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Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are neuromorphic transistors made of carbon-based materials that combine both electronic and ionic charge carriers. These transistors could be particularly effective solutions for amplifying and switching electronic signals in devices designed to be placed on the human skin, such as smart watches, trackers that monitor physiological signals and other wearable technologies.

In contrast with conventional neuromorphic transistors, OECTs could operate reliably in wet or humid environments, which would be highly advantageous for both medical and wearable devices. Despite their potential, most existing OECTs are based on stiff materials, which can reduce the comfort of wearables and thus hinder their large-scale deployment.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong have developed a new wearable device based on stretchable OECTs that can both perform computations and collect signals from the surrounding environment. Their proposed system, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could be used to realize in-sensor edge computing on a flexible wearable device that is comfortable for users.

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The Tewksbury earthquake’s minimal local damage but widespread impact was due to its rupture direction, funneling shaking from New Jersey towards New York City, with the anomaly highlighted in studies on seismic energy distribution.

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake in Tewksbury startled millions across the U.S. East Coast, marking the strongest recorded tremor in New Jersey since 1900.

But researchers noted something else unusual about the earthquake: why did so many people 40 miles away in New York City report strong shaking, while damage near the earthquake’s epicenter appeared minimal?

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A recent study from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, investigating meditation as a treatment for chronic lower back pain, has revealed that men and women use different biological mechanisms for pain relief. Men primarily rely on the release of endogenous opioids, the body’s natural painkillers, whereas women depend on alternative, non-opioid pathways to manage pain.

Synthetic opioid drugs, such as morphine and fentanyl, are the most powerful class of painkilling drugs available. Women are known to respond poorly to opioid therapies, which use synthetic opioid molecules to bind to the same receptors as naturally occurring endogenous opioids. This aspect of opioid drugs helps explain why they are so powerful as painkillers, but also why they carry a significant risk of dependence and addiction.

“Dependence develops because people start taking more opioids when their original dosage stops working,” said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology and Endowed Professor in Empathy and Compassion Research at UC San Diego Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. “Although speculative, our findings suggest that maybe one reason that females are more likely to become addicted to opioids is that they’re biologically less responsive to them and need to take more to experience any pain relief.”

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Just as we mimicked birds and fish to model cars and planes, we may gain inspiration for deep dive vehicles.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

The bottom of the ocean is cold, dark, and under extreme pressure. It is not a place suited to the physiology of us surface dwellers: At the deepest point, the pressure of 36,200 feet of seawater is greater than the weight of an elephant on every square inch of your body. Yet Earth’s deepest places are home to life uniquely suited to these challenging conditions. Scientists have studied how the bodies of some large animals, such as anglerfish and blobfish, have adapted to withstand the pressure. But far less is known about how cells and molecules stand up to the squeezing, crushing weight of thousands of feet of seawater.

“The animals that live down in the deep sea are not ones that live in surface waters,” said Itay Budin, who studies the biochemistry of cell membranes at the University of California, San Diego. “They’re clearly biologically specialized. But we know very little, at the molecular level, about what is actually determining that specialization.”

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Anikeeva added, “Yes, it is a record-breaking particle, but it’s not as record-breaking as it could be.”

Although that is still a work in progress, the team has ideas about how to move forward.

Large-scale safety studies are one of the additional steps that would be necessary to move these nanodiscs from basic research using animal models to clinical use in humans, “which is something academic researchers are not necessarily most well-positioned to do,” according to Anikeeva.

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Lee esta historia en español aquí.

NASA has selected a new crew of four volunteers to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Jason Lee, Stephanie Navarro, Shareef Al Romaithi, and Piyumi Wijesekara will step into the agency’s Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, on Friday, May 10. Once inside, the team will live and work like astronauts for 45 days. The crew will exit the facility on June 24 after they “return” to Earth. Jose Baca and Brandon Kent are this mission’s alternate crew members.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a series of structural changes and leadership appointments aimed at accelerating the company’s AI initiatives.

The restructuring sees the Gemini app team, led by Sissie Hsiao, joining Google DeepMind under the leadership of Demis Hassabis.

“Bringing the teams closer together will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app, make our post-training work proceed more efficiently and build on our great product momentum,” Pichai explained.

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