https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from NYU Tandon School of Engineering On a sweltering August afternoon or in the teeth of a winter storm, New York City subway riders make a quiet calculation: Is the trip worth it? A new study published in npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport takes a detailed look at how those decisions show up in ridership patterns across the system, and how they vary from station to station. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nyc-subway-riders-stay-home.html Environment Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:00:01 EDT news695910322 Hydrogen is often described as the fuel of the future—a clean, energy-dense way to store renewable power and decarbonize industries from steelmaking to shipping. But inside the devices that produce it, a surprisingly small and familiar phenomenon is getting in the way: bubbles. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-hydrogen-highlights-outsized-impacts-tiny.html Engineering Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:40:07 EDT news696249121 In the race to make AI models not just reason better but respond faster, latency—the delay before an answer appears—is often treated as a purely technical constraint, something to minimize and move past. But how is this relentless push for speed actually impacting the people using these systems every day? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-faster-ai-isnt.html Consumer & Gadgets Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:40:06 EDT news696245701 When a screenwriter told New York University researchers last year that letting AI do her work would make her "miserable inside," she was onto something. A follow-up study from NYU's Tandon School of Engineering and Stern School of Business finds that the instinct to compete with generative AI, rather than simply embrace it, is associated with meaningful long-term benefits for writing professionals. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-rivalry-collaboration-attitudes-writers-age.html Machine learning & AI Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:00:02 EDT news694412991 When a customer calls to complain about a billing error or a delayed package, the person on the other end of the line is doing more than answering questions. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-center-rep-emotionally-exhausted.html Business Thu, 02 Apr 2026 09:40:01 EDT news694340360 Rivers are rarely the calm, orderly streams we imagine on maps. Over time, their winding paths—called meanders—shift, bend, and occasionally snap off in sudden "cutoff" events that shorten loops and reshape the landscape. While scientists have long suspected that such cutoffs inject a dose of unpredictability into river evolution, a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment demonstrates that these abrupt events are, by themselves, enough to produce chaos in river channels. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-chaos-meandering-rivers.html Earth Sciences Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:40:02 EDT news694266421 In physics, some waves behave in a surprising way: instead of spreading out and fading, they hold their shape as they travel at constant speeds. These unusual waves, called solitons, have interested scientists since they were first observed in canals in the 19th century. Today, researchers study solitons in everything from optical fibers to biological systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-strained-liquid-crystals-soliton-bullets.html Soft Matter Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:20:07 EDT news694104181 For decades, video games have served as a proving ground for artificial intelligence. From early checkers programs to systems that conquered chess and Go, each milestone has seemed to bring machines closer to human-like intelligence. But a new paper by Julian Togelius and colleagues argues that this narrative is misleading. Despite impressive victories, today's AI still struggles with a deceptively simple challenge: playing a game it has never seen before. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-ai-video-game.html Machine learning & AI Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:00:06 EDT news693745428 As transit agencies face growing climate risks and limited capital budgets, deciding which flood protection measures to implement—and where—has become a critical challenge. Now, a research team at NYU Tandon School of Engineering has built a computer modeling framework that allows agencies to rapidly test and prioritize hundreds of subway resilience strategies for coastal storm surge flooding before committing to major infrastructure investments. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-hundreds-mta-subway-defenses-minute.html Engineering Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:30:10 EDT news692879784 Blow up a long balloon and two things happen: it gets longer and it gets wider. Now imagine a living cell that inflates itself under enormous pressure and yet only grows longer, never adding width. That is exactly what rod-shaped bacteria do, every time they divide, with a precision that has baffled scientists for decades. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-bacteria-secret.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 10 Mar 2026 14:40:03 EDT news692362750 Data centers—the warehouse-sized buildings that store photos, stream movies and train artificial intelligence—are voracious consumers of electricity. A surprisingly large share of that power never reaches a microchip. Instead, it is spent on cooling, hauling away the heat generated by millions of tightly packed servers. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-zeolite-thermal-batteries-center-cooling.html Engineering Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:40:02 EST news691856579 Wildlife trafficking is one of the world's most widespread illegal trades, contributing to biodiversity loss, organized crime, and public health risks. Once concentrated in physical markets, much of this activity has moved online. Today, animals and animal products are advertised on large e-commerce platforms alongside ordinary consumer goods. This shift makes enforcement harder—but it also creates a valuable source of data. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-tracking-wildlife-trafficking-age-online.html Ecology Thu, 26 Feb 2026 17:30:03 EST news691348861 Neuroscience rarely enjoys clean experiments. Most brain disorders are mosaics of risk genes, aging, lifestyle and chance that leave their origins obscured. Huntington's disease (HD) is different. It begins with a single genetic expansion—a repeated stretch of DNA letters in the HTT gene—that is both measurable and decisive. If you inherit a sufficiently long repeat, you will develop the disease. That stark clarity makes HD scientifically invaluable. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-huntington-disease-rare-case-brain.html Medical research Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:10:06 EST news690629898 Eucalyptus trees, laden with flammable oils, could spread into Portugal's south-central region by 2060 if changing climate conditions make the area more hospitable to their growth, creating wildfire hotspots that would evade detection by conventional prevention approaches. