Jagiellonian University

Potential applications range from air-quality monitors to electronic skin Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) are showing the way toward low-cost, industrial-scale manufacturing of a new family of electronic devices. A leading example is a gas sensor that could be integrated into food packaging to gauge freshness, or into compact wireless air-quality monitors. New

Cleaning up the water left over from mining operations can literally take generations – 25 to 50 years on average – leaving billions of gallons of the precious resource locked up and useless. Now, a University of Florida researcher has figured out how to trim that time dramatically – to just two to three hours,

Programmable kirigami metamaterials enable responsive surfaces and smart skins Bad news for ophiophobes: Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new and improved snake-inspired soft robot that is faster and more precise than its predecessor. The robot is made using kirigami — a Japanese paper craft

Researchers have shown how to convert waste packing peanuts into high-performance carbon electrodes for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that outperform conventional graphite electrodes, representing an environmentally friendly approach to reuse the waste. Batteries have two electrodes, called an anode and a cathode. The anodes in most of today’s lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite. Lithium ions

Moreover, he said, he was disturbed by the irony of landfills choked with building materials and yet a lack of affordable housing.

Two University of Pennsylvania students who designed a wireless energy transmitter took the $5,000 top prize at Friday’s PennVention competition. Ten teams of student inventors from the University of Pennsylvania who made it to the event’s final round pitched their ideas to industry professionals who were looking for feasible products that could make it to market.

Image via Wikipedia Google is currently working to develop breakthrough solar thermal technology (which it expects will be ready in 1-3 years). Google is currently working to develop breakthrough solar thermal technology (which it expects will be ready in 1-3 years). It has also gotten into the smart metering game with its innovative PowerMeter technology.

Rice shows reusable, carbon nanotube-reinforced filters clean toxins from water Carbon nanotubes immobilized in a tuft of quartz fiber have the power to remove toxic heavy metals from water, according to researchers at Rice University. Prize-winning filters produced in the lab of Rice chemist Andrew Barron by then-high school student and lead author Perry Alagappan absorb more

Image via Wikipedia A new approach to tiny fuel cells implanted in rats enables the devices to generate electricity for months using sugar in the rodents’ bodies The advent of the artificial heart has spurred scientists to pursue synthetic kidneys and pancreases as well. Still, one key obstacle to realizing such devices is powering them