There’s a lion’s share of potential energy in the vibrations produced by footsteps on dance floors, exercise machines in the gym, or the engines of cars, planes or construction equipment. Some tech companies have already begun to harvest electricity from waste vibrations to power lights and recharge batteries using a class of piezoelectric ceramic materials, which emit electrical charges when stepped on or manipulated.

Sometimes, less really is more. By removing oxygen during synthesis, a team led by materials scientists at Penn State created seven new high-entropy oxides, or HEOs: a class of ceramics composed of five or more metals with potential for applications in energy storage, electronics and protective coatings.

Ferroelectric materials are used in devices ranging from ultrasounds to miniature speakers in cell phones. The materials commonly used today, however, are lead-based and therefore toxic.

A National Science Foundation grant will help University of Delaware researchers create more secure computer chips by using AI and other tools to predict and counter hardware threats early in design.

University of Maine students will soon be able to gather around lab-scale ocean structures, attach sensors, run tests and watch real-time data stream into a digital dashboard as part of a new internship program. These experiences will center on digital twin technology, in which participants use this data-driven, virtual modeling approach to support smarter decision-making. This effort will support 48 undergraduate and graduate students through eight-week summer and year-round internships over the next three years, preparing them for careers in digital twin technology and the blue economy.

Published in PLOS Water, the study reveals that phosphate used in such treatment can leak into streams and reshape their chemistry and health

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has combined deep botanical knowledge with powerful genomic technology to decode and mine the DNA of non-flowering seed plants and uncover genes that evolved to help plants build seeds. These findings, published in Nature Communications, may aid scientists in improving seed crop production in agriculture and in the conservation of these ancient endangered seed plants.