Technology
press releases.

Technology12 Jul 2023

Supercomputer used to simulate winds that cause clear air turbulence

A research group from Nagoya University has accurately simulated air turbulence occurring on clear days around Tokyo using Japan’s fastest supercomputer. They then compared their findings with flight data to create a more accurate predictive model. The research was reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Although air turbulence is usually associated with bad weather, an airplane cabin can shake violently even on a sunny and cloudless day. Known as clear air turbulence (CAT), these turbulent ...

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Technology12 Jul 2023

Training robots how to learn, make decisions on the fly

Mars rovers have teams of human experts on Earth telling them what to do. But robots on lander missions to moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter are too far away to receive timely commands from Earth. Researchers in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a novel learning-based method so robots on extraterrestrial bodies can make decisions on their own about where and how to scoop up terrain samples. “Rather than simulating how to scoop every possible type of rock or granular material, ...

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Technology11 Jul 2023

Paths for reducing harmful air pollution in South Asia identified

Fine particulate matter comes from wood burning, power generation, motor vehicles and other combustion sources that emit tiny particles into the air. At only 2.5 micrometers or smaller, these particles are small enough to be inhaled and cause lasting damage to the heart and lungs. Known as PM2.5, exposure to these particles is a leading mortality risk factor in India and the surrounding region of South Asia. A new study by researchers in Randall Martin’s lab in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis evaluated the contribution of various emission sectors and fuels to PM2.5 mass for 29 states in India ...

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Technology11 Jul 2023

Generative AI ‘fools’ scientists with artificial data, bringing automated data analysis closer

The same AI technology used to mimic human art can now synthesize artificial scientific data, advancing efforts toward fully automated data analysis. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an AI that generates artificial data from microscopy experiments commonly used to characterize atomic-level material structures. Drawing from the technology underlying art generators, the AI allows the researchers to incorporate background noise and experimental imperfections into the generated ...

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Technology11 Jul 2023

Software creates entirely new views from existing video

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Filmmakers may soon be able to stabilize shaky video, change viewpoints and create freeze-frame, zoom and slow-motion effects – without shooting any new footage – thanks to an algorithm developed by researchers at Cornell University and Google Research. The software, called DynIBar, synthesizes new views using pixel information from the original video, and even works with moving objects and unstable camerawork. The work is a major advance over previous efforts, which ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Quantum proton billiards

The quantum nature of interactions between elementary particles allows drawing non-trivial conclusions even from processes as simple as elastic scattering. The ATLAS experiment at the LHC accelerator reports the measurement of fundamental properties of strong interactions between protons at ultra-high energies. The physics of billiard ball collisions is taught from early school years. In a good approximation, these collisions are elastic, where both momentum and energy are conserved. The scattering angle depends on how central the collision was (this is often quantified by the impact parameter value – the distance between the centres of ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Stretchy color-changing display points to future of wearable screens

Imagine a wearable patch that tracks your vital signs through changes in the colour display, or shipping labels that light up to indicate changes in temperature or sterility of food items. These are among the potential uses for a new flexible display created by UBC researchers and announced recently in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. “This device is capable of fast, realtime and reversible colour change,” says researcher Claire Preston, who developed the device as part of her master’s in ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Game-playing automaton acts like an ‘irrational’ human

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Humans make lots of irrational decisions in predictable ways, but what if we’re all just doing our best within the limits of our abilities? Researchers were able to simulate human behaviors using a probabilistic finite automaton, a well-known model of limited computational power. They programmed the automatons to compete against each other in a wildlife poaching game, as either a rhino poacher or a ranger trying to stop the poaching. When the automatons could remember everything, they settled into an optimal game strategy. But when researchers limited their memories, they took some decision-making shortcuts – the same ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Navigating the future of underwater geolocalization: how polarization patterns enable new technology

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a novel method for underwater geolocalization using deep neural networks that have been trained on 10 million polarization-sensitive images collected from locations around the world. This new study, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Viktor Gruev, along with computer science professor David Forsyth, enables underwater geolocalization using only optical data while providing a tool for tethered-free underwater navigation. These findings were recently published in the journal eLight. “We are showing for the first time, you can geolocate yourself, or a camera, in a number of different ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Anastasopoulos receives funding for EAGER: building language technologies by machine reading grammars

Antonios Anastasopoulos, Assistant Professor Computer Science, received $99,294 from the National Science Foundation for: "EAGER: Building Language Technologies by Machine Reading Grammars." This funding began in June 2023 and will end in late May 2024. Anastasopoulos said, "This project aims to explore the feasibility of building language technologies while bypassing the need for exorbitant amounts of data, instead turning to already-codified linguistic knowledge. This is of particular importance for bridging the language technology gap for underserved communities: ...

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Technology10 Jul 2023

Carnegie Mellon University offers new online graduate certificate in computational data science to meet AI demand

Artificial intelligence has transformed how industries and organizations operate, putting data professionals in high demand. To meet this increasing need, Carnegie Mellon University recently launched an online Graduate Certificate in Computational Data Science Foundations program. "Everything we teach will translate into skills that enable mobilization of data for significant impact in your organization," said Carolyn Rosé, the faculty program director and a professor in both the Human-Computer ...

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Technology7 Jul 2023

New center merges math, AI to push frontiers of science

ITHACA, N.Y. -- With artificial intelligence poised to assist in profound scientific discoveries that will change the world, Cornell is leading a new $11.3 million center focused on human-AI collaboration that uses mathematics as a common language. The Scientific Artificial Intelligence Center, or SciAI Center, is being launched with a grant from the Office of Naval Research and is led by Christopher J. Earls, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell Engineering. Co-investigators include Nikolaos Bouklas, assistant professor ...

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Technology7 Jul 2023

Breakthrough identifies new state of topological quantum matter

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell scientists have revealed a new phase of matter in candidate topological superconductors that could have significant consequences for condensed matter physics and for the field of quantum computing and spintronics. Researchers at the Macroscopic Quantum Matter Group at Cornell have discovered and visualized a crystalline yet superconducting state in a new and unusual superconductor, Uranium Ditelluride (UTe2), using one of the world’s most powerful millikelvin Scanned Josephson Tunnelling Microscopes (SJTM). This “spin-triplet electron-pair crystal” is a previously unknown state of topological quantum matter. The findings, ...

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Technology7 Jul 2023

Deciphering the association between uterine microbiota and fertility in dairy cows

Reduced fertility prolongs the interval from calving to conception in dairy cows, resulting in significant economic losses to dairy farms. Up to 25% of cows are culled due to reproductive failure, and this accounts for a larger proportion than that caused by other major factors, including mastitis and lameness. A variety of factors are considered to cause low fertility in cows, including farm management factors like estrus detection, nutritional control, and cowshed environment, as well as cow-specific ...

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Technology7 Jul 2023

Ultra-low threshold continuous-wave quantum dot mini-BIC lasers

Lasers with ultra-low threshold and compact size are highly desirable in photonic integrated circuits, aiming at the application of optical communications, chip-scale solid-state LIDAR and quantum information. The general approach to realizing such lasers is to effectively trap light and boost light-matter interaction by embedding gain materials into few- or sub-wavelength scale optical cavities with high quality (Q) factor and/or small mode volume (V-mode). Low-threshold lasing has been realized on planar photonic crystal via introducing defect-type PhC modes or ...

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Technology6 Jul 2023

Leading the way to cyber safety on roads and highways

A new research center led by the University of Houston is helping prevent potential cyberattacks that could threaten to impede the safe and efficient movement of people and goods in the United States and throughout the world. CYBER-CARE – the Transportation Cybersecurity Center for Advanced Research and Education – is a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) University Transportation Center (UTC), Tier 1. The center is supported by a $2 million USDOT grant for its first year with anticipated total federal funding of $10 million over five years. “We all use transportation. Therefore, maintaining ...

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Technology6 Jul 2023

Multistakeholder collaborations are vital to advancing technologies in Parkinson’s

TUCSON, Ariz., July 6, 2023 — Critical Path Institute (C-Path) and the Center for Health + Technology (CHeT) at University of Rochester today announced the release of two seminal publications about digital health technologies for Parkinson’s. These technologies, such as smartphones and wearable sensors, offer an opportunity for objective, frequent and remote assessment of people with Parkinson’s. With 10 million people living with Parkinson’s worldwide, collaboration and data sharing are crucial for driving innovation in drug development for the fastest-growing degenerative neurological condition. Research leaders at CHeT have joined ...

