Tech & Engineering
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 3-Apr-2026 00:15 ET (3-Apr-2026 04:15 GMT/UTC)
How can cocoa farmers adapt to climate change?
University of GöttingenPeer-Reviewed Publication
Climate change threatens agricultural production across sub-Saharan Africa, where most farmers rely on rainfall. A study by researchers at the University of Göttingen and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre shows that Ghanaian cocoa farmers who cultivate cocoa under shade trees – a practice known as agroforestry – are better able to withstand periods of reduced rainfall. However, the study also finds that these benefits are confined to Ghana’s wetter regions, which have a climate that better suits growing cocoa. In drier regions, where water is already scarce, the researchers find no significant advantages of agroforestry in maintaining yields during times of less rainfall. The results were published in the journal Agricultural Systems.
- Journal
- Agricultural Systems
Numerical study of a parabolic-trough CPV-T collector with spectral-splitting liquid filters
Higher Education PressConventional photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) collectors have coupled electrical and thermal outputs, limiting the temperature of the delivered thermal energy typically to < 60 °C. Concentrating PV-T (CPV-T) collector designs can reach higher temperatures, but cell overheating from similar coupling limitations reduces their electrical efficiency. Spectral splitting—dividing the solar spectrum so that only useful wavelengths reach the PV cells—promises to break this compromise, yet to go beyond previous studies and propose advanced spectral-splitting CPV-T designs capable of breakthrough performance, it is necessary to develop fully coupled optical, electrical and thermal-fluid models validated at the collector scale.
- Journal
- Frontiers in Energy
Pulsed laser deposition ushers in the hydrogen energy era via atomic-scale fabrication
Opto-Electronic Journals GroupPeer-Reviewed Publication
- Journal
- Opto-Electronic Advances
PollinERA publishes its first policy brief “Reforming EU chemical risk assessment: from regulatory bottlenecks to systems solution”
Pensoft PublishersReports and Proceedings
LLM-driven cognitive diagnosis with SOLO taxonomy: A model-agnostic framework
Higher Education PressWith the development of the Internet and intelligent education systems, the significance of cognitive diagnosis has become increasingly acknowledged. Cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) aim to characterize learners’ cognitive states based on their responses to a series of exercises. However, conventional CDMs often struggle with less frequently observed learners and items, primarily due to limited prior knowledge. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) offer a promising avenue for infusing rich domain information into CDMs. However, integrating LLMs directly into CDMs poses significant challenges. While LLMs excel in semantic comprehension, they are less adept at capturing the fine-grained and interactive behaviours central to cognitive diagnosis. Moreover, the inherent difference between LLMs’ semantic representations and CDMs’ behavioural feature spaces hinders their seamless integration. To address these issues, this research proposes a model-agnostic framework to enhance the knowledge of CDMs through LLMs extensive knowledge. It enhances various CDM architectures by leveraging LLM-derived domain knowledge and the structure of observed learning outcomes taxonomy. It operates in two stages: first, LLM diagnosis, which simultaneously assesses learners via educational techniques to establish a richer and a more comprehensive knowledge representation; second, cognitive level alignment, which reconciles the LLM’s semantic space with the CDM’s behavioural domain through contrastive learning and mask-reconstruction learning. Empirical evaluations on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly improves diagnostic accuracy and underscoring the value of integrating LLM-driven semantic knowledge into traditional cognitive diagnosis paradigms.
- Journal
- Frontiers of Digital Education
ITU Member States set path for bringing digital benefits to all
International Telecommunication UnionReports and Proceedings
Universal, meaningful connectivity at centre of global strategy for human-centred digital development