete already builds our world, and now it's one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete ...