Monash University

US AI giants got a wake-up call this week when fledgling Chinese firm DeepSeek wiped a record-breaking trillion dollars off the value of heavyweights like Nvidia and OpenAI. The technology's gatekeepers are rattled – and they have good reason to be.

Finally, science has given us permission to play with our food. Taking a unique recipe featuring a modified electronic plate and plenty of imagination, researchers have dished up a fun way of enhancing a food experience for both a chef and the diner.

Last year, Monash University scientists created the "DishBrain" – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

The humble X-ray may have received a long-overdue upgrade thanks to the development of a highly sensitive, printable X-ray detector that can operate over a wide range of energy levels, with potential in a wide range of real-world applications.

Engineers have developed a new 3D-printed titanium alloy with a unique microstructure that makes it ultra-strong. Not only is it stronger than other forms of titanium, but it has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any 3D-printed metal ever made.

Scientists in Australia have come up with a new design for lithium sulfur batteries that involves adding a sugar to address inherent stability issues, a move that keeps the experimental cells ticking across more than 1,000 cycles.

Australian researchers have cooked up a creative partial solution to the problem of labor shortages in the fruit-picking sector, developing a robot that can harvest apples from orchards at high speed.

Aluminum can develop weak points through repeated, alternating stress, and scientists in Australia may have come up with a solution to this shortcoming by modifying the microstructure of aluminum alloys so that they can heal these themselves.

A new record has been achieved for the fastest internet speed from a single light source – an absolutely astounding 44.2 terabits per second, 44,000 times faster than the highest speed connection. It was made possible by a new kind of optical chip.

Seawater is a complex cocktail of useful minerals, but it’s hard to separate the ones we need. Now a team of scientists from Australia and the US has developed a new water desalination technique that can not only make seawater fresh enough to drink, but recover lithium ions for use in batteries.

With the help of drones, Australian archaeologists are creating a virtual replica of the Plain of Jars, an ancient site littered with mysterious stone jars in Laos, so that inquisitive minds can strap on headsets and explore the site from afar.​

Australian researchers have discovered an ultra-low density and corrosion-resistant magnesium-lithium alloy that could greatly reduce the weight of cars and planes, in what they describe as the first step toward mass production of stainless magnesium. ​​