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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 11-Jun-2026 16:16 ET (11-Jun-2026 20:16 GMT/UTC)

Strengthening asphalt roads with a unique green ingredient: Algae

American Chemical Society
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Snow and ice can damage paved surfaces, leading to frost heaves and potholes. These become potential hazards for drivers and pedestrians and are expensive to fix. Now, researchers propose in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering a figurative and literal green solution to improve the durability of roads and sidewalks: an algae-derived asphalt binder. For temperatures below freezing, results indicated that the algae binder reduced asphalt cracks when compared to a conventional, petroleum-based binder.

Journal: ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

World's smallest programmable robot perform tasks

University of Michigan
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The world's smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots have debuted at the University of Pennsylvania, sporting a brain developed at the University of Michigan.

Journal: Science Robotics
Funder: National Science Foundation

UT Health Sciences researchers demonstrate breakthroughs in cancer treatment quality through AI-enhanced data analytics

University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Cancer researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have published three groundbreaking studies demonstrating how advanced artificial intelligence and population health analytics can identify and address barriers to quality cancer care.

Funder: Tennessee Department of Health

Engineered material uses light to destroy PFAS, other contaminants

Rice University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Materials scientists at Rice and collaborators have developed a material that uses light to break down a range of pollutants in water, including “forever chemicals” or PFAS.

Journal: Materials Today
Funder: Air Force Research Laboratory, Welch Foundation

New phenotyping platform identifies key drought-tolerance genes in soybean

Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team has developed a low-cost, high-throughput phenotyping platform that continuously measures plant transpiration, enabling real-time monitoring of drought response.

Journal: Plant Phenomics

New AI model segments crop diseases with just a few images

Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team has now developed a new few-shot semantic segmentation framework, SegPPD-FS, capable of identifying infected regions from only one or a few labeled samples.

Journal: Plant Phenomics

Mayo Clinic smartwatch system helps parents shorten and defuse children's severe tantrums early

Mayo Clinic
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a smartwatch-based alert system that signals parents at the earliest signs of a tantrum in children with emotional and behavioral disorders — prompting them to intervene before it intensifies.

Journal: JAMA Network Open
Funder: Mayo Clinic Clinical Trial Stimulus Fund, Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine

What makes a good proton conductor?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT researchers created a way to predict how efficiently materials can transfer protons in clean energy, low-power computing devices and other advanced technologies.

Journal: Matter
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Center – Hydrogen in Energy and Information Sciences, National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program

Buffalo's deadly blizzard revealed when travel bans lose their power over time

NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Peer-Reviewed Publication

When Buffalo, New York’s devastating December 2022 blizzard claimed more than 30 lives, it exposed a hard reality: even life-saving travel bans can lose their force over time, especially when residents face situations where compliance becomes difficult. Researchers at NYU Tandon and RIT have now developed a way to help authorities anticipate when these breakdowns may begin.

Journal: Transport Policy