Sensing

When there’s a fire, smoke detectors beep when enough smoke fills the air to scatter a light beam within the device enough that it hits a light detector. This ‘dumb’ model works well to detect house fires. Detecting radiation is different. Detection thresholds, the signal level a pulse must exceed for a detector to count…

At Sandia National Laboratories, inspecting ceramic components destined for nuclear deterrence applications traditionally meant lots of manual work. Inspectors would sit at a microscope for up to an hour per part where they would scan every surface for hairline cracks, chips and voids that could compromise performance. Training a single operator on the manual process…

At least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. A 2023 UNODC assessment estimated 267,000 deaths per year from falsified antimalarials alone in sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 170,000 more from counterfeit antibiotics. In the U.S., the problem is smaller in scale but growing: the CDC has warned about counterfeit…

Winner of an R&D 100 Award, the Universal GridEdge Analyzer (UGA) is a portable, high-speed device built to help utilities see what’s happening on the power grid in real time. Designed to move from site to site, UGA can “listen” to electrical waveforms on feeders serving neighborhoods and major loads, including solar, EV chargers, and…

The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not feature protests at the factory gates or workers marching against the machines. The revolution will not be debated on cable news or hashtagged into a culture war. The revolution will arrive on a Tuesday at a facility short of 47 technicians, and it will clock…

Food allergies affect 250 million people worldwide, with one person admitted to the ER for food allergies every ten seconds. More than 60% of severe reactions occur outside of the home. Now, patients can have access to laboratory-grade food testing wherever they are with Allergen Alert’s new portable food testing device.  The device contains a…

Cellular Tracking Technologies (CTT) engineers have developed a transmitter light enough to track a monarch butterfly from New Jersey, where the company is based, to Mexico, where the butterflies spend the winter.  For decades, the 5% body-mass rule made it nearly impossible to make a tracker light enough for a butterfly. Monarch butterflies weigh about…

Kaman Precision Products announced the KD-2306, a single-channel, multipurpose, noncontact displacement-sensing system. When paired with a supported dual- or single-coil sensor, the unit is intended for static and dynamic measurements in research and development, the company said. The KD-2306 supports dual and single-coil sensors. Its DIN rail-mount interface is designed for integration into OEM equipment…

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, working with MIT and a multi-university team, have demonstrated a nanomanufacturing method that peels off 10-nanometer-thick crystalline membranes for highly sensitive infrared detection without cryogenic cooling. The approach, called atomic lift-off (ALO), eliminates the buffer “release” layers common in prior techniques and achieved a record pyroelectric response in ultrathin films,…

A new sensor developed at the University of Waterloo aims to take the guesswork out of monitoring drinking water. Using a gold-plated sensor the size of a dime paired with a smartphone-sized circuit board containing a vector network analyzer (VNA), researchers have built a palm-sized device that can detect Escherichia coli in minutes. The system…

A total of 158 Finalists for the 2025 R&D 100 Awards have been announced by R&D World. Now in its 63rd year, this renowned global science and innovation competition drew entries from 13 countries/regions. This year’s esteemed judging panel featured 54 respected industry professionals from across the globe. The Finalists are listed below by category,…

Using an “interrogator” device to activate 50 miles of dormant fiber-optic cable, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory seismologists created a network of 8,000 virtual sensors, recording March’s 3.9 magnitude Dublin earthquake with unprecedented detail, achieving 1,000 times the observational density of current seismic networks. “The detail of the seismic wave field was unprecedented,” said Lab seismologist…

Increasing our understanding of the interactions between fuel properties and combustion processes can help us develop advanced internal combustion engines (ICE) with better performance and efficiency. To this end, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Engine Research Center (ERC) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering are investigating this interplay by combining sophisticated imaging techniques with…