News by Subject Technology & Engineering

From engineered pandemics to city-toppling cyber attacks to nuclear annihilation, life on Earth could radically change, and soon. Scientists will forecast the fate of the planet at a press conference during the 2021 APS April Meeting.

Underground pipelines that transport oil and gas are very important engineering communications worldwide. Some of these underground communications are built and operated in earthquake-prone areas. The research shows that current methods used for calculating stress received by the underground pipelines during an earthquake are incorrect.

Researchers at the Human Interface Technology Lab New Zealand at the University of Canterbury compared the effectiveness of virtual humans to real ones for helping people practice leadership skills. They found that virtual humans with realistic characteristics can be equally effective in these types of training scenarios. This was especially the case in mixed reality settings, which blend real and digital worlds together, providing an anchor to reality that appeared to positively impact performance and engagement.

Spin waves could unlock the next generation of computer technology, a new component allows physicists to control them.

What are the most effective ways to leverage and augment smartphone capabilities? Helpful guidelines are provided in a critical review of emerging smartphone-based imaging systems recently published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO).

Researchers at Duke University have developed a method that uses machine learning, satellite imagery and weather data to autonomously find hotspots of heavy air pollution, city block by city block. The technique could be a boon for finding and mitigating sources of hazardous aerosols, studying the effects of air pollution on human health, and making better informed, socially just public policy decisions.

researchers in Germany have used Europe's most powerful high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to run new and more precise lattice quantum chromodynamics (lattice QCD) calculations of muons in a magnetic field. The team found a different value for the Standard Model prediction of muon behaviour than what was previously accepted.