Technology
press releases.

Technology13 Mar 2025

OFC conference to showcase energy-efficient optical links that result in faster, low-power photonic chips

Researchers have demonstrated an integrated optical link on a silicon wafer that exhibits high-speed data transmission with very low power consumption. The advance, which was possible because of new low-energy membrane photonic devices made from indium phosphide, could help improve the power efficiency of integrated photonic circuit boards and chip packages without compromising speed. Tatsurou Hiraki from NTT Corporation in Japan will present this research at OFC, the premier global event for optical communications and networking, which will take place 30 March – 03 April 2025 at the Moscone Center ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Robotics and spinal stimulation restore movement in paralysis

Spinal cord injuries are life-altering, often leaving individuals with severe mobility impairments. While rehabilitation robotics—devices that guide movement during therapy—have improved training for those with spinal cord injuries, their effectiveness remains limited. Without active muscle engagement, robotic-assisted movement alone does not sufficiently retrain the nervous system. A team at .NeuroRestore, led by Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch, has now developed a system that seemlessly integrates an implanted spinal cord neuroprosthesis with rehabilitation robotics. The researchers’ device delivers well-timed electrical pulses to stimulate ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Digital Exclusion Increases Risk of Depression Among Older Adults Across 24 Countries

Older adults who lack internet access are at a significantly higher risk of developing depressive symptoms, especially those with limited familial support or lower income levels, according to a new study published in Health Data Science. Conducted by an international team of researchers, this study analyzed data from five major aging cohort studies covering 24 countries, revealing a strong link between digital exclusion and mental health. The researchers, led by Dr. Yinzi Jin from Peking University, investigated how digital exclusion—defined as the lack of internet access—affects the mental health of older adults. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Quantum annealing processors achieve computational advantage in simulating problems on quantum entanglement

Quantum annealing processors outperform classical supercomputers in solving real-world scientific simulations of quantum spin dynamics, researchers report in a new study, achieving results far beyond the capacity of conventional computational methods, which may require impossible time and energy to match. The results provide a challenge to classical computing, where method improvement has in the past tempered claims of quantum advantage. Only in recent years have quantum computers begun to live up to their lofty promises, with quantum processing units (QPUs) with diverse architectures – such as photonic, neutral-atom, and ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

QIA researchers create first Operating System for Quantum Networks

Delft, The Netherlands: Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) researchers at TU Delft, QuTech, University of Innsbruck, INRIA and CNRS recently announced the creation of the first operating system designed for quantum networks: QNodeOS. The research, published in Nature, marks a major step forward in transforming quantum networking from a theoretical concept to a practical technology that could revolutionize the future of the internet. “The goal of our research is to bring quantum network technology to all. With QNodeOS we're taking a big step forward. We're making it possible – ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Ultra-broadband photonic chip boosts optical signals

Modern communication networks rely on optical signals to transfer vast amounts of data. But just like a weak radio signal, these optical signals need to be amplified to travel long distances without losing information. The most common amplifiers, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), have served this purpose for decades, enabling longer transmission distances without the need for frequent signal regeneration. However, they operate within a limited spectral bandwidth, restricting the expansion of optical networks. To meet the growing demand for high-speed data transmission, researchers have been seeking ways to develop more powerful, flexible, ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Food systems, climate change, and air pollution: Unveiling the interactions and solutions

A recent review published in Engineering delves into the complex relationships among food systems, climate change, and air pollution, highlighting the need for sustainable strategies to address these interconnected global challenges. Climate change and air pollution pose significant threats to food systems. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events, driven by climate change, disrupt agricultural production. For example, higher temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns have altered crop growth cycles, caused yield fluctuations, and increased uncertainty ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

UNCG professor investigates how symbiotic groups can behave like single organisms with $600,000 in Templeton Foundation funding

"UNCG philosopher of biology Dr. Derek Skillings is the lead investigator on a new, three-year, $600,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a study of the emergence and evolution of goal-directed behavior in collective entities. “A holobiont is a term for a host organism and all of the things that live inside of it and on it,” says Skillings, who is an assistant professor of philosophy at UNCG with adjunct positions in biology and geography, environment, and sustainability. Examples of collective entities include simple biofilms and massive coral reefs. “We used to think these weird things like corals, ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

Delhi air pollution worse than expected as water vapour skews figures

New Delhi's air pollution is more severe than previously estimated with particles absorbing atmospheric water vapour leading to particulate matter levels across the city being underestimated by up to 20%, a new study reveals. Hygroscopic growth causes fine particulate matter (PM1) to swell, reducing sampling devices efficiency and leading to underestimation, with greatest underestimation in estimated concentrations happening during winter morning rush hours, when humidity is highest and pollution is most severe. In contrast, research shows that the monsoon ...

