Researchers have developed a full-color near-eye display using a novel, prism-free process to stack three independent red, green, and blue holographic gratings. By eliminating complex alignment steps and boosting diffraction efficiency, this multilayer waveguide approach produces brighter virtual images with lower power consumption. The technology offers a scalable path toward lightweight, battery-powered AR glasses and vehicle head-up displays (HUDs).

SAN ANTONIO — August 11, 2026 — A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) project is developing techniques to improve inhalers for young children and other people who can’t inhale deeply. The multidisciplinary team of researchers is creating a more effective inhaler for people who can’t manage the strong, deep breath crucial for maximum benefit from standard inhalers. This work combines computational fluid dynamics (CFD), particle science, and pharmaceutical science to achieve improved designs. The internally funded project is a collaboration between three SwRI divisions: Mechanical Engineering, Powertrain Engineering, and Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

A research team led by Professor Keisuke Goda of the SiRIUS Institute of Medical Research and Graduate School of Medicine at Tohoku University, together with the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo, has been named a Milestone 2 Awardee of the XPRIZE Healthspan competition - one of the world’s largest health research competitions. Chosen from among more than 600 teams worldwide, the team received the competition’s Milestone 2 award, US$1 million award, in recognition of its groundbreaking research and to be used toward further testing and research.

The search for an as-yet undiscovered elementary particle has been given fresh momentum as the German Research Foundation (DFG) has now greenlit the construction of a special €6 million magnet system in the Color meets Flavor Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn, University of Siegen and TU Dortmund University. Dubbed “BabyIAXO,” it is being built to hunt for the axion, a hitherto undetected elementary particle that could unlock one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in particle physics.

A high-throughput ceramic processing method developed at Institute of Science Tokyo uses cellulose nanofiber dispersions for rapid preparation of ceramic samples. The simple, low-cost approach allows researchers to explore materials of varying compositions while eliminating several time-consuming steps. Using this method, the team successfully identified a dielectric ceramic with excellent temperature stability, demonstrating its potential in the discovery of advanced functional materials. 

A new etymological study shows that the terms for scientific disciplines can take shape through naming and classification as much as through theories and institutional usage, as reported by a researcher from Japan. Focusing on Busseiron, a Japanese term for the study of matter, the study traced its use across textbooks, journals, and scientific meetings. Analysis revealed how the term gradually brought together diverse matter-related research and became a durable branch of physics in Japan.

Joint press release from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

In a nutshell:

 Applied to a single rhodolith from the central Red Sea: The method reconstructed 133 days of temperature closely matching on-site measurements.

Preserved in the skeleton: The ratio of chemical elements in the growth layers reveals daily seawater temperatures

New method solves previous analysis problem: Growth measurements, 3D X-ray imaging, and data alignment merge the data from multiple algal branches into a single, continuous timeline. 

Wiley today released the new edition of the Wiley Registry/NIST Mass Spectral Library, a reference database that combines two essential mass spectrometry references in a single, integrated collection.