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In 2022, PhD student Austin Carter, who worked with the Center for Old Ice Exploration (COLDEX), dropped a camera in a 305-foot hole beneath Antarctica at the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area.
He then posted the results on TikTok.
Category: electronics
Do you want to make your VRChat character more true to life? You can use motion capture gear to ensure the most realistic movement. There is plenty of equipment to choose from, and 3D character designer Yueou demonstrated one that might interest you: UDCAP, “silk-like” gloves for SteamVR that track your hand gestures pretty accurately.
While there is a little delay, such gloves could be a great addition to your setup. The creator, Udexreal, promises 15 hours of battery work, so you don’t have to worry about your virtual social life ending early. There are 12 sensors that cover all 15 finger joints, providing a total of 21 joint angles.
“Our sensors are foldable and highly flexible, blending seamlessly with fabric without causing any discomfort. They capture even the slightest stress, stretch, and bend, with a resolution of 0.01 degrees,” the creators say.
The soft metal bismuth may be a wonder material for electronics – particularly because of one surprising behaviour it displays when exposed to magnetic fields.
LG plans to launch its brightest-ever OLED screen later this year. A new internal structure enables the fourth-gen panel to achieve a maximum brightness of 4,000 nits – about 30 percent higher than the previous generation.
Insects exhibit impressive agility and responsiveness even when faced with low-light conditions. The secret lies in their compound eyes, which are capable of detecting motion with incredible speed and sensitivity.
Now, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a camera that mimics this feat to achieve ultra-high-speed imaging.
Interestingly, this bio-inspired camera surpasses the limitations of traditional high-speed cameras.
Japan-based Kirin Holdings has showcased its new electric spoon at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2025) in Las Vegas.
What makes it different from any other ordinary spoon in the market is that it can make the food seem saltier, and by that, it also means tastier.
As per Kirin, the device uses electricity to raise the saltiness and umami in low-sodium foods.
Researchers have developed a new method for quickly detecting and identifying very low concentrations of gases. The new approach, called coherently controlled quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy, could form the basis for highly sensitive real-time sensors for applications such as environmental monitoring, breath analysis and chemical process control.
“Most gases are present in small amounts, so detecting gases at low concentrations is important in a wide variety of industries and applications,” said research team leader Simon Angstenberger from the University of Stuttgart in Germany. “Unlike other trace gas detection methods that rely on photoacoustics, ours is not limited to specific gases and does not require prior knowledge of the gas that might be present.”
In Optica, the researchers report the acquisition of a complete methane spectrum spanning 3,050 to 3,450 nanometers in just three seconds, a feat that would typically take around 30 minutes.
When unable to smell prey, female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes turn to—and upregulate—heat sensors in their legs, new Science Advances research finds.
Fig. 2. Orco mutant mosquitoes display enhanced heat-seeking behavior.
(A) Schematic of female body parts that express Orco. (B) Heatmaps showing mean mosquito occupancy for the indicated genotypes on the Peltier (dotted lines) and surrounding area at indicated Peltier temperature during seconds 90 to 180 of each stimulus period. © Mean ± SEM percentage of mosquitoes of indicated genotypes on Peltier (top) during the 36°C trial (bottom). A 20-s pulse of CO2 was applied at the beginning of each stimulus period. (D) Percent of mosquitoes of indicated genotypes on Peltier during seconds 90 to 180 of stimuli of indicated temperature (mean ± SEM, n = 9 trials per genotype; data points marked with indicate that the mutant differs significantly from all other tested genotypes within each tested temperature at P < 0.05; one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s HSD post hoc test). (E to G) Mean dwell time (E), landing frequency (F), and take-off frequency (G) of indicated genotypes on the Peltier surface during the 36°C trial (n = 9 trials per genotype).
Birds are the undisputed champions of epic travel, but they are not the only long-haul fliers. A handful of bats are known to travel thousands of kilometers in continental migrations across North America, Europe, and Africa. The behavior is rare and difficult to observe, which is why long-distance bat migration has remained an enigma.
Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) have studied 71 common noctule bats on their spring migration across the European continent, providing a leap in understanding this mysterious behavior. Ultra-lightweight, intelligent sensors attached to bats uncovered a strategy used by the tiny mammals for travel: they surf the warm fronts of storms to fly further with less energy. The study is published in Science.
“The sensor data is amazing,” says first author Edward Hurme, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB and the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz. “We don’t just see the path that bats took, we also see what they experienced in the environment as they migrated. It’s this context that gives us insight into the crucial decisions that bats made during their costly and dangerous journeys.”
Prof Zhang Zhiyong’s team at Peking University developed a heterojunction-gated field-effect transistor (HGFET) that achieves high sensitivity in short-wave infrared detection, with a recorded specific detectivity above 1014 Jones at 1,300 nm, making it capable of starlight detection. Their research was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials, titled “Opto-Electrical Decoupled Phototransistor for Starlight Detection.”
Highly sensitive shortwave infrared (SWIR) detectors are essential for detecting weak radiation (typically below 10−8 W·Sr−1 ·cm−2 ·µm−1) with high-end passive image sensors. However, mainstream SWIR detection based on epitaxial photodiodes cannot effectively detect ultraweak infrared radiation due to the lack of inherent gain.
Filling this gap, researchers at the Peking University School of Electronics and collaborators have presented a heterojunction-gated field-effect transistor (HGFET) that achieves ultra-high photogain and exceptionally low noise in the short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) region, benefiting from a design that incorporates a comprehensive opto-electric decoupling mechanism.