Color-Changing Ink Turns Clothes into Giant Chemical Sensors

Trouble viewing? View in your browser. View all Scientific American publications.

             

July 06, 2020

Dear Reader, A new color-changing ink can respond to, and quantify, the presence of chemicals on or around the body. The formulation can be printed on anything from a T-shirt to a tent and could aid in health and environment monitoring. Our lead story has the details. Next up, from the narwhal's tusk to thorns on plants, pointed objects serve many functions in nature. Researchers have used physics to explain why this narrow shape is optimal for stingers and other piercing objects—including human-made tools such as hypodermic needles. Also in today's roundup: a recent study found that speech recognition technology is biased against Black speakers. Specifically, the disparities were mainly due to the way words were said. Even when speakers said identical phrases, Black speakers were twice as likely to be misunderstood compared to white speakers.

Sunya Bhutta, Senior Editor, Audience Engagement @sunyaaa

Chemistry Color-Changing Ink Turns Clothes into Giant Chemical Sensors A silk-based substance could lead to new wearables By Jillian Kramer

Physics Welcome Anyons! Physicists Find Best Evidence Yet for Long-Sought 2D Structures The 'quasiparticles' defy the categories of ordinary particles and herald a potential way to build quantum computers By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine

Physics Stingers Have Achieved Optimal Pointiness, Physicists Show A single equation describes the shapes of stingers, spikes and spines throughout the natural world By Scott Hershberger

Public Health Lessons for COVID-19 from the Early Days of AIDS A pioneer in the fight against HIV reflects on the dangers of excess optimism about a coronavirus vaccine By William A. Haseltine

Policy & Ethics Speech Recognition Tech Is Yet Another Example of Bias Siri, Alexa and other programs sometimes have trouble with the accents and speech patterns of people from many underrepresented groups By Claudia Lopez Lloreda

Conservation Australian Plant Species Face 'Imminent Extinction' from Invasive Pathogen The once common native guava has nearly vanished—killed off by an invasive fungus that arrived just 10 years ago. Other plant species may soon follow By John R. Platt

Climate Climate Denial Spreads on Facebook as Scientists Face Restrictions The company recently overruled its scientific fact-checking group, which had flagged information as misleading By Scott Waldman,E&E News

Behavior & Society Why People Are Toppling Monuments to Racism Statues are ideological powerhouses that compress whole systems of authority into bodies of bronze or marble By Verity Platt

Behavior & Society On Crazyism, Jerkitude, Garden Snails and Other Philosophical Puzzles Eric Schwitzgebel investigates an eclectic assortment of mysteries with (unintentional?) irony and humor By John Horgan

Behavior & Society The Biggest Psychological Experiment in History Is Running Now What can the pandemic teach us about how people respond to adversity? By Lydia Denworth

FROM THE STORE July 4th Flash Sale Celebrate July 4th with 25% savings on any subscription to Scientific American. Your purchase will support expert journalism. Use code JULY20 at checkout.

ADVERTISEMENT

FROM THE ARCHIVE Mirage Seen from Buffalo Is Toronto in the Sky Originally published in August 1894 | July 2020

LATEST ISSUES

Questions?   Comments?

Download the Scientific American App

To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add news@email.scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe     Manage Email Preferences     Privacy Policy     Contact Us