Senior Positive Impact Reporter
Elena covers breakthrough innovations and social enterprises creating measurable change worldwide.
Clean Core Thorium Energy has selected Kinectrics to independently review its ANEEL nuclear fuel qualification program, bringing the thorium-based fuel one step closer to a demonstration in an existing CANDU reactor. The review will examine the fuel’s design, manufacturing process, safety case and r...
Polaris has unveiled a new continuously variable transmission (CVT) in its 2027 Xpedition utility. The transmission builds on the current mechanical CVT by adding pneumatics to soften noise and harshness when maximum rpm are not needed....
Sales of used electric vehicles continued their surge in July, jumping 7.7 percent from June and 10.1 percent compared to last year, according to data Cox Automotive released today. New EVs, in contrast, saw only modest 3.2 percent month-over-month growth and were down 41.5 percent from 2025. “The u...
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive Brief: The Federal Railroad Administration announced $5.3 billion in safety grants Friday for 41 projects in 23 states and for new and replenished Amtrak trains. Amtrak will get $2.05 billion for 43 new passen...
A British company is set to develop a new generation of fully rare-earth-free and heavy-rare-earth-free axial flux electric motors. YASA has secured UK government’s funding to develop these motors.These technologies are will power future electric and hybrid vehicles.YASA also revealed that as part o...
American Fortune 500 company Lam Research plans to invest more than $3 billion over the next five years to expand its global research and development laboratory network, strengthening semiconductor research capabilities across the United States, Asia, and Europe. The US semiconductor equipment manuf...
Even the most forgiving automotive designers might struggle to find a flattering angle on the Deep Orange 17.Looking less like a sleek vehicle of the future and more like a Top Gear budget challenge gone wrong, the college-built experimental solar prototype was revealed earlier this month. My first ...
Mitsubishi makes only a handful of EVs across its global markets, but it's finally getting around to expanding its lineup with a beauty. Australia will get this handsome crossover later this year....
Most robot AI systems have an awkward dependency. Change the robot, and much of the intelligence controlling it may have to change too. Feagine Robotics is taking a different approach. The company has introduced Fi0, a cross-embodiment foundation model designed to retain task knowledge across robots...
Bridges do much more than carry people from one side of an obstacle to another. The best ones have opened trade routes, connected cities, accelerated the construction of railways and roads, and introduced engineering techniques that changed what could be built afterward. From a cast-iron arch in the...
The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP), an organization founded in Berlin in 2016, announced today that it has added AI capabilities to its provenance research tool, Legacy Explorer, which launched last year. Legacy Explorer is currently able to search five archives, including the Eins...
Operators at China’s Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant have started loading nuclear fuel into Unit 7. The step marks the transition from heavy construction to nuclear commissioning. Unit 7 uses a Russian-designed VVER-1200 third-generation pressurized water reactor. This is the first time engineers in Chi...
China has revealed a robotic hand that can thread an acupuncture needle, operate a pipette, and twist a bottle cap nearly four times farther than a human hand, all without copying the hand’s complicated anatomy. Named BioflexBot, it uses a coiled spring, a constraining shell, and compressed air to a...
Built by four Chennai engineers, WEGoT’s smart water meter lets residents track water use, receive instant leak alerts and even shut off supply from their phones, helping reduce consumption by up to 50%....
Portable solar panels have long been a favorite of the off-grid camping and backpacking community. They are light, silent, and increasingly efficient.But solar power has an obvious, inescapable weakness: it requires the sun. When night falls, cloud cover rolls in or you are camping in wintry conditi...
Double-network granular elastomers (DNGEs) flex like rubber and resist damage from sudden shocks and long-term stress. As a 3D-printing medium, DNGEs could revolutionize wearable electronics and soft robotics due to strength and durability....
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Electric aircraft startups have been promising a lot for a long time. Two of them are now close enough to matter.
Carrying a full-size mouse, presentation clicker, and another remote for TVs or tablets can feel like a lot for a regular workday. The DS21 is aiming to collapse those jobs into one, using a magnetic modular docking system....
Anthropic will add machine-readable watermarks to text generated by new Claude models starting August 2, 2026. The move responds to transparency requirements under Article 50 of the EU AI Act. Anthropic has signed the European Union’s Code of Practice covering AI-generated content. New Claude models...
The system combines quantum dots and an OLED display, translating infrared light into a range of visible colors. Night-vision technology has changed little for decades, producing grainy green images that make it difficult to distinguish objects and depth. Now, researchers have developed a system tha...