Author: arron

Nature, Published online: 10 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01811-8

Greening nickel extraction requires institutional and financial support

Nature, Published online: 10 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01826-1

An open collection of tips and tools could help researchers and publishers to pick up on problematic research.

Nature, Published online: 10 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01225-6

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Nature, Published online: 10 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01768-8

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Nature, Published online: 10 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01771-z

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Nature, Published online: 11 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01770-0

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Nature, Published online: 11 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01769-7

Building scientific capacity in the global south is key to solving today’s most pressing planetary challenges.

Nature, Published online: 11 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01827-0

Jayanta Bhattacharya says the US biomedical agency can’t continue ‘business as usual’ if it wants to restore its reputation.

In a new podcast episode, a neurologist digs into the “social brain” and how dementia affects how we act.

When someone we know or love starts to develop psychological issues, we don’t often associate it with a form of dementia. However, this trait is one of the most common signs of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) —the most common neurodegenerative disease in people under the age of 65.

In his new book, Mysteries of the Social Brain: Understanding Human Behavior Through Science (Routledge, 2025), Bruce Miller highlights his experiences observing people with FTD and what they have taught him about what he calls the “social brain.”

Miller has been observing people with FTD for decades in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of San Francisco, where he is also professor of neurology and the founding director of the Global Brain Health Institute.

In this episode of the Big Brains podcast, he shares key insights on how to keep our “social brain” healthy and how it can even unlock our creative potential:

Read the transcript of this episode.

Source: University of Chicago

The post Listen: How dementia changes how people act appeared first on Futurity.

Researchers have developed smart textiles that use acoustic waves instead of electronics to measure touch, pressure, and movement precisely.

Imagine wearing a T-shirt that measures your breathing or gloves that translate your hand movements into commands for your computer.

Researchers at ETH Zurich, led by Daniel Ahmed, professor of acoustic robotics for life sciences and health care, have laid the foundations for just such smart textiles.

Unlike many previous developments in this area, which usually use electronics, the researchers rely on acoustic waves passed through glass fibers. This makes the measurements more precise and the textiles lighter, more breathable, and easier to wash.

“They are also inexpensive because we use readily available materials, and the power consumption is very low,” says Ahmed.

The researchers call their development SonoTextiles.

“While research has already been conducted into smart textiles based on acoustics, we are the first to explore the use of glass fiber in combination with signals that use different frequencies,” explains Yingqiang Wang, the first author of the study.

The researchers have woven glass fibers into the fabric at regular intervals. At one end of each glass fiber is a small transmitter that emits sound waves. The other end of each of the glass fibers is connected to a receiver that measures whether the waves have changed.

Each transmitter works at a different frequency. This means it requires little computing power to determine which fiber the sound waves have changed on. Previous smart textiles often struggled with data overload and signal processing issues, since each sensor location had to be evaluated individually.

“In the future, the data could be sent directly to a computer or smartphone in real time,” says Ahmed.

When a glass fiber moves, the length of the acoustic waves passing through it changes, as they lose energy. In the case of a T-shirt, this can be caused by body movement or even breathing.

“We used frequencies in the ultrasonic range, around 100 kilohertz—well beyond the range of human hearing, which is between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz,” Wang emphasizes.

The researchers have shown that their concept works in the lab. In the future, SonoTextiles could be used in a variety of ways: as a shirt or T-shirt, they could monitor the breathing of asthma patients and trigger an alarm in an emergency.

In sports training and performance monitoring, athletes could receive real-time analysis of their movements, to optimize their performance and prevent injuries. The textiles also have potential for sign language: gloves with this technology could simultaneously translate hand movements into text or speech. They could also be used in virtual or augmented reality environments.

“SonoTextiles could even measure a person’s posture and improve their quality of life as an assistive technology,” adds Chaochao Sun, who shares first authorship of the study. People who want to improve their posture could receive targeted feedback to correct poor posture. The textiles could also indicate when a wheelchair user needs to change position to prevent pressure ulcers.

Although the everyday usability of SonoTextiles is potentially very high, Ahmed adds that there is still room for improvement in terms of practical application. Glass microfibers worked well as sound conductors in the lab, but they could potentially break in everyday use.

“The beauty is that we can easily replace the glass fibers with metal. Sound also propagates effectively through metal,” explains Ahmed. “We would like to expand our research in this direction and also into other applications.”

The researchers now want to make the system more robust and examine how the electronics can be better integrated into the textiles.

The research appears in Nature Electronics.

Source: ETH Zurich

The post Smart fabric uses sound to measure touch, pressure, and more appeared first on Futurity.