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Technology12 Mar 2025

How satisfied are you with your mattress? New research survey aims to find out

Sleep quality is a crucial aspect of health, yet while adults spend around a third of their lives sleeping, there is surprisingly little research on mattresses. Mass General Brigham researchers developed and tested the Boston Mattress Satisfaction Questionnaire (BMSQ), a new tool to rigorously assess mattress satisfaction and characteristics. They administered the BMSQ to a representative sample of over 1,000 adults in the United States, finding that the tool is internally consistent and viable for assessing mattress ...

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Technology11 Mar 2025

Water aerobics for more than 10 weeks can trim waist size and aid weight loss

Water/aqua aerobics for 10 or more weeks at a time can trim waist size and aid weight loss, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Open This type of exercise is particularly effective in overweight/obese women and the over 45s, the analysis indicates. Global estimates for 2022 indicate that more than 43% of adults worldwide were overweight, and that 504 million women and 374 million men were obese, note the researchers, adding that obesity contributes to an estimated 2.8 million deaths every year. The buoyancy of water helps reduce joint injuries commonly associated with land based exercise ...

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Technology11 Mar 2025

‘Fishial’ recognition: Neural network identifies coral reef sounds

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2025 – Coral reefs are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. Despite making up less than 1% of the world’s oceans, one quarter of all marine species spend some portion of their life on a reef. With so much life in one spot, researchers can struggle to gain a clear understanding of which species are present and in what numbers. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution combined acoustic monitoring with a neural network to identify fish activity on coral reefs ...

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Technology11 Mar 2025

AI in engineering

A review explores the role of AI in engineering, assessing the benefits and challenges of the synergy between the two fields. A 2004 DARPA contest pitted AI vehicles against one another in a race on 150 miles of dirt roads. The best-performing vehicle made it less than eight miles of the way. The next year, five vehicles finished a 132-mile course, and today driverless cabs are active in several major cities. Enthusiasts have suggested AI could improve transportation and manufacturing, medicine, consumer goods, and military technology. Rama Chellappa, Guru Madhavan, Ed ...

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Technology11 Mar 2025

Untangling quantum entanglement with new calculation formulas

Once described by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance,” quantum entanglement may now seem less intimidating in light of new research findings. Osaka Metropolitan University physicists have developed new, simpler formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems and applied them to study several nanoscale materials. Their results offer fresh perspectives into quantum behaviors in materials with different physical characteristics, contributing to advances in quantum technologies. Quantum entanglement is a unique phenomenon ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

Clothes dryers and the bottom line: Switching to air drying can save hundreds

Researchers from the University of Michigan are hoping their new study will inspire some Americans to rethink their relationship with laundry. Because, no matter how you spin it, clothes dryers use a lot of comparatively costly energy when air works for free. Household dryers in the U.S. consume about 3% of our residential energy budget, about six times that used by washing machines. Collectively, dryers cost more than $7 billion to power each year in this country, and generating that energy emits the equivalent of more than ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

New research explores how AI can build trust in knowledge work

In today’s economy, many workers have transitioned from manual labor toward knowledge work, a move driven primarily by technological advances, and workers in this domain face challenges around managing non-routine work, which is inherently uncertain. Automated interventions can help workers understand their work and boost performance and trust. In a new study, researchers explored how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance performance and trust in knowledge work environments. They found that when AI systems provided feedback in real-time, performance and trust increased. The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

Unlocking the secrets of phase transitions in quantum hardware

Phase transitions, like water freezing into ice, are a familiar part of our world. But in quantum systems, they can behave even more dramatically, with quantum properties such as Heisenberg uncertainty playing a central role. Furthermore, various spurious effects can cause the systems to lose, or dissipate, energy to the environment. When they happen, theses “dissipative phase transitions” (DPTs) push quantum systems into new states. There are different types or “orders” of DPTs. First-order DPTs are like flipping a switch, causing abrupt jumps between states. ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

