Critical lifeline systems such as transportation networks, water supply, and energy infrastructure are increasingly exposed to extreme natural hazards. A newly published review highlights how smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), a powerful mesh-free numerical method, is transforming the simulation and visualization of complex lifeline disasters such as dam-break floods and debris flows, offering new opportunities for emergency safety assessment and disaster mitigation.

The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has received a donation of 5 million euros from Canadian philanthropist and entrepreneur Garrett Camp to help advance AI as a trustworthy, human-centered technology that benefits society. ISTA’s commitment to responsible AI, coupled with its focus on frontier research and interdisciplinary culture, make it perfectly placed to pursue this goal.

Researchers in James Tour’s lab at Rice University showed that Thomas Edison’s original carbon-filament light bulbs could have inadvertently produced graphene more than a century ago. By recreating Edison’s 1879 design and applying modern analysis, the team demonstrated that briefly heating carbon filaments can form turbostratic graphene, linking historic experiments to cutting-edge materials science.