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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 ...

Engineering

'Self-driving' lab learns to grow materials on its own

When scientists make the thin metal films used in electronics, optics, and quantum technologies, they usually spend months tinkering with the temperature, composition and timing of the process, hoping to land on just the ...

Energy & Green Tech

Eyes turn to space to feed power-hungry data centers

Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun's energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.

Engineering

Composite metal foam could lead to safer hazmat transportation

A new study finds that composite metal foam (CMF) can withstand tremendous force—enough to punch a hole in a railroad tank car—at much lower weight than solid steel. The finding raises the possibility of creating a safer ...

Engineering

How AI can track hockey action from faceoff to finish

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed two innovative artificial intelligence (AI) systems that significantly improve how hockey games can be analyzed using video footage without the need for expensive equipment.

Electronics & Semiconductors

Ultra-thin 3D display delivers wide-angle, highly-detailed images

Researchers have developed an ultra-thin 3D display with a wide viewing angle, clear image quality and vivid display depth. By overcoming tradeoffs that typically limit glasses-free 3D displays, the advance could open new ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

'Living metal' could bridge biological and electronic systems

Electronics have been transforming from rigid, lifeless systems into adaptive, living platforms capable of seamlessly interacting with biological environments. Researchers at Binghamton University are pioneering "living metal" ...

Computer Sciences

Human-centric photo dataset aims to help spot AI biases responsibly

A database of more than 10,000 human images to evaluate biases in artificial intelligence (AI) models for human-centric computer vision is presented in Nature this week. The Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (FHIBE), developed ...