When we move, it’s harder for existing wearable devices to accurately track our heart activity. But University of Missouri researchers found that a starfish’s five-arm shape helps solve this problem. Inspired by how a starfish flips itself over — shrinking one of its arms and using the others in a coordinated motion to right itself — Sicheng Chen and Zheng Yan in Mizzou’s College of Engineering and collaborators have created a starfish-shaped wearable device that tracks heart health in real time. Because the starfish-inspired device has multiple points touching the skin near the heart, it stays more stable than traditional wearables built as a single, unified structure, such as a smartwatch. This allows the device to collect clearer, more accurate heart data — even while someone is moving. The device conveniently pairs with a smartphone app to provide the user with health insights and help detect potential heart problems.

People living in Bronze Age-era Denmark may have been able to travel to Norway directly over the open sea, according to a study published April 2, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Boel Bengtsson from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues. To complete this study, the research team developed a new computer modeling tool that could help other scientists better understand how ancient peoples traversed the sea.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Rachid Guerraoui the recipient of the inaugural ACM Luiz André Barroso Award for theoretical and applied contributions to distributed computing and impactful work on promoting computer science in Africa.

A collaboration between chemical engineers and animal scientists has created a system for recovering valuable industrial chemicals from animal waste, representing a major step towards circularity and environmental sustainability.

When spring arrives and the heating season comes to an end, keeping warm becomes less of an issue. However, scientists remind us that it is not just a seasonal necessity – heat is also a valuable energy resource that can be stored and used when needed most. Researchers at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) have discovered an innovative solution beneath our feet: using soil as an efficient thermal energy storage system.