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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 4-Nov-2025 16:10 ET (4-Nov-2025 21:10 GMT/UTC)

Empowering robots with human-like perception to navigate unwieldy terrain

Duke University
Reports and Proceedings

Researchers from Duke University have developed a novel framework named WildFusion that fuses vision, vibration and touch to enable robots to “sense” and navigate complex outdoor environments much like humans do.

Funder: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Army Research Laboratory
Meeting: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

R. Rex and Carrol Parris make $10 million gift to launch USC Longevity Research Accelerator at Keck School of Medicine

Keck School of Medicine of USC
Grant and Award Announcement

Keck School of Medicine of USC will launch a new research initiative focused on extending the human health span with a $10 million transformative gift from R. Rex Parris and his wife Carrol Parris. The USC Parris Longevity Accelerator, to be led by Denis Evseenko, MD, PhD, professor of orthopedic surgery and regenerative medicine, will bring together experts from engineering, stem cell research and gerontology to uncover predictive biomarkers of aging and develop early interventions for age-related diseases. The USC Parris Longevity Accelerator aims to create treatments for major age-associated conditions like osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative disorders, with the goal of bringing them to clinical trials within a few years.

Funder: R. Rex and Carrol Parris

Team creates light-activated therapy to target hard-to-treat cancer

University of Texas at Dallas
Grant and Award Announcement

University of Texas at Dallas bioengineers, in collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, are developing an enhanced light-activated immunotherapy approach that could one day treat patients with stomach cancer that has spread throughout the abdomen.

The approach uses lab-designed molecules and far-red or near-infrared light to “prime” the immune system to help it attack stubborn cancer cells, said Dr. Girgis Obaid, assistant professor of bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

The US has a new most powerful laser

University of Michigan
Business Announcement

The ZEUS laser facility at the University of Michigan has roughly doubled the peak power of any other laser in the U.S. with its first official experiment at 2 petawatts (2 quadrillion watts).

New BU study examines how a protein called PAX3 controls genes in melanoma

Boston University School of Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

PAX3 is a transcription factor (proteins involved in converting DNA into RNA) that drives melanoma progression by promoting cell growth, migration and survival, while inhibiting cellular terminal differentiation, which is the final stage where a cell becomes specialized and cell division ends. However, known PAX3 target genes are limited and cannot fully explain the wide impact of PAX3 function, suggesting that there are most likely many other genes that PAX3 controls that are undiscovered.

The PAX3 protein can regulate DNA through two separate binding domains, the paired domain (PD) and homeodomain (HD), which bind different DNA motifs, short recurring sequences within a DNA strand that regulate gene expression. It is not clear if these two domains bind and work together to regulate genes and if they promote all or only a subset of downstream cellular events.

A new study by researchers at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine has discovered that PAX3 mainly uses the PD to bind to the DNA, and that it mostly turns on genes—many of which help cells grow and make other proteins – activities that support cancer growth.

Journal: Genes

With evolutionary AI, scientists find hidden keys for better land use

University of Texas at Austin
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new AI decision making tool effectively balances various complex trade-offs to recommend ways of maximizing carbon storage, minimizing economic disruptions and helping improve the environment and people’s everyday lives. It uses evolutionary AI, a kind of digital version of biological natural selection, to optimize policies in the face of competing priorities.

Journal: Environmental Data Science

Scientists use salinity to trace changes in the US Northeast Coastal Ocean

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The near-bottom water on the U.S. Northeast continental shelf provides a critical cold-water habitat for the rich regional marine ecosystem. This “cold pool” preserves winter temperatures, even when waters elsewhere become too warm or salty during the summer.

• The U.S. Northeast coastal ocean has experienced accelerated warming in recent years, compared to the global average. Now, scientists using salt as a tracer are investigating how much the influx of salty offshore water onto the continental shelf contributes to the observed “erosion” of the seasonal cold pool.

• This paper provides the first evidence for a seasonal salinification of the cold pool on the US Northeast continental shelf, as consistently observed in the multi-year mooring record of the [Ocean Observatories Initiative] Coastal Pioneer Array.

Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans
Funder: NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team, National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Ocean Science Division, George E. Thibault Early Career Scientist Fund, Scripps Chair for Excellence in Oceanography.