Water resources: Defusing conflict, promoting cooperation

Rivers are lifelines for many countries. They create valuable ecosystems, provide drinking water for people and raw water for agriculture and industry. In the Global South in particular, there is strong competition for access to freshwater resources. The increasing use…

DeepMind and EMBL release the most complete database of predicted 3D structures of human proteins

Partners use AlphaFold, the AI system recognised last year as a solution to the protein structure prediction problem, to release more than 350,000 protein structure predictions including the entire human proteome to the scientific community

‘Wrapping’ anodes in 3D carbon nanosheets: The next big thing in li-ion battery technology

Study finds that anchoring manganese selenide nanoparticles, an anode material, in 3D carbon nanosheets prevents their expansion in lithium-ion batteries

Global approach is needed on battery regulation

New European Union regulations on batteries could offer a huge boost to the global decarbonisation mission – but only if it leverages its political and economic weight to ensure a fairer global marketplace. According to a team of scientists and…

Smartphone screens effective sensors for soil or water contamination

The touchscreen technology used in billions of smartphones and tablets could also be used as a powerful sensor, without the need for any modifications. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated how a typical touchscreen could be used to…

Zero-dimensional molecular sieve membranes enhance gas separation selectivity

Classical molecular sieve membranes, with 3D microparticles and 2D nanosheets as primary building blocks, are promising in chemical separation. Separation within such membranes relies on molecular movement and transport though their intrinsic or artificial nanopores. Since the weak connections by…

Dynamic heart model mimics hemodynamic loads, advances engineered heart tissue technology

Efforts to understand cardiac disease progression and develop therapeutic tissues that can repair the human heart are just a few areas of focus for the Feinberg research group at Carnegie Mellon University. The group’s latest dynamic model, created in partnership…

Take two: Integrating neuronal perspectives for richer results

Every brain function, from standing up to deciding what to have for dinner, involves neurons interacting. Studies focused on neuronal interactions extend across domains in neuroscience, primarily using the approaches of spike count correlation or dimensionality reduction. Pioneering research from…

Nanostructures enable record high-harmonic generation

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell researchers have developed nanostructures that enable record-breaking conversion of laser pulses into high-harmonic generation, paving the way for new scientific tools for high-resolution imaging and studying physical processes that occur at the scale of an attosecond…

Glass sponges have properties for the design of ships, planes and skyscrapers

Published in the journal Nature the first-ever simulation of the deep-sea Venus flower sponge and how it responds to and influences the flow of nearby water.

Team streamlines neural networks to be more adept at computing on encrypted data

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, July 21, 2021 – This week, at the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 21), researchers at the NYU Center for Cyber Security at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering are revealing new insights into…

Mind and matter: Modeling the human brain with machine learning

Researchers from Japan construct a human brain model using a machine learning-based optimization of required user information

Solar cells: Layer of three crystals produces a thousand times more power

The photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a lattice. This has been revealed in a study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). They…

New technology shows promise in detecting, blocking grid cyberattacks

Researchers from Idaho National Laboratory and New Mexico-based Visgence Inc. have designed and demonstrated a technology that can block cyberattacks from impacting the nation’s electric power grid. During a recent live demonstration at INL’s Critical Infrastructure Test Range Complex, the…

Neural model seeks ‘inappropriateness’ to reduce chatbot awkwardness

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from Mobile TeleSystems have introduced the notion of inappropriate text messages and released a neural model capable of detecting them, along with a large collection of such messages for further research. Among the potential…

NASA returns Hubble Space Telescope to science operations

NASA has returned the science instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to operational status, and the collection of science data will now resume. This will be the first science data collected since the payload computer experienced a problem on June…

An automated flight control system for drone swarms has been developed

“The project’s main objective is to integrate a certain degree of automation, so that an operator can control a small fleet of up to 10 drones from a single ground station,” says Luis E. Moreno, LABYRINTH’s coordinator and researcher at…

Bonding’s next top model — Projecting bond properties with machine learning

Tokyo, Japan – Designing materials that have the necessary properties to fulfill specific functions is a challenge faced by researchers working in areas from catalysis to solar cells. To speed up development processes, modeling approaches can be used to predict…