Science News

A team of engineers from several institutions in South Korea has developed a type of wheel with spokes that can be adjusted in real time to conform the wheel's shape to uneven terrain. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the principles behind their wheel design and how well it worked in two- and four-wheeled test models.

As organizations rush to implement artificial intelligence (AI), a new analysis of AI-related risks finds significant gaps in our understanding, highlighting an urgent need for a more comprehensive approach.

Despite the vast amounts of human mobility data generated by smartphones, a lack of standardized formats, protocols, and privacy-protected open-source datasets hampers innovation across various sectors, including city planning, transportation design, public health, emergency response, and economic research. The absence of established benchmarks further complicates efforts to evaluate progress and share best practices.

A team of AI researchers at Sakana AI, in Japan, working with colleagues from the University of Oxford and the University of British Columbia, has developed an AI system that can conduct scientific research autonomously.

Hydrogen is a fuel alternative that is becoming increasingly interesting for heavy-duty vehicles. Hydrogen-powered vehicles only emit water vapor as exhaust, and if the hydrogen is produced using renewable energy, it is completely free of carbon dioxide emissions.

An innovative development by a team of Tel Aviv University researchers allows for the conversion of the wet raw waste that we throw in the trash into liquid and solid biofuels, without the need to dry the waste. The researchers assess that at the national level, fuels produced from organic waste can, among other things, meet about a third of Israel's marine fuel consumption.

Ask a large language model (LLM) like GPT-4 to smell a rain-soaked campsite, and it'll politely decline. Ask the same system to describe that scent to you, and it'll wax poetic about "an air thick with anticipation" and "a scent that is both fresh and earthy," despite having neither prior experience with rain nor a nose to help it make such observations. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the LLM is simply mimicking the text present in its vast training data, rather than working with any real understanding of rain or smell.

In recent years, urban waterlogging disasters have become more frequent due to rapid urbanization and climate change, severely threatening city infrastructure. Subway tunnels, with their semi-enclosed structure, face significant risks during floods, leading to difficult evacuations and substantial casualties.

In preclinical models, a subcutaneously implanted device was able to continuously monitor vital signs and deliver naloxone automatically and rapidly when it detected opioid overdose.

A new, air-powered computer sets off alarms when certain medical devices fail. The invention is a more reliable and lower-cost way to help prevent blood clots and strokes—all without electronic sensors.

Imagine a coat that captures solar energy to keep you cozy on a chilly winter walk, or a shirt that can monitor your heart rate and temperature. Picture clothing athletes can wear to track their performance without the need for bulky battery packs.

Identifying one faulty turbine in a wind farm, which can involve looking at hundreds of signals and millions of data points, is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

Seawater electrolysis holds immense promise as a means to decarbonize the global energy sector. However, challenges such as anode corrosion by chloride ions, unwanted chloride oxidation reactions, and the high cost of catalysts have hindered direct seawater electrolysis.

The team preparing NASA's X-59 continues through testing in preparation for the quiet supersonic aircraft to make its first flight. This includes a trio of important structural tests and critical inspections on the path to flight.

Machine-generated text has been fooling humans for the last four years. Since the release of GPT-2 in 2019, large language model (LLM) tools have gotten progressively better at crafting stories, news articles, student essays and more, to the point that humans are often unable to recognize when they are reading text produced by an algorithm.

Africa contributes only about 4% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The continent consumes the least energy for each person, compared with other regions of the world. With over 560 million people who don't have access to electricity, Africa has the lowest rate of energy access in the world.

If you were told solar farms could take up to 0.3% of the total land area in the UK by 2035, would you take up a banner and march to parliament in protest? It's hard to imagine anyone feeling troubled by such a perceptibly small figure.

Winter is now well upon us, and many of us—especially those living in old homes—are discovering just how drafty they are. In fact, Australia has some of the least air-tight homes in the world.

As global warming intensifies, people increasingly suffer from extreme heat. For those working in a high-temperature environment indoors or outdoors, keeping thermally comfortable becomes particularly crucial.

Critical minerals like lithium and cobalt are vital to batteries, electric vehicles, and renewable energy systems. To meet the long-term demand for these materials, finding sources of these materials beyond mining has become a priority for many researchers.