https://techxplore.com/rss-feed/software-news/ en-us The latest news on the software, software development, software sciences and computer science. A research team at Google co-led by Michael Brenner, Catalyst Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Google research scientist, has produced a new artificial intelligence system that can automatically write scientific software programs that surpass the performance of human-written programs. The paper is published in the journal Nature. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-ai-automates-scientific-software-outperforming.html Software Wed, 20 May 2026 13:00:05 EDT news698500058 With artificial intelligence upending how people seek, interpret, and act on information, efforts are underway to design AI systems that are equitable, efficient, and inclusive. A University of Oklahoma data scientist has created a free research tool to facilitate this process. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-free-tool-aims-ai-chatbots.html Software Mon, 18 May 2026 16:20:07 EDT news698339811 Whether on a smartphone, tablet, or PC, computer users like things to be convenient. Apps can be launched and configured with just a few clicks or taps on the screen, all with a clean, intuitive graphical interface. The AiiDAlab user interface has been developed to ensure that researchers enjoy a similar level of convenience when running complex computer simulations or data analyses. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-aiidalab-software.html Software Tue, 12 May 2026 21:00:02 EDT news697797753 Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed an open-source "digital twin" of a wireless network, giving graduate students, startups and other innovators a free, easy-to-use way to test new technologies and get fast, realistic feedback. The platform could help accelerate the pace of wireless innovation. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-source-digital-twin-enables-applications.html Software Tue, 12 May 2026 15:40:09 EDT news697815841 Sophisticated new flight simulation software capable of accurately modeling the performance of firefighting helicopters could help train pilots to tackle wildfires more effectively in the future. Researchers from the University of Glasgow developed the prototype software as part of the Daedalus I flight simulation framework, which is showcased in a paper published in the CEAS Aeronautical Journal. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-simulation-breakthrough-aerial-firefighter-revolution.html Software Mon, 11 May 2026 12:00:02 EDT news697719121 Researchers from The University of Osaka, Kyushu University, and the University of Victoria have developed a new method called Majority Voting SZZ (MV-SZZ) that accurately identifies defect-inducing software commits. By combining detailed code tracking with a majority voting system, the approach reduces false positives and outperforms existing techniques. This improvement could help developers debug software more efficiently and build more reliable systems. The work is published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-majority-voting-method-smarter-software.html Software Fri, 08 May 2026 12:00:07 EDT news697460281 Remote collaboration software tools, such as Zoom or Google Docs, have become essential for teamwork—but they often overlook the fact that people do not all approach collaboration in the same way. Researchers have now developed a new human-computer interaction (HCI) method called RemoteCollabEval (RCE) to identify barriers to collaboration and inclusivity, allowing designers and developers to build software features that better support diverse teamwork styles. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-remote-teamwork-tools-users-method.html Software Mon, 04 May 2026 13:00:01 EDT news697117922 Artificial intelligence (AI) experts from The University of Texas at Dallas have partnered with a Japanese company through its Irving, Texas-based subsidiary to help local governments prioritize road repairs. The system builds on NEXCO-Central's existing technology, which combines artificial intelligence and video footage gathered from mobile cameras to assess road conditions and provide a network-wide view of pavement conditions. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-pothole-ai-team-company-city.html Software Fri, 01 May 2026 13:00:08 EDT news696858181 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 movements. In other words, dancers can actually dance about dancing. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-reality-tool-dancers-movement.html Software Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:40:09 EDT news696772921 Representing the pathway of participants in a study is a key element in clinical and epidemiological research. Flow diagrams are the standard tool to do so, as they allow the different stages of the process to be clearly visualized, from initial selection to final analysis, following international guidelines such as CONSORT or STROBE. However, their creation is often laborious. It usually involves manually entering data or programming complex structures, which makes reproducibility more difficult and may increase the risk of errors. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-package-generation-flowcharts.html Software Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:40:03 EDT news696695642 Even though he wanted to bike commute from his Capitol Hill home to the University of Washington, Jared Hwang often took transit because he struggled to find a good bike route. Apps like Google Maps and Strava might suggest hilly, busy streets simply because they have bike lanes. He even headed to Reddit to crowdsource ideas. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-bikebutler-personalized-routes-riders-based.html Software Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:00:02 EDT news696587041 New research in Contemporary Economic Policy reveals that generative artificial intelligence tools like GitHub Copilot may lead to more, not fewer, jobs in the software engineering workforce. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-generative-ai-tools-reshape-software.html Software Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:00:04 EDT news695977428 A new hardware-software co-design increases AI energy efficiency and reduces latency, enabling real-time processing of continuous data streams like video or sensor feeds. The neuromorphic approach unlocks the ability to run powerful, real-time AI directly on local edge devices like phones, hearing aids or autonomous vehicle cameras, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study published in Nature Communications. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-hardware-software-efficiently-ai-edge.html Software Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:00:04 EDT news694871654 To improve data center efficiency, multiple storage devices are often pooled together over a network so many applications can share them. But even with pooling, significant device capacity remains underutilized due to performance variability across the devices. MIT researchers have now developed a system that boosts the performance of storage devices by handling three major sources of variability simultaneously. Their approach delivers significant speed improvements over traditional methods that tackle only one source of variability at a time. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-software-pooled-ssd-centers.html Software Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:12:57 EDT news694782611 Which details in a de-identified scientific record are enough to still identify a person? If, for example, the record includes that a person is a CEO, the abundance of CEOs in the world would make identification nearly impossible. If the person is a CEO living in Missouri, the list becomes notably shorter but likely extensive enough to safeguard identity. But the name of a CEO living in St. Louis and working at a particular company is easy to figure out. