EurekAlert! News by Subject: Tech & Engineering - News by Subject: Tech & Engineering

Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 29-Dec-2025 16:11 ET (29-Dec-2025 21:11 GMT/UTC)

AI-created materials could make your energy bill cheaper

University of Texas at Austin
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin used machine learning and artificial intelligence to develop new materials that could keep your house cooler and reduce energy bills.

Journal: Nature

First-of-its-kind study finds striking parallels between biological and artificial intelligence during social interaction

University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A first-of-its-kind study reveals that when mice interact socially, specific brain cell types synchronize in "shared neural spaces," and AI agents develop analogous patterns when engaging in social behaviors.

Journal: Nature
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health

Paper outlines catalytic process to make eco-friendly plastics from natural polymer

Colorado State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study led by Colorado State University Distinguished Professor Eugene Chen outlines a path to creating advanced, recyclable plastics. Published in Nature, the study describes a breakthrough method for upconverting a natural polymer that is usually made by microorganisms into a wide range of new and more sustainable high-performance materials as well as valuable chiral small molecules for organic and polymer synthesis.

Journal: Nature

“Sniffing” bodily fluids to diagnose bacterial infections and detect antimicrobial resistance

Cell Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Tiny sensors, similar to breathalyzers, could “sniff out” bacterial infections and detect antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in bodily fluids, says a team of engineers, microbiologists, and machine learning experts in an opinion paper publishing July 2 in the Cell Press journal Cell Biomaterials. Developing this technology could provide affordable and rapid diagnostic tests, which would improve treatment plans and help combat antibiotic resistance.

Journal: Cell Biomaterials
Funder: Helmut Horten Foundation, Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation, Swiss National Science Foundation, University of Zurich

Clingy planets can trigger own doom, suspect Cheops and TESS

European Space Agency
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have caught an exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits. These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year.

This is the first-ever evidence for a ‘planet with a death wish’. Though it was theorised to be possible since the nineties, the flares seen in this research are around 100 times more energetic than expected.

Journal: Nature

Robots could one day crawl across the moon. These undergrads are laying the groundwork

University of Colorado at Boulder
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In the not-so-distant future, humans could train to operate robots on the moon using hyper-realistic virtual reality simulations, or "digital twins."

Journal: Advances in Space Research

Foundation models for the process industry: challenges and opportunities

Higher Education Press

Professor Lei Ren’s team has proposed ProcessFM, the first foundational model framework tailored for the process industry. ProcessFM integrates data, mechanisms, knowledge, and computation across four systematic layers. It is designed to address industrial challenges through six core capabilities, enabling trustworthy and intelligent solution for manufacturing industry.

Journal: Engineering