Technology
press releases.

Technology29 Jan 2026

New guide aims to tame the chaos of UTI care

Millions of times a year, Americans seek urgent treatment for painful, embarrassing urinary tract infections. But while they once had to go in person for testing and treatment, now they can type messages to their clinic into their phone, or see a doctor or nurse practitioner by video. They can also buy a rapid UTI test at the drug store, or fill out an online symptom questionnaire and get an antibiotic prescription from a telehealth service that has no connection to their regular health care provider. And while these recent ...

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Technology29 Jan 2026

The Frontiers of Knowledge Award goes to Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen for designing the cryptographic system that protects the security of electronic devices and digital connections worldwide

In 1997, the two Belgian researchers created an algorithm they called Rijndael, a portmanteau of their names, which not long after – in 2001 in the U.S. and 2005 elsewhere – would become the international standard used to safeguard the security and privacy of websites, laptops, mobile phones, Wi-Fi connections, digital messaging systems, bank cards, and cloud data storage, among numerous other applications. So much so, says the committee, that over the last quarter century, the cryptographic system they devised “has become an intrinsic part of everyday life.” Thanks ...

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Technology29 Jan 2026

AI swarms could hijack democracy—without anyone noticing

They don’t march in the streets or storm the polls, but a new breed of AI-controlled personas could be the next big threat to democracy. According to a new policy forum paper in Science, Swarms of AI personas mimic humans so well they can infiltrate online communities, shape conversations, and tilt elections—all at machine speed. Unlike old-school botnets, these agents coordinate in real time, adapt to feedback, and sustain coherent narratives across thousands of accounts. How AI-controlled personas work Advances ...

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Technology29 Jan 2026

Novel quantum refrigerator benefits from problematic noise

For quantum computers to function, they must be kept at extremely low temperatures. However, today’s cooling systems also generate noise that interferes with the fragile quantum information they are meant to protect. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed an entirely new type of minimal quantum "refrigerator", which is partly driven by the noise itself. This refrigerator enables very precise control over heat and energy flows and could ...

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Technology29 Jan 2026

AI tools help decode how TCM formulas work

Traditional Chinese medicine formulas (TCMFs) are widely used in clinical practice, but their molecular mechanisms can be difficult to pin down because formulas often contain many constituents that act on multiple targets and pathways. In a new review in the Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines, researchers describe how artificial intelligence (AI) methods are increasingly being used to tackle this complexity and accelerate mechanism-oriented research on TCMFs. The review, authored by researchers ...

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Technology29 Jan 2026

Research clarifies record-late monsoon onset, aiding northern Australian communities

Every year, Australia experiences a summer monsoon characterized by the reversal of winds, heavy rainfall and flooding. In 2024-2025 however, the Australian summer monsoon (ASM) was the latest on record since measurements began in 1957. The monsoon's timely arrival is critical for Northern Australia. It dictates water security for communities, drives pasture growth for the vital cattle industry and signals the end of the high bushfire risk period. The start of the ASM is defined by the change in prevailing dry southeasterly trade winds that occur most of the ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Artificial Intelligence can generate a feeling of intimacy

People can develop emotional closeness to Artificial Intelligence (AI) – under certain conditions, even more so than to other people. This is shown by a new study conducted by a research team led by Prof. Dr Markus Heinrichs and Dr Tobias Kleinert from the Department of Psychology at the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr Bastian Schiller from Heidelberg University’s Institute of Psychology. Participants felt a sense of closeness especially when they did not know that they were communicating with AI. The results have been published in the renowned journal Communications Psychology. Questions about life experiences and friendships In ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

New chip-sized, energy-efficient optical amplifier can intensify light 100 times

Light does a lot of work in the modern world, enabling all types of information technology from TVs to satellites to fiber-optic cables that carry the internet across oceans. Stanford physicists recently found a way to make that light work even harder with an optical amplifier that requires low amounts of energy without any loss of bandwidth, all on a device the size of a fingertip. Similar to sound amplifiers, optical amplifiers take a light signal and intensify it. Current small-sized optical amplifiers need a lot of power to function. The new optical amplifier, detailed in ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

