Technology
press releases.

Technology1 Mar 2024

Scientists make nanoparticles dance to unravel quantum limits

The question of where the boundary between classical and quantum physics lies is one of the longest-standing pursuits of modern scientific research and in new research published today, scientists demonstrate a novel platform that could help us find an answer. The laws of quantum physics govern the behaviour of particles at miniscule scales, leading to phenomena such as quantum entanglement, where the properties of entangled particles become inextricably linked in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics. Research in quantum physics ...

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Technology1 Mar 2024

Brown bears digging up artificial forests

Brown bears foraging for food in the Shiretoko Peninsula of Hokkaido, Japan, have been disrupting tree growth in artificial conifer forests, according to a new study. Researchers compared soil and tree samples from human-forested plots with samples from natural forests. They found that the bears’ digging for cicada nymphs damaged tree roots and altered the nitrogen content of the soil, which in turn limited the diameter growth of trees. The phenomena of bears digging for cicadas, an unusual food source, appears to be restricted to human-planted conifer forest; diversely vegetated natural forest ...

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Technology29 Feb 2024

Cyber-physical heating system may protect apple blossoms in orchards

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Spring frosts can have devastating effects on apple production, and a warming climate may be causing trees to blossom early, making them more susceptible to the damaging effects of extreme cold events. Growers’ attempts to prevent the flowers from freezing by attempting to heat the canopies of their orchards largely have been inefficient. To deal with the worsening problem, Penn State researchers devised a frost protection cyber-physical system, which makes heating decisions based on real-time temperature and wind-direction data. The system consists of a temperature-sensing device, a propane-fueled heater that ...

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Technology29 Feb 2024

All-light communication network bridges space, air and sea for seamless connectivity

WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed an all-light communication network that enables seamless connectivity across space, air and underwater environments. The new network design combines different types of light sources to ensure connectivity no matter the environment. “In today’s world, data transmission is critical for communication, navigation, emergency response, research and commercial activities,” said research team leader Yongjin Wang from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and ...

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Technology29 Feb 2024

Digital Science announces Catalyst Grant winners, supporting AI-based innovations to benefit research

Digital Science has awarded two new Catalyst Grants of £25,000 each to innovative AI-based technology ideas aimed at advancing global research. The winners will use the funding to develop their ideas, which include using AI to alleviate the burden on researchers of applying for research funding, and to predict research impact. The winning applications from Digital Science’s 2023 Catalyst Grant round announced today are: Atom – Tomer du Sautoy (co-founder and CEO) and Hamilton Evans (co-founder and ...

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Technology29 Feb 2024

Study detects cognitive changes in older drivers using in-vehicle sensors

An estimated 4 to 8 million older adults with mild cognitive impairment are currently driving in the United States, and one-third of them will develop dementia within five years. Individuals with progressive dementias are eventually unable to drive safely, yet many remain unaware of their cognitive decline. Currently, screening and evaluation services for driving can only test a small number of individuals with cognitive concerns, missing many who need to know if they require treatment. Nursing, engineering and neuropsychology researchers at Florida Atlantic University are testing and evaluating a readily and rapidly available, unobtrusive in-vehicle sensing ...

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Technology29 Feb 2024

Uncovering the connections between autism, sensory hypersensitivity

Supported by a $2 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Auerbach Lab at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology will examine how different genes associated with autism spectrum disorders may similarly impact our brain’s neurons, resulting in heightened sensitivity to sounds. Autism spectrum disorders are genetically complex, and hundreds of genes are implicated in their development. As a result, some may conclude that autism is a collection of disconnected disorders with comparable symptoms. However, much like how roads converge as they approach a destination, at some level of brain function ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

Researchers use AI, Google street view to predict household energy costs on large scale

Low-income households in the United States are bearing an energy burden that is three times that of the average household, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. In total, more than 46 million U.S. households carry a significant energy burden — meaning they pay more than 6 percent of their gross income for basic energy expenses such as cooling and heating their homes. Passive design elements like natural ventilation can play a pivotal role in reducing energy consumption. By harnessing ambient energy sources like sunlight and wind, they can create a more comfortable environment at little or no ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

