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Dehydration warning at your fingertips: Touchscreen tech tracks body water levels

The holy month of Ramadan is a sacred time when millions of Muslims around the world embark on a profound spiritual journey of fasting, prayer, and reflection. But it is also a time when many face serious health risks, as going without food or water from sunrise to sunset—often in scorching heat—can lead to dangerous levels of dehydration. Now, scientists at KAUST have found a surprisingly simple way to track the body's water levels during fasting: by measuring how skin interacts with a touchscreen. The study is published in the IEEE Sensors Journal. It is not only useful when fasting. The research team, led by electrical engineer Tareq Al-Naffouri and colleagues at KAUST, showed that the same method applies to athletes, who often experience dehydration due to intense exertion and fluid loss through sweat.

A New Nanotechnology Application Accelerates the Transition of Stem Cells into Bone – Transforming Regenerative Medicine: Bio-Science from KAUST

A cell cultured on top of the nanowire scaffold. Credit: © 2022 KAUST; Heno Hwang A nanotechnology platform developed by King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) scientists could lead to new treatments for degenerative bone diseases. The technique relies on iron nanowires that bend in response to magnetic fields. Bone-forming stem cells grown on a mesh of these tiny wires get a…

Sunlight-powered catalyst sets new standard for hydrogen peroxide production efficiency

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) packs so much chemical energy into a small space that it is powerful enough to fuel rockets. But this same ability to concentrate energy also makes hydrogen peroxide useful for more earthly energy applications, such as powering fuel cells. It also holds promise as a green and sustainable energy source: when hydrogen peroxide releases its stored energy, the main byproduct is simply water. Huabin Zhang and his team at KAUST, together with colleagues from China and the United States, have developed a material that significantly boosts hydrogen peroxide production. "We proposed a convenient strategy to regulate the chemical state of a catalyst at the atomic level," says Chengyang Feng from the KAUST team. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Solvent selection tool boosts thermoelectric devices

Organic thermoelectric devices (OTEs) convert waste heat into useful electric power, but they are not yet efficient enough for practical use. KAUST researchers have now developed a tool that predicts the best solvent to use when processing the devices' polymer films, significantly improving their power output. The paper is published in the journal Nature Materials. "Waste heat is present everywhere: industrial processes, car engines, air conditioners, and even in your cup of coffee, so it would be useful to recover a portion of this energy into electricity," says Derya Baran, who led the team. "We want to use this to improve the energy autonomy of electronic devices; for example, to recharge a battery without plugging it into a wall outlet."