Category Technology/Electronics

Stretchable antenna keeps wearable health sensors in tune with human health

Close up of a person's chest, wearing a olive green sleeveless shirt, with a sensor attached to it.
Researchers demonstrated a soft, printable hydrogel electrode that conforms to the skin while recording physiological signals. The material maintained close contact during movement and under wet conditions, offering a potential platform for future wearable health-monitoring technologies. Credit: Huanyu “Larry” Cheng / Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Wearable health monitors are designed to move with the body. But for many devices, movement creates a problem: The more a person bends, stretches, reaches or runs, the harder it can be for the device to keep a stable wireless connection. Penn State researchers and international collaborators set out to solve that problem by developing a soft, stretchable antenna that can keep working even when pulled in different directions...

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3D-printable material can heal the body, build better robots and recover critical minerals

3D-printable material can heal the body, build better robots and recover critical minerals
Credit: University of Texas at Austin

A new type of 3D-printable material developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin mimics human tissue’s ability to sort and filter, allowing certain molecules to pass through while keeping others out. This broad functionality means the material can be used in a variety of applications across medicine, water and robotics.

Current methods for building small tissue-like materials don’t scale to sizes that can make applications possible, the researchers say. The team overcame these issues of speed and scalability by jamming billions of tiny water droplets tightly together using simple mixing and centrifuge techniques to form large, tissue-like materials in just a few minutes...

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Quantum internet leaves the lab with first real-world entanglement over busy telecom fiber

Quantum internet leaves the lab
Entangled photons are distributed over 24.4 km of deployed fiber from Evanston to Chicago. One of the photons is wavelength division multiplexed to propagate with a state-of-the-art classical communications system and optical synchronization clock. BW, bandwidth; EPPS, entangled photon pair source; MUX, wavelength-division multiplexer; OLS Tx (Rx), classical optical line system transmitter (receiver); SNSPD, superconducting nanowire single photon detector; TDC, time-to-digital converter; WR, White Rabbit synchronizer. Credit: Optica Quantum (2026). DOI: 10.1364/opticaq.592786

Quantum information is notoriously fragile. Internet traffic is anything but. Yet Northwestern University scientists have demonstrated they can peacefully coexist inside the same fiber-optic cable.

In a new...

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Hidden prompts can plant false memories in AI agents, researchers warn

Study exposes security risks of AI agents with long-term memories
Stateless LLM agents process each interaction in isolation. LLM agents with persistent memory allow for querying and retrieving saved information. Credit: Torres, Shrestha & Misra.

Large language models (LLMs), the computational algorithms underpinning ChatGPT, Gemini and other artificial intelligence (AI)-powered conversational platforms, are now widely used worldwide. These models can rapidly answer questions, source information online, assist users with specific tasks and produce text tailored for specific purposes.

Over the past few years, computer scientists have introduced a wide range of LLMs, some of which can also complete tasks autonomously and take actions on a user’s behalf, for instance, answering messages, scheduling online appointments or updating programming code...

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