Tech Xplore news

Tech Xplore / Pilot system couples seawater desalination with hydrogen production

Seawater holds enormous potential for green hydrogen production, but realizing that potential remains far from straightforward. Direct seawater electrolysis can damage electrodes, whereas conventional freshwater electrolysis ...

Sep 18, 2026
Tech Xplore / Bio-inspired whiskers enable tiny drones to navigate in darkness using touch

Rats and mice can scurry through dark, tight spaces with ease—in caves, underground burrows, buildings or sewers. Their superpower is their whiskers. Now, tiny autonomous drones could soon navigate through darkness, dust ...

Sep 18, 2026
Tech Xplore / Waste from paper production could help make stronger, lower-carbon car materials

Carbon fiber is a key component in automobile manufacturing, aerospace engineering and energy infrastructure, but it mostly relies on petroleum-derived products, which can be expensive and contribute to carbon emissions. ...

Sep 18, 2026
Tech Xplore / Maple-seed-inspired robot flies more accurately with predictive control

A flying robot with just one moving part may sound simple. Controlling one precisely is anything but. Most conventional drones rely on several rotors to control how they rise, turn and move. A robot with only one actuator ...

Sep 18, 2026
Tech Xplore / Cost-conscious method helps design automated materials labs before equipment is purchased

A research team from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed a new modeling and optimization framework that helps researchers design modularized autonomous experimentation (MAE) platforms ...

Sep 18, 2026
Tech Xplore / Ferroelectric material that's stable at near-atomic thickness reveals new route to low-power electronics

Electronics engineers worldwide have been trying to develop increasingly smaller components that can store and process information while consuming less energy. Ferroelectric materials, which possess spontaneous electrical ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / Harvesting hot electrons could break solar panel barrier

Physics predicts that no more than 33% of the solar energy that falls on a solar panel can be converted into electricity. However, experiments and simulations by scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / 'Artificial leaf' generates clean hydrogen from contaminated seawater

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, have designed a device that harvests sunlight to generate clean hydrogen from seawater and simultaneously degrades hydrazine, a highly toxic contaminant from industrial ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / A robot that shifts its own weight to cross land, steps, and water

A robot meant to inspect a coastline, a flooded street or a wetland can't count on one kind of ground. It might need to crawl over a hard surface, climb a bank, scale a curb or a step, then slide into open water, often within ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / AI still isn't as good at recognizing objects as people are, new test shows

Artificial intelligence has gradually made its way into many areas of life with abilities that often match or surpass those of humans. But a study published in the journal iScience finds that AI-powered machines have trouble ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / MRI technique eliminates 'dead time' to capture rapidly fading signals, making scans more precise

A team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart has developed a new method that could make MRI even more precise by eliminating "dead time," a key limiting factor in the measurement process, thereby enabling the detection ...

Sep 17, 2026
Tech Xplore / Chatbot gives teens first-hand experience of cybergrooming tactics without the risk of harm

Virginia Tech researchers are developing virtual tools to help teens protect themselves against cybergrooming. Using survey data from parents and teens and leveraging artificial intelligence, the research team created a chatbot ...

Sep 17, 2026