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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 30-Oct-2026 21:16 ET (31-Oct-2026 01:16 GMT/UTC)

Smartwatches and GPS show promise for tracking environmental impacts on health in real time

The Graduate Center, CUNY
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new pilot study led by researchers at The City University of New York demonstrates the feasibility of combining wearable devices, smartphone location data, and real-time surveys to capture individuals’ environmental exposures and their immediate physical and emotional effects.

Journal: JMIR Formative Research

Plant stress and unique cAMP signaling

Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The molecule cAMP, which plays essential roles in mammalian cells, is less well understood in plants. In a new Science Advances paper, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and international collaborators demonstrate that plants use two forms of cAMP in parallel to regulate normal cellular processes and respond to stress, while maintaining crosstalk between them. That crosstalk provides redundancy, so that if one fails, the other can compensate, allowing plants to respond more robustly to a wider range of environmental factors. Ultimately, the findings could help improve crop resilience and productivity in a rapidly changing climate.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: H2020 European Research Council, Austrian Science Fund, Taif University, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

ORNL names Kate Evans associate lab director for biological, environmental systems science

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Business Announcement

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has named Katherine (Kate) Evans as associate laboratory director for the Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate (BESSD). Evans will lead the directorate as it advances the science and technology needed to strengthen energy security, safeguard infrastructure and accelerate biotechnology innovation.

Hertz Foundation announces 19 recipients of the 2026 Hertz Fellowship

Fannie and John Hertz Foundation
Grant and Award Announcement

The Hertz Foundation, the nation’s preeminent nonprofit organization committed to advancing American scientific and technological leadership, has announced 19 recipients of the 2026 Hertz Fellowship in the applied sciences, engineering and mathematics. Awarded through a rigorous selection process honed over eight decades, the Hertz Fellowship is the nation’s most competitive doctoral fellowship in science and technology. Hertz Fellows receive up to five years of financial support — a stipend and full tuition equivalent — offering the rare freedom to pursue bold ideas and a community of influential peers dedicated to their success.

Funder: Hertz Foundation

USDOT awards $10 million to OU-led autonomous freight movement project

University of Oklahoma
Grant and Award Announcement

Researchers from the University of Oklahoma’s Gallogly College of Engineering are helping address logistical and safety challenges on American roadways throough a major research project backed by federal funding.

Funder: U.S. Department of Transportation

Causes of excess deaths in the US compared with other high-income countries

JAMA Network
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About The Study: In this repeated cross-sectional study of cross-national mortality, the U.S. had substantially higher death rates than other high-income countries between 1999 and 2022, despite having similar access to advanced medical technology. Many of these excess U.S. deaths could likely be avoided by adopting health and social policies that have benefited other high-income countries. These descriptive findings should be interpreted in light of uncertainty arising from differences in death coding, data completeness, and other aspects of data comparability across countries.

Journal: JAMA Network Open

Physician-reported safety outcomes of AI-generated hospital course summaries

JAMA Network
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About The Study: In this study, a large language model-based agentic workflow produced hospital course summaries that were frequently used with minimal risk of harm identified. The intervention was associated with a reduction in physician burnout, supporting the viability of AI summarization to mitigate documentation burden.

Journal: JAMA Network Open

Barua extracting high resolution harmonic fingerprinting from sparse sampling to disaggregate complex CVDs

George Mason University
Grant and Award Announcement

Anomadarshi Barua, Assistant Professor, Cyber Security Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for the project: “Extracting High Resolution Harmonic Fingerprinting FromSparse Sampling to Disaggregate Complex CVDs.”

Funder: Office of Naval Research

Good vibrations for quantum communications

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have demonstrated, for the first time, a single quantum of vibrational energy interacting with a single atomic spin, seeding a pathway to quantum technologies that use sound as an information carrier, instead of light or electricity.

Journal: Nature