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Technology6 Jul 2023

Big robot bugs reveal force-sensing secrets of insect locomotion

Researchers have combined research with real and robotic insects to better understand how they sense forces in their limbs while walking, providing new insights into the biomechanics and neural dynamics of insects and informing new applications for large legged robots. Campaniform sensilla (CS) are force receptors found in the limbs of insects that respond to stress and strain, providing important information for controlling locomotion. Similar force receptors exist in mammals known as Golgi tendon organs, suggesting that understanding the role ...

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Technology6 Jul 2023

New ferroelectric material could give robots muscles

UNVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State. Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied. Traditionally, these actuator ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

New genetic technology developed to halt malaria-spreading mosquitoes

Malaria remains one of the world’s deadliest diseases. Each year malaria infections result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, with the majority of fatalities occurring in children under five. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that five cases of mosquito-borne malaria were detected in the United States, the first reported spread in the country in two decades. Fortunately, scientists are developing safe technologies to stop the transmission of malaria by genetically editing mosquitoes that spread the parasite that causes the disease. Researchers at the University of California San Diego led by Professor Omar Akbari’s laboratory have engineered ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

Black Americans may face relatively accelerated biological aging because they tend to experience lower socioeconomic status, more neighborhood deprivation and higher air pollution than White Americans

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287112 Article Title: Contributions of neighborhood social environment and air pollution exposure to Black-White disparities in epigenetic aging Author Countries: USA Funding: This work was supported by National Institute on Aging: R01-AG066152 (CM), R01- AG070885 (RB), P30-AG072979 (CM). Additional support includes Pennsylvania Department of Health (2019NF4100087335; CM), and Penn Institute on Aging (CM). National Institute on Aging: https://www.nia.nih.gov Pennsylvania Department of Health: https://www.health.pa.gov/Pages/default.aspx Penn Institute on Aging: https://www.med.upenn.edu/aging/. ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

Finding the flux of quantum technology

We interact with bits and bytes everyday – whether that’s through sending a text message or receiving an email. There’s also quantum bits, or qubits, that have critical differences from common bits and bytes. These photons – particles of light – can carry quantum information and offer exceptional capabilities that can’t be achieved any other way. Unlike binary computing, where bits can only represent a 0 or 1, qubit behavior exists in the realm of quantum mechanics. Through “superpositioning,” a qubit can represent a 0, ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

From atoms to materials: Algorithmic breakthrough unlocks path to sustainable technologies

New research by the University of Liverpool could signal a step change in the quest to design the new materials that are needed to meet the challenge of net zero and a sustainable future. Publishing in the journal Nature, the Liverpool researchers have shown that a mathematical algorithm can guarantee to predict the structure of any material just based on knowledge of the atoms that make it up. Developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Liverpool’s Departments of Chemistry and Computer Science, the algorithm systematically evaluates entire sets of possible structures at once, rather than considering them one at a time, to accelerate identification ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

Potent greenhouse gas produced by industry could be readily abated with existing technologies

CAMBRIDGE, MD (July 5, 2023)—Researchers have found that one method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is available, affordable, and capable of being implemented right now. Nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, could be readily abated with existing technology applied to industrial sources. “The urgency of climate change requires that all greenhouse gas emissions be abated as quickly as is technologically and economically feasible,” said lead author Eric Davidson, a professor with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental ...

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Technology5 Jul 2023

An easier way to learn quantum processes

Imagine a world where computers can unravel the mysteries of quantum mechanics, enabling us to study the behavior of complex materials or simulate the intricate dynamics of molecules with unprecedented accuracy. Thanks to a pioneering study led by Professor Zoe Holmes and her team at EPFL, we are now closer to that becoming a reality. Working with researchers at Caltech, the Free University of Berlin, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, they have found a new way to teach a quantum computer how to understand and predict the behavior of quantum systems, even with a few simple examples. Quantum neural networks (QNNs) The researchers worked on “quantum neural networks” ...

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