Tech Xplore

Scientists have taken solar cells to new depths, demonstrating that they can function 10 meters (33 feet) below the surface of the South China Sea. The study, published Sept. 11 in the journal Joule, found that solar cells could generate 324 megawatt-hours of energy—enough to charge lithium-ion batteries—when submerged for two hours and could operate continuously at a depth of 10 meters (33 feet) for about 5.5 years. The findings suggest that underwater solar cells may be able to power submerged sensors, cameras and communication systems far from land.

WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems for websites. Plugins are very popular among developers and users because they allow websites to be customized with functionality tailored to individual needs.

The transition to cleaner energy is reshaping the way energy is produced and consumed. It is also redefining how engineers manage the infrastructure left behind. Across the United States, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells remain after production has ceased. As they age, some begin releasing methane through deteriorating well barriers, and those emissions can't always be traced by conventional inspection methods.

There is a modern adage: If you don't want it on the internet, don't put it on the internet. However, a review of research into social media privacy in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy has found that legal and ethical protections are not keeping pace with the volume of personal information collected and shared online. Moreover, much inferred information that people don't deliberately share can now be gleaned by interested third parties from their social media activity.

The world needs more homes. The world also has too much plastic. Perhaps the only thing those two problems have in common is that they're hard to solve.

William Overman began his Ph.D. program at Stanford Graduate School of Business at an auspicious moment: just two months before ChatGPT launched publicly in November 2022, exploding the widely held understanding of what machines are capable of.

A new deep-learning architecture could deflect cyberattacks by combining several methods for analyzing network traffic, according to research published in the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining. The approach addresses a weakness in standard intrusion-detection systems, which struggle with the volume and complexity of modern network traffic.

Scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a camera-based inspection system that can monitor complex 3D-printed structures layer by layer, using AI and machine learning (ML) to measure tiny variations and potentially identify problems before a part ever leaves the printer.

The question of how to ethically decommission an AI system may sound like the least of humanity's current concerns, but a world-renowned AI expert says it's a challenge we need to address now—before synthetic consciousness becomes reality.

Monitoring the lifespan of a lithium-ion battery without disassembling it may be possible. This prospect emerged from a study published in May in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science by researchers at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and their collaborators. The scientists created an advanced computational model to investigate these energy sources and discovered that natural voltage fluctuations act as an "X-ray" of the system. This reveals the microscopic structure of battery materials and the speed of the chemical reactions occurring within them. The finding paves the way for rapid, low-cost diagnostics in energy storage.