#capillary action

A dental floss that can measure stress

Chronic stress can lead to increased blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, decreased immune function, depression, and anxiety. Unfortunately, the tools we use to monitor stress are often imprecise or expensive, relying on self-reporting questionnaires and psychiatric evaluations. Now a Tufts interdisciplinary engineer and his team have devised a simple device using specially designed floss that can easily and accurately measure cortisol, a stress hormone, in real time. The work is published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. "It started in a collaboration with several departments across Tufts, examining how stress and other cognitive states affect problem solving and learning," said Sameer Sonkusale, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

*schmoozes dickishly*

PHOENIZ, Ariz. — When sweat is dripping down your face (or armpits), you might think it’s just a sign of hard work. But as sweat dries, it removes some heat with it, cooling you down. A young researcher now wants to empower sweat to do even more. He wants it to help athletic wear further cool the bodies of hard-working athletes. Its name? The sweatshirt, of course.

Rohit Nemani, 17, has been on the Cox Mill High School varsity cross-country team for three years. Running in the hot, sticky summers of Concord, N.C., will make anyone aware of just how much the human body can perspire. Sweat cools the skin, of course. But sometimes it’s not enough. “Every year, tons of athletes put themselves at risk from overheating, dehydration and heatstroke from working out in hot climates,” Rohit says.

Rohit Nemani describes his research findings at Intel ISEF. CREDIT: C. Ayers Photography/SSP

One day while running (of course), the teen came up with an idea to use sweat itself to power an improved cooling system.

Sweat isn’t just water and smell. It has salts, too. Those salts are electrically charged particles that can produce electricity when they contact an electrode — a device that conducts electricity. If Rohit could weave electrodes into the fabric of a shirt, he reasoned, he could use those salts to generate electricity.

Animal footpads inspire a polymer that sticks to ice

A solution to injuries from slips and falls may be found underfoot—literally. The footpads of geckos have hydrophilic (water-loving) mechanisms that allow the little animals to easily move over moist, slick surfaces. Researchers have found that using silicone rubber enhanced with zirconia nanoparticles creates a gecko-inspired slip-resistant polymer. They say the material, which sticks to ice, could be incorporated into shoe soles to reduce injuries in humans. Their study is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Slips and falls account for more than 38 million injuries and 684,000 deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization. And nearly half of these incidents happen on ice. Current anti-slip shoe soles rely on materials such as natural rubber that repel the layer of liquid water that sits atop the pavement on a rainy day.