Research & Development World

Designing irregular structures often means wrestling with huge systems of equations. Princeton engineers have found a shortcut, using a mathematical bridge between origami and tensegrity to preserve known mechanical properties as a structure shifts into a more complex shape. Tensegrity is a structural principle where a continuous network of tension (cables or strings) and a… The post Princeton re…

Traditionally, discussions about experimental reproducibility have focused on statistics, sample sizes and publication bias. However, procedural quality and training also play an important role in reducing variability.  JoVE, a video platform for scientific content, is aiming to improve the reproducibility of research by providing detailed visual demonstrations of experimental procedures. This is…

A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is using microbes to turn single-use plastics into biodegradable plastics and bioproducts, including biodegradable jet fuel, nylon and chemicals used in chemotherapy and child myopia treatments. They published their findings in Trends in Biotechnology.  Common recycling practices can only use a fraction of plastic waste in… The post…

Chicago startup Newtonian Standard says it has identified a memory behavior in NVIDIA GPUs that could serve as the foundation for a new kind of hardware-level security. J.P. O’Donnell, the company’s founder and a former Okta engineer, says he spent 18 months characterizing the behavior across NVIDIA Turing, Lovelace and Blackwell GPU architectures. The company… The post A startup says it found hi…

A research project in Hawaii is turning recycled plastic waste into asphalt, aiming to reduce the environmental impact of marine debris and improve the state’s infrastructure. The program, called Nets-to-Roads, is run by Hawaii Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research (CMDR).  The CMDR pulls approximately 200 tons of plastic from the ocean each year,… The post Hawaiian researchers t…

More R&D-heavy companies are going into debt. SpaceX? Racked up $23 billion in debt in 2025. Its xAI subsidiary, itself funded through loans, stands to repay $17.5 billion in debt. Microsoft? While it has retained its “AAA” credit rating, its stock has tumbled 12% year to date, partly over spending concerns. The company, which is… The post The R&D debt machine is ratcheting up in 2026 appeared fi…

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center have announced the first selections for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad. Deployable Energy, General Matter, NuCube Energy and Radiant Industries were selected from an initial pool of Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program applicants, the two precursor programs to… The post DOE announces first s…

A new study in Science reveals that LLMs can now outperform physicians at diagnosis. The study demonstrated that OpenAI’s o1 model identified the correct or a very close diagnosis in 67% of early ER cases, compared to about 50% to 55% for physicians.  The model was required to complete various tasks such as reading medical… The post Study shows LLMs can diagnose ER patients more accurately than p…

Researchers at Brno University of Technology have developed magnetic microbots that can remove nanoplastics from water via electrostatic attraction. They published their findings in Environmental Science: Nano.  Nanoplastics, plastic particles smaller than 100 nm, are considered more dangerous than microplastics because their size allows them to cross cell membranes. They have been detected in th…

The U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies approved a bill proposing slimmer cuts to science agencies than those proposed in President Donald Trump’s proposed FY 2027 budget. The bill would still leave the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the… The post House …

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found organic molecules that have never been seen before on Mars. A rock that the rover drilled and analyzed in 2020 includes the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars, NASA announced last week. Of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample, seven of them had never… The post Martian chemistry: how the Curiosity rover detected …

BEIT Inc., a quantum computing startup founded by ex-Googlers in Kraków, has launched CovAngelo, a hybrid quantum-classical platform designed to accurately model chemical reactions in complex molecular environments. Its focus is on covalent inhibitors. The firm is backed by Bloomberg Beta and the European Innovation Council and participates in NVIDIA Inception, a startup program that… The post Ex…

Vacuum technology keeps running into sustainability challenges. First there was a helium shortage. Then another. And another. In addition, the industry has been moving away from oil-sealed pumps and towards more sustainable methods.  Helium shortages affect lab equipment Helium shortages aren’t exactly new. The gas has been through four supply crunches since 2006, each driven… The post Helium sho…

For decades, the loudest voices against animal testing in drug development belonged to animal rights groups and organizations like PETA. The pharmaceutical industry largely tuned them out while committing to the three Rs, which include Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of preclinical testing processes. So it was striking to see FDA encouraging drug developers to plan… The post When can organo…

The Pistoia Alliance, a life sciences nonprofit organization, today announced new data showing that only 1% of professionals report AI having value in the wet lab. The data also shows that while 30% of organizations claim to have rolled out enterprise-wide AI, 69% lack metrics to show the impact of AI on reducing costs or… The post New Pistoia Alliance survey shows just 1% of professionals report…

President Trump’s FY2027 budget request would cut NASA by $5.6 billion, with the deepest reductions falling on science and STEM education while leaving Artemis and a planned lunar base camp funded through prior appropriations. The request would cut the Science Mission Directorate by roughly 50%, terminate 27 operating missions, cancel 26 missions in development and… The post Senate largely hearin…

Engineers manage agents now. So do scientists. So do the labs building AI. “Engineering roles are becoming management roles where you manage AI agents.” That is how Vinay Pinnaka, co-founder and CTO of the Y Combinator-backed Silicon Valley fintech JustPaid, describes what the past year has done to his job. “I built AI Gilfoyle,” Pinnaka… The post The startup JustPaid drew inspiration from the si…

A Chinese robotics company is finally tackling what we all wanted to see robots do: our chores. UniX AI announced earlier this month that its Panther service robot had begun the “first real-home deployment of a mass-produced humanoid robot.”  The Panther robot has completed full-stack, continuous multi-task validation in real, unmodified household environments without staging… The post UniX AI’s …

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is going high end. The firm just announced a 1,000-plus-horsepower supercar that measures its speed in seconds at both the track and the plug. Unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show under the automaker’s premium Denza brand, the Denza Z is claimed to hit 100 km/h in less than two seconds… The post BYD’s EV megawatt leap is a 1,000-hp supercar with flash charging appe…

President Donald Trump fired all 22 members of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and guides the president and Congress on science policy, via email on Friday.  The board was created in 1950 to advise the administration on science and engineering policy and approve major funding awards. It is usually made… The post Trump fired all 22 members of the NSF’s ad…