An earthquake on a chip: New tech could make smartphones smaller, faster
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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 3-Apr-2026 15:15 ET (3-Apr-2026 19:15 GMT/UTC)
The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology behind flexible cell phones, curved monitors, and televisions could one day be used to make on-skin sensors that show changes in temperature, blood flow, and pressure in real time. An international collaboration, led by researchers from Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea and Drexel University, has developed a flexible and stretchable OLED that could put the technology on track for this use and a range of new applications.
A joint research team led by Tae‑Woo Lee, Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University, and Yury Gogotsi, Professor at Drexel University, has overcome long-standing limitations of next-generation stretchable light-emitting devices by developing the record efficiency fully stretchable organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The study was published in Nature on January 15.
Bonn, January 14, 2026 – Researchers from Bonn and Basel have developed a new method to equip human retinal organoids – small, lab-grown models of the retina – with artificial blood vessel structures. These vascularized retinal organoids, called vROs, preserve inner retinal cell types and for the first time, form fully functional light-signal pathways from photoreceptors to retinal ganglion cells.
A novel liquid biopsy technology is set to advance cancer diagnostics and monitoring by overcoming the long-standing challenge of simultaneously achieving high sensitivity, broad coverage, and simple workflow. A team of researchers from Genomill Health Inc., the University of Turku, and the TYKS Turku University Hospital, Finland, benchmarked this new method, Bridge Capture, against two market-leading tools Their analysis, appearing in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier, highlights the method’s simplicity, cost-efficiency, reproducibility, and scalability, making it well suited for routine clinical testing, disease monitoring, and treatment selection.