EurekAlert! News by Subject: Tech & Engineering - News by Subject: Tech & Engineering

Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Nov-2025 16:11 ET (21-Nov-2025 21:11 GMT/UTC)

ORNL leads three INFUSE projects solving fusion challenges

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

ORNL has been selected to lead three research collaborations with fusion industry partners as part of the 2025 cohort of the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy program. The awarded projects will tap ORNL’s deep expertise in fusion materials, plasma diagnostics and advanced modeling and simulation to solve practical challenges and develop new technologies to accelerate the development of fusion energy.

Funder: Fusion Energy Sciences

Interactive apps, AI chatbots promote playfulness, reduce privacy concerns

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The more interactive a mobile app or artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is, the more playful they are perceived to be, with users letting their guard down and risking their privacy, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State.

Journal: Behaviour and Information Technology

When the wireless data runs dry

University of Pittsburgh
Grant and Award Announcement

Wei Gao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, has collaborated with researchers from Peking University to develop analytical metrics to qualitatively evaluate the quality of synthetic wireless data. The researchers have created a novel framework that significantly improves the task-driven training of AI models using synthetic wireless data.

NJIT student–faculty team wins best presentation award for ant swarm simulation

New Jersey Institute of Technology
Reports and Proceedings

NJIT's Matthew Loges ’25 and Assistant Professor Tomer Weiss explored how the collective behavior of ants — acting like both fluids and elastic materials — can inspire breakthroughs in engineering materials, robotics and traffic control. Their simulation work, recognized at the prestigious ACM SIGGRAPH conference, highlights how studying biological swarm dynamics may lead to innovations such as self-healing concrete and smarter multi-agent systems.

Meeting: ACM SIGGRAPH 2025

Wheat disease losses total $2.9 billion across the United States and Canada between 2018 and 2021

American Phytopathological Society
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new multiyear study has revealed that between 2018 and 2021, wheat diseases caused the loss of approximately 560 million bushels—valued at US$2.9 billion, or $18.10 per acre, in farmer revenue—across 29 U.S. states and Ontario, Canada.

Journal: Plant Health Progress
Funder: Grain Farmers of Ontario, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Construction secrets of honeybees: Study reveals how bees build hives in tricky spots

University of Colorado at Boulder
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In a new study, CU researchers found that honeybees used adaptive strategies to build stable, usable honeycomb on irregular and imperfect surfaces.

Journal: PLOS Biology

Cheaper, sustainable plant biomanufacturing on Earth and in space

University of California - Davis
Grant and Award Announcement

Researchers at UC Davis have been awarded a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to develop new technologies and workforce training programs to grow plants in low-resource environments both on Earth and in space.

Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation