Invention

Tarleton State Researcher Uses AI to Tackle Mental Fatigue from Virtual Meetings

by | Mar 10, 2025

A professor of psychological sciences at Tarleton State University in Stephenville has received a $419,534 research grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to gain a better understanding of how people are affected by extended exposure to virtual meetings.

This is the second federal grant that Jonali Baruah has received to conduct research on the effects of video-based meetings on cognitive performance....

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Mind-Blowing Expansion: Museum of Illusions Reopens in Downtown Dallas
by | Mar 6, 2025
The expansion introduces several interactive exhibits including a gravity-defying illusion inspired by the works of artist Leandro Erlich, where a cleverly angled building mock-up allows guests to live out their superhero dreams and appear as if they’re scaling walls.
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Dallas-Based WATTER Snags $5M Seed Funding To Repurpose Waste Energy to Heat Water in Homes, Businesses
by | Mar 6, 2025
A spinout from Dallas' Hunt Innovative Technologies, WATTER's high-tech water heaters enable cloud computing to "generate revenue while heating your water, delivering net zero computing." The solution aims to reduce demand on the grid while "bringing economic value to homeowners and businesses alike."
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Game On: UTD Opens One of Nation’s Largest Gaming, Esports Centers
by | Mar 5, 2025
Called Comets LANding, the newly constructed, two-story facility is roughly 16,000 square feet and houses more than 100 PCs. “We may not have football, but we have one of the best esports programs in the country,” a UTD esports manager said.
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Meet the Colossal Woolly Mouse, Created by Dallas-Based ‘Decacorn’ Colossal Biosciences

by | Mar 4, 2025
Before Colossal Biosciences can "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth, some small steps are in order. They've now been taken by the Colossal Woolly Mouse—a gene-edited creation with "dramatically altered coat color, texture, and thickness reminiscent of the woolly mammoth’s core phenotypes."
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Beyond Gaming: How Minecraft Became a Platform for Scientific Learning and AI Research
by | Mar 3, 2025
UT Dallas researcher Dr. Walter Voit transformed Minecraft’s 170-million-player universe into an advanced virtual training ground—for students and for AI agents tested by DARPA. His team’s Polycraft World uses gameplay to turn classroom theory into real-world expertise, covering topics from synthetic organic chemistry to nuclear plants to semiconductor facilities. Their new startup company, Pedegree Studios, has licensed the core technologies from the university to create a scalable digital pipeline for education and workforce development.
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UTA’s Amphibian & Reptile Diversity Research Center Among World’s Largest Herpetology Libraries
by | Feb 27, 2025
UTA's research center features more than 200,000 specimens, including samples of many species that are now extinct. You'll also find tens of thousands of rare books, scientific journals, articles, and reports on "literally anything you can think of that has to do with a reptile or amphibian," says the ARDRC's Gregory Pandelis.
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‘Egg Beater’ Solution for Deep-Ocean Wind Turbines: UTD Team Advances New Design With Nearly $8M From DOE
by | Feb 27, 2025
Ultimately, the offshore turbine designed by UTD Professor Dr. Todd Griffith could reached the stunning height of 900 feet—as tall as a 72-story skyscraper—generating electricity from winds over the deep ocean "miles from the coast and out of view from land."
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This week, newly granted patents also include:

  • 4WEB's implants having bone growth promoting agents contained within biodegradable materials
  • Bear Robotics' method, system, and non-transitory computer-readable recording medium for controlling a robot to load and unload a target object
  • CVS Pharmacy's intelligent medication monitoring
  • Hemanext's anaerobic blood storage containers
  • JPMorgan Chase Bank's automated detection, elimination, and prevention of toxic combinations for personal information data
  • Lennox Industries' peak demand response operation of HVAC systems
  • Match Group's system and method for dynamically generating suggestions to facilitate conversations between remote users
  • Seismic Software's document portion identification in a recorded video
  • Texas Instruments' lookup table for non-linear systems
  • Textron Innovations' heliport docking system
  • Toyota's systems and methods for obstacle detection using a neural network model, depth maps, and segmentation maps


Patented: Game Changer Patch Co.’s Transdermal Patches for Hangover Minimization and More North Texas Inventive Activity

Dallas-Fort Worth ranked No. 10 for patent activity out of 250 metros for the week of Jan. 21 with a total of 138 patents granted.
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A NASA illustration depicts the idea of a future air taxi hovering over a municipal vertiport. [Rendering: NASA/Lillian Gipson and Kyle Jenkins]
At 2026 World Cup, Soccer Fans May Use Air Taxis to Zip Around North Texas
by | Feb 22, 2025

When thousands of soccer fans arrive in North Texas for the 2026 FIFA World Cup they may be looking to the sky as a way to get around Arlington and the rest of DFW via flying taxis....

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UTA Researcher: Children of Divorce May Have Increased Stroke Risk Later in Life
by | Feb 20, 2025
According to research by UTA's Philip Baiden, Americans aged 65 and older who experienced their parents divorcing as children were more likely to suffer a stroke compared to their peers—one in nine as compared to one in 15 for those whose parents did not divorce.
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Patented: McWane’s Remote Monitoring of Water Distribution and More North Texas Inventive Activity
Dallas-Fort Worth ranked No. 9 for patent activity out of 250 metros for the week of Jan. 14 with a total of 154 patents granted.
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UT Dallas Researchers Solve Battery Puzzle That Could Extend Phone Life and EV Range

by | Feb 18, 2025
Lithium nickel oxide, a promising material for next-gen, longer-lasting batteries, keeps failing during charging. Now a UTD team says it's found a fix to make it viable for commercial use. The researchers plan to manufacture test batteries in their robotics lab before seeking industry partners to take them to market.
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Dallas Researchers Work to Unravel the Mystery of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy
by | Feb 17, 2025
Southern Methodist University biology researchers are uncovering how brain, heart, and lung connections may hold the key to preventing sudden death in epilepsy—while making a breakthrough discovery linking a missing brain protein to fatal seizures.
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Fort Worth Medical Students Bridge Healthcare Gaps for the Unhoused
by | Feb 15, 2025

Often cities can have a gap between healthcare opportunities and its unhoused population.

In Fort Worth a group of medical students from The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth is helping to bridge that gap via the Street Medicine Student Coalition....

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UTSW Researchers Study Experimental Depression Treatment Using Magnets
by | Feb 14, 2025

A clinical trial led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas could help bring an experimental treatment for depression closer to approval from the U.S....

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