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A new smart skin developed at Stanford University might foretell a day when people type on invisible keyboards, identify objects by touch alone, or allow users to communicate by hand gestures with apps in immersive environments.

In a just-publish paper in the journal Nature Electronics the researchers describe a new type of stretchable biocompatible material that gets sprayed on the back of the hand, like suntan spray. Integrated in the mesh is a tiny electrical network that senses as the skin stretches and bends and, using AI, the researchers can interpret myriad daily tasks from hand motions and gestures. The researchers say it could have applications and implications in fields as far-ranging as gaming, sports, telemedicine, and robotics.

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“This shows that we must factor the gut microbiome into our understanding of how nanomaterials affect the immune system,” said the paper’s corresponding author Bengt Fadeel, professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. “Our results are important for identifying the potential adverse effects of nanomaterial and mitigating or preventing such effects in new materials.”

ALSO READ: Researchers reveal tomatoes’ health benefits to gut microbes

Graphene is an extremely thin material, a million times thinner than a human hair. It comprises a single layer of carbon atoms and is stronger than steel yet flexible, transparent, and electrically conductive. This makes it extremely useful in a multitude of applications, including in “smart” textiles equipped with wearable electronics and as a component of composite materials, to enhance the strength and conductivity of existing materials.

Electronic wearable patches have been devised to monitor various health conditions by noninvasively detecting biomolecules on the skin surface.

A new Nature Communications study discusses the development of novel skin patches capable of deep detection of biomolecules, which correlate better and more rapidly with physiological states. For example, the photoacoustic patch described by the researchers, who are engineers at the University of California San Diego, can produce a three-dimensional (3D) map of deep tissue hemoglobin.

Imagine brain implants that let you control devices by thought alone—or let computers read your mind. It’s early days, but research into this technology is well under way.

Film supported by @mishcondereya.

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Scientists are working to end the need for human heart transplants by 2028. A team of researchers in the UK, Cambridge, and the Netherlands are developing a robot heart that can pump blood through the circulatory network but is soft and pliable. The first working model should be ready for implantation into animals within the next 3 years, and into humans within the next 8 years. The device is so promising that it is among just 4 projects that have made it to the shortlist for a £30-million prize, called the Big Beat Challenge for a therapy that can change the game in the treatment of heart disease.

The other projects include a genetic therapy for heart defects, a vaccine against heart disease, and wearable technology for early preclinical detection of heart attacks and strokes.

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Solar cell technology is a seen as a key pillar in our transition to cleaner forms of energy, but within this field there is all kinds of room for experimentation. Solar cells that are thin and flexible hold unique promise in the area, as they could be applied to all kinds of irregular, curvy or otherwise unsuitable surfaces. Thinner than a human hair, a new lightweight solar cell from MIT scientists continues to push the envelope in this space.

The MIT team behind the technology sought to build on its previous advances in material science, which in 2016 culminated in ultra-thin solar cells light enough to sit atop a soap bubble without breaking it. As is the case with other thin, light and flexible solar cells we’ve looked at over the years, this pointed to all kinds of possibilities, from paper-based electronics to lightweight wearables that harvest energy throughout your day.

Despite the potential, the team still had some problems to solve, with the fabrication technique for the solar cells requiring vacuum chambers and expensive vapor deposition methods. In order to scale the technology up, the scientists have now turned to ink-based printable materials to streamline the process.

In recent years, engineers have been working to develop increasingly sophisticated and smaller electronic components that could power the devices of the future. This includes thin and stretchable components that could be easily worn on the skin or implanted inside the human body.

Researchers at RIKEN, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, University of Tokyo, and other institutes in Japan, Singapore and China have recently realized a new, elastic electrical conductor that is 1.3-micrometers thin. This conductor, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could advance the development of both wearable and implantable sensors.

“Ultrathin electronic devices can form a conformal interface with curved surfaces, are not perceivable by human when wearing, and do not induce strong foreign body rejection (FBR) when implanted in animals,” Zhi Jiang, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.

For years, Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab has used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to make soft robots and related components – from skin to wearable technology – as nimble and practical as possible.

In fiber-optic sensors, light from a LED is sent through an optical waveguide, and a photodiode detects changes in the beam’s intensity to determine when the material is being deformed. One of the virtues of the technology is that waveguides are still able to propagate light if they are punctured or cut.

The researchers combined the sensors with a polyurethane urea elastomer that incorporated hydrogen bonds, for rapid healing, and disulfide exchanges, for strength.

MIT engineers have developed ultralight fabric solar cells that can quickly and easily turn any surface into a power source.

These durable, flexible solar cells, which are much thinner than a human hair, are glued to a strong, lightweight fabric, making them easy to install on a fixed surface. They can provide energy on the go as a wearable power fabric or be transported and rapidly deployed in remote locations for assistance in emergencies. They are one-hundredth the weight of conventional solar panels, generate 18 times more power-per-kilogram, and are made from semiconducting inks using printing processes that can be scaled in the future to large-area manufacturing.

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