Stephanie vL Henkel

At Cornell University, researchers are working on a new table napkin made of nanofibers that can advise of the presence of microorganisms you don't want to ingest.

There's yet another food spoilage detector that can detect high levels of bacterial activity in poultry and other meats destined for the table. SensorfreshQ sniffs out biogenic amines that can be picked up by a handheld device that passes an air sample over the item of interest.

FingerTPS, a line of capacitive tactile pressure sensors mounted on stretchable fabric designed to be worn on a person's fingertips and palm, can measure the pressures exerted while the person uses a tool or performs some other action.

Determining the extent of a burn injury is difficult from visual inspection. At stake is a surgical procedure should the underlying blood vessels not be receiving the amount of oxygen needed for the surrounding tissue to regenerate.

University of Missouri-Columbia researchers have found a way to detect the spread of melanoma, a particularly aggressive form of skin cancer, by listening to the sound melanin makes in the blood cells. With as few as 10 cells/sample, oncologists could spot early signs of metastasis before the...more >>

Listening to Melanoma

Far to the west of the Mississippi River are the Rocky Mountains, new, raw and breathtaking in their seemingly sudden rise. On the east side of that river lies the Appalachian Chain, older and more weathered down, and known to hikers for the trail that begins in Spring Mountain, Georgia, and ends...more >>

The charms of the SUV continue to elude me. Trying to peer around some monster bulk parked at the corner of School and Grove streets here in Peterborough when I want to turn right without getting T-boned is a sweaty proposition. It's worse after a winter storm, when snow banks along the curbs mean...more >>

Only two cheers today, but one’s pretty loud and the other’s well above audible. First, NASA will save the Hubble Space Telescope. Second, NASA has established a venture capital entity designed to direct government research contracts (and funds) toward small high-tech companies with...more >>

When I was in Anaheim, California, on business a couple of years ago, more than one native Golden Stater remarked: I know New Hampshire's beautiful, but I don't think I could take the humidity. This struck me as hilarious, because as someone who grew up in Memphis (as in Tennessee), I think of my...more >>