A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

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Researchers at Princeton University have found a way to turn a common breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a lightweight and porous material that can be used in many applications, including water filtration, energy storage and sound and thermal insulation.

The research was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation through a grant to the Princeton Center for Complex Materials. The results of the research are published in Materials Today.

Credit: Kelby Hochreither/Penn State; A mechanical integrated circuit can perform computation like a computer, without needing the computer.

Someone taps your shoulder. The touch receptors in your skin send a message to your brain, which processes the information and directs you to look left, in the direction of the tap. This processing of mechanical information has now been harnessed by Penn State and U.S. Air Force researchers and integrated into engineered materials that "think."

The results, published in Nature, are supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and hinge on a novel, reconfigurable alternative to integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are typically composed of multiple electronic components housed on a single semiconductor material, usually silicon, and run all types of modern electronics, including phones, cars and robots.

Credit: UCLA/Interconnected & Integrated Bioelectronics Lab

Researchers at UCLA and Stanford University have developed a secure, noninvasive, one-touch technology using hydrogel-coated chemical sensors and a signal-interpretation framework. It can present detailed information about an individual's blood composition — such as metabolites, hormones, nutrients, and pharmaceuticals, as well as blood oxygen — all through the press of a finger.

An 8-bit pneumatic RAM chip used to help a soft robot control its movements. Credit: William Grover

Pneumatic soft robots use pressurized air to move soft, rubbery limbs and grippers

Engineers at the University of California, Riverside have unveiled an air-powered computer memory that can be used to control soft robots. The innovation overcomes one of the biggest obstacles to advancing soft robotics: the fundamental mismatch between pneumatics and electronics. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded work is published in PLOS One.