Clearing the air reduces suicide rates

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Researchers in the United States and China have discovered a curious link between air pollution and suicide rates that prompts us to reconsider how to approach this issue. China’s efforts to reduce air pollution have prevented 46,000 suicide deaths in the country over just five years, the researchers estimate. The team used weather conditions to tease apart confounding factors affecting pollution and suicide rates, arriving at what they consider to be a truly causal connection. The results, published in Nature Sustainability, unearth air quality as a key factor influencing mental health. Issues ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

Early-life exposure to air pollution and childhood asthma cumulative incidence

About The Study: In this study of 5,279 children, early life air pollution was associated with increased asthma incidence by early and middle childhood, with higher risk among minoritized families living in urban communities characterized by fewer opportunities and resources and multiple environmental co-exposures. Reducing asthma risk in the U.S. requires air pollution regulation and reduction combined with greater environmental, educational, and health equity at the community level. Authors: Antonella Zanobetti, Ph.D., ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

CityUHK develops world-leading microwave photonics chip for high-speed signal processing

A research team led by Professor Wang Cheng from the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) has developed a world-leading microwave photonic chip that is capable of performing ultrafast analog electronic signal processing and computation using optics. The chip, which is 1,000 times faster and consumes less energy than a traditional electronic processor, has a wide range of applications, covering 5/6G wireless communication systems, high-resolution radar systems, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and image/video processing. The team's research findings were published in the prestigious scientific ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

How air pollution can harm team performance

High levels of air pollution can harm performance of teams, which are vital for solving complex problems such as developing clean energy technologies and vaccines, and this could harm economic development in highly polluted emerging economies, says a new study co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School. The study used data from 15,000 live escape-room games in London. It estimated based on the data and the study’s equations that for about 3,500 teams that participated for team-building exercises (usually from a corporate ...

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Technology28 Feb 2024

A survey on federated learning: A perspective from multi-party computation

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a popular machine learning paradigm which allows multiple data owners to train models collaboratively with out sharing their raw datasets. It holds potential for a wide spectrum of nalytics applications on sensitive data. For example, federated learning has been applied on medical big data analysis such as disease prediction and diagnosis without revealing the patients’ private medical information to thirdparty services. It has also been exploited by banks and insurance ...

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Technology27 Feb 2024

Texas Tech and TTUHSC professors honored as NAI senior members

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has announced four faculty members from the Texas Tech University System as part of the 2024 class of Senior Members. Noureddine Abidi and Seshadri Ramkumar, both professors at Texas Tech University; Annelise Nguyen, associate dean for research at the School of Veterinary Medicine in Amarillo; and Hongjun (Henry) Liang, a professor from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC), join 120 other emerging academic inventors in this year’s class. “These individuals are great representatives of the innovative spirit here at Texas Tech and are highly deserving of this recognition,” ...

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Technology27 Feb 2024

New AI model could streamline operations in a robotic warehouse

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Hundreds of robots zip back and forth across the floor of a colossal robotic warehouse, grabbing items and delivering them to human workers for packing and shipping. Such warehouses are increasingly becoming part of the supply chain in many industries, from e-commerce to automotive production. However, getting 800 robots to and from their destinations efficiently while keeping them from crashing into each other is no easy task. It is such a complex problem that even the best path-finding algorithms struggle to keep up with the breakneck pace of e-commerce or manufacturing. In a sense, ...

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Technology27 Feb 2024

Smartphone app uses AI to detect depression from facial cues

Dartmouth researchers report they have developed the first smartphone application that uses artificial intelligence paired with facial-image processing software to reliably detect the onset of depression before the user even knows something is wrong. Called MoodCapture, the app uses a phone's front camera to capture a person's facial expressions and surroundings during regular use, then evaluates the images for clinical cues associated with depression. In a study of 177 people diagnosed with major depressive disorder, the app correctly identified early symptoms of depression with 75% accuracy. These results suggest the technology could be publicly ...

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Technology27 Feb 2024

Determine stroke risk at an early stage using tear fluid, mitochondria and AI-based data

Every year, over 100 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Ischemic strokes (cerebral infarction) are the most common, but they can also occur "silently" and therefore often go undetected. This can result in serious illnesses such as dementia, depression or even suicide. In order to determine the risk of stroke at an early stage, Prof. Dr. Olga Golubnitschaja, head of the research group for 3P (predictive, preventive and personalized) medicine at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), together with the University of Bonn and other authors from 25 institutions from 11 countries, has developed a holistic approach to health ...

