Using the human body to transmit signals, Georgia Tech engineers have created a wireless networking system that allows tiny implantable sensors and actuators to communicate with each other and with wearable devices. Their system means devices can work together like never before, sensing in one part of the body and triggering a therapeutic response elsewhere—perhaps releasing medicine or stimulating a nerve.

Imagine if your car weren't powered by a conventional battery under the hood but by energy stored in its walls or even its roof? This is a future that Dr. Bhagya Dharmasiri and her colleagues at the Deakin Institute for Frontier Materials have been exploring, bringing load-bearing structures and rechargeable energy storage together to create structural battery composites.

Reinforced concrete floor slabs account for about 40% of buildings' embodied carbon emissions. Until now, however, there has been no practical alternative for complex, multistory buildings.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Anupam Pandey's research team has found that microscopic folds in soft materials can act like tiny, programmable traffic gates for liquid droplets. The folds can stop droplets, let them pass or merge them together without surface coatings or additional hardware. Remarkably, the droplets never touch the fold. They sense it from a distance and slow down, stop short or change course in response. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.