Science News

There's a hidden scourge making homes more harmful to the climate and less comfortable: leaky heating and cooling systems. Plugging those leaks may be the dull stepchild of the energy transition, but that doesn't make it any less important than installing dazzling solar arrays and getting millions of electric vehicles on the road.

A new study from NC State University combines three-dimensional embroidery techniques with machine learning to create a fabric-based sensor that can control electronic devices through touch. The paper is published in the journal Device.

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are widely used to synthesize intricate and realistic data by learning the distribution of authentic real samples. However, a significant challenge that GANs face is mode collapse, where the diversity of generated samples is notably lower than that of real samples. The complexity of GANs and their training process has made it difficult to reveal the underlying mechanism of mode collapse.

The ability of the human wrist to rotate around the forearm axis in 2 directions is crucial for many daily activities. This rotation, limited to a range of approximately [-90°, 90°], restricts the wrist's capacity to execute complex operational tasks. For example, when we open or lock a door with a key, our wrist performs a large rotational movement. When we screw, the wrist needs to twist 180° several times.

A novel temperature-dependent viscosity-mediated strategy proposed by researchers at the South China University of Technology was able to suppress the deactivation of Bi dopants during the fiber drawing process.

Wind power is a source of energy that is both affordable and renewable. However, decision-makers have been reluctant to invest in wind energy due to a perception that wind farms require a lot of land compared to electric power plants driven by fossil fuels. Research led by McGill University and based on the assessment of the land use of close to 320 wind farms in the U.S. (the largest study of its kind) paints a very different picture.

The electromyographic (EMG) signal is the bioelectrical current generated during muscle contraction. It can be transmitted as an input signal to an intelligent bionic prosthetic hand to control hand movements. By increasing the number of signal acquisition channels, richer information about the intention of the action can be captured, thus improving the success rate of the recognition of the intention of the action. However, it is not better to have more acquisition channels.

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography of RAS and research centers in China, Japan, and Italy have discovered a material for chemical storage of hydrogen that can "soak up" four times as much of this hard-to-contain gas as the current top contenders.

Engineers at Princeton University have quantified the cooling benefits of a simple solution for beating urban heat: reflecting solar radiation back from whence it came.

A research group led by Prof. Ge Ziyi at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a key strategy for optimizing guest components to minimize non-radiative voltage losses and thus achieve high-efficiency ternary organic solar cells (OSCs).

Researchers at Tohoku University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have unveiled a probabilistic computer prototype. Manufacturable with a near-future technology, the prototype combines a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuit with a limited number of stochastic nanomagnets, creating a heterogeneous probabilistic computer.

The launch is set for July 2028, targeting to arrive at Titan by 2034.

A team of engineering students at the University of Bath have achieved a world first by becoming the first undergraduates to build and successfully run a hydrogen-fueled engine.

Earlier this year, Neuralink implanted a chip inside the brain of 29-year-old US man Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down. The chip has enabled Arbaugh to move a mouse pointer on a screen just by imagining it moving.

A robot is chatting to an elderly British man in his bedroom. The robot has a cheery demeanor and a pleasantly high-pitched voice.

Deepfakes—essentially putting words in someone else's mouth in a very believable way—are becoming more sophisticated by the day and increasingly hard to spot. Recent examples of deepfakes include Taylor Swift nude images, an audio recording of President Joe Biden telling New Hampshire residents not to vote, and a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling on his troops to lay down their arms.

International shipping does not want to be a climate bad guy and is aiming to be emission-free by 2050. A new tool designed by researchers in Trondheim can help shipowners who are searching for green solutions.

It's a sign of the times: an app store for omics enthusiasts. The Multi-Omics Analysis Portal (MAP) by the end of 2024 will be a one-stop shop for computer applications capable of making sense of various and vast omics data. Genomics, proteomics, lipidomics, transcriptomics—all are welcome.

While the world would love to have a quick fix, there is no one specific pathway to stop or slow the rate of climate change.

Canadians are no strangers to water main breaks. Aging equipment, increased demand, seasonal weather changes, and many other factors have added stress to the infrastructure of utilities across Canada.