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Technology27 Feb 2024

Using multimodal deep learning to detect malicious traffic with noisy labels

The success of a deep learning-based network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) relies on large-scale, labeled, realistic traffic. However, automated labeling of realistic traffic, such as by sand-box and rule-based approaches, is prone to errors, which in turn affects deep learning-based NIDS. To solve the problems, a research team led by Yuefei ZHU published their new research on 15 Feb 2024 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer Nature. The team ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

University of Technology Sydney chooses Figshare to drive the discoverability of non-traditional research outputs

Figshare, a leading provider of institutional repository infrastructure that supports open research, is pleased to announce that the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has chosen Figshare to support them in sharing, showcasing and managing their research reports and non-traditional research outputs. UTS – Australia’s leading technology university – will use its Figshare repository and its integration with the Australian Research Data Commons Datacite DOI minting service to drive the discoverability and increase the impact of their research reports and non-traditional research outputs, ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

Black carbon sensor could fill massive monitoring gaps

Black carbon is the most dangerous air pollutant you’ve never heard of. Its two main sources, diesel exhaust and wood smoke from wildfires and household heating, produce ultrafine air particles that are up to 25 times more of a health hazard per unit compared to other types of particulate matter. Despite its danger, black carbon is understudied due to a lack of monitoring equipment. Regulatory-standard sensors are wildly expensive to deploy and maintain, resulting in sparse coverage in regions infamous for poor air quality, such as the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area in Utah. A University of Utah-led study found that the AethLabs ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

Resurrecting niobium for quantum science

For years, niobium was considered an underperformer when it came to superconducting qubits. Now scientists supported by Q-NEXT have found a way to engineer a high-performing niobium-based qubit and so take advantage of niobium’s superior qualities. When it comes to quantum technology, niobium is making a comeback. For the past 15 years, niobium has been sitting on the bench after experiencing a few mediocre at-bats as a core qubit material. Qubits are the fundamental components of quantum devices. One qubit type relies on superconductivity to process information. Touted for its superior qualities as a superconductor, niobium was always a promising ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

Steering and accelerating electrons at the microchip scale

Stanford researchers are getting closer to building a tiny electron accelerator based on “accelerator-on-a-chip” technology with broad potential applications in studying physics as well as medical and industrial uses. The researchers have demonstrated that a silicon dielectric laser accelerator, or DLA, can now both speed up and confine electrons, creating a focused beam of high-energy electrons. “If the electrons were microscopic cars, it’s as if, for the first time, we’re steering and we have our foot on the gas,” said Payton Broaddus, PhD ’23 in electrical engineering and the lead author on a paper published on ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

Affective computing: Connecting computing with human emotions for empathetic AI

Imagine a world where your smartphone can detect your mood just by the way you type a message or the tone of your voice. Picture a car that adjusts its music playlist based on your stress levels during rush hour traffic. These scenarios are not just futuristic fantasies. They are glimpses into the rapidly evolving field of affective computing. Affective computing is a multidisciplinary field integrating computer science, engineering, psychology, neuroscience and other related disciplines. A new and comprehensive review on affective computing was published Jan. 5 in Intelligent ...

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Technology26 Feb 2024

A novel method for easy and quick fabrication of biomimetic robots with life-like movement

Ultraviolet-laser processing is a promising technique for developing intricate microstructures, enabling complex alignment of muscle cells, required for building life-like biohybrid actuators, as shown by Tokyo Tech researchers. Compared to traditional complex methods, this innovative technique enables easy and quick fabrication of microstructures with intricate patterns for achieving different muscle cell arrangements, paving the way for biohybrid actuators capable of complex, flexible movements. Biomimetic robots, which mimic the movements and biological functions of living organisms, are a fascinating area of research that ...

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Technology25 Feb 2024

Measuring the properties of light: Scientists realise new method for determining quantum states

Scientists at Paderborn University have used a new method to determine the characteristics of optical, i.e. light-based, quantum states. For the first time, they are using certain photon detectors - devices that can detect individual light particles - for so-called homodyne detection. The ability to characterise optical quantum states makes the method an essential tool for quantum information processing. Precise knowledge of the characteristics is important for use in quantum computers, for example. The results have now been published in the specialist journal "Optica Quantum". "Homodyne detection is a method frequently ...

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