Soft robotic grippers can safely handle fragile objects, making them promising for applications such as food handling, nursing, and household services. However, giving soft grippers a sense of touch remains a major engineering challenge. Now, researchers from Japan have developed EleTac, an elephant trunk-inspired soft gripper that combines gentle grasping with tactile sensing using a single internal camera. The system can accurately estimate contact location, force applied, object shape, and the position of its fingers.

Tokyo, Japan – The research group of Professor Kotohiro Nomura, Tokyo Metropolitan University, in cooperation with the research groups of Senior Researcher Hiroshi Hirano and Director Seiji Higashi, Osaka Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, and Associate Professor Hiroki Takeshita, The University of Shiga Prefecture, has developed biobased poly(ester amide)s from inedible bio-renewables, which can be easily chemical recyclable and exhibit better mechanical (tensile) properties in film than commodity plastics.

The world’s soils are vast reservoirs of organic carbon, vital for both climate change mitigation and sustaining agricultural productivity. A major component of this vital carbon pool is Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPS), a sticky "slime" secreted by microorganisms. Despite its importance, how EPS transforms and persists within soils, particularly in interaction with minerals, remains poorly understood. A study from Huazhong Agricultural University sheds new light on these intricate processes, revealing that microbial activity, rather than simple surface attachment, drives significant changes in soil organic matter (SOM) composition, with iron (oxyhydr)oxides emerging as key players in carbon stabilization.

This investigation addressed a critical gap in understanding the intricate relationship between microbial life and geological structures beneath our feet. The team's work illustrates the complex pathways through which bacterial EPS contributes to SOM persistence, a process crucial for maintaining soil health and securing long-term carbon storage. EPS primarily comprises polysaccharides, proteins, and nucleic acids, acting as the interface for microbial interactions with their environment and impacting the stability of soil aggregates.

Small Language Models (SLMs) are emerging as efficient, privacy-focused alternatives to resource-intensive Large Language Models. Published in AI+, the study reviews SLM optimization strategies and evaluates a Greek labor-law assistant that combines fine-tuning, Retrieval-Augmented Generation and quantization for practical local deployment on desktop and mobile devices.

A new tumor-on-a-chip model lets Sylvester researchers watch how pancreatic cancer co-opts immune cells in real time, revealing how tumors build defenses that resist treatment. The findings point to possible ways to disrupt those signals and make resistant tumors more vulnerable to therapy.

- Professor Yong-Young Noh's team solves one of the semiconductor industry's "10 Future Grand Challenges" by achieving record-breaking performance and stability in p-type perovskite transistors

- First-ever study on perovskite transistors published in Nature

POSTECH research team led by Prof. Jongmin Kim develops 'RATEX,' an RNA circuit capable of complex computation inside living cells.