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-software-safeguards-privacy.html Software Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:03 EDT news694777944 When movie and TV directors want to tinker with their footage in post-production, they have an array of tools at their disposal to perfect a scene if it wasn't shot exactly how they liked. That includes removing objects like stray equipment or unwanted background actors. But the tech has its limits when it comes to more complex physical interactions. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-ai-video-tool-laws-physics.html Software Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:20:03 EDT news694778242 Data centers consume millions of homes' worth of electricity each year, with much of that electricity simply powering the cooling systems that keep the facilities operational. Researchers at Penn State are addressing this inefficiency by using artificial intelligence (AI) to dynamically adjust data centers' power usage to peak when the weather is favorable and electricity is affordable. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-software-cooling-energy-centers.html Software Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:20:01 EDT news694777914 Typically, AI requires massive amounts of training data to understand complex human actions. However, in real-world scenarios, it is often difficult to secure sufficient video data for specific actions. A research team led by Jae-Pil Heo, Professor in the Department of Software at Sungkyunkwan University, has developed an AI technology that can accurately recognize new actions from only a small number of example videos. The research team focused on few-shot action recognition, which enables AI to learn and distinguish the characteristics of new actions from only a few examples. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-ai-tech-human-actions-videos.html Software Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:50:01 EDT news693754021 New research from the University of Waterloo shows that artificial intelligence (AI) still struggles with some basic software development tasks, raising questions about how reliably AI systems can assist developers. As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly incorporated into software development, developers have struggled to ensure that AI-generated responses are accurate, consistent, and easy to integrate into larger development workflows. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-ai-coding-tools.html Software Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:20:03 EDT news692963821 POSTECH's (Pohang University of Science and Technology) Professor Inseok Hwang's team has developed ArithMotion, a mobile virtual reality (VR) system that enables anyone to express a wide range of avatar motions with ease. Using simple arithmetic-like controls, users can scale an avatar's motion up or down and reverse it into an opposite response, allowing more natural nonverbal communication without expensive equipment. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-lifelike-vr-avatars.html Software Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:40:07 EST news692022182 AI users and developers can now measure the amount of electricity various AI models consume to complete tasks with an open-source software and online leaderboard developed at the University of Michigan. Companies can download the software to evaluate private models run on private hardware. And while the software can't evaluate the energy costs of queries run on proprietary AI models at private data centers, it has allowed University of Michigan engineers to measure the power used by open-weight AI models in which the parameters under the hood are publicly available. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-ai-energy-tools-consumes-power.html Software Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:40:03 EST news691074961 Hackers could exploit wireless systems in Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck to track vehicles, disrupt communications, and interfere with network performance, according to research from Northeastern University posted to the arXiv preprint server. The study highlights the broader security risks facing all modern connected cars, which have increasingly become "computers on wheels." https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-vulnerabilities-tesla-cybertruck-reveal-cars.html Software Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:20:06 EST news690725038 In recent weeks, a range of large "software-as-a-service" companies, including Salesforce, ServiceNow and Oracle, have seen their share prices tumble. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-ai-threatens-business-software.html Software Sun, 15 Feb 2026 09:00:02 EST news690118299 Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a deep learning algorithm that analyzes drone, camera, and sensor data to reveal unusual vehicle patterns that may indicate illicit activity, including the movement of nuclear materials. The work is published in the journal Future Transportation. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-decoding-shadows-vehicle-recognition-software.html Software Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:19:12 EST news689530741 Friendly robots, the ones people love to love, are quirky: R2-D2, C-3PO, WALL-E, BB-8, Marvin, Roz and Baymax. They're emotional, prone to panic or bossy, empathetic and able to communicate like humans do—even when they communicate in only beeps and bloops. At Purdue University, Sooyeon Jeong, robot communication and behavior expert, is working to make robots as friendly and helpful as possible in nonfictional settings. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-theyre-robots-scientist-robot-interactions.html Software Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:47:28 EST news689345222 Scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are developing a tool to help organizations and their human resources teams get ready for the wider use of digital twinning technologies. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-human-resources-tool-employers-digital.html Software Mon, 26 Jan 2026 11:04:45 EST news688647782 New research into project management in software engineering shows that the most successful systems are not the ones that follow a fixed blueprint from the start, but those that evolve in response to real challenges as projects unfold. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-software-hybrid-delivery-real-world.html Software Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:25:15 EST news688397102 Generative AI is reshaping software development—and fast. A new study published in Science shows that AI-assisted coding is spreading rapidly, though unevenly: in the U.S., the share of new code relying on AI rose from 5% in 2022 to 29% in early 2025, compared with just 12% in China. AI usage is highest among less experienced programmers, but productivity gains go to seasoned developers. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-ai-software-code.html Software Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:00:07 EST news688293541 Gemstones like precious opal are beautiful to look at and deceivingly complex. As you look at such gems from different angles, you'll see a variety of tints glisten, causing you to question what color the rock actually is. It's iridescent thanks to something called structural color—microscopic structures that reflect light to produce radiant hues. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-morphochrome-pairs-software-handheld-device.html Software Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:15:29 EST news688151702 How do you know if a chatbot is giving the correct answer? This is an important question for companies that use large language models to communicate with their customers. The Dutch company AFAS was using chatbots to generate answers, which had to be checked by a human employee before being sent to the customer. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-framework-ai-generated-chatbot.html Software Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:35:31 EST news687530102