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98 published articles
Cotton with two dyes disinfects itself under ordinary lamps
Spanish scientists coated ordinary cotton with two dyes. Under lamp light the fabric kills bacteria on its own, and in hospital rooms it collected three quarters fewer microbes than plain cotton.
A drop of blood and a crank are enough to learn your blood type in a minute
A drop of finger-prick blood, a plastic chip and a crank: after a minute you can see the blood type and how many red cells the blood contains. Taiwanese researchers want to give this to paramedics; for now it is a prototype.
Chemists mix glowing liquids and get new anti-counterfeiting marks
Four glowing liquids can be mixed like paints, and each mixture has its own "fingerprint" under a UV lamp. Chemists want to use this to protect documents and medicines from fakes, for now in the lab.
An algorithm designs cast iron that gets stronger from the impurities in scrap
Instead of cleaning up scrap, an algorithm found a cast iron recipe in which impurities from waste strengthen the metal. Castings made only from scrap came out stronger and 8% cheaper, so far in tests.
Plastic trash turned into a sponge that pulls water from dry air
Vienna chemists turned plastic trash into sponges that pull water from the air and release it when gently warmed, for example by sunlight. For now, this is laboratory research.
Water droplets in oil compute with ions and remember what just happened
Penn State researchers linked water droplets with thin fatty membranes and turned them into a network that processes signals with ions, much like nerve cells. For now this is early lab research.
A salt that melts for a moment improves the perovskite cell layer
Researchers improved a solar cell by adding a salt to its light-absorbing layer that melts briefly and then escapes. The cell turns more than 25 percent of light into current, but so far it is only a laboratory test.
Instead of random grains, one MoS₂ crystal grows where we want it
Korean researchers taught a thin chip-material layer to grow from the center of a marked field, not from a random point. That way they avoid seams that spoil the electronics.
A capacitor printed from cement lights LEDs
Chinese researchers 3D-printed an element from cement that stores electricity and keeps a strength close to ordinary concrete. In the lab it lit LEDs, but it stops working in frost of minus 18 degrees.
A drone flies among moving obstacles with a mathematical proof of safety
MIT researchers built a program that steers a drone among moving obstacles even though the machine does not know its surroundings. The authors prove mathematically that, under stated assumptions, the drone will not collide.
A paper wallpaper in the lab feeds on humidity in the room
Researchers built paper wallpaper that turns humidity in a room into a small electric current. It also dries the air a little — for now only in the lab.
The first nuclear clocks tick in thorium-doped crystals
Physicists in Vienna and Beijing have built the first clocks that keep time with the nucleus of a thorium atom held in a small crystal. For now they run worse than atomic clocks, but they are already helping the search for dark matter.