Tech

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Wi-Fi signals can do much more than deliver streaming movies and music around the home, it turns out: they can also be used to identify shapes through solid walls, as demonstrated in recent experiments. The ability for Wi-Fi to spot movement through walls has been shown off before, but the technology struggles with seeing anything
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Ever since 1911, when British mycologist Michael Cressé Potter noticed that brewer’s yeast generated electricity, scientists have been trying to harness the power of microbial fuel cells. But the efficiencies of tiny, budding ‘bioreactors’ have been too low for practical use. What’s more, it turns out microbes can be surprisingly picky in what substrates they
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In an effort to create robots capable of controlling their own life-cycles, researchers have developed squishy little devices that can melt themselves into a puddle of goo. “We have mimicked death in a life cycle where the robot could end itself,” Seoul National University engineer Min-Ha Oh told Peter Grad at Tech Xplore. This ‘death’
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The soothing sounds of binaural beats are thought to sharpen focus when cramming information into our chock-a-block heads. But a new study has found that binaural beats might actually hinder learning, not help it. Michał Klichowski, a cognitive neuroscientist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, and colleagues wanted to see whether listening to binaural beats
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Amidst the excitement surrounding ChatGPT and the impressive power and potential of artificial intelligence (AI), the impact on the environment has been somewhat overlooked. Analysts predict that AI’s carbon footprint could be as bad – if not worse – than bitcoin mining, which currently generates more greenhouse gases than entire countries. Record-shattering heat across land,
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Scientists are constantly searching for better ways to store renewable energy, and MIT researchers have now found a way to turn cement and an ancient material into a giant supercapacitor. Potentially, this electrified cement could turn building foundations and roads into almost limitless batteries. To create the new substance, a team from the Massachusetts Institute
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Cicada wings can kill and remove bacteria, and now researchers have used simulations to study the functions of blunt spikes on their surface, with some surprising findings. Understanding this natural process could solve a significant healthcare challenge. Medical devices like catheters enable microbial colonization and biofilm formation by providing a surface for bacteria to cling
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ChatGPT is proving to be a rather alluring assistant in many professions, but it’s not without risks, and some companies have banned the chatbot at work. It may seem obvious that uploading work-related information to an online artificial intelligence platform owned by another company is a potential security and privacy breach. Still, ChatGPT can be
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Sourcing human tissue samples for biological investigations isn’t always easy. While they are ethically obtained through organ donation or from tissue that’s removed during surgical procedures, scientists are finding them increasingly difficult to get hold of. And it’s not just because there’s a limited supply of human tissue samples. There’s also restricted availability of the