New light-based platform sets the stage for future quantum supercomputers

A light has emerged at the end of the tunnel in the long pursuit of developing quantum computers, which are expected to radically reduce the time needed to perform some complex calculations from thousands of years down to a matter of hours. A team led by Stanford physicists has developed a new type of “optical cavity” that can efficiently collect single photons, the fundamental particle of light, from single atoms. These atoms act as the building blocks of a quantum computer by storing “qubits” – the quantum version of a normal computer’s bits of zeros and ones. This work enables that process for ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Huayuan biota decodes Earth’s first Phanerozoic mass extinction

Around 540 million years ago, Earth's biosphere underwent a pivotal transformation, shifting from a microbe-dominated world to one teeming with animal life, as nearly all major animal phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record over a very short geological time interval. This landmark evolutionary event is known as the Cambrian Explosion. However, this surge in animal diversity was cut short around 513 million years ago by the Phanerozoic eon's first mass extinction, the Sinsk Event—with an extinction rate on par with the planet's five most severe mass extinctions, the so-called "Big Five." In its aftermath, global biodiversity ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

SLAS receives grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop lab automation educational guidelines

Oak Brook, IL (USA) — The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) has been awarded a $199,884 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to lead a multi-year initiative to develop education standards for laboratory automation, addressing a growing gap between the rapid adoption of automation technologies and formal training pathways for the scientific workforce. The project, Standards for Automated Science Education, will establish evidence-based, interdisciplinary guidelines to help educators prepare students for the technical competencies required in modern laboratory ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Powering AI from space, at scale

Penn Engineers have developed a novel design for solar-powered data centers that will orbit the earth and could realistically scale to meet the growing demand for AI computing while reducing the environmental impact of data centers. Reminiscent of a leafy plant, with multiple, hardware-containing stems connected to branching, leaf-like solar panels, the design leverages decades of research on “tethers,” rope-like cables that naturally orient themselves under the competing forces of gravity and centrifugal motion. This architecture could ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Research Spotlight: a new “lab-on-a-disc” device paves the way for more automated liquid biopsies

Hakho Lee, PhD, Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the Center for Systems Biology at Mass General Brigham, is the co-senior author of a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, “Automated disc device for multiplexed extracellular vesicle isolation and labelling from liquid biopsies in cancer diagnostics.” Hyunkyung Woo, PhD, a research fellow also at the Center for Systems Biology, is a co-lead author. Q: What challenges or unmet needs make this study important? Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are tiny particles shed by cells that carry important molecular “clues” about the cell’s identity ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Artificial nighttime lighting is suppressing moth activity

Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research shows. Moths’ attraction to artificial light, such as streetlights, is common knowledge and has been much studied. But, as many people will have observed, moths may also remain still if they land near a light, apparently “trapped”. To understand this behaviour, University of Exeter researchers caught more than 800 moths from 23 species and exposed them to LED lights (of various colours and brightness) or to natural night conditions. Moths were collected with light traps and butterfly nets on the Penryn ...

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Technology28 Jan 2026

Grant to expand self-cloning crop technology for Indian farmers

Venkatesan Sundaresan, a Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a Gates Foundation grant to develop self-cloning crops for Indian farmers. The five-year, $4.9 million project is a collaboration with researchers Myeong-Je Cho at UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), Viswanathan Chinnusamy at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI), New Delhi and Ravi Maruthachalam at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER-Thiruvananthapuram). The ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

FAU leaps ahead as state’s first university to host an onsite quantum computer

Florida Atlantic University will be the first university in Florida to publicly host a large, dedicated quantum computer on site. Today, FAU signed an agreement with D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS), to acquire and install an Advantage2 annealing quantum computer on the university’s Boca Raton campus, aiming to accelerate and solidify the state of Florida’s position as a leader in quantum computing. The Advantage2 system deployment, expected later this year, will serve as the foundation of a new partnership with D-Wave, the only dual-platform quantum computing company, providing annealing ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

