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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 3-Apr-2026 12:16 ET (3-Apr-2026 16:16 GMT/UTC)

NII, etc. achieve world's first successful demo of rapid optical wavelength-path switching

Research Organization of Information and Systems
Business Announcement

NII, NTT, Inc. and NTT EAST, Inc. have successfully demonstrated the world's first automated optical transport layer control, enabling wavelength-path switching with a wavelength conversion and on-demand wavelength-path provisioning within the APN architecture. These capabilities help maintain network connectivity during severe disasters. The ability to rapidly switch and add optical wavelength-paths is expected to contribute to the realization of a highly reliable and flexible communication infrastructure that supports advanced research.

Wood becomes smart glass: Photo- and electro-chromic membrane switches tint in seconds

Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Engineers in the Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts embed WO₃ and silver nanowires in a densified wood membrane, delivering 78 % optical modulation after 1 000 bends and 120 colour cycles with 96 % retention. The new dual-response composite transmits 86 % of visible light in the bleached state, blocks 92 % of incoming UV, and needs only 7.6 s to darken under 0.6 V. Because the substrate is regenerated cellulose, devices can be recycled by ethanol wiping and re-spraying, avoiding the brittle indium-tin-oxide electrodes that normally end in e-waste.

Journal: Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts

Hong Kong researchers break the single-field barrier with dual-field assisted diamond cutting

International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has created a machining method that takes a clear step beyond all existing field-assisted cutting techniques. Instead of using only one external energy field, such as heat or magnetism, the new approach applies a laser field and a magnetic field at the same time during diamond cutting. This dual-field method offers a way to machine advanced materials that are extremely difficult to process with conventional techniques.

Journal: International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing

Open-sourcing the future of food

Tufts University
Business Announcement

The Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA), which seeks to enable production of meat, milk, and eggs from cells instead of animals, has teamed up with nonprofit partner Good Food Institute to salvage the intellectual property—the inventions and cell lines—of shuttered start-ups to make them publicly available to help nurture the industry.

AI tools speed development of antibody probes to see activity inside living cells

Colorado State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers used Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 and ProteinMPNN to speed development of antibody-based probes that can be used to see key functions and chemical changes inside living cells as they happen. This AI-driven method is significantly faster than previous manual testing and development approaches, allowing the CSU team to rapidly create and test 19 new potential probes. The work enables continuous imaging of living cells, which may help researchers better understand errors in genetic expression that can lead to cancer and other disorders.

Journal: Science Advances

Two wrongs make a right: how two damaging variants can restore health

Pacific Northwest Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists at Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) report that pairs of genetic variants previously classified as damaging can frequently restore normal protein function when present together, overturning a core assumption in human genetics. In a large experimental study of a rare-disease gene, more than 60% of damaging variant pairs rescued enzyme activity. The findings could improve genetic diagnosis and risk prediction for rare disorders by revealing when standard interpretations overestimate disease severity.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

El Niño and La Niña make water extremes move in sync

University of Texas at Austin
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Over the past two decades ENSO, a climate pattern in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that includes El Niño and La Niña, has been the dominant driver of total water storage extremes at the global level. What’s more, the researchers found that ENSO has a synchronizing effect on water storage extremes across continents.

Journal: AGU Advances