Researchers led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Assistant Professor Jiawei Yang have designed a modular system that could potentially improve hydrogel implants in the body by customizing the materials for stiffness and functionality.

At left, hydrogels developed by Jiawei Yang and a team of researchers exhibit different colors according to their coatings. At right, a microscopic image of a hydrogel surface. Photos courtesy of Jiawei Yang. The system, described in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, uses coatings to treat the surface of hydrogels, which are flexible, water-loaded polymers. 

Artificial intelligence is beginning to transform not only drug discovery but also the design of advanced biomaterials. In a new study, researchers combined machine learning with laboratory validation to develop a data-driven strategy for identifying bioactive nucleoside hydrogels for periodontitis treatment. By integrating predictive modeling with innovative molecular scoring methods, the work aims to streamline biomaterial discovery and accelerate the development of targeted therapies for oral health applications.

The cyber-attack diagnosability (CA-diagnosability) of discrete event systems (DESs) assess the ability to diagnose issues when an attacker interferes with sensor-to-diagnostic communication. In real life, for example, in network systems, a network node (router or user) may be attacked or unable to correctly and promptly transmit messages due to other reasons; in power systems, a current or voltage detector may naturally age or be affected by external factors, thus failing to accurately obtain the current and voltage values of the power system; in automotive systems, damage to a component may cause the sensor readings to differ from the original values, and so on.

A newly developed architecture for full-duplex wireless transceivers solves the long-standing problem of self-interference, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. They implemented an innovative switching strategy that isolates self-interference in the time domain by alternating transmission and reception faster than the wireless signal period, enabling effective simultaneous transmission and reception. Experiments using 400-MHz-wide millimeter-wave signals (5G-compatible) highlight the technology’s potential for future Beyond 5G/6G infrastructure, including extended reality systems, and smart factories.

The performance and applications of carbon materials are tightly related to their structural characteristics, especially the types and distribution of defects. However, defect structures at the atomic level have long been regarded as a ‘black box’ in carbon science. Now, researchers from Japan have shed light on these structural mysteries. By integrating advanced spectroscopy with computer simulations, they precisely identified the atomic configurations responsible for key defect peaks, paving the way for advanced material engineering.