News by Subject Technology & Engineering

A group of Italian researchers has developed a method that enables more efficient use of energy by smart homes that are connected to a microgrid -- a web of individualized units that are connected to one another and one common energy source. The findings address the need for efficient approaches to residential energy management by presenting a strategy that controls energy distribution.

A group of scientists in USA has developed the first-ever standardized method of evaluating commercially available driver-monitoring systems. The researchers hope to use their method in a more complex way by incorporating more factors and looking at more scenarios. These include a lighting device that could be used in the lab to simulate real light conditions as well as a few other sites that could enhance the method's accuracy and efficiency even further.

New research from the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, in partnership with the Kingsley Association and funded by the Heinz Endowments examined the impact that bottom-up, community-level initiatives have in addressing environmental justice issues. They found that the best way to address a community's environmental injustices is to meet them where they are, integrating into the community and building trust over a long-term partnership.

A study by The University of Texas at Austin has quantified the amount of water flowing in major Texas rivers during heavy rains and found that there is enough room in coastal aquifers to store most of it. This discovery means that capturing and storing water could be a feasible option for partially mitigating floods and droughts, which are both expected to increase in frequency and intensity as the climate changes.

As more rain falls on a warming planet, a new computer model shows that it may not take a downpour to cause widespread disruption of road networks. The model combined data on road networks with the hills and valleys of topography to reveal 'tipping points' at which even small localized increases in rain cause widespread road outages.

The Department of Civil Engineering, led by Prof. Terumi Touhei, at Tokyo University of Science has developed a novel mathematical method for reconstruction/imaging of the complex distribution of point-like scatterers using a sensor grid with a small network. This method can potentially be used to improve the efficiency of tomography in underground geophysical studies, nondestructive physical testing, or even human body imaging.