MLEDGE project proves federated learning can support real-world AI services

After two and a half years of work, the MLEDGE project (Cloud and Edge Machine Learning), led by Professor Nikolaos Laoutaris at IMDEA Networks, has demonstrated that it is possible to combine federated learning with cloud and edge computing infrastructures to develop artificial intelligence solutions that are more secure, efficient, and closer to end users. The project’s results have been translated into real-world applications in both the traditional and digital economy. Applications that make a difference The project has developed and tested concrete applications that clearly illustrate its impact. First, real-time COVID ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Discovery challenges long-held beliefs on early human technology in East Asia

A newly excavated archaeological site in central China is reshaping long-held assumptions about early hominin behaviour in Eastern Asia. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers conducted archaeological excavations at Xigou, located in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region in central China, uncovering evidence of advanced stone tool technologies dating back 160,000-72,000 years ago. The explorations, co-led by Griffith University, revealed hominins in this region were far more inventive and adaptable than previously believed, at a time when multiple large-brained ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Liverpool scientists discover graphene’s electronic properties in 3D material in boost for green computing

University of Liverpool researchers have discovered a way to host some of the most significant properties of graphene in a three‑dimensional (3D) material, potentially removing the hurdles for these properties to be used at scale in green computing. Graphene is famous for being incredibly strong, lightweight, and an excellent conductor of electricity and its applications range from electronics to aerospace and medical technologies. However, its two-dimensional (2D) structure makes it mechanically fragile and limits its use in demanding environments and large-scale applications. In a paper published today, a team of researchers have identified that 3D material, HfSn₂, ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Xigou site discovery challenges long-held views on early human technology in East Asia

An international research team has uncovered evidence of advanced stone tool technologies in East Asia dating back 160,000 to 72,000 years, with the findings recently published in Nature Communications. Led by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team—which included researchers from China, Australia, Spain, and the United States—conducted multidisciplinary archaeological investigations at the Xigou site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

New white paper on rebuilding trust at work amid AI-driven change and burnout published by University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies

University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies has published a new white paper, “Rebuilding the Social Contract,” by TaMika Fuller, DBA, an affiliate of the Center for Educational and Instructional Technology Research (CEITR), and Victoria Lender, DBA; both authors are College alumna. The paper examines how burnout, limited career development, and perceptions of low autonomy can erode trust at work—and what leaders can do to rebuild confidence, commitment and retention in an era shaped by accelerating technology and artificial intelligence. Drawing on findings from the ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Should companies replace human workers with robots? New study takes a closer look

Last year, when The New York Times reported that Amazon’s robotics team’s ultimate goal was to automate 75% of the company’s operations, replacing more than half a million human jobs in an attempt to pass cost savings onto customers, it was a stark reminder of robots’ ever-expanding role in reshaping the American workplace. Meanwhile, at Hyundai’s auto plant in Georgia, more than 1,000 robots work alongside almost 1,500 human employees. But as ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Chungnam National University develops AI model to accelerate defect-based material design

Across the physical world, many intricate structures form via symmetry breaking. When a system with inherent symmetry transitions into an ordered state, it can form stable imperfections known as topological defects. Such defects are found everywhere, from the large-scale structure of the universe to everyday materials, making them a powerful way to study how order emerges in complex systems. We have a tool to study these defects: nematic liquid crystals. In these materials, molecules can rotate freely while remaining roughly aligned, providing a clear and controllable ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Integrated smart contact lens technology for real-time intraocular pressure monitoring

Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness among people who are unable to monitor and manage their intraocular pressure (IOP) daily. The current tools for IOP measurement are not portable, convenient, easily accessible, or capable of continuous (24/7) monitoring. These limitations in existing IOP devices are a major contributor to inadequate ocular health management in glaucoma patients. This mismanagement could result in severe and irreparable problems for patients. This problem is particularly concerning, considering that one of the factors behind increased IOP is age. As the global population ...

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Technology27 Jan 2026

Prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with lower cognitive performance in early childhood

The prenatal period is a critical window for brain development, yet few studies have examined the impact of air pollution exposure during pregnancy on child cognition. A new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Barcelona (UB), shows that prenatal exposure to pollution is associated with lower cognitive performance in newborns. These findings highlight the importance of reducing air pollution exposure, especially during pregnancy, to protect neurodevelopment. The study, published in Environmental Pollution, included data from 168 mother-child ...

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