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-wildfire-key-factor-forests-decades.html Environment Sat, 07 Feb 2026 08:20:01 EST news689335906 For Roy Maimon, hitting the bar stage and working in the scientific laboratory have never been separate worlds. During his Ph.D., the new NYU Tandon biomedical engineering assistant professor would spend his days pipetting samples and his nights playing drums in punk rock bands at local bars. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-science-biomedical-musical-roots-reimagine.html Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:50:01 EST news688230311 When energy researchers talk about the future of the grid, they often focus on individual pieces: solar panels, batteries, nuclear plants, or new transmission lines. But in a recent study, urban systems researcher Anton Rozhkov takes a different approach—treating the energy system itself as a complex, evolving organism shaped as much by policy and human behavior as by technology. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-policy-people-power-interact-future.html Business Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:28:17 EST news687623281 Buildings produce a large share of New York's greenhouse gas emissions, but predicting future energy demand—essential for reducing those emissions—has been hampered by missing data on how buildings currently use energy. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-peak-ai-nyc-power-grid.html Energy & Green Tech Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:21:25 EST news687007262 When Buffalo, New York's devastating December 2022 blizzard claimed more than 30 lives, it exposed a hard reality: Even life-saving travel bans can lose their force over time, especially when residents face situations where compliance becomes difficult. The disruption stretched on for days, straining households' ability to stay supplied without venturing out. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-buffalo-blizzard-effectiveness-storms-persist.html Environment Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:56:11 EST news684752161 When someone walks into an emergency room with symptoms of a stroke, every second matters. But today, diagnosing the type of stroke, the life-or-death distinction between a clot and a bleed, requires large, stationary machines like CT scanners that may not be available everywhere. In ambulances, rural clinics, and many hospitals worldwide, doctors often have no way to make this determination in time. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-unveil-algorithm-scans.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:44:48 EST news684089065 New York City's thousands of traffic cameras capture endless hours of footage each day, but analyzing that video to identify safety problems and implement improvements typically requires resources that most transportation agencies don't have. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-ai-language-vision-traffic-video.html Automotive Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:44:17 EST news682951441 Graphene's enduring appeal lies in its remarkable combination of lightness, flexibility, and strength. Now, researchers have shown that under pressure, it can briefly take on the traits of one of its more glamorous carbon cousins. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-coaxing-bilayer-graphene-diamond-layer.html Nanomaterials Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:24:04 EST news682788241 When we listen to a moving piece of music or feel the gentle pulse of a haptic vibration, our bodies react before we consciously register the feeling. The heart may quicken and palms may sweat, resulting in subtle electrical resistance variations in the skin. These changes, though often imperceptible, reflect the brain's engagement with the world. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-quantifying-intensity-emotional-response-images.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 13 Nov 2025 16:55:05 EST news682275301 The United States is falling far behind China in remote sensing research, according to a comprehensive new study that tracked seven decades of academic publishing and reveals a notable reversal in global technological standing. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-china-remote.html Earth Sciences Wed, 05 Nov 2025 08:03:05 EST news681552182 New York City's roads and bridges already incur millions in annual damage from oversized trucks, and a new study warns the shift to electric freight could intensify that burden. As electric trucks replace diesel models, their heavier batteries could increase the city's yearly repair costs by up to nearly 12% by 2050. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-heavier-electric-trucks-strain-york.html Engineering Fri, 24 Oct 2025 13:22:04 EDT news680530921 Grassroots logistics networks provided food and essential goods to New Yorkers who fell through the cracks of conventional supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering important lessons for engineers designing the next generation of distribution technologies, according to new research from NYU Tandon and the University of Toronto. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-grassroots-logistics-networks-fed-yorkers.html Economics & Business Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:09:04 EDT news680346541 Hydrogen is often touted as a clean, carbon-free energy carrier that could help decarbonize industry and transportation. Yet the very properties that make it efficient and lightweight also make it uniquely tricky to handle safely. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-hydrogen-failures-linked-flaws.html Engineering Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:49:04 EDT news680258941 A new study from NYU Tandon, NYU Langone Health, and the NYU Stern School of Business offers one of the first data-driven looks at how generative AI might help health care providers manage their message overload—and why many are hesitant to adopt the technology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-reveals-uptake-ai-powered-messaging.html Health informatics Thu, 16 Oct 2025 14:54:04 EDT news679845241 Widely available artificial intelligence systems can be used to deliberately insert hard-to-detect security vulnerabilities into the code that defines computer chips, according to new research from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, a warning about the potential weaponization of AI in hardware design. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-ai-tools-hackers-hidden-flaws.html Hardware Thu, 09 Oct 2025 13:24:04 EDT news679235041 Silicides—alloys of silicon and metals long used in microelectronics—are now being explored again for quantum hardware. But their use faces a critical challenge: achieving phase purity, since some silicide phases are superconducting while others are not. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-substrate-principles-scalable-superconducting-quantum.html Superconductivity Fri, 03 Oct 2025 11:17:03 EDT news678709022 Manufacturers of infrared cameras face a growing problem: The toxic heavy metals in today's infrared detectors are increasingly banned under environmental regulations, forcing companies to choose between performance and compliance. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-eco-friendly-dark-colloidal-quantum.html Nanophysics Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:19:19 EDT news677765954