The struggle to design green buildings amid shifting legal, tech landscape

Holly Samuelson, an associate professor of architecture at the GSD, looks at climate change’s impact on new city and state regulations as architects, designers, and developers try to stay current.…

Sensor enables high-fidelity input from everyday objects, human body

A sensing system called SAWSense takes advantage of acoustic waves traveling along the surface of an object to enable touch inputs to devices almost everywhere. Here, a table is used…

Robotic seal’s gait may be graceless, but it could help save lives

(A) Bioinspiration from pinnipeds (i.e., seals, sea lions, and walruses) that use fore flippers and body (or hind flipper) for terrestrial locomotion. (B) Pinniped robot in an unactuated pose. Credit:…

Light-based defensive device could help stop attacks from assailants

Associate clinical professor Brian Arwari has designed a system to help thwart attacks by assailants. Credit: Joshua Prezant/University of Miami Brian Arwari grew tired of what he calls “the cycle.”…

Novel additive helps improve stability of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells

The spatial distributions of long-alkyl-chain anionic surfactant additives in perovskite precursors. Credit: NIMTE Prof. Ye Jichun’s team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese…

Manufacturers hope for AI boost in factories

Manufacturers see potential for artificial intelligence in the sector. Manufacturers are hoping for the artificial intelligence revolution to reach their factories, envisaging robots being used to repair complex machinery. There…

Grad student helps design ‘artificial muscles’ you can toss in the compost bin

An “artificial muscle” made, in part, from material designed for biodegradable grocery bags. Credit: Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Say “hello” to the robots of the future: They’re soft…

Self-navigating catamaran can carry cargo into war zones

Alive team members (back row, from left) Wyeth McKinley, Oli MacGregor, Freddy Angarita-Cuesta, Jessica Kies, (front row) Alan Lopez, Anna Frey and Scarlett Spindler pose next to their self-navigating, cargo-carrying…

Surface steers signals for next-gen networks

Computer science Ph.D. student Kun Woo Cho is the lead author of a study on mmWall, a new device that steers higher-frequency 5G signals, or mmWave signals, to get around…

Scientists point the way to a sustainable circular economy for plastics