Sunday, July 26, 2026

MOOD RING REDUX

New wearable ring tracks glucose, ketone and other biomarkers in sweat simultaneously

UC San Diego engineers share results from the first fully integrated smart ring for continuous biochemical monitoring from sweat

University of California - San Diego

biomarker-ring-main — image:
A new smart ring continuously tracks multiple biomarkers at the same time, including glucose, ketones, vitamin C, uric acid, lactate and alcohol.
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Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Engineers at the University of California San Diego created a smart ring that simultaneously and continuously monitors up to four different chemical biomarkers from finger sweat. The complete array of biomarkers the smart ring can monitor in sweat consists of: glucose, ketones, vitamin C, uric acid, lactate and alcohol.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, UC San Diego engineers in the lab of Joseph Wang, professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, report results from what they believe is the first fully integrated smart ring for daily biochemical monitoring.

“Commercial rings only provide biophysical information, but they lack molecular information about biochemical markers that offers deeper insights about an individual’s health status,” said study first author Tamoghna Saha, a postdoctoral researcher in Wang’s lab.

For the ring to detect biomarkers in sweat, exercise or other exertion is not required; sweat is passively drawn up through the surface of the skin via osmosis using a technique pioneered by Saha.

Tracking multiple biomarkers simultaneously has the potential to broaden the real-time health picture in many different scenarios, including diabetes management and nutrition tracking.

“A ring capturing dynamic molecular information in real time would be extremely useful for making informed decisions regarding health, diet and lifestyle,” said Wang. “For example, the ring’s ability to track both glucose and ketone continuously and simultaneously would greatly benefit optimal insulin dosing for the management of diabetes.”

In trials with healthy volunteers and people with type‑1 diabetes, the biomarker smart ring’s glucose readings closely tracked those from commercial continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), while the ketone readings closely tracked ketone readings from commercial blood meters.

The biomarker smart ring is a fully integrated prototype that includes all the necessary biomarker sensing technology, low-power electronics and a flexible battery. Biomarker information is sent wirelessly to a smartphone app. The ring draws sweat passively using an osmotic hydrogel, a soft polymer that creates a pressure gradient to pull fluid from the skin painlessly. It works similarly to how water travels from soil to the leaves in plants. The collected sweat is analyzed by an electrochemical sensor array within the ring. Through repeated measurements, subject-specific calibration factors are established to convert current responses into concentration values. These calibration factors enable more personalized insight into the biomarker trends.

The ring is powered by a flexible zinc-silver oxide rechargeable battery that supplies power for up to 12 hours of operation between charges. The electronic board dimension ranges smaller than a US quarter coin. The outer shell of the smart ring is made from a 3D‑printed polymer. “Such integration onto the small footprint of a ring form factor is amazing,” Wang said.

Fully study: “A Fully Integrated Smart Ring for Daily Biochemical Monitoring.” Co-first authors of the study are Tamoghna Saha, Shichao Ding and Siyu Qin, all at UC San Diego.

This work was supported by the UC San Diego Center of Wearable Sensors (CWS) and the National Science Foundation – UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR‑2011924).

In one half of the ring is housed the sensor array (orange stripes), sweat extraction component and fluidic channel.

The other half of the ring houses the flexible electronics, which consist of the battery and printed circuit board.

The biomarker monitoring ring next to a U.S. quarter for scale.

Credit

David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-75980-z

Article Title

A fully integrated smart ring for daily biochemical monitoring

Article Publication Date

23-Jul-2026

Ultra-robust and multifunctional ionic biogels enable wearable self-powered human-interactive sensing

Science China Press

image:
Design of Ultra-robust and Multifunctional Ionic Biogels for Self-Powered Human-Machine Interaction
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Credit: Yan Liu, Chunya Wang

A research group led by Professor Chunya Wang at China University of Petroleum (Beijing), in collaboration with Professor Guozhen Shen’s team at Beijing Institute of Technology, has designed a remarkably tough, fatigue-resistant, and multifunctional ionic biogel that could accelerate the development of next-generation wearable electronics. As reported in Science Bulletin, the new biogel combines silk fibril reinforcement with deep eutectic solvent (DES)-induced polymeric network reconstruction to create a hierarchical structure in a single, scalable processing step, and has already been used to demonstrate self-powered wearable devices capable of high-precision gesture recognition and real-time robotic hand control.

