Tech Xplore

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In the United States, automobile crashes are responsible for about 40,000 deaths and 2 million injuries a year, resulting in an estimated $340 billion in economic costs. In a new study, researchers examined the effectiveness of automated speed cameras, which detect and fine speeding motorists, over a 10-year period.

Circuit diagrams of a conventional probabilistic bit (p-bit) (a) and the proposed DAC-free p-bit. "X" denotes a device whose state fluctuates probabilistically; in this work, it is implemented using a stochastic magnetic tunnel junction whose magnetization direction thermally fluctuates. In the conventional p-bit (a), an analog circuit, namely a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), is required to convert digital input signals into analog ones.

Credit: Ron Lach from Pexels The tech industry's unofficial motto for two decades was "move fast and break things." It was a philosophy that broke more than just taxi monopolies or hotel chains. It also constructed a digital world filled with risks for our most vulnerable.

European plane-maker Airbus said Monday it had detected a "quality issue" affecting metal panels on its popular A320 passenger jet but the problem was "contained". "Airbus confirms it has identified a supplier quality issue affecting a limited number of A320 metal panels," a spokeswoman for the company told AFP, confirming earlier media reports.

When the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act passed in May 2024, it made national headlines. The law was the first of its kind in the U.S. It was a comprehensive attempt to govern "high-risk" artificial intelligence systems across various industries before they could cause real-world harm. Gov. Jared Polis signed it reluctantly—but now, less than a year later, the governor is supporting a federal pause on state-level AI laws.

A new study has shown for the first time that waste cardboard can be used as an effective source of biomass fuel for large-scale power generation. Engineers from the University of Nottingham have provided the first comprehensive characterization of cardboard as a potential fuel source and created a new method to assess the composition of the material, providing a practical tool for fuel assessment for cardboards. The study has been published in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy.

By combining microwave technology with chemical treatment, Felicia Syrén has explored how renewable materials such as jute and paper yarn can be given new properties—and thus new applications within the textile industry. In her doctoral thesis, Syrén investigated how jute can be modified through microwave treatment and impregnation with poly(vinyl alcohol), as well as how paper yarn can be made more suitable for knitting using chemicals already employed in today's textile production.

Researchers from the Institute of Solid State Physics at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with the Shenzhen International Graduate School of Tsinghua University and Suzhou University of Technology, have successfully developed a natural electron donor–assisted healing and targeted surface reconstruction strategy that enables the direct regeneration of degraded lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO₄) cathode materials from retired power batteries.

People are increasingly turning to software to design complex material structures like airplane wings and medical implants. But as design models become more capable, our fabrication techniques haven't kept up. Even 3D printers struggle to reliably produce the precise designs created by algorithms. The problem has led to a disconnect between the ways a material is expected to perform and how it actually works.

When we shop online, a chatbot answers our questions. A virtual assistant helps us track a package. And an AI system guides us through a return of our goods. We have become accustomed to technology by being a customer service representative. But is it actually important to us as customers whether a human or a machine is helping us? A new international meta-analysis shows that artificial agents are in many cases more positively received than you might think.