Author: Derek Smith
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You’re just a stick figure to this camera
The anonymity could reduce unnecessary surveillance in an age of smart devices.
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Nanoscale engineering brings light-twisting materials to more extreme settings
New manufacturing method builds tougher materials that were previously considered useless for twisting light into more robust optical devices.
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Managing screen time by making phones slightly more annoying to use
Delaying a phone’s swiping and tapping functions forces users to think harder, making it easier for them to consider whether to keep scrolling.
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New $14.5M center to help US Navy overcome emerging challenges
The center will connect faculty, students, postdocs and US Navy engineers, building a community to find cutting-edge solutions to naval and marine engineering issues.
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Snowfall and drought: $4.8M field study to improve western US forecasts
A mountaintop laboratory and a suite of radar instruments will study winter storms from large-scale cloud movement down to individual snowflakes in an NSF-funded project.
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Better battery manufacturing: Robotic lab vets new reaction design strategy
Mixing unconventional ingredients in just the right order can make complex materials with fewer impurities. The robotic lab that tested the idea could be widely adopted.
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Seeing the sun in a new light
For scientists, students and the rest of us, the April 2024 eclipse helped illuminate some of the sun’s deepest mysteries.
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New reactor could save millions when making ingredients for plastics and rubber from natural gas
With oil production dropping, a process using natural gas is needed to avert a shortage of a workhorse chemical used for automotive parts, cleaning products and more.
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Targeting multiple COVID variants through the twist in the spike protein
Particles that gum up the keys that the virus uses to enter cells could one day be an effective COVID treatment whenever vaccines and other treatments fall short.
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Widely used AI tool for early sepsis detection may be cribbing doctors’ suspicions
When using only data collected before patients with sepsis received treatments or medical tests, the model’s accuracy was no better than a coin toss.
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Beating the freeze: Up to $11.5M for eco-friendly control over ice and snow
Taking a page from nature’s book could allow humans to mitigate subzero temperatures without harming the environment
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Is lung cancer treatment working? This chip can tell from a blood draw
By trapping and concentrating tiny numbers of cancer cells from blood samples, the device can identify whether a treatment is working at the four-week mark.