EurekAlert! News by Subject: Tech & Engineering - Home

Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 28-Oct-2026 15:16 ET (28-Oct-2026 19:16 GMT/UTC)

Oil palm, coconut and soybean cause more species extinction than thought

ETH Zurich
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Oil crops cause a loss of around 1.5 percent of animal and plant species. This is the conclusion of a new study. According to the study, the biodiversity loss caused by oil crops has increased by around 80 percent since 1995. The key driver is per-capita consumption and not global population growth.

Journal: Nature Food

A light-color-programmed artificial synapse for brain-like balanced learning

Sungkyunkwan University External Affairs Division (PR team)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The human brain actively keeps “learning” in balance, by holding on to what matters and letting go of what does not. Researchers in Korea have now reproduced this ability in a semiconductor device, using the color of light to strengthen (remember) or weaken (forget) an artificial synapse's memory.

Journal: Nature Communications

KAIST develops next-generation database technology that reduces AI hallucinations and improves accuracy by 78%

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Professor Min-Soo Kim’s research team in the School of Computing and GraphAI Co., Ltd. develop “AkasicDB,” which integrates vector, graph, and relational databases into a single system

Expected to serve as core AI data infrastructure across industries such as finance, law, and manufacturing, improving enterprise AI agent accuracy by up to 78% and processing speed by up to 20 times

Biochar and smarter water table management could help cut greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon, but when they are drained for agriculture, they can become major sources of greenhouse gases. Restoring water levels can slow carbon dioxide emissions, yet overly wet peat can produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. This creates a difficult climate dilemma: how can peatlands be managed to protect soil carbon without triggering high methane release?

Journal: Biochar

Graphitized biochar turns paddy soil into a cleaner, more reactive environment

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Paddy soils are living chemical reactors. Under flooded and drained conditions, microbes, minerals, oxygen, and organic matter constantly exchange electrons, shaping how pollutants move, transform, or disappear. A new study published in Biochar reports that a specially engineered form of biochar can redirect these electron flows, helping paddy soils generate more hydroxyl radicals, one of nature’s most powerful oxidants, and break down the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole more efficiently.

Journal: Biochar

Biochar-coated catalyst turns wet microalgae into cleaner fuel-building chemicals

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Microalgae have long been viewed as a promising source of renewable fuel. They grow quickly, capture carbon dioxide efficiently, and do not compete with food crops for farmland. Yet turning algae into usable liquid fuels remains difficult because algae-derived bio-oil often contains high levels of oxygen and nitrogen compounds, which can lower fuel quality, reduce stability, and create pollution concerns during combustion.

Journal: Biochar

Illinois study: How cracks in dry soil impact moisture evaporation

College of ACES at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Soils that are exposed to prolonged drought often develop desiccation cracks, which impact soil properties and exacerbate moisture loss through evapotranspiration. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines the evolution of soil cracking and how cracks interact with storage and movement of water in the soil. The findings can help improve hydrological models essential for water management.

Journal: Soil and Tillage Research

SwRI-led Lucy mission reveals wobbling peanut asteroid

Southwest Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

SAN ANTONIO — June 18, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists studying the inner main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson have found that its rotation wobbles. Rather than rolling through space in a steady pattern, Donaldjohanson turns on two axes, rotating end-over-end once every 10.5 Earth days while wobbling around its horizontal axis then once every 26.5 days.

Journal: Science

Scientific computing must adapt in an AI world

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Reports and Proceedings

While the scientific computing community has long been a driver of computing innovation, that is no longer possible. Today, the community must embrace the new realities of an AI-dominated technology world, say Jack Dongarra and colleagues in this Policy Forum. It should integrate AI with simulation and – because energy has become a primary design constraint – it should focus on energy-efficient methods and systems. To make swift progress, the authors propose an initial “minimum viable” suite of workflow-shaped benchmarks. As part of these workflows, data and models are “intellectual gold,” say the authors; they “are investments in future scientific leverage.” Dongarra et al. propose a “moonshot” to build a new foundation that would benefit both scientific computing and AI.

Journal: Science