Microbial Fuel Cell Uses Soil Bacteria to Power Agricultural Sensors

Precision agriculture uses sensors to monitor soil and help farmers improve yields. However, powering these sensors with continuous, uninterrupted power is challenging due to limited battery capacity and limited development of renewable power. To help address farmers' power needs, Northwestern University researchers have developed a fuel cell the size of a paperback that captures energy as microbes break down organic matter, powering underground sensors for agriculture and environmental monitoring.

Light-Responsive Perovskites Exhibit Reversible Shape-Shifting Behavior

Researchers at the University of California, Davis recently found that perovskites may enable a new class of light-responsive semiconductor devices. Read on to learn more.

New Technology Makes Solar Panels Blend Seamlessly Into Buildings

German researchers have developed a technique for applying realistic designs to photovoltaic modules, which convert sunlight into electricity, enabling them to mimic roof tiles and integrate more seamlessly into buildings. Read on to learn about this new method, termed ShadeCut.

New Solar Research Achieves 130% Efficiency Yield Using Singlet Fission

To become a mainstream energy source, solar panels need to become more efficient, and a recent breakthrough by researchers from Kyushu University and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz may accelerate this progress. Read on to learn more.

National Astronaut Day 2026: Astronauts and Space Missions Quiz

This quiz highlights iconic astronauts associated with historic missions — professionals whose work sits at the intersection of engineering excellence and operational courage. How well do you know the people behind the programs that helped define spaceflight innovation? Test your knowledge here.

LiDAR Goes Digital

Early LiDAR sensors, built on legacy mechanical architectures, proved the possibility of 3D perception but struggled to meet the demands of production. As the industry matures, the focus has shifted from simply detecting objects to doing so reliably, at scale, and at a price point suitable for commercial deployment. Read on to learn more.

Wireless Transceiver Rivals Fiber-Optic Speed

A new transceiver invented by electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into 140-gigahertz territory, unlocking data speeds that rival those of physical fiber-optic cables and laying the groundwork for a transition to 6G and FutureG data transmission protocols. Read on to learn more about it.

Cars and Planes Could Avoid Hazardous Ice and Freezing Rain with New Sensors

Pilots, drivers, and automated safety systems in cars and airplanes could be alerted to icy hazards by a pair of sensors developed at the University of Michigan. Read on to learn more about it.

Resilient Nylon Device Creates Electricity Under Tons of Pressure

Researchers have developed a flexible nylon-film device that generates electricity from compression and keeps working even after being run over by a car multiple times, opening the door to self-powered sensors on our roads and for other electronic devices. Read on to learn more.

An Industrial Edge Layer Creates a Safe OT-IT Interface

Edge software provides the controlled, secure interface manufacturers need to comply with the 2024 EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and other security mandates. Read on to learn more.

Humidity-Resistant Hydrogen Sensor Can Improve Safety for Large-Scale Clean Energy

It's a challenge that today’s sensors do not work optimally in humid environments. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, are presenting a new sensor that is well suited to humid environments — and actually performs better the more humid it gets. Read on to learn more about it.

Attacking the Cyberattackers

Smart factories, smart buildings, smart grids, smart cars, make things run better, more productively, more sustainably, more accurately, more safely, and unfortunately, more vulnerable to attack. The more things are automated and interconnected, the more attention has to be given to protecting these systems from outside interference. Read on to learn how to combat cyberattacks.

MEMS in Transition

Wide-scale applications for Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) became practical in the 1980s when they started being fabricated with the same silicon wafer processes as semiconductor chips. Once they could be mass produced, they found a major market in automobile safety systems as inertial sensors for airbag deployment. Then came the introduction of smart phones in the late 2000s. Read on to learn where they're heading.

Finding Hidden Damage in Cold-Formed Steel with Radar and AI

A University of Houston engineer has developed a method to detect possible damage in concealed cold-formed steel construction framing materials hidden behind walls, without having to tear the walls open. Read on to learn more.

New Products

See the new products, including EBE Elektro Bau Elemente GmbH's capacitive level sensor technology based on corTEC® technology for applications where conventional level sensors reach their limits; Abaco Systems' VP241, a SOSA-aligned 3U VPX FPGA carrier card designed to deliver unmatched flexibility for next-generation embedded computing applications; Emerson's Rosemount™ QX1000 Continuous Gas Analyzer; and more.

Floating Piston Valve

A valve developed by NASA Stennis Space Center consists of a solid piston floating in a medium to control the flow stream. The piston is designed to be axially and radially balanced within the flow stream whether the valve is in the open or closed position. This valve has many unique features and design advantages over conventional valve concepts. Read on to learn more.

Porous Radical Organic Framework Improves Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

A team led by Professor Yan Lu, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, and Professor Arne Thomas, Technical University of Berlin, has developed a material that enhances the capacity and stability of lithium-sulfur batteries. Read on to learn more.

A Fully Autonomous Robotic System Measures Key Properties of New Materials

Scientists are striving to discover new semiconductor materials that could boost the efficiency of solar cells and other electronics. But the pace of innovation is bottlenecked by the speed at which researchers can manually measure important material properties. A fully autonomous robotic system developed by MIT researchers could speed things up. Read on to learn more.

