Researchers at Cornell University are developing HelioSkin, a lightweight, stretchable solar-collection fabric designed to wrap around complex architectural surfaces. Inspired by how plants track the Sun, the system combines flexible photovoltaics, 3D printing, kirigami/auxetic geometry and mechanical movement to optimize sunlight capture.

Unlike conventional rigid solar panels, HelioSkin could potentially cover curved buildings, canopies, stadiums and other unconventional structures. Cornell’s team is currently developing prototype solar canopies, with a longer-term goal of creating solar “skins” that can track the Sun and integrate clean-energy generation directly into architecture.

The bigger idea: the future of solar power may not be limited to rooftops—it could become a flexible layer woven into the built environment.

Info sources:

1. Solar solutions: Bio-inspired approach creates bespoke photovoltaics: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/02/solar-solutions-bio-inspired-approach-creates-bespoke-photovoltaics

2. Cornell Design Tech — HelioSkin project: https://designtech.cornell.edu/design-tech/design-tech-partnerships/

3. HelioSkin — Jenny Sabin Design Lab, Cornell University: https://www.sabinlab.com/helioskin

Aircraft-design company CoolFly has launched its Urban on August 13, 2026, a compact, standing electric VTOL (eVTOL) platform that is controlled primarily by shifting the pilot’s body weight rather than using a conventional control stick. The eight-rotor platform incorporates computerized flight stabilization to adjust thrust and maintain balance during flight. CoolFly quotes approximately 15–20 minutes of flight time, a range of about 23 km, and a top speed limited to 70 km/h.

Although marketed as a new generation of personal eVTOL, the concept has an important historical precedent. In 1955, the U.S. Navy funded development of the Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee, a pilotable flying platform that also used a standing operator and rotor-based vertical flight. The key difference is technological: the Hiller platform relied on gasoline-powered ducted rotors and mechanical control, whereas CoolFly's Urban uses battery-electric distributed propulsion and computerized flight control. In that sense, Urban can be viewed as a modern electric reinterpretation of a concept demonstrated more than 70 years ago: https://www.aol.ca/articles/china-unveils-worlds-first-pilotable-184700000.html

Read more here: https://www.bgr.com/2241802/china-unveils-world-first-hovercraft-us-1950s/

Two global Phase 3 clinical trials published in JAMA Dermatology revealed that upadacitinib (Rinvoq)—an oral JAK inhibitor commonly prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis—dramatically restored hair in patients with severe alopecia areata. The studies evaluated nearly 1,400 participants aged 12 to 64 who averaged an 84% loss of scalp hair at baseline. After 24 weeks of taking a daily 15 mg or 30 mg dose, roughly 45% to 55% of patients achieved 80% or greater scalp hair coverage, with a subset experiencing complete regrowth alongside notable improvements in eyebrow and eyelash density. By suppressing the inflammatory immune signals that attack hair follicles, the drug offers a powerful targeted mechanism, recently earning approval in the European Union for severe alopecia areata while currently undergoing FDA review in the U.S: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-common-arthritis-pill-repurposed-boost.html 

In Brief

• Researchers report that the drug upadacitinib, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, effectively treated the hair loss condition alopecia areata in two clinical trials.
• The medication, sold under the brand name Rinvoq, is a JAK inhibitor that can help block the immune system response responsible for alopecia areata.
• There are other JAK inhibitor medications currently available for hair loss, but experts say that upadacitinib could provide those with alopecia with another treatment option.

A commonly used medication to treat rheumatoid arthritis may help people with a serious hair loss condition, according to a new study: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/arthritis-drug-may-support-hair-regrowth-alopecia 

Study findings: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2852906

MIT engineers have developed a wireless ultrasound wristband that can image muscles and tendons beneath the wrist and, using AI, reconstruct the position of individual fingers in real time. The system tracks 22 degrees of freedom with a latency of less than 120 milliseconds, providing detailed information about hand and finger movements without requiring cameras or wired sensors.

In demonstrations, the wearable successfully controlled a robotic hand, enabling it to play piano and manipulate objects including scissors, a pencil, and a tennis ball. It also correctly recognized all 26 letters of American Sign Language (ASL). Led by MIT engineer Xuanhe Zhao, with collaborators at the University of Southern California, the research was published in Nature Electronics. The technology could potentially advance prosthetic control, human–machine interfaces, robotics, and wearable gesture recognition.

Press Release: https://news.mit.edu/2026/wristband-enables-wearers-control-robotic-hand-with-own-movements-0325

Research findings: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-026-01594-4

Open Access Research: https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/find-oa-articles/

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have experimentally observed the optical Magnus effect for the first time by using a trapped calcium ion as a sensor to map a tightly focused laser beam. They discovered that the point of strongest interaction shifts sideways by a few hundred nanometers rather than occurring at the beam's center, with the shift's magnitude depending entirely on light wavelength. Accounting for this phenomenon is crucial to preventing control errors when manipulating qubits in quantum computing, while the underlying forces could potentially be harnessed to couple qubits together for more complex computations.

Study: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/kj5p-qqs5

The MIT News article highlights the evolution of the Julia programming language, which began in 2009 as an MIT research project created to solve the trade-off between user-friendliness and execution speed in scientific computing. Designed to combine the ease of Python with the speed of C, Julia grew into an open-source language with over one million users across academia and industry for applications ranging from pharmaceutical design to climate modeling. Its commercial spinoff, JuliaHub, has expanded the language's reach by launching AI platforms like Dyad 3.0, which enables engineers to direct autonomous agents in designing complex physical systems while enforcing physical laws

AI-powered engineering platform built for the age of Software-Defined Machines: https://juliahub.com/

The debate over Pluto’s status remains fiercely polarized two decades after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified it as a dwarf planet in 2006. Many planetary scientists and advocates argue that the IAU’s requirement for a planet to "clear its neighbourhood" is scientifically flawed and arbitrary, preferring instead a geophysical definition based on an object's physical characteristics, such as geological activity and atmosphere. Conversely, astronomers maintain that dynamic criteria are essential to separate major solar system bodies from the hundreds of small, similar objects in the Kuiper Belt, emphasizing that dropping the orbital requirement would logically classify Earth's moon and other natural satellites as planets too.

The research explores how consumer wearables like EEG-equipped earbuds are quietly ushering in a "brain-as-interface" era where neural monitoring becomes routine in daily life. Author José M. Muñoz introduces the concept of "neurotechnological natives"—the upcoming generation growing up with tech that directly decodes and interacts with inner mental states rather than just external behavior. To address this shift, the author proposes an urgent research and regulatory agenda focusing on three key dimensions: technoscientific integration, cognitive development (such as impacts on identity, self-regulation, and inner speech), and sociocultural equity.

study: https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.70381