Science News

Both living creatures and AI-driven machines need to act quickly and adaptively in response to situations. In psychology and neuroscience, behavior can be categorized into two types—habitual (fast and simple but inflexible), and goal-directed (flexible but complex and slower).

Greener sensors, circuit boards and other electronic devices are being developed by EU researchers to reduce unsustainably high levels of e-waste.

A fully edible robot could soon end up on our plate if we overcome some technical hurdles, say EPFL scientists involved in RoboFood—a project which aims to marry robots and food.

Machines can learn not only to make predictions, but to handle causal relationships. An international research team shows how this could make medical treatments safer, more efficient, and more personalized.

Large language models like those that power ChatGPT have shown impressive performance on tasks like drafting legal briefs, analyzing the sentiment of customer reviews, or translating documents into different languages.

A team of roboticists at the University of Tokyo has taken a new approach to autonomous driving—instead of automating the entire car, simply put a robot in the driver's seat. The group built a robot capable of driving a car and tested it on a real-world track. They also published a paper describing their efforts on the arXiv preprint server.

“We are very concerned about unintended consequences.”

This year has already seen massive heat waves around the globe, with cities in Mexico, India, Pakistan and Oman hitting temperatures near or past 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

Around 20 million smartphones are sold in Germany every year, as Bitkom recently reported—a heavy burden on the environment and climate: Information and communication technologies are responsible for around 8% of Germany's CO2 emissions.

The energy transition in Germany, Europe, and across the world is driving robust demand for solar panels. Alongside high energy yields, aesthetics and acceptance are also increasingly important factors. To accommodate these trends, a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has developed an innovative solar facade element that can be incorporated into a building's exterior practically invisibly and without any significant loss of efficiency.

From severe storms to recent unprecedented cold and heat waves, extreme weather events are impacting electric utilities, grid operators, and ultimately customers like never before. At the same time, the energy sources that power the grid are evolving, integrating higher percentages of renewable sources.

Solar power is not only the fastest growing energy technology in recent history but also one of the cheapest energy sources and the most impactful in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Geothermal energy from the superhot rock miles below our feet has the potential to become a major player in the energy transition, but first we need to develop ways to not only access those rocks, but also extract their heat. Now a computer model sheds light on the latter, describing for the first time what happens when rock at those depths and temperatures is exposed to fluids that can eventually transfer the rocks' heat to the surface.

Imagine hailing a dynamic shuttle whenever you need to go somewhere—and arriving faster than if you had just driven yourself. That's the vision shared by Berkeley researchers: a world where environmentally friendly, energy-efficient high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs) are the preferred and quickest mode of transportation.

Researchers have demonstrated a new intelligent photonic sensing-computing chip that can process, transmit and reconstruct images of a scene within nanoseconds. This advance opens the door to extremely high-speed image processing that could benefit edge intelligence for machine vision applications such as autonomous driving, industrial inspection and robotic vision.

The development of technologies to generate affordable electricity and their deployment in remote or developing geographical regions has been the topic of many recent studies. These studies could inform future interventions and policies in these regions, by highlighting the most promising solutions.

From Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, multiple northern regions across China are among the best destinations to enjoy the stunning beauty of the aurora - a breathtaking gift brought by the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades, which attracts visitors and photographers to rush for the mesmerizing display by the nature.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding released a statement on Saturday to dispel public concerns over the health condition of a panda couple living at Zoo Atlanta in the US, saying that the two pandas are in good health and the research base is maintaining smooth communication with the zoo to tackle problems arising with the pandas.

A research team has significantly enhanced the data storage capacity of ferroelectric memory devices. By utilizing hafnia-based ferroelectric materials and an innovative device structure, their findings, published on June 7 in the journal Science Advances, mark a substantial advancement in memory technology. The team was led by Professor Jang-Sik Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Semiconductor Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH).

Including "tactile emoticons" into social media communications can enhance communication, according to a study published June 12, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alkistis Saramandi and Yee Ki Au from University College London, United Kingdom, and colleagues.