While the electronic tongue bears little physical resemblance to its namesake, the strand-like sensory probes of the 'e-tongue' still outperformed human senses when detecting contaminated wine in a recent study. In a recent experiment, the e-tongue identified signs of microorganisms in white wine within a week after contamination -- four weeks before a human panel noticed the change in aroma. This was also before those microbes could be grown from the wine in a petri-dish. Winemakers traditionally rely on these two methods, sniffing the wine and petri-dish testing, to identify potential wine ..read more

Engineers have developed a record-setting nanomaterial which when stretched in one direction, expands perpendicular to the applied force ..read more

In an approach they call 'nanostitching,' engineers used carbon nanotubes to prevent cracking in multilayered composites. The advance could lead to next-generation airplanes and spacecraft ..read more

Tagging marine animals with sensors to track their movements and ocean conditions can provide important environmental and behavioral information. Existing techniques to attach sensors currently largely rely on invasive physical anchors, suction cups, and rigid glues. While these techniques can be effective for tracking marine animals with hard exoskeletons and large animals such as sharks, individuals can incur physiological and metabolic stress during the tagging process, which can affect the quality of data collection. A newly developed soft hydrogel-based bioadhesive interface for marine se ..read more

Simulations on the Stampede2 supercomputer of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are helping scientists engineer solutions to overheating of grid transformers -- a critical component of the electric grid ..read more

Researchers adapt a novel force measurement technique to uncover the previously unidentified physics at play at the thin air-film gap between water droplets and superhydrophobic surfaces ..read more

Cloud 'engineering' could be more effective for climate cooling than previously thought, because of the increased cloud cover produced, new research shows ..read more

While there's no regulation in the U.S. for what's in organic shampoos, they tend to contain ingredients perceived as safe or environmentally friendly. However, these 'clean' shampoos separate and spoil faster than those made with synthetic stabilizers and preservatives. Now, researchers demonstrate that a simple process -- spinning organic shampoo at high speeds -- improved the final products' shelf lives and ability to clean hair ..read more

Tyche is a machine-learning framework that can generate plausible answers when asked to identify potential disease in medical images. By capturing the ambiguity in images, the technique could prevent clinicians from missing crucial information that could inform diagnoses ..read more

Researchers have developed synthetic platelets that can be used to stop bleeding and enhance healing at the site of an injury. The researchers have demonstrated that the synthetic platelets work well in animal models but have not yet begun clinical trials in humans ..read more