The team’s design strategy relies on synergistic structural engineering. By simply incorporating a silk fibril–DES dispersion into an aqueous polymer solution, the researchers were able to simultaneously generate a hierarchical fiber-reinforced structure, a crystalline cross-linked network, and multiple functionalities within the biogel—all in a single processing step. This strategy efficiently addresses the critical challenge of engineering gels that combine mechanical robustness with multifunctionality for complex practical applications.

The engineered biogel exhibits exceptional mechanical performance, including high toughness (~12.35 MJ/m3), remarkable crack tolerance (fracture energy of 112.41 KJ/m2), and superior fatigue resistance (fatigue threshold of 2286 J/m2), alongside high ionic conductivity, environmental stability, and good recyclability.

To demonstrate practical utility, the researchers integrated the biogel as the triboelectric layer in wearable self-powered sensors. Within a machine-learning-facilitated system, the sensors achieved high-accuracy gesture recognition and enabled real-time, precise control of a robotic hand, highlighting the biogel’s potential for intelligent human-interactive applications.

This synergistic structural engineering strategy offers a straightforward and scalable pathway to engineer gels with multiscale hierarchical structures and superior mechanics, overcoming longstanding trade-offs between performance and processability. The advance could pave the way for more durable, multifunctional wearables suitable for complex real-world environments.

Journal

Science Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.scib.2026.06.009

Article Title

Ultra-robust ionic biogel with multiscale structure and multifunctionality for wearable self-powered human-interactive sensing

Wearable patch vibrates when it detects environmental hazards

North Carolina State University

Device — image:
Wearable, multimodal sensor that detects gaseous, aerosolized, and aqueous environmental toxins and alerts the wearer via unique haptic feedback codes.
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Credit: Baha Erim Uzunoğlu

Researchers have created a wearable patch that can detect hazards in the environment – such as dangerous gases or heavy metals in water – and then notify wearers by vibrating against their skin. The researchers have also extended the work to create an “e-skin” for robotic devices, allowing robots to detect and avoid hazards in their environment.

“There are already sensors that can detect environmental hazards and send notifications to your phone – we wanted to improve on that,” says Erim Uzunoğlu, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “We had two goals for this work. First, we wanted to miniaturize the sensors and incorporate them into a wearable patch to identify any potential risks to the wearer.

“Second, if you’re coming into contact with a hazardous substance, you need to know as quickly as possible. And if the notification is being sent to your phone, you may not check it right away. So we wanted to incorporate haptic technology into the patch so that it would vibrate as soon as the hazard was detected, allowing people to respond quickly to the potential threat.”

For this work, the researchers created a square patch slightly smaller than a driver’s license. The patch contains a microcontroller that serves as the patch’s brain; a very small battery; sensors to monitor for six environmental hazards; and a tiny actuator, which serves as the haptic motor that vibrates against the skin. The exterior of the patch also incorporates an array of thin-film photovoltaic cells, which allows the device to harvest solar power while being worn.

“Just having a buzzing motor isn’t enough; you need to actually feel it,” says Oluwatobi Ojuade, co-author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. “So, we designed tiny textured surfaces that sit at the interface between the motor and your skin, almost like a miniature pattern of bumps. By changing the size and spacing of those bumps, we could control how the vibration is perceived against your skin. That let us fine-tune the sensation so it actually grabs your attention, instead of feeling like a faint buzz you might miss.”

The device also triggers a different “haptic sequence,” or vibration pattern, for each hazard it detects. This allows wearers to determine which environmental hazard they need to be aware of.

“In proof-of-concept testing, we found that the device did a good job of detecting the hazardous substances and immediately triggering the haptic response,” says Uzunoğlu. “We also found the energy harvesting technology did a good job of extending the life of the battery. Coupled with the low power demand of the sensors, this allows the device to function for around 24 hours.”

As the researchers were developing the patch, they wondered whether it would be possible to extend the concept for use in robotic devices, allowing robots to detect and respond to hazards in their environment. That led to the development of what they call the e-skin.

