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

Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 25-Jan-2026 19:11 ET (26-Jan-2026 00:11 GMT/UTC)

Sibling and friend game time key to keeping children safe in online video games

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Older siblings and friends may play important, and sometimes overlooked, roles in helping parents keep their children safe on online gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft, according to new research led by Penn State.

Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

In disaster-prone Nepal, farmers sticking with agriculture amid climate risks

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For small-scale farmers up against floods, droughts and other dramatic climate events, diversifying income sources can mean financial safety — a lifeline as crop-growing conditions destabilize. But in Nepal, where natural hazards rank among the most severe in the world, how farmers perceive climate-related risks often leads them to double down on agriculture instead of exploring other livelihoods, according to a study led by a Penn State researcher.

Journal: Population and Environment
Funder: Princeton High Meadows Environmental Institute Walbridge Fund, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Center for Policy Research on Energy, Environment Nicholas Fund, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Overtaking the odds: Do passing zones make rural roads safer?

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The frustration of getting stuck behind a slow vehicle on a remote road is all too familiar to drivers in Pennsylvania, where rural roads make up about 60% of highways. One of the roadway features that addresses this issue are passing zones — dotted sections of two-lane roadways that allow for vehicles to cross into the opposing lane of traffic to pass other vehicles — but are they safe?

Journal: Accident Analysis & Prevention

Conversations remotely detected from cellphone vibrations, researchers report

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An emerging form of surveillance, “wireless-tapping,” explores the possibility of remotely deciphering conversations from the tiny vibrations produced by a cellphone’s earpiece. With the goal of protecting users’ privacy from potential bad actors, a team of computer science researchers at Penn State demonstrated that transcriptions of phone calls can be generated from radar measurements taken up to three meters, or about 10 feet, from a phone. While accuracy remains limited — around 60% for a vocabulary of up to 10,000 — the findings raise important questions about future privacy risks.

Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

Caught in a social media echo chamber? AI can help you out, new study shows

Binghamton University
Reports and Proceedings

Thanks to AI technologies, the spread of mass-produced contextually relevant articles and comment-laden social media posts has become so commonplace that it can appear as though it’s coming from different information sources. The resulting “echo chamber” effect could reinforce a person’s existing perspectives, regardless of whether that information is accurate.

A new study involving Binghamton University, State University of New York researchers offers a promising solution: developing an AI system to map out interactions between content and algorithms on digital platforms to reduce the spread of potentially harmful or misleading content.

IJCAI 2025 – Artificial Intelligence for a Better World - Since 1969

International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence
Meeting Announcement

Media Invitation – IJCAI 2025, Montréal, Canada
Artificial Intelligence for a Better World – Since 1969

The 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) takes place August 16–22, 2025 in Montréal, Canada, bringing together over 2,000 AI researchers, practitioners, and thought leaders. Guided by the theme “AI at the service of society”, IJCAI 2025 features world-class keynote speakers, award-winning researchers, thematic tracks on AI for Social Good, Human-Centred AI, and AI, Arts & Creativity, as well as admission free public events like the AI Lounge: Between Wonder and Caution.

Highlights include talks by Yoshua Bengio, Heng Ji, Luc De Raedt, Bernhard Schölkopf, and IJCAI 2025 awardees Aditya Grover, Rina Dechter, and Cynthia Rudin. The program also showcases AI-driven competitions, an AI Art Gallery, and discussions on ethics, creativity, and global impact.

Full program & details: https://2025.ijcai.org
Media contact: mrozman@ijcai.org

Slicing and dictionaries: a new approach to medical big data

FAR Publishing Limited
Peer-Reviewed Publication

With the exponential expansion of medical databases, the number of records in a single file has reached hundreds of millions, and the number of variables has increased significantly (such as the MIMIC database and the 4,484 variables in the ELSA survey). Traditional SQL queries and distributed storage systems are difficult to meet the needs of ordinary researchers due to their high technical barriers and high maintenance costs. This study proposes an innovative "slicing + dictionary" data processing strategy: by designing a multi-level slicing scheme for clinical dimensions, event dimensions, and mixed dimensions, massive datasets are decomposed into manageable subsets; at the same time, a standardized dictionary system with an encoding-description-location-attribute structure is constructed to achieve precise mapping between clinical concepts and data locations. Experimental verification shows that this method significantly reduces computational resource consumption, improves query efficiency, and supports flexible customization, enabling ordinary computing devices to load and process large-scale data on demand, which opens up new avenues for the popularization of medical big data utilization.