Tech Xplore news

Tech Xplore / Tiny defects deliver big gains: Controlling oxygen vacancies boosts thermoelectric efficiency by 91%

A research team has dramatically enhanced the efficiency of converting heat into electricity. The key lies in controlling tiny defects known as oxygen vacancies.

Aug 27, 2025 in Engineering
Tech Xplore / Real-time technique directly images material failure in 3D to improve nuclear reactor safety and longevity

MIT researchers have developed a technique that enables real-time, 3D monitoring of corrosion, cracking, and other material failure processes inside a nuclear reactor environment.

Aug 27, 2025 in Engineering
Tech Xplore / Researchers find evidence suggesting ChatGPT influences how we speak

Within five days of ChatGPT's release in 2022, the artificial intelligence chatbot gained more than a million users. Today, more than half of all adults under age 30 and nearly half of adults ages 30–49 say they've used ...

Aug 27, 2025 in Consumer & Gadgets
Tech Xplore / AI prescribes new electrolyte additive combinations for enhanced battery performance

Batteries, like humans, require medicine to function at their best. In battery technology, this medicine comes in the form of electrolyte additives, which enhance performance by forming stable interfaces, lowering resistance ...

Aug 27, 2025 in Energy & Green Tech
Tech Xplore / Reinventing fiber-based pressure sensors with a unique internal structure

Pressure sensors are crucial in many emerging applications, but traditional designs are often bulky or inflexible. In a recent study, researchers from Japan developed a fiber-shaped pressure sensor that overcomes this limitation ...

Aug 27, 2025 in Engineering
Tech Xplore / Starfish-inspired tube feet could help underwater robots get a grip

Soft robotics, which uses flexible and deformable materials, is an emerging field in autonomous systems. It has recently been applied to next-generation tasks such as deep-sea sampling with soft robotic grippers—requiring ...

Aug 27, 2025 in Robotics
Tech Xplore / A new dopant-pairing strategy can boost the stability of cathodes for lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), rechargeable batteries that move lithium ions between the anode (i.e., negative electrode) and cathode (i.e., positive electrode), are used to power most portable electronics on the market today. ...

Aug 26, 2025 in Engineering
Tech Xplore / Can large language models figure out the real world? New metric measures AI's predictive power

In the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler figured out the laws of motion that made it possible to accurately predict where our solar system's planets would appear in the sky as they orbit the sun. But it wasn't ...

Aug 26, 2025 in Computer Sciences
Tech Xplore / Study says AI chatbots need to fix suicide response, as family sues over ChatGPT role in boy's death

A study of how three popular artificial intelligence chatbots respond to queries about suicide found that they generally avoid answering questions that pose the highest risk to the user, such as for specific how-to guidance. ...

Aug 26, 2025 in Machine learning & AI
Tech Xplore / Pre-fatigue training technique doubles the performance of high-strength steel

A NIMS research team has discovered that the fatigue limit of steel is improved by prior cyclic deformation (fatigue) training. Based on this finding, the research team developed a novel pre-fatigue training technique, which ...

Aug 26, 2025 in Engineering
Tech Xplore / Meta's new ultra-thin flat-panel display could change the future of screens

Meta has developed a new flat ultra-thin panel laser display that could lead to lighter, more immersive augmented reality (AR) glasses and improve the picture quality of smartphones, tablets and televisions. The new display ...

Tech Xplore / Digital to analog in one smooth step: Device could replace signal modulators in fiber-optic networks

Addressing a major roadblock in next-generation photonic computing and signal processing systems, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a device that can ...