Can AI tell us if those Zoom calls are flowing smoothly? New study gives a thumbs up

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers have spent countless hours in videoconferences—now a fixture of office life. As more people work and live remotely, videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, FaceTime, Slack, and Discord are a huge part of socializing among family and friends as well. Some exchanges are more enjoyable and flow better than others, raising questions about how the medium of online meetings could be improved in order to raise both efficiency and job satisfaction. A team of New York University scientists has developed an AI model that can identify aspects ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

Team of computer engineers develops AI tool to make genetic research more comprehensive

University of Florida researchers are addressing a critical gap in medical genetic research — ensuring it better represents and benefits people of all backgrounds. Their work, led by Kiley Graim, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, focuses on improving human health by addressing "ancestral bias" in genetic data, a problem that arises when most research is based on data from a single ancestral group. This bias limits advancements in precision medicine, Graim said, and leaves large portions ...

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Technology10 Mar 2025

KIST develops high-performance sensor based on two-dimensional semiconductor

Next-generation imaging technology is rapidly expanding beyond smartphones into intelligent devices, robotics, extended reality (XR) devices, healthcare, CCTV, and various other industries. At the core of these technological advances are highly efficient, ultra-compact image sensors that convert light signals into electrical signals. Image sensors capture and process visual information from objects and environments, enabling precise reconstruction of their shape, size, and spatial position. Currently, commercial image sensors are primarily based on silicon semiconductors. ...

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Technology9 Mar 2025

Intracortical neural interfaces: Advancing technologies for freely moving animals

A recent study published in Engineering delves into the latest progress in intracortical neural interface technologies for freely moving animals. These interfaces, which establish a connection between the nervous system and external devices, have the potential to revolutionize neuroscience research and clinical medicine. The researchers, led by Xinxia Cai, Zhaojie Xu and Yirong Wu, analyzed four key technological directions for ideal implantable neural interface devices: higher spatial density, improved biocompatibility, enhanced multimodal detection of electrical/neurotransmitter signals, and more effective neural modulation. In terms of high spatial density, microelectrode ...

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Technology8 Mar 2025

Post-LLM era: New horizons for AI with knowledge, collaboration, and co-evolution

A recent paper published in the journal Engineering delves into the future of artificial intelligence (AI) beyond large language models (LLMs). LLMs have made remarkable progress in multimodal tasks, yet they face limitations such as outdated information, hallucinations, inefficiency, and a lack of interpretability. To address these issues, researchers explore three key directions: knowledge empowerment, model collaboration, and model co-evolution. Knowledge empowerment aims to integrate external knowledge into LLMs. This can be achieved through various methods, including integrating knowledge ...

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Technology8 Mar 2025

USC researchers observe mice may have a form of first aid

Humans may not be the only ones who aid their friends when they’re hurt. Mice may do it, too, as shown by a new research study led by scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC published recently in Science. Scientists have been trying to understand why social mammals appear to help injured members of their species. There are numerous factors that determine empathetic behavior and social bonding in mammals, said Li Zhang, the principal investigator of the study and professor of physiology and neuroscience ...

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Technology7 Mar 2025

VUMC to develop AI technology for therapeutic antibody discovery

An ambitious project led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators aims to use artificial intelligence technologies to generate antibody therapies against any antigen target of interest. VUMC has been awarded up to $30 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to build a massive antibody-antigen atlas, develop AI-based algorithms to engineer antigen-specific antibodies, and apply the AI technology to identify and develop potential therapeutic antibodies. ARPA-H is an ...

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Technology7 Mar 2025

Metasurface technology offers a compact way to generate multiphoton entanglement

Quantum information processing is a field that relies on the entanglement of multiple photons to process vast amounts of information. However, creating multiphoton entanglement is a challenging task. Traditional methods either use quantum nonlinear optical processes, which are inefficient for large numbers of photons, or linear beam-splitting and quantum interference, which require complex setups prone to issues like loss and crosstalk. A team of researchers from Peking University, Southern University of Science and Technology, and the University of Science and Technology of China recently made ...

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