Science News

Much of Alaska is empty—of humans, at least. Vast tundra and forest separate cities and villages, dividing the state into more than 150 isolated power grids. The largest of these grids, known as the Railbelt, carries 70% of the state's electrical energy to about three-quarters of its population. Today, that grid runs mostly on natural gas.

There's a newly-determined "major factor" in declining bumblebee populations – and it's attacking their nests.

Pursuing a viable alternative to invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) has been a continued research focus of Carnegie Mellon University's He Lab. In 2019, the group used a noninvasive BCI to successfully demonstrate, for the first time, that a mind-controlled robotic arm had the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

More than a thousand cities around the world now have "net zero" pledges: they want to emit only as much CO2 into the atmosphere as they can simultaneously recapture. An elaborate meta-study has now summarized the state of knowledge on which methods might be useful and what they could achieve.

Charge-recharge cycling of lithium-super-rich iron oxide, a cost-effective and high-capacity cathode for new-generation lithium-ion batteries, can be greatly improved by doping with readily available mineral elements.

A first-ever stretchy electronic skin could equip robots and other devices with the same softness and touch sensitivity as human skin, opening up new possibilities to perform tasks that require a great deal of precision and control of force.

Artificial intelligence may soon help to identify lies and deception. However, a research team from the Universities of Marburg and Würzburg warns against premature use.

A new type of laser-based immersion probe, which the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen is testing as part of projects with industrial partners and users, could pave the way for continuous inline monitoring of water treatment processes in wastewater treatment plants.

Scientists use an array of imaging instruments to look inside living organisms, sometimes as they move, and to observe inert objects without altering their state. Such instruments include telescopes, microscopes, CT scanners and more. But these instruments, even when working at maximum capacity, often generate only partial images or images of too low quality to provide much insight.

A research team has developed a memory transistor capable of adjusting its threshold voltage. This innovation combines two molecules that form a stable bond with a polymeric semiconductor, situated at the end of a molecular switch. The research was recently featured in the online edition of Advanced Science.

In sub-Saharan Africa, over 600 million people (more than 50% of the population) are without access to electricity. Malawi has one of the world's lowest electricity access rates—just 14.1% of the total population have access to the main grid. In rural areas, the electrification access rate is even lower, estimated at 5.6% in 2021.

To avoid catastrophic climate impacts, excessive carbon emissions must be addressed. At this point, cutting emissions isn't enough. Direct air capture, a technology that pulls carbon dioxide out of ambient air, has great potential to help solve the problem.

A small team of materials scientists and environmental engineers at Imperial College London has found that using olivine in cement could result in carbon-negative concrete. In their study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group conducted experiments with cement mixing that resulted in a way to produce it in a more climate-friendly manner.

Northwestern University engineers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm designed specifically for smart robotics. By helping robots rapidly and reliably learn complex skills, the new method could significantly improve the practicality—and safety—of robots for a range of applications, including self-driving cars, delivery drones, household assistants and automation.

Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly useful for programming and robotics tasks, but for more complicated reasoning problems, the gap between these systems and humans looms large. Without the ability to learn new concepts like humans do, these systems fail to form good abstractions—essentially, high-level representations of complex concepts that skip less-important details—and thus sputter when asked to do more sophisticated tasks.

AI holds the potential to help doctors find early markers of disease and policymakers to avoid decisions that lead to war. But a growing body of evidence has revealed deep flaws in how machine learning is used in science, a problem that has swept through dozens of fields and implicated thousands of erroneous papers.

A major approach to achieving net-zero carbon emissions relies on converting various parts of the economy, such as personal vehicles and heating, to run via electricity generated from renewable sources. But carbon cannot be removed from all parts of society. Plastics, ubiquitous in the modern world, cannot be decarbonized because they are made of carbon-based molecules.

A review published in the International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing has investigated ways in which the increasing problem of duplicate data in computer storage systems might be addressed. Solutions to this problem could improve storage efficiency, system performance, and reduce the overall demand on resources.

The future of automobiles is electric, but many people worry about the safety of today's electric vehicles.

Plans to revive an old coal-fired power station using bioenergy are being considered in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Similar plans for the station have previously not gone ahead. As we grapple with decarbonization, bioenergy (energy derived from harvested trees and other plants) is often put on the table as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.