Black Friday is less than a week away, and I'm already tracking great deals on TVs and home theater equipment from Samsung, Sony, and more live. [...]

The GE Cync smart bulbs let you control the lighting and mood of your home. Currently, a two-pack is 25% off, ahead of Black Friday. [...]

Researchers discovered that copper oxide catalysts form metallic copper mid-reaction, triggering a dramatic boost in ammonia output. The insight offers a roadmap for designing cleaner, more efficient ammonia-production technologies. [...]

Plant robotics shows how living movement and sensing can power biodegradable machines that work with natural environments, offering a sustainable alternative to conventional robotic materials and actuators. [...]

New measurements of radio galaxies reveal that the solar system is racing through the universe at over three times the speed predicted by standard cosmology. Using highly sensitive data from multiple radio telescope arrays, researchers uncovered a surprisingly strong dipole pattern—one that challenges longstanding assumptions about how matter is distributed [...]

A porous hydrogel composite prevents MXene collapse and rapid oxidation, creating a stable semiconducting network that achieves reliable low level gas sensing at room temperature. [...]

Looking to get ahead on your holiday shopping a few weeks early? We found the best early Black Friday tablet deals from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and more. [...]

The holiday season is upon us, which means that Black Friday deals are on the horizon. Here are the best Cyber Week discounts at Target right now. [...]

A flexible optical identifier uses polarized emission from self-assembled crystal films to create two stable states that support tri modal authentication and improve reliability in secure device verification. [...]

A water soluble carbon nanodot ink produces bright long lasting invisible prints with micrometer scale detail and high accuracy for secure and low cost applications. [...]

New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s composition remains uncertain, making the encounter even more compelling. Insights from this work could [...]

Scientists have directly measured the minuscule electron sharing that makes precious-metal catalysts so effective. Their new technique, IET, reveals how molecules bind and react on metal surfaces with unprecedented clarity. The insights promise faster discovery of advanced catalysts for energy, chemicals, and manufacturing. [...]

A new study demonstrates that an AI assistant can conduct psychiatric assessment interviews with greater diagnostic accuracy than widely used mental health rating scales. In a sample of 303 participants with confirmed psychiatric conditions, the AI assistant Alba provided DSM-based diagnostic suggestions after a brief conversational interview, outperforming rating scales [...]

A team of researchers used a massive dance video dataset and advanced AI models to map how the human brain interprets dance, revealing striking differences between experts and nonexperts. By pairing fMRI recordings with AI-derived cross-modal features, they found that higher-order brain regions outperform simple motion or sound cues when [...]

Digital resilience—the ability to prevent, withstand, and recover from digital disruptions—has long been a strategic priority for enterprises. With the rise of agentic AI, the urgency for robust resilience is greater than ever. Agentic AI represents a new generation of autonomous systems capable of proactive planning, reasoning, and executing tasks with [...]

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can write an essay or plan a menu almost instantly. But until recently, it was also easy to stump them. The models, which rely on language patterns to respond to users’ queries, often failed at math problems and were not good at complex reasoning. [...]

Manufacturing is getting a major system upgrade. As AI amplifies existing technologies—like digital twins, the cloud, edge computing, and the industrial internet of things (IIoT)—it is enabling factory operations teams to shift from reactive, isolated problem-solving to proactive, systemwide optimization. Digital twins—physically accurate virtual representations of a piece of equipment, a [...]

A group of quantum physicists claims to have created a version of the powerful reasoning AI model DeepSeek R1 that strips out the censorship built into the original by its Chinese creators.  The scientists at Multiverse Computing, a Spanish firm specializing in quantum-inspired AI techniques, created DeepSeek R1 Slim, a model [...]

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is the go-to method for designing most of today’s physical products. Engineers use CAD to turn 2D sketches into 3D models that they can then test and refine before sending a final version to a production line. But the software is notoriously complicated to learn, with thousands [...]

“We’re here to talk about really substantive changes, and we want you to be a participant in that,” said Desirée Plata, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Climate and Energy in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at Energizing@MIT: the MIT Energy Initiative’s (MITEI) Annual Research Conference that [...]

The Ryder Cup is an almost-century-old tournament pitting Europe against the United States in an elite showcase of golf skill and strategy. At the 2025 event, nearly a quarter of a million spectators gathered to watch three days of fierce competition on the fairways. From a technology and logistics perspective, pulling [...]

Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even discovered a bizarre “pinball” state where some electrons stay locked in place while others dart around freely. Their simulations help explain how [...]

Aalto University researchers have developed a method to execute AI tensor operations using just one pass of light. By encoding data directly into light waves, they enable calculations to occur naturally and simultaneously. The approach works passively, without electronics, and could soon be integrated into photonic chips. If adopted, it [...]

Researchers have created a prediction method that comes startlingly close to real-world results. It works by aiming for strong alignment with actual values rather than simply reducing mistakes. Tests on medical and health data showed it often outperforms classic approaches. The discovery could reshape how scientists make reliable forecasts. [...]

Researchers showed that large language models use a small, specialized subset of parameters to perform Theory-of-Mind reasoning, despite activating their full network for every task. This sparse internal circuitry depends heavily on positional encoding, especially rotary positional encoding, which shapes how the model tracks beliefs and perspectives. [...]

What can we learn about human intelligence by studying how machines “think?” Can we better understand ourselves if we better understand the artificial intelligence systems that are becoming a more significant part of our everyday lives?These questions may be deeply philosophical, but for Phillip Isola, finding the answers is as [...]

A new brain decoding method called mind captioning can generate accurate text descriptions of what a person is seeing or recalling—without relying on the brain's language system. Instead, it uses semantic features from vision-related brain activity and deep learning models to translate nonverbal thoughts into structured sentences. [...]

USC researchers built artificial neurons that replicate real brain processes using ion-based diffusive memristors. These devices emulate how neurons use chemicals to transmit and process signals, offering massive energy and size advantages. The technology may enable brain-like, hardware-based learning systems. It could transform AI into something closer to natural intelligence. [...]