In a historic turn of events, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have voted decisively to become a union shop, marking the first victory for organized labor at a foreign-owned auto plant in the American South. With an overwhelming 73 percent in favor of representation by the United Auto Workers (UAW), employees at the Chattanooga plant have
Technology
Climate change is set to impact the future value of residential rooftop solar panels across the United States significantly, with a potential increase of up to 19% by the end of the century. This information comes from a recent study led by the University of Michigan, which looks at how the Value of Solar (VOS)
Nature has always been a source of inspiration for scientific innovations, and the development of a new robotic suction cup is no exception. Scientists at the University of Bristol have drawn insights from the structures of octopus biological suckers to create a robotic suction cup that can grasp rough, curved, and heavy stones with remarkable
Off-road environment recognition technologies have seen significant advancements in Korea, particularly in detecting and removing extraneous substances such as dust, mud, snow, or rain during off-road autonomous driving of various vehicles. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize industrial machinery and military self-driving cars, providing a safer and more efficient working environment for operators. The
Bipolar membranes, commonly used in various energy technologies such as electrolyzers and hydrogen fuel cells, have been a subject of interest for many researchers and companies. However, the underlying working principles of these membranes and the ion solvation kinetics involved have remained a mystery for a long time. The lack of a comprehensive understanding has
Manufacturing nations in the Global North have been exploiting their advantages in capital and technology by outsourcing energy-intensive industrial processes to countries in the Global South. This practice has led to a ‘false decoupling’ of energy consumption from economic growth. While Global North countries may appear to be reducing their energy consumption, the reality is
In a recent study, it has been pointed out that clear guidelines need to be established for the generation and processing of synthetic data. The use of synthetic data, which is created through machine learning algorithms from original real-world data, is becoming increasingly popular due to its potential to provide privacy-preserving alternatives to traditional data
The US House of Representatives recently voted to reauthorize a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), known as Section 702, with a bipartisan vote of 273-147. This program allows US intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance of foreigners outside the United States. While the primary purpose of this surveillance is to monitor
Google recently announced that it is conducting a test in which it is removing links to California news sites for users located in the western US state. This decision comes as California legislators debate the implementation of the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would establish a “link tax” for connecting users to news articles
In a recent report led by researchers from UCL, it was found that many popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools exhibit discrimination against women and individuals from diverse cultures and sexual orientations. The study, which was commissioned and published by UNESCO, focused on examining stereotyping in Large Language Models (LLMs) that are widely used in generative