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Assitant professor Nanshu Lu and her team have developed a faster, inexpensive method for making epidermal electronics. Cockrell School of Engineering AUSTIN, Texas -  A team of researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has invented a method for producing inexpensive and high-performing wearable patches that can continuously monitor the body's vital signs for human health and performance tracking, potentially outperforming traditional monitoring tools such as cardiac event monitors.

Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? In the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE , a team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose-to make the person they interact with smile in return.

A scanning electron microscope image of the device. The GST phase-change material, highlighted in yellow, sits on top of the silicon nitride waveguide, highlighted in red. The world's first entirely light-based memory chip to store data permanently has been developed by material scientists at Oxford University and University of Münster in collaboration with scientists at Karlsruhe and Exeter.

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and University of Washington researchers have created an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can solve SAT geometry questions as well as the average American 11th-grade student, a breakthrough in AI research. This system, called GeoS , uses a combination of computer vision to interpret diagrams, natural language processing to read and understand text and a geometric solver to achieve 49 percent accuracy on official SAT test questions.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) created a synthetic material out of 1 billion tiny magnets. Astonishingly, it now appears that the magnetic properties of this so-called metamaterial change with the temperature, so that it can take on different states; just like water has a gaseous, liquid and a solid state.

The boiling of water is at the heart of many industrial processes, from the operation of electric power plants to chemical processing and desalination. But the details of what happens on a hot surface as water boils have been poorly understood, so unexpected hotspots can sometimes melt expensive equipment and disable plants.

Berkeley Lab researchers characterize individual defects inside a bulk insulator using scanning tunneling microscopy Nanoscale defects are enormously important in shaping the electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of a material. For example, a defect may donate charge or scatter electrons moving from one point to another.

AUSTIN, Texas -  Led by the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, a team of researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has identified a new safe and sustainable cathode material for low-cost sodium-ion batteries. During the past five years, sodium-ion batteries have emerged as a promising new type of rechargeable battery and an alternative to lithium-ion batteries because sodium, better known as the main element of salt, is abundant and inexpensive.

UCLA Engineering professors play key role in advance that could yield better understanding of nature's building blocks Matthew Chin Weiming An/UCLA Rendering showing high-energy positron acceleration in plasma - a new method that could help build next-generation particle colliders. A study led by researchers from UCLA and the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has demonstrated a more efficient way to accelerate positrons, the antimatter opposites of electrons.

Children will be given the chance to meet the original robot scientist in a series of demonstrations at London's Science Museum this week. Professor Ross D. King, from the University of Manchester's School of Computer Science, will join academic colleagues to demonstrate just what ADAM, a machine who thinks and does experiments like a human scientist, is capable of.

Dozens of new two-dimensional materials similar to graphene are now available, thanks to research from University of Manchester scientists. These 2D crystals are capable of delivering designer materials with revolutionary new properties. The problem has been that the vast majority of these atomically thin 2D crystals are unstable in air, so react and decompose before their properties can be determined and their potential applications investigated.

An exotic kind of magnetic behavior, driven by the mere proximity of two materials, has been analyzed by a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere using a technique called spin-polarized neutron reflectometry. They say the new finding could be used to probe a variety of exotic physical phenomena, and could ultimately be used to produce key components of future quantum computers.

Researchers have observed the process of evolution by natural selection at work in robots, by constructing a 'mother' robot that can design, build and test its own 'children', and then use the results to improve the performance of the next generation, without relying on computer simulation or human intervention.

Progressively zoomed-in images of graphene nanoribbons grown on germanium. The ribbons automatically align perpendicularly and naturally grow in what is known as the armchair edge configuration. Images: Arnold Research Group and Guisinger Research Group Graphene, an atom-thick material with extraordinary properties, is a promising candidate for the next generation of dramatically faster, more energy-efficient electronics.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The personality-based communication styles of team members can often determine the success or failure of a team, according to a recent study by Penn State researchers. "This new research shows that understanding the communication styles of team members can help us account for differences in personality and the impact those differences have on team performance," said Gretchen Macht, a postdoctoral scholar in architectural engineering.

Scientists are developing a 'bionic eye' that could be used by manufacturers to improve monitoring of industrial assembly lines. At the back of the human eye is a specialised layer of cells called the retina, which captures light information. This information is then converted into electrical signals and sent via the optic nerve to the brain, where a visual image is produced.

Using unique mechanical experiments and close-up video, Cambridge researchers have shown how ants use microscopic 'combs' and 'brushes' to keep their antennae clean, which could have applications for developing cleaners for nanotechnology. Insects have developed ingenious ways of cleaning very small, sensitive structures, which could have fascinating applications for nanotechnology - where contamination of small things is a big problem Alexander Hackmann For an insect, grooming is a serious business.

After 85-year search, massless particle with promise for next-generation electronics discovered Posted July 16, 2015; 02:00 p.m. by Morgan Kelly, Office of An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered an elusive massless particle theorized 85 years ago. The particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because of its unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal, according to new research.

A technique devised by UCLA researchers could help scientists better understand a tiny — but potentially important — component of next-generation electronic devices. Scientists trying to improve the semiconductors that power our electronic devices have focused on a technology called spintronics as one especially promising area of research.

Microwave ovens, penicillin and Velcro are examples of scientific discoveries made by accident. Now, Cornell researchers announce another accidental discovery: When a green fluorescent protein (GFP) is exposed to specific wavelengths of laser light, it turns red. Students engaged in a photo-bleaching technique discovered the color change when they accidentally used a different laser wavelength to look at the GFP.