Magnetocaloric Heat Pumps: The Future of Sustainable Cooling and Heating

A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Ames National Laboratory developed a magnetocaloric heat pump that matches current vapor-compression heat pumps for weight, cost, and performance. Read on to learn more about it.

Obtaining 6G Edge Intelligence

The race to develop sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks is accelerating, with commercialization expected by 2030. Read on to learn how some researchers are exploring the integration of edge AI and space–ground integrated networks (SGINs) to extend AI services globally.

Products of Tomorrow

See the products of tomorrow, including a new material that can use sunlight and water to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide; a novel design for solar-powered data centers that will orbit the Earth and could realistically scale to meet the growing demand for AI computing while reducing the environmental impact of data centers; and more.

Supersonic Spike Diffuser

A new type of spike diffuser recently developed by NASA Stennis Space Center is able to provide approximately double the pumping performance of second-throat diffusers via Pareto-efficient reduction of both core Mach number and flow deflection. Read on to learn more about it.

A Blueprint for a 6G Core Network

A research team from Huawei’s advanced wireless labs in Canada and China has published a blueprint for a 6G core network that can generate, update, and execute its own control procedures without human intervention. Read on to learn more.

Giving Magnets the Graphene Treatment

In an article published in Physical Review X, a team in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign showed how to engineer two-dimensional magnetic systems to obey the same equations as mobile electrons in the two-dimensional material graphene. Read on to learn more.

New on the Market

See what's new on the market, including The Imaging Source's Aptiris, USB 3.1 autofocus cameras designed for dynamic machine vision applications; Würth Elektronik's Proteus-IV and Ophelia-IV components, two new high-performance RF modules based on the latest Nordic nRF54L15-SoC semiconductor; Novotechnik U.S.'s Vert-X 13E Series of touchless rotary sensors; and much more.

Optimizing 3D-Printed Helixes as Terahertz Optical Materials

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have optimized and 3D-printed helix structures as optical materials for Terahertz frequencies, a potential way to address a technology gap for next-generation telecommunications, non-destructive evaluation, chemical/biological sensing and more. Read on to learn more.

COTS Edge AI Accelerators for SWaP-C Constrained Defense and Space Systems

Edge AI is beginning to incorporate compact generative approaches to support greater autonomy. This shift is accelerating the adoption of COTS edge AI accelerators as an alternative to centralized processing and legacy radiation-hardened compute architectures. Read on to learn more.

The Rise of the Integrated Battery Large Model

A research team innovatively proposed the “Integrated Battery Large Model,” establishing the first AI-driven paradigm covering the entire lifecycle of the Li-ion battery industry, providing a novel technological path for the industry’s intelligent upgrade. Read on to learn more about the Battery Large Model system.

The Next Step in Wireless Cellular Technology: 6G

Researchers from the University of Tokyo, as part of a multi-institution team, have created an electromagnetic wave absorber for waves between 0.1–1 terahertz (THz). This greatly expands the range of the terahertz frequency which could be commercially used in the future. Read on to learn more.

Ultrasound as a New Wireless Power Transfer Technology

A research team led by Dr. Sunghoon Hur of the Electronic and Hybrid Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and Professor Hyun-Cheol Song of Korea University has developed a biocompatible ultrasonic receiver that maintains its performance even when bent. Read on to learn more.

How Electroadhesion Can Hold Materials Together

Is there a way to stick hard and soft materials together without any tape, glue, or epoxy? A new study published in ACS Central Science shows that applying a small voltage to certain objects forms chemical bonds that securely link the objects together. Read on to learn more.

Product of the Month

See the product of the month: Pickering Interfaces' Test System Architect, a free online graphical toolset designed to simplify signal path design for electronic test systems.

5Ws of Perched Drones

A new robotic platform developed by Aithon Robotics enables safe, efficient work at height by combining drone mobility with human capability.

Reciprocal Energy: A New Model for Grid-Friendly Data Centers

ARIES, the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems platform, can simulate the electrical brains behind a single device or an entire country. Read on to learn more.

Saving Lives at Sea and on Land

Developed in part by NASA, the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SARSAT) technology carried by multiple satellites in middle- and low-Earth orbit, is now helping save lives in sea and on land.

Aerospace Materials & Manufacturing Digital Summit 2026

While aluminum and aluminum alloys, steel, titanium alloys, and fiber-reinforced composites continue to dominate the aerospace materials and manufacturing industry, advanced materials such...

Agentic AI Moves from Hype to Reality in Automation Engineering

A purpose-built AI has been designed by Siemens to execute engineering tasks autonomously by applying multi‑step reasoning and self‑correction.

Test Your Knowledge About Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Here is a five-question quiz to see how much you know about fuel cells. Take now!

SBQuantum Launches Quantum Sensor into Space

SBQuantum’s diamond quantum magnetometer (SBQDM) represents a significant leap forward in addressing the challenge of magnetic navigation.

How Tissue-Based Approaches Are Enabling Long-Term Implants

A new category of medical devices on the horizon integrates with and leverages the body’s own tissue.