Stretchy, Bendy, Flexible LEDs

They’re also cheaper, faster and fabricated with an inkjet printer.

Sure, you could attach two screens with a hinge and call a cell phone “foldable,” but what if you could roll it up and put it in your wallet? Or stretch it around your wrist to wear it as a watch?The next step in digital displays being developed at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis could make that a reality.

First, there were light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. Then, organic LEDs, or OLEDs. Now, researchers in the lab of Chuan Wang, assistant professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, have developed a new material that has the best of both technologies and a novel way to fabricate it — using an inkjet printer.

The research was publis...

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Astronomers may have discovered the First Planet Outside of our Galaxy

Signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way galaxy may have been detected for the first time. This intriguing result, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, opens up a new window to search for exoplanets at greater distances than ever before.

The possible exoplanet candidate is located in the spiral galaxy Messier 51 (M51), also called the Whirlpool Galaxy because of its distinctive profile.

Exoplanets are defined as planets outside of our Solar System. Until now, astronomers have found all other known exoplanets and exoplanet candidates in the Milky Way galaxy, almost all of them less than about 3,000 light-years from Earth...

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Astrophysicists reveal Largest-ever Suite of Universe Simulations

Astrophysicists reveal largest-ever suite of universe simulations
A snapshot measuring 10 billion light-years across of one of the AbacusSummit simulations. Credit: The AbacusSummit Team

Collectively clocking in at nearly 60 trillion particles, a newly released set of cosmological simulations is by far the biggest ever produced.

The simulation suite, dubbed AbacusSummit, will be instrumental in extracting secrets of the universe from upcoming surveys of the cosmos, its creators predict. They present AbacusSummit in several papers published October 25 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

AbacusSummit was produced by researchers at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York City and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian...

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Americans Vaccinated Against Coronavirus Have Lower Mortality Rates — Even From Non-Covid Causes

Maryland County Vaccinates Minority Communities
Nurses draw Covid-19 vaccine doses from a vial on March 25, 2021 in Bowie, Maryland.
 
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People who are vaccinated against Covid-19 are less likely to die for any reason — including from non-coronavirus causes — than the unvaccinated, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released Friday, which researchers framed as more proof of the vaccines’ safety despite stubborn levels of vaccine hesitancy.

KEY FACTS
Partially and fully vaccinated people died from non-coronavirus causes at a lower rate than their unvaccinated peers, according to the study, which looked at millions of patients at seven U.S. health organizations from December to July.

All three vaccines approved by U.S...

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