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Energy & Green Tech

Solar reactor uses old battery acid to turn plastic waste into clean hydrogen

Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle forms of plastic waste—such as drink bottles, nylon textiles and polyurethane foams—using acid recovered from old car batteries, and converting ...

Robotics

Too many cooks, or too many robots? Finding a Goldilocks level of randomness to keep robot swarms moving

Picture a futuristic swarm of robots deployed on a time-sensitive task, like cleaning up an oil spill or assembling a machine. At first, adding robots is advantageous, since many hands make light work. But a tipping point ...

Hardware

Memristor chip combines security and compute-in-memory for edge devices

A cross-institutional research team has developed Co-Located Authentication and Processing (CLAP), a privacy-preserving system that overcomes the trade-off between security and performance in edge computing devices. The study, ...

Robotics

Resilient actuator shows potential for space-ready soft robots

To be safely and reliably deployed in outer space, underwater and in other extreme environments, robots need to be able to withstand harsh conditions without breaking. In addition, they should be able to promptly and rapidly ...

Technology news

Electronics & Semiconductors

Opening the door to more efficient orbitronic devices

Electrons have three intrinsic properties: spin, charge and orbital angular momentum. Researchers have long studied how to use spin to more efficiently create an electrical current. But the field of orbitronics—which is based ...

Computer Sciences

Helping resolve quantum computers' memory problem

A major problem with quantum computers is memory, as the information they contain can be quickly lost. Quantum computers are not yet fully reliable—they are far too unstable. However, all around the world, people are trying ...

Hi Tech & Innovation

Living brain cells enable machine learning computations

A research team at Tohoku University and Future University Hakodate has demonstrated that living biological neurons can be trained to perform a supervised temporal pattern learning task previously carried out by artificial ...

Energy & Green Tech

New hope for lithium extraction from old batteries

A new study shows that lithium—a critical element used in rechargeable batteries and susceptible to supply chain disruption—can be recovered from battery waste using an electrochemically driven recovery process. The method ...

Energy & Green Tech

The next frontier in clean flight? Jet fuel from city waste

Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of total global carbon emissions, and with air travel demand expected to double by 2040, cutting those emissions has become a pressing priority. One path forward is sustainable aviation ...

Engineering

Morphing 3D-printed structures from flat to curved—in space

Because it's costly and cumbersome to transport large structures such as satellite dishes into space, aerospace Ph.D. student Ivan Wu and his advisor, Jeff Baur, at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois ...

Computer Sciences

Mind readers: How large language models encode theory-of-mind

Imagine you're watching a movie, in which a character puts a chocolate bar in a box, closes the box and leaves the room. Another person, also in the room, moves the bar from a box to a desk drawer. You, as an observer, know ...

Engineering

Spray 3D concrete printing simulator boosts strength and design

Concrete 3D printing reduces both time and cost by eliminating traditional formwork, the temporary mold for casting. Yet most of today's systems rely on extrusion-based methods, which deposit material very close to a nozzle ...