Tech Xplore news
Tech Xplore / Fungi turn shredded mattress foam into lightweight building insulation
Swinburne researchers have turned old, unwanted mattresses into safe and sustainable building insulation materials using fungi. The team grew a common fungus together with shredded mattress foam to create a new material that ...
Tech Xplore / 'Discovery learning' AI tool predicts battery cycle life with just a few days' data
An agentic AI tool for battery researchers harnesses data from previous battery designs to predict the cycle life of new battery concepts. With information from just 50 cycles, the tool—developed at University of Michigan ...
Tech Xplore / A programmable, Lego-like material for robots emulates life's flexibility
Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds of individual cells in ...
Tech Xplore / Unhackable metasurface holograms: Security technology can lock information with light color and distance
A research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has developed a secure hologram platform that operates solely based on the wavelength of light and the spacing between metasurface ...
Tech Xplore / Neptunium study yields plutonium insights for space exploration
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are breathing new life into the scientific understanding of neptunium, a unique, radioactive, metallic element—and a key precursor for production of ...
Tech Xplore / Your future home might be framed with printed plastic
The plastic bottle you just tossed in the recycling bin could provide structural support for your future house. MIT engineers are using recycled plastic to 3D print construction-grade beams, trusses, and other structural ...
Tech Xplore / They're robots, and they're here to help: Computer scientist improves robot interactions with human beings
Friendly robots, the ones people love to love, are quirky: R2-D2, C-3PO, WALL-E, BB-8, Marvin, Roz and Baymax. They're emotional, prone to panic or bossy, empathetic and able to communicate like humans do—even when they ...
Tech Xplore / Octopus-inspired 'smart skin' uses 4D printing to morph on cue
Despite the prevalence of synthetic materials across different industries and scientific fields, most are developed to serve a limited set of functions. To address this inflexibility, researchers at Penn State, led by Hongtao ...
Tech Xplore / MoSi₂ shows transverse thermoelectric effect, converting waste heat to electricity
Thermoelectric conversion devices offer a promising route for sustainable heat-to-energy conversion. They are particularly attractive for recovering energy from waste heat, such as that produced by conventional fossil fuel-based ...
Tech Xplore / Novel approach to a key biofuel production step captures an elusive energy source
Plants grown for biofuel have the potential to power our travel industry, but an important fraction of their chemical power has remained stubbornly difficult to recover. New research from the Center for Advanced Biofuel and ...
Tech Xplore / New AI system fixes 3D printing defects in real time
Additive manufacturing has revolutionized manufacturing by enabling customized, cost-effective products with minimal waste. However, with the majority of 3D printers operating on open-loop systems, they are notoriously prone ...
Tech Xplore / A mathematical framework for optimizing robotic joints
Consider the marvelous physics of the human knee. The largest hinge joint in the body, it has two rounded bones held together by ligaments that not only swing like a door, but also roll and glide over each other, allowing ...
