Hi Tech & Innovation news

Computer Sciences

Virtual markers help smartphone cameras reconstruct lifelike multi-person movement, from hugs to martial arts

For decades, the gold standard for capturing human movement and transferring these data into the digital world has required actors to wear suits with physical markers that cameras track in a specialized studio. While accurate, ...

Energy & Green Tech

Consumer camera modification offers low-cost way to assess solar cell performance

Commercial cameras can be powerful, producing images with exquisite detail that mimic real life. In the lab, specially designed cameras can photograph objects in the infrared region, invisible to the naked eye.

Hi Tech & Innovation

Chatbot gives teens first-hand experience of cybergrooming tactics without the risk of harm

Virginia Tech researchers are developing virtual tools to help teens protect themselves against cybergrooming. Using survey data from parents and teens and leveraging artificial intelligence, the research team created a chatbot ...

Engineering

MRI technique eliminates 'dead time' to capture rapidly fading signals, making scans more precise

A team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart has developed a new method that could make MRI even more precise by eliminating "dead time," a key limiting factor in the measurement process, thereby enabling the detection ...

Engineering

Cool, power, move: A printable textile that does it all

A new printable textile combines passive cooling with biomechanical energy harvesting to enable motion-controlled, adaptive thermal management. Led by researchers in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of ...

Energy & Green Tech

New tool identifies raw materials used in buildings

Circular-economy thinking is becoming increasingly important in the construction sector. It helps reduce raw material consumption and emissions and can provide a well-thought-out reuse and recycling scheme to cut costs.

Computer Sciences

Bringing classical LDPC code design theory to quantum computers

Quantum error correction must detect and correct errors without directly reading the quantum information. Classical low-density parity check (LDPC) codes have a well-established design theory: by choosing how many checks ...

Energy & Green Tech

Electricity could produce cement with almost no carbon footprint

As the world works to alter the trajectory of climate change, most attention focuses on reducing humanity's reliance on fossil fuels and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Yet a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2) is cement ...

Robotics

Honeybees teach drones how to navigate

It sounds like science fiction, but also strangely familiar: drones buzzing around, inspecting tomatoes in greenhouses, delivering your package or inspecting an industrial site. With all the talk about drone-swarms, development ...

Energy & Green Tech

The ionic path to all-solid-state batteries

Carbon neutrality may come in the form of a battery. All-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) are gaining traction in the energy and electric vehicle industries as potentially safer alternatives to the standard, flammable liquid ...

Energy & Green Tech

Copper cold plates could slash data-center energy usage

Mechanical engineers have designed a more effective and energy-efficient technology for cooling computer chips. Published in Cell Reports Physical Science, the researchers used a mathematical algorithm and advanced 3D printing ...

Engineering

Scientists program materials just by spinning them

There is something universally appealing about the slap bracelet, and the way a simple tap causes it to switch between a straight shape and a curled one. What you probably didn't know is that a slap bracelet's satisfying ...

Engineering

Move over cassette tapes, adhesive tape has memory too

Materials can store information about their past—like a crease in a piece of paper that has been unfolded is a "memory" of being folded—that can be retrieved or read out and used for various purposes. In everyday life, combination ...