Science News

Peel apart a smartphone, fitness tracker or virtual reality headset, and inside you'll find a tiny motion sensor tracking its position and movement. Bigger, more expensive versions of the same technology, about the size of a grapefruit and a thousand times more accurate, help navigate ships, airplanes and other vehicles with GPS assistance.

New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that programming robots to create their own teams and voluntarily wait for their teammates results in faster task completion, with the potential to improve manufacturing, agriculture and warehouse automation. The study is published in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

Joro spiders have hearts that are able to withstand the loud and bustling noises of big cities​, according to a study published on Monday.

Common push puppet toys in the shapes of animals and popular figures can move or collapse with the push of a button at the bottom of the toys' base. Now, a team of UCLA engineers has created a new class of tunable dynamic material that mimics the inner workings of push puppets, with applications for soft robotics, reconfigurable architectures and space engineering.

South Africa's Northern Cape province has become a prime area for investment in renewable energy. It is host to 59 of the 112 large-scale renewable energy projects secured through the country's flagship Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program by 2021. But have the communities hosting these new projects benefited from them?

A research team led by the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed full-color fiber light-emitting diodes utilizing perovskite quantum wires (PeQWs), paving the way for innovative wearable lighting and display devices.

An international team of mechanical engineers has developed what they call a fracture-driven, power-amplified hydrogel launcher. They have published their discovery in the journal Nature Materials.

Researchers at the University of Maryland genetically modified poplar trees to produce high-performance, structural wood without the use of chemicals or energy-intensive processing. Made from traditional wood, engineered wood is often seen as a renewable replacement for traditional building materials like steel, cement, glass and plastic. It also has the potential to store carbon for a longer time than traditional wood because it can resist deterioration, making it useful in efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Humanoid robots have long been a staple of science fiction, but there is now real progress being made. A range of new models made by or backed by the likes of Boston Dynamics, Tesla and OpenAI are able to walk and move like humans, as well as perform feats of agility and dexterity.

A team of applied physicists at Columbia University, working with a colleague from Henry M. Gunn High School, and another from the University of California, Los Angeles, has found that using corrugated siding on outdoor building walls can passively reduce wall temperatures.

According to a new study led by TU Darmstadt, AI models such as ChatGPT are apparently less capable of learning independently than previously assumed.

Running a day late, the four person crew plans to dock at the International Space Station early Sunday.

White, brown and pink noise are all examples of "sound masking," which neurologist Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen says can help people relax and fall asleep.

The Perseids meteor shower peaks between August 11th and 13th this year.

CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook takes a look at new research that suggests popular drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy might help with other cravings.

Park rangers suspect changing water levels and erosion from waves contributed to the demise of the "Double Arch" located in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

More than 26 million people across China were affected to varying degrees by natural disasters in July, which mainly involved heavy rain, flooding, typhoons and geological disasters, according to an assessment by the country's top disaster relief authorities.

Power grid operators, such as National Grid in the UK, rely on high-performance computers to plan grid expansions and to schedule when energy should be produced from different sources. These problems are becoming larger and more complex due to the transition to net zero carbon emissions, and they are now reaching the limits of even the world's largest supercomputers.

Recent advancements in speech emotion recognition have highlighted the significant potential of deep learning technologies across various applications. However, these deep learning models are susceptible to adversarial attacks.

In this work, researchers studied the outdoor and indoor photovoltaic performance of LHP-based devices utilizing Spiro-OMeTAD as the hole-transport material with commonly used dopants such as lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (Li-TFSI) or without any dopants.