Technology
press releases.

Technology18 Jul 2024

Assessment methods for realizing digital urban planning and low-carbon urban design

With the promotion of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking goals, the construction of low-carbon cities and related quantitative assessments have become hot topics in the field of urban planning and design. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out that the net emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have continued to rise over the past decade, with the average annual emissions higher than any previous decade. Without additional climate change mitigation policies, global warming could lead to a temperature increase of 3.5°C ...

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Technology17 Jul 2024

Ant insights lead to robot navigation breakthrough

Have you ever wondered how insects are able to go so far beyond their home and still find their way? The answer to this question is not only relevant to biology but also to making the AI for tiny, autonomous robots. TU Delft drone-researchers felt inspired by biological findings on how ants visually recognize their environment and combine it with counting their steps in order to get safely back home. They have used these insights to create an insect-inspired autonomous navigation strategy for tiny, lightweight robots. The strategy allows such robots to come back home after long trajectories, while requiring extremely little computation and memory (0.65 kiloByte per ...

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Technology17 Jul 2024

Scientists bridge the 'valley of death' for carbon capture technologies

A major obstacle for net zero technologies in combatting climate change is bridging the gap between fundamental research and its application in the real world. This gap, sometimes referred to as ‘the valley of death’, is common in the field of carbon capture, where novel materials are used to remove carbon dioxide from flue gasses produced by industrial processes. This prevents carbon from entering the atmosphere, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. Chemists have proposed and ...

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Technology17 Jul 2024

A new approach to accelerate the discovery of quantum materials

– By Michael Matz Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and several collaborating institutions have successfully demonstrated an innovative approach to find breakthrough materials for quantum applications. The approach uses rapid computing methods to predict the properties of hundreds of materials, identifying short lists of the most promising ones. Then, precise fabrication methods are used to make the short-list materials and further ...

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Technology17 Jul 2024

Powerful new particle accelerator a step closer with muon-marshalling technology

New experimental results show particles called muons can be corralled into beams suitable for high-energy collisions, paving the way for new physics. Particle accelerators are best known for colliding matter to probe its make-up, but they are also used for measuring the chemical structure of drugs, treating cancers, and manufacturing silicon microchips. Current accelerators use protons, electrons and ions, but more powerful accelerators using muons – heavier cousins of electrons – have the potential to revolutionise the field. Muon accelerators would ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Scientists develop new artificial intelligence method to create material ​‘fingerprints’

Study shows how materials change as they are stressed and relaxed. Like people, materials evolve over time. They also behave differently when they are stressed and relaxed. Scientists looking to measure the dynamics of how materials change have developed a new technique that leverages X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This technique creates ​“fingerprints” of different materials that can be read and analyzed by ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

How to assess a general-purpose AI model’s reliability before it’s deployed

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Foundation models are massive deep-learning models that have been pretrained on an enormous amount of general-purpose, unlabeled data. They can be applied to a variety of tasks, like generating images or answering customer questions. But these models, which serve as the backbone for powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, can offer up incorrect or misleading information. In a safety-critical situation, such as a pedestrian approaching a self-driving car, these mistakes could have serious consequences. To help prevent such mistakes, researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a technique to estimate the reliability ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Advancing quantum research – DOE inks MOU with Department of Defense

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to coordinate efforts to move the needle on quantum computing. “Realizing practical quantum computers has the potential to dramatically accelerate the pace of discovery across the science and technology landscape,” said Ceren Susut, DOE Associate Director of Science for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. “The Office of Science is proud to bring decades of experience in fundamental science for quantum ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

SwRI, UTD jointly fund project to evaluate space sensor in unique facility

SAN ANTONIO — July 16, 2024 — Researchers from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) are collaborating to evaluate a next-generation sensor designed to measure neutral gas velocities in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The project, led by SwRI’s Dr. Joo Hwang and UTD’s Dr. Phillip Anderson, is supported by a grant from the new SwRI/UTD Seed Projects for Research, INnovation, and Technology (SPRINT) Program. Another SPRINT project is researching domestic lithium independence, looking at ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Scientists use machine learning to predict diversity of tree species in forests

