News by Subject Biology

A team of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing wearable skin sensors that can detect what's in your sweat. In a new paper, the team describes a sensor design that can be rapidly manufactured using a "roll-to-roll" processing technique that essentially prints the sensors onto a sheet of plastic like words on a newspaper. The sensors can provide real-time measurements of sweat rate, and electrolytes and metabolites in sweat.

Stanford engineers have developed experimental stickers that pick up physiological signals emanating from the skin, then wirelessly beam these health readings to a receiver clipped onto clothing. It's all part of a system called BodyNet.

The amount of water injected for conventional oil and gas production exceeds that from high-volume hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional oil and gas production by more than a factor of 10, according to a new report. Conventional methods of oil and gas production have been used since the late 1800s. An assessment of the environmental impacts of the petroleum industry should examine the conventional production methods, as well as fracking.

An innovative way to pattern metals has been discovered by scientists in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, which could make the next generation of solar panels more sustainable and cheaper.

The periodic table has been a vital foundational tool for material research since it was first created 150 years ago. Now, Martin Rahm from Chalmers University of Technology presents a new article which adds an entirely new dimension to the table, offering a new set of principles for material research. The article is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Scientists at EPFL have developed a tiny pump that could play a big role in the development of autonomous soft robots, lightweight exoskeletons and smart clothing. Flexible, silent and weighing only one gram, it is poised to replace the rigid, noisy and bulky pumps currently used. The scientists' work has just been published in Nature.

Tiny nanoparticles play a gargantuan role in modern life, but experts have struggled to reach a consensus on the best way to assess and measure them. NIST scientists have concluded that measuring the range of sizes in nanoparticles -- instead of just the average particle size -- is optimal for most applications.