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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-May-2025 17:09 ET (8-May-2025 21:09 GMT/UTC)

Complete breakdown of Plexiglas into its building blocks

ETH Zurich
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Polymer chemists at ETH Zurich have discovered a surprising way to virtually fully break down PMMA plastic – commonly known as Plexiglas – into its monomer building blocks. The process remains unaffected by the presence of additives.

Journal: Science

Pusan National University researchers develop a novel 3D adipose tissue bioprinting method

Pusan National University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Adipose tissues, which serve as fat reserves, have been recognized as an endocrine organ. The three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting of adipose tissues has potential applications in regenerative medicine. However, the 3D bioprinting conditions have not been optimized for adipose tissues. Now, researchers from Korea have developed a novel method for 3D adipose tissue bioprinting using a hybrid bioink. The 3D bioprinted adipose tissues exhibited skin regeneration ability, paving the way for their applications in regenerative medicine.

Journal: Advanced Functional Materials

Two video games created to improve hand and wrist rehabilitation

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Business Announcement

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in collaboration with Escuela Politécnica del Ecuador and the ASEPEYO hospitals in Barcelona and Madrid, has developed a system of exercise video games (or exergames) that promotes the rehabilitation of people with mobility problems in their hands and wrists. The system also provides data to therapists so that they can analyse their patients’ progress during the recovery stage.

From handicap to asset: AI approach leverages optics phenomenon to produce better images

Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
Reports and Proceedings

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a microscopy technique widely used to investigate cells and tissues. Even though first biomedical applications based on QPI have been developed, both acquisition speed and image quality need to improve to guarantee a widespread reception. Scientists from the Görlitz-based Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) as well as Imperial College London and University College London suggest leveraging an optical phenomenon called chromatic aberration – that usually degrades image quality – to produce suitable images with standard microscopes. By employing a generative AI model, just one single exposure is needed to obtain the image quality necessary to make QPI attractive for applications in biomedicine. The team presented the work in late February at the 39th Annual Conference on AI by the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI) organized this year in Philadelphia (USA). The corresponding peer-reviewed conference paper will be available later in March.

Journal: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Meeting: The 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Scientists discover potential for serious harm from chemical loophole

Green Science Policy Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The scientific community has long believed that polymers—very large molecules—are too big to migrate out of products into people and therefore pose no health risks. As a result, polymers have largely evaded regulation. For example, polymers are exempt from the major toxics acts: Toxic Substances Control Act in the U.S. and REACH in the E.U. However, a breakthrough peer-reviewed study published today in Nature Sustainability demonstrates that polymers used as flame retardants can break down into smaller harmful chemicals.

Journal: Nature Sustainability

It’s not just what you say – it’s also how you say it

Northwestern University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

First study to reveal the brain encodes pitch accents separately from the sounds that make up words. Heschl’s gyrus region of the brain, an earlier stage of auditory processing, plays a much larger role than previously thought

Findings could transform speech therapy, AI-driven voice recognition and our understanding of what makes human communication unique

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health

Newly designed chiral organometallic nanosheets offer room-temperature multiferroicity and topological features

Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Recently, a research team led by Associate Professor LI Xiangyang and Professor WANG Xianlong from Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor LI Xingxing from University of Science and Technology of China, found a way to design a class of homochiral organometallic nanosheets that exhibit room-temperature multiferroic and topological nodes.

Journal: Nano Letters