A collaborative team of researchers led by Ben Weinstein of the University of Florida, Oregon, US, used machine learning to generate highly detailed maps of over 100 million individual trees from 24 sites across the U.S., publishing their findings July 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. These maps provide information about individual tree species and conditions, which can greatly aid conservation efforts and other ecological projects. Ecologists have long collected data on tree species to better understand a forest’s unique ecosystem. Historically, this has been done by surveying small plots of land and extrapolating those findings, though this cannot account for ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Breakthrough in quantum microscopy: Stuttgart researchers are making electrons visible in slow motion

"With the method we developed, we can make things visible that no one has seen before," says Prof. Sebastian Loth, Managing Director of the Institute for Functional Matter and Quantum Technologies (FMQ) at the University of Stuttgart. "This makes it possible to settle questions about the movement of electrons in solids that have been unanswered since the 1980s." However, the findings of Loth's group are also of very practical significance for the development of new materials. Tiny changes with macroscopic consequences In ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

New sleep study aims to understand cognitive decline in women

LA JOLLA, CA—Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia, currently affects twice as many women as men, with minority populations predicted to witness the most significant increase in cases in the coming years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disturbances in sleep are well-known in dementia but have previously been explained as an outcome of the disease, not the cause. Increasing evidence, however, now implicates sleep disturbances with the development of dementia. In a bid to better understand the relationship between sleep and cognitive outcomes in women, scientists at the Scripps ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

AI makes human-like reasoning mistakes

Large language models (LMs) can complete abstract reasoning tasks, but they are susceptible to many of the same types of mistakes made by humans. Andrew Lampinen, Ishita Dasgupta, and colleagues tested state-of-the-art LMs and humans on three kinds of reasoning tasks: natural language inference, judging the logical validity of syllogisms, and the Wason selection task. The authors found the LMs to be prone to similar content effects as humans. Both humans and LMs are more likely to mistakenly label an invalid argument as valid when the semantic content is sensical and believable. LMs are also just as bad as humans at the Wason selection task, in which the participant ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Digital dog and cat skull database

The ELTE Eötvös Loránd University is home to the skulls of more than 150 dog breeds and other animals. To make this unique collection accessible to all, researchers digitised the skulls of 431 dogs, cats and wild relatives. The database can be used for educational and research purposes. Tibor Csörgő, a researcher at ELTE, has been collecting animal skulls for decades to teach anatomy to biologists. The shape of the skull varies considerably between species and breeds, especially in dogs, where, for example, greyhounds have long skulls and the now popular French bulldogs have rounded skulls. A skull biobank ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Breaking through silicon

Overcoming Historical Barriers Silicon, the cornerstone of modern electronics, photovoltaics, and photonics, has traditionally been limited to surface-level nanofabrication due to the challenges posed by existing lithographic techniques. Available methods either fail to penetrate the wafer surface without causing alterations or are limited by the micron-scale resolution of laser lithography within Si. In the spirit of Richard Feynman's famous dictum, 'There's plenty of room at the bottom', ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Recycled micro-sized silicon anodes from photovoltaic waste improve lithium-ion battery performance

Researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed low-cost micro-sized silicon anodes from recycled photovoltaic waste using a novel electrolyte design. Their pioneering work, published in Nature Sustainability on July 16, offers a path to more sustainable, low-cost, and high-energy-density batteries that could transform energy storage systems for electric vehicles and renewable energy applications. Silicon anodes are favored for their ability to substantially increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries compared to traditional graphite anodes but are hindered by significant volume ...

