Self-Ventilating Workout Suit keeps Athletes Cool and Dry

Ventilating flaps lined with live cells open and close in response to an athlete’s sweat. MIT team has designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete’s body heat and sweat. These flaps, which range from thumbnail- to finger-sized, are lined with live microbial cells that shrink and expand in response to changes in humidity. The cells act as tiny sensors and actuators, driving the flaps to open when an athlete works up a sweat, and pulling them closed when the body has cooled.

They have also fashioned a running shoe with an inner layer of similar cell-lined flaps to air out and wick away moisture...

Artists’ impression of the gas and dust disk around the planet-like object OTS44. First radio observations indicate that OTS44 has formed in the same way as a young star. Credit: Johan Olofsson (U Valparaiso & MPIA)

First radio observations of the lonely, planet-like object OTS44 reveal a dusty protoplanetary disk that is very similar to disks around young stars. This is unexpected, given that models of star and planet formation predict that formation from a collapsing cloud, forming a central object with surrounding disk, should not be possible for such low-mass objects. Apparently, stars and planet-like objects are more similar than previously thought...

Oblique view of the reconnection region. Magnetic field direction is represented by the cyan lines. The color trail represents an electron moving in the field. Color of the particle trail represents a dimensionless speed of the particle, with blue for slow and red for fast. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Tom Bridgman

You can’t see them, but swarms of electrons are buzzing through the magnetosphere around Earth. The electrons spiral and dive around the planet in a complex dance dictated by the magnetic and electric fields. When they penetrate into the magnetosphere close enough to Earth, the high-energy electrons can damage satellites in orbit and trigger auroras...