The electric current from a flexible battery placed near the knuckle flows through the conductor and powers the LED just below the fingernail.
Credit: 2017 Someya Laboratory

New nanomesh structure lets skin breathe, prevents inflammation. A hypoallergenic electronic sensor can be worn on the skin continuously for a week without discomfort, and is so light and thin that users forget they even have it on, says a Japanese group of scientists. The elastic electrode constructed of breathable nanoscale meshes holds promise for the development of noninvasive e-skin devices that can monitor a person’s health continuously over a long period.

Wearable electronics that monitor heart rate and other vital health signals have made headway in recent years, with next-generation gadgets employing lightweigh...

The neutron spectrometer used in this study. Credit: EPFL/PSI

Many physical phenomena can be modeled with relatively simple math. But, in the quantum world there are a vast number of intriguing phenomena that emerge from the interactions of multiple particles – “many bodies” – which are notoriously difficult to model and simulate, even with powerful computers. Examples of quantum many body states with no classical analogue include superconductivity, superfluids, Bose-Einstein condensation,quark-gluon plasmas etc. As a result, many “quantum many-body” models remain theoretical, with little experimental backing...

Scientists at UConn and North Carolina State University have found that reducing oxygen content in some nanocrystalline materials may improve their grain size stability at elevated temperatures. This graphic shows the pattern of stability for Iron-Chromium-Hafnium nanograins with oxygen (represented by red triangles) and without oxygen (represented by black squares) as temperature increases relative to thermodynamic prediction.
Credit: Image courtesy of Peiman Shahbeigi-Roodposhti

Researchers at the University of Connecticut have found that reducing oxygen in some nanocrystalline materials may improve their strength and durability at elevated temperatures, a promising enhancement that could lead to better biosensors, faster jet engines, and greater capacity semiconductors...

This image shows the model of the tidally shredded Sagittarius dwarf galaxy wrapping around a 3-D representation of the Milky Way disk (flattened blue spiral). The yellow dot represents the position of the Sun. Credit: David R. Law/UCLA.

An international team has performed detailed measurements of the chemical composition of 158 red giant stars in the nearby Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The study is so far the largest and most chemically extensive high-resolution survey of this galaxy. Discovered in 1994, Sagittarius is a nearby, massive, elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The dwarf is currently merging with our galaxy, resulting in massive tidal tails that can be found in the Galactic halo...