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Technology16 Jul 2024

Sorry, I didn’t get that: evaluating usability issues with AI-assisted smart speakers

With the rapid development of AI technology, voice-controlled smart speakers are becoming increasingly popular due to their convenience and ability to control compatible home devices. Despite the rise in use, smart speakers often do not have screens and little-to-none of the visual information feedback common to manually operated devices. This aspect complicates their usability, thus providing room for research and subsequent improvement. As such, a research team led by Dr. Toshihisa Doi, a lecturer at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Human Life and Ecology, recruited 39 young adults (22 males and ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Silicon photonics light the way toward large-scale applications in quantum information

In a significant leap forward for quantum technology, researchers have achieved a milestone in harnessing the frequency dimension within integrated photonics. This breakthrough not only promises advancements in quantum computing but also lays the groundwork for ultra-secure communications networks. Integrated photonics, the manipulation of light within tiny circuits on silicon chips, has long held promise for quantum applications due to its scalability and compatibility with existing telecommunications infrastructure. In a study published in Advanced Photonics, researchers from the Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology (C2N), Télécom Paris, ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

A new neural network makes decisions like a human would

Humans make nearly 35,000 decisions every day, from whether it’s safe to cross the road to what to have for lunch. Every decision involves weighing the options, remembering similar past scenarios, and feeling reasonably confident about the right choice. What may seem like a snap decision actually comes from gathering evidence from the surrounding environment. And often the same person makes different decisions in the same scenarios at different times. Neural networks do the opposite, making the same decisions each time. Now, Georgia Tech researchers in Associate Professor Dobromir Rahnev’s lab are ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Wojtusiak to use artificial intelligence to help caregivers with social isolation

Janusz Wojtusiak, Professor, Health Administration and Policy, College of Public Health, is set to receive funding for the project: “An Artificial Intelligence Solution to Social Isolation and Longlines of Caregivers of People with Dementia.” Wojtusiak and his graduate student Ghaida Alsadah will lay the foundation for a large study aimed at utilizing AI methods to address social isolation and loneliness among people who care for those with Alzheimer’s Disease and those suffering from dementia. Addressing ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Santiago Núñez-Corrales on ‘NCSA’s Mission in Quantum Computing’

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of virtual essays from NCSA experts on current topics impacting the field of high-performance computing and research. NCSA’s Mission in Quantum Computing By Santiago Núñez-Corrales, NCSA Quantum Lead Research Scientist The fact that physical laws in our universe contain the recipe to perform computation is nothing short of extraordinary. John Archibald Wheeler described how intricate and intense the relationship is between physics and information in his foundational paper in 1991, one that bears profound consequences ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Breakthrough wildlife tracking technology that adheres to fur delivers promising results from trials on wild polar bears

TORONTO, July 15, 2024 – Studying polar bears just became a lot easier with new “burr on fur” trackers which confirmed scientists’ belief that subadult and adult males spend most of their time on land lazing around, conserving energy until the ice returns. A multi-institutional research team led by York University and including the University of Alberta, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Manitoba Sustainable Development, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, and Polar Bears International, used three ...

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Technology12 Jul 2024

When to trust an AI model

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Because machine-learning models can give false predictions, researchers often equip them with the ability to tell a user how confident they are about a certain decision. This is especially important in high-stake settings, such as when models are used to help identify disease in medical images or filter job applications. But a model’s uncertainty quantifications are only useful if they are accurate. If a model says it is 49% confident that a medical image shows a pleural effusion, then 49% of the time, the model should be right. MIT ...

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Technology12 Jul 2024

AI found to boost individual creativity – at the expense of less varied content

Stories written with AI assistance have been deemed to be more creative, better written and more enjoyable. A new study published in the journal Science Advances finds that AI enhances creativity by boosting the novelty of story ideas as well as the ‘usefulness’ of stories – their ability to engage the target audience and potential for publication. It finds that AI “professionalizes” stories, making them more enjoyable, more likely to have plot twists, better written and less boring. In ...

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Technology12 Jul 2024

Scientists find new way global air churn makes particles

By Leah Shaffer You can think of our atmosphere as a big chemistry set, a global churn of gaseous molecules and particles that constantly bounce off and change each other in complicated ways. While the particles are very small, often less than 1% of the thickness of human hair, they have outsized impacts. For example, particles are the seeds of cloud droplets, and the abundance of the particles changes the reflectivity and the amount of clouds, rainfall and climate. Now, researchers at Washington University in St. ...

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