Data centers power the digital world, storing and processing the vast amounts of information that keep businesses and web-based services running. According to Wangda Zuo, Penn State professor of architectural engineering in the College of Engineering and associate director for research at the Global Building Network, the operating costs for data centers are rising. He said for data centers, cooling is often the primary expense after IT. Servers generate significant heat, requiring temperature regulation to prevent overheating and malfunctions. 

Iowa State researchers are combining bio-based reactions with electricity-driven reactions as a potential step toward transforming chemical manufacturing to a greener industry that’s less dependent on petroleum-based materials and the need to process them with high energies, temperatures and emissions.

New research from the University of Chicago and University of Missouri shows how physical changes in the skull affected the mechanics of the way birds move and use their beaks to eat and explore their habitats — adaptations that helped them evolve into the extraordinarily diverse winged creatures we see today.

The only iguanas outside the Americas, Fiji iguanas are an enigma. A new genetic analysis shows that they are most closely related to the North American desert iguana, having separated about 34 million years ago, around the same time that the islands emerged from the sea. This suggests that the iguanas rafted 5,000 miles across the Pacific from western North America to reach Fiji — the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any land animal.

It may someday be possible to listen to a favorite podcast or song without disturbing the people around you, even without wearing headphones. In a new advancement in audio engineering, a team of researchers led by Yun Jing, professor of acoustics in the Penn State College of Engineering, has precisely narrowed where sound is perceived by creating localized pockets of sound zones, called audible enclaves. In an enclave, a listener can hear sound, while others standing nearby cannot, even if the people are in an enclosed space, like a vehicle, or standing directly in front of the audio source.

Ancient DNA shows an endangered dove species endemic to Cuba is more genetically distinct than the dodo was before it died out.

University of Texas at Dallas scientists are investigating how structures made from several layers of graphene stack up in terms of their fundamental physics and their potential as reconfigurable semiconductors for advanced electronics.

MIT engineers developed a method to grow artificial muscle tissue that twitches and flexes in multiple, coordinated directions. These tissues could be useful for building “biohybrid” robots powered by soft, artificially grown muscle fibers.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system in HR 8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years away that has long been a key target for planet formation studies.

Until now, a global evaluation of ocean current energy with actual data was lacking. Using 30 years of NOAA's Global Drifter Program data, a study shows that ocean currents off Florida’s East Coast and South Africa have exceptionally high-power densities, ideal for electricity generation. With densities over 2,500 watts per square meter, these regions are 2.5 times more energy-dense than “excellent” wind resources. Shallow waters further enhance the potential for ocean current turbines, unlike areas like Japan and South America, which have lower densities at similar depths.