ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

Microbes can degrade the toughest PFAS

Posted: 23 May 2022 01:28 PM PDT

Engineers now report selective breakdown of a particularly stubborn class of PFAS called fluorinated carboxylic acids (FCAs) by common microorganisms. Under anaerobic conditions, a carbon-carbon double bond is crucial for the shattering the ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bond by microbial communities. The resulting products could be relayed to other microorganisms for defluorination under in aerobic conditions.

Low-cost gel film can pluck drinking water from desert air

Posted: 23 May 2022 01:28 PM PDT

Researchers developed a low-cost gel film made of abundant materials that can pull drinkable water from the air in even the driest climates.

Designers find better solutions with computer assistance, but sacrifice creative touch

Posted: 23 May 2022 12:07 PM PDT

A computer-guided approach to design can propose more solutions and balance out human inexperience and design fixation.

Charting a safe course through a highly uncertain environment

Posted: 23 May 2022 12:06 PM PDT

Researchers have developed a trajectory-planning system for autonomous vehicles that enables them to travel from a starting point to a target location safely, even when there are many different uncertainties in the environment, such as unknown variations in the shapes, sizes, and locations of obstacles.

Small adaptations, major effect: Researchers study potential of future public transportation

Posted: 23 May 2022 12:06 PM PDT

Being mobile individually, at any time -- without owning a car: To facilitate this, public transportation authorities cooperate with service providers for new forms of mobility such as bicycle sharing, car sharing, or ridepooling. Researchers have studied how publicly available mobility options in the Karlsruhe region in the future can optimally fulfill the citizens' needs. The result: Widespread availability of pooling and sharing services and improved public transportation will profit both -- and reduce car traffic.

Twisted soft robots navigate mazes without human or computer guidance

Posted: 23 May 2022 12:06 PM PDT

Researchers have developed soft robots that are capable of navigating complex environments, such as mazes, without input from humans or computer software.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Predict Life-Threatening Bacterial Disease in Dogs

Posted: 23 May 2022 10:50 AM PDT

Veterinarians and researchers have developed a technique to predict leptospirosis in dogs through artificial intelligence. Leptospirosis is a life-threatening bacterial disease dogs can get from drinking contaminated water.

'I don't even remember what I read': People enter a 'dissociative state' when using social media

Posted: 23 May 2022 10:50 AM PDT

Researchers found that people might not be 'addicted' to social media. Instead they get stuck in a state of dissociation, like what happens when you are reading a good book.

New CRISPR-combo boosts genome editing power in plants

Posted: 23 May 2022 10:50 AM PDT

Scientists have developed CRISPR-Combo, a method to edit multiple genes in plants while simultaneously changing the expression of other genes. This new tool will enable genetic engineering combinations that work together to boost functionality and improve breeding of new crops.

Diamond mirrors for high-powered lasers

Posted: 23 May 2022 09:25 AM PDT

Researchers have built a mirror out of one of the strongest materials on the planet: diamond. By etching nanostructures onto the surface of a thin sheet of diamond, the research team built a highly reflective mirror that withstood, without damage, experiments with a 10-kilowatt Navy laser. In the future, the researchers envision these mirrors being used for defense applications, semiconductor manufacturing, industrial manufacturing, and deep space communications.

Novel AI algorithm for digital pathology analysis

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:55 AM PDT

Digital pathology is an emerging field which deals with mainly microscopy images that are derived from patient biopsies. Because of the high resolution, most of these whole slide images (WSI) have a large size, typically exceeding a gigabyte (Gb). Therefore, typical image analysis methods cannot efficiently handle them. Seeing a need, researchers developed a novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm based on a framework called representation learning to classify lung cancer subtype based on lung tissue images from resected tumors.

New recipe for restaurant, app contracts

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:55 AM PDT

A novel contract could help alleviate key sources of conflict between restaurants and food-delivery platforms.

Watching corals breathe: Simultaneously measuring flow and oxygen

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:55 AM PDT

An international research team has developed tiny particles that measure the oxygen concentration in their surroundings. In this way, they can track fluid flow and oxygen content at the same time -- exciting prospects for many fields of research, from biology to physics.

Planets of binary stars as possible homes for alien life

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:55 AM PDT

Nearly half of Sun-size stars are binary. According to new research, planetary systems around binary stars may be very different from those around single stars. This points to new targets in the search for extraterrestrial life forms.

New tech aims to drive down costs of hydrogen fuel

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:54 AM PDT

Researchers have developed a new technique for extracting hydrogen gas from liquid carriers which is faster, less expensive and more energy efficient than previous approaches.

Hydrogen production method opens up clean energy possibilities

Posted: 23 May 2022 08:49 AM PDT

A new energy-efficient way to produce hydrogen gas from ethanol and water has the potential to make clean hydrogen fuel a more viable alternative for gasoline to power cars.

Custom 'headphones' boost atomic radio reception 100-fold

Posted: 23 May 2022 07:22 AM PDT

Researchers have boosted the sensitivity of their atomic radio receiver a hundredfold by enclosing the small glass cylinder of cesium atoms inside what looks like custom copper 'headphones.'

Spinning is key for line-dancing electrons in iron selenide

Posted: 23 May 2022 06:33 AM PDT

Quantum physicists have answered a puzzling question at the forefront of research into iron-based superconductors: Why do electrons in iron selenide dance to a different tune when they move right and left rather than forward and back? In a new study, the researchers report the discovery of high-energy spin anisotropy that occurs concurrently with electronic nematicity in iron selenide.

Charging a green future: Latest advancement in lithium-ion batteries could make them ubiquitous

Posted: 19 May 2022 07:38 AM PDT

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) power electric vehicles and electronics. With the prevalence of these set to increase, efforts have been directed towards improving the performance and longevity of LIBs. Now researchers have shown that adding a specific polymer composite binder to the silicon anode of LIBs can improve its structural stability significantly, making it viable for much more powerful, long-lasting LIBs, and changing the future of the technologies it drives.