A new, low-cost biosensing technology that could make rapid at-home tests up to 100 times more sensitive to viruses like COVID-19. The diagnostic could expand rapid screening to other life-threatening conditions like prostate cancer and sepsis, as well. Created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the test combines a natural evaporation process called the “coffee-ring effect” with plasmonics and AI to detect biomarkers of disease with remarkable precision in just minutes. 

In modern devices, such as phone screens or advanced sensors, light is often generated by pairs of organic molecules, where one molecule, known as the donor, transmits electrons, and the other, referred to as the acceptor, receives them. An international team of scientists from Kaunas University of Technology, KTU, Lithuania, has, for the first time, observed the luminescence of an excited complex formed by two donor molecules. This discovery opens new possibilities for developing simpler, more efficient, and more sustainable optoelectronic devices.

Much of the internet runs on systems written in the C programming language, but C has major security vulnerabilities. Now, computer science researchers have created a tool that safeguards these systems while developers migrate them into safer languages, a process that will take many years.