SAN ANTONIO — June 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Craig DeForest discussed the latest accomplishments of NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission during a media event at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. As the spacecraft constellation completes commissioning, early PUNCH data showed coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, as they erupted from the Sun and traveled across the inner solar system.

The innovation turns conventional RFID technology into a reliable sensing platform without requring wires, batteries or calibration.

Rice University student engineers have earned top international honors for a novel device that could redefine how humans interact with virtual environments. Their project, a wearable haptic wristband, claimed first place in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Student Design Competition held in London May 27.

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), headed by President Kazuhiro Hono(Open in a new window), has decided to present this year’s NIMS Award to: Prof. Tsutomu Miyasaka, Professor of Engineering, Toin University of Yokohama, Prof. Henry J. Snaith Professor of Physics, University of Oxford, and Prof. Nam-Gyu Park Professor of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University.

- Scientists led by University of Leicester will support traditional communities to monitor biodiversity in the Amazon

- Working with universities in Brazil, they will develop an AI toolkit to catalogue local knowledge and understanding

- Funded with nearly £1 million from UK Research and Innovation

In Nanotechnology and Precision Engineering, researchers developed a microrobot capable of manipulating small droplets in the presence of magnetic fields. To make their robot, they mixed neodymium magnetic particles and sugar with a chemically stable polymer. The sugar was then dissolved away, leaving holes throughout the polymer for increased surface area. Lastly, the team treated the polymer with plasma to make it attract water and other liquids. Including the magnetic particles allowed the team to control their robot by applying magnetic fields, and using powerful neodymium particles made the robot more responsive and effective compared to existing magnetic microrobots.