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Category: robotics/AI – Page 31

Secure glass containers for storing chemical waste through laser welding

As the adoption of electric vehicles continues to grow, so does the need for the safe and permanent storage of battery materials and industrial chemical waste. Certain waste streams require disposal in what are known as Category IV landfills, which impose particularly stringent requirements on storage containers. These must simultaneously ensure environmental protection, safe handling and long-term structural integrity.

Glass is a highly promising material for this application: It is exceptionally chemically inert—meaning it reacts with virtually no other substances—making thick-walled glass containers especially well-suited for the permanent containment of hazardous materials. Glass containers are also of particular interest in the context of potential new recycling methods in the future. The stored residual materials do not react with the containers and can be readily recovered from them.

Until now, these glass containers have been manufactured primarily using thermal gas processes. However, these are limited by uncontrolled heat input, high residual stresses and restricted automation potential. Laser welding, on the other hand, enables high processing speeds and shows excellent potential for automation.

New 200Gbps photodetector doubles optical reception capacity for data centers

Korean researchers have developed, for the first time in Korea, a 200Gbps-class photodetector device for use in hyperscale AI data centers and 5G/6G mobile communications infrastructure. The technology enables ultrahigh-speed data reception fast enough to transmit five 5GB full HD movies per second. The results of this study were presented at OECC 2025, held in Sapporo, Japan, and were recently published in Optics Express.

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that it has developed a photodetector device capable of processing 200Gbps-class optical signals per channel. A photodetector is a key semiconductor component that converts optical signals into electrical signals and is essential in determining data reception performance in data centers and communication networks.

The photodetector device developed by the researchers simultaneously achieved a bandwidth of 70GHz or higher, high responsivity of 0.75A/W or greater, and dimensions of 0.5mm × 0.4mm. In particular, applying a “rear-lens integrated structure” that monolithically integrates a convex lens made of indium phosphide (InP) on the back of the chip significantly improved optical reception efficiency and alignment convenience. The entire process, from design to fabrication, was implemented using purely domestic technology.

Firefly brightness holds a cautionary tale about accepting older measurements

For over a century, the accepted value for a firefly’s brightness has mostly stood, tracing its origins to experiments carried out in 1912. Through rigorous new analysis published in the American Journal of Physics, David Silver of Remiza AI in New York has discovered that this value has likely been vastly overestimated. His results provide a stark reminder of what can happen when widely accepted older measurements are converted into modern standard units.

Out of the hundreds of species of animals, fungi and bacteria that produce their own light, fireflies are the most widely studied. In the 1880s, experiments revealed that their flashing bioluminescence emerges from a catalyzed reaction between an organic compound named luciferin and an enzyme named luciferase.

In 1912, the brightness of these flashes was measured for the first time by William Coblentz—one of the founders of modern radiometry. “Coblentz reported that the flash of the firefly Photinus pyralis ranged from 1/50th to 1/400th the power of a candle, with 1/400 predominating,” Silver describes.

AI-powered electronic nose can distinguish tens of thousands of odors

A research team has presented a roadmap for developing an “artificial olfactory system” that detects odors like the human nose and analyzes them using artificial intelligence (AI) by leveraging metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The team systematically organized and reviewed key research trends in electronic nose technology, from MOF material design to sensor implementation and AI-based odor pattern recognition. The research was led by Hyuk-Jun Kwon’s in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology. The work is published in the journal Progress in Materials Science.

An artificial olfactory system, or “electronic nose (e-nose),” is a technology in which AI learns and analyzes signal patterns generated when multiple sensors respond to odor molecules. Although it has broad potential applications in areas such as food safety, environmental pollution monitoring, hazardous gas detection and disease diagnosis, conventional sensor materials have faced limitations in selectivity, response speed and operating conditions.

The research team focused on MOFs as a key material for overcoming these limitations. MOFs are porous materials formed by combining metal ions and organic compounds, and they can effectively adsorb odor molecules through their microscopic pores. Moreover, because their structures and chemical properties can be tailored for specific purposes, they are regarded as next-generation sensor materials capable of sensitively detecting various odors even under room-temperature, low-power operating conditions.

Meta Files Patent for AI That Can Listen All Day and Track How You’re Feeling

Meta has filed a patent application for an AI that listens to your voice throughout the day, works out how it thinks you are feeling from the way you sound, and keeps a timestamped log of every read.

Each read gets pinned to the moment it happened: the time, your location, what you were doing, even how you were using your phone. Some versions in the filing would listen all day; others would check in only at set times.

None of these ships in a product today, and Meta has not announced one; a filing like this stakes a claim on an idea long before anyone commits to building it.

RedHook Android malware now uses Wireless ADB for shell access

A new version of the RedHook Android malware abuses the Android Wireless Debugging (Wireless ADB) mechanism in a novel way to gain shell-level privileges without requiring a computer connection.

Researchers at cybersecurity company Group-IB analyzed the new release of the mobile malware and say that it significantly expands its capabilities compared to the previous variant documented in 2025.

At the same time, the malware retains its remote access trojan (RAT) features, allowing it to stream the screen, intercept keystrokes, automate UI interactions, and steal credentials.

Physics doesn’t explain the universe. Computation does | Stephen Wolfram: Full Interview

Darwin spent his life trying to find the law that governs evolution. He knew it existed — he just never found it. Stephen Wolfram thinks he has. And it explains a lot more than evolution.

❍ Subscribe to The Well on YouTube: https://bit.ly/welcometothewell.

Stephen Wolfram is a mathematician, complexity theorist, and the mind behind Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica — someone who has spent his career finding the hidden rules underneath reality itself.

The same principle that explains why evolution never gets stuck, why you have free will despite living in a deterministic universe, and why the laws of physics are the way they are turns out to say something profound about what it means to be alive.

0:00 Intro.
1:08 Chapter 1: The limits of theoretical physics.
5:50 Chapter 2: A computational understanding of the world.
12:03 Rule 30: a simple program that outputs pure randomness.
15:48 Evolution and machine learning are the same trick.
18:19 What computational irreducibility means for science.
25:00 Chapter 3: A new kind of theory of everything.
31:36 The ruliad: every possible computation, in one object.
35:03 The second law, explained by the limits of our minds.
38:38 Why the universe exists isn’t the real question — why we do is.
42:53 Chapter 4: If the universe is a program, what is the meaning of life?
44:59 Free will as a side effect of computational irreducibility.
48:06 AI as a civilization we’re learning to coexist with.

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