Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that foams — from soap suds to food emulsions — are not static, as long assumed, but instead continuously reorganize themselves in ways that mathematically resemble how modern AI systems learn.

Researchers have created a self-healing composite that is tougher than materials currently used in aircraft wings, turbine blades and other applications – and can repair itself more than 1,000 times. The researchers estimate their self-healing strategy can extend the lifetime of conventional fiber-reinforced composite materials by centuries compared to the current decades-long design-life.

Converting the vibrations generated by water currents in contact with an object into energy. This is the basis of the new system designed by Francisco Huera, a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). The device harnesses the energy of water currents from the vibrations that occur when water passes around a cylinder and creates vortices behind it. This method has a very simple structure: a submerged cylindrical tube hanging from an axis that oscillates like a pendulum when the water current makes it vibrate. The results of this research have been published in the Journal of Fluids and Structures.

With speech technologies becoming increasingly common, engineering researchers want to make sure we don’t give away more information than we mean to.

Chemical looping fluidized bed reactors are an innovative technology for green hydrogen and chemical production. Recently, researchers have comprehensively reviewed the latest developments in chemical looping, with a focus on fluidized bed design and oxygen carrier performance. The findings of the study can pave the way for low-emission power generation, inherent carbon dioxide separation, carbon footprint reduction, and industrial decarbonization.

Coffee beans that pass through the digestive tracts of animals get their unique flavors from the activity of gut microbes, report researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo. The guts of Asian elephants that produce Black Ivory coffee (BIC) were rich in pectin-digesting bacteria. Heat-driven degradation of pectin during roasting makes coffee bitter. Bacterial activity that reduces the pectin content of BIC could be the source of its smoother, chocolaty, and less bitter flavor.