Category Technology/Electronics

Waste to wealth: Pomelo peel can be used for electricity generation and sensing devices

Waste to wealth: Pomelo peel can be used for electricity generation and sensing devices
The researchers developed pomelo peel-based devices for energy harvesting and self-powered sensing. Credit: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c02319

Pomelo is a large citrus fruit commonly grown in Southeast and East Asia. It has a very thick peel, which is typically discarded, resulting in a considerable amount of food waste. In a new study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers explore ways to utilize waste pomelo-peel biomass to develop tools that can power small electric devices and monitor biomechanical motions.

“There are two main parts of the pomelo peel—a thin outer layer and a thick, white inner layer. The white part is soft and feels like a sponge when you push on it...

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Prototype turns car and helicopter exhaust into thermoelectric energy

Researchers design and test a waste-heat recovery system, illustrated here, that attaches to a car tailpipe and converts heat from exhaust into energy. The fanned grooves on the outside of the pipe are the cold side of the device’s heatsink and the triangular components inside the pipe are plate-fin heat exchangers.
Adapted from ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2025, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c18023

Combustion engines, the engines in gas-powered cars, only use a quarter of the fuel’s potential energy while the rest is lost as heat through exhaust.

Now, a study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces demonstrates how to convert exhaust heat into electricity...

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Entangling two physically separate resonators enables a major advance in the science of quantum sound

A symphony in quantum
A new paper from the lab of UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Prof. Andrew Cleland demonstrates entanglement between two physically separate resonators. Credit: Cleland Lab

Entanglement—linking distant particles or groups of particles so that one cannot be described without the other—is at the core of the quantum revolution changing the face of modern technology.

While entanglement has been demonstrated in very small particles, new research from the lab of University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) Prof. Andrew Cleland is thinking big, demonstrating high-fidelity entanglement between two acoustic wave resonators.

The paper is published in Nature Communications.

“A lot of research groups have demonstrated that they can enta...

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Is DOGE a cybersecurity threat? A security expert explains the dangers of violating protocols and regulations

cybersecurity
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), President Donald Trump’s special commission tasked with slashing federal spending, continues to disrupt Washington and the federal bureaucracy. According to published reports, its teams are dropping into federal agencies with a practically unlimited mandate to reform the federal government in accordance with recent executive orders.

As a 30-year cybersecurity veteran, I find the activities of DOGE thus far concerning. Its broad mandate across government, seemingly nonexistent oversight, and the apparent lack of operational competence of its employees have demonstrated that DOGE could create conditions that are ideal for cybersecurity or data privacy incidents that affect the entire nation.

Tradition...

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