The e-skin essentially layers the sensor patch over a layer of piezoelectric material. When the sensor detects a hazard and triggers the haptic response, the resulting vibration against the piezoelectric layer creates an electrical signal that can be detected by the robot.

In proof-of-concept testing, the e-skin allowed quadrupedal robots to detect hazards and alter their routes to avoid those hazards.

“The patch and e-skin are largely made using off-the-shelf components, with very few custom-engineered elements,” says Amay Bandodkar, co-corresponding author of the paper and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. “That should make it easier to scale up the technology moving forward. And the concept is extremely flexible – the sensor array is modular, so you can add or remove sensors that monitor for whichever hazards are most relevant to the application.

“It’s quite amazing to see that we can encode tactile signals into materials of different properties, something that has been very challenging to do in the past – especially in real-world situations where people would want to wear the device,” says Lilian Hsiao, co-corresponding author and an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. “To combine something that people would wear, along with sophisticated sensing capabilities and the ability to alert the user, is something we’ve been working on for a long time.”

The paper, “Multimodal, wearable sensors with tactile communication capabilities for human and robotic applications,” is published in the journal Device. The paper was co-authored by Mahaboobbatcha Aleem and Rajaram Kaveti, postdoctoral researchers at NC State; Krish Kathpalia and Kyle Su, undergraduates at NC State; and Veena Misra, M.C. Dean Distinguished University Professor and interim dean of engineering at NC State.

This work was done with support from the National Eye Institute, under grant R01EY032584-05.

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Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“Multimodal, wearable sensors with tactile communication capabilities for human and robotic applications”

Authors: Baha Erim Uzunoğlu, Oluwatobi Ojuade, Mahaboobbatcha Aleem, Rajaram Kaveti, Krish Kathpalia, Kyle Su, Veena Misra and Lilian C. Hsiao, North Carolina State University; Kayla Hepler and Charles Dhong, University of Delaware; Bünyamin Şahin, Necmettin Erbakan University; Amay J. Bandodkar, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Published: July 24, 2026 in Device

DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2026.101245

Abstract:
We demonstrate a multimodal, wearable device with haptics-based communication that enables wearers to perceive environmental hazards through vibrations. The device monitors gaseous, aerosolized, and aqueous contaminants and conveys threshold events via distinct tactile codes. Energy harvesting with low power sensing methods yield a high-fidelity system with day long operation. Communication can be extended from humans to robots by engineering a soft electronic skin (e-skin) incorporating an array of transducers embedded in silicone that resolves the temporal structure of the tactile codes. On a quadrupedal robot, the e-skin decodes haptic sequences to trigger adaptive re-routing upon detecting chemical hazards, bypassing the need for wireless communication. Our approach introduces a framework in which chemical awareness is communicated physically rather than electronically, opening opportunities for embodied intelligence, distributed sensing, and human-robot interactions.

Journal

Device

DOI

10.1016/j.device.2026.101245

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Multimodal, wearable sensors with tactile communication capabilities for human and robotic applications

Article Publication Date

24-Jul-2026

Can a robot tutor give too much help?

New study shows that robot-delivered feedback can support learning after mistakes, but timing matters

Technische Universität Berlin – Science of Intelligence

A robot tutor interacting with a learner — image:
A learner interacts with a humanoid robot tutor during the experiment. The robot guided participants through a learning task and provided feedback after each placement attempt. Every five minutes, it also asked learners to report their current emotional state using the touchscreen on its chest. The image shows the learner entering one of these emotional-state ratings.
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Credit: ©SCIoI/Zappner

A learner stands in a room with a bottle, a cup, and a book. The task is to figure out, step by step, where each object belongs in the room. Under the table? Or perhaps on the chair? A humanoid robot gives the instructions - but in Swahili, a language the learner does not know. To solve the puzzle, the learner must gradually decipher what the robot is saying.

After each placement attempt, the robot responds. When the learner makes a mistake, it sometimes simply says that the placement was wrong. Sometimes it gives an additional hint: one that helps the learner think through the task, or one that asks them to reflect on their strategy.

This was the setup of the new study “Real-time cognitive-affective dynamics of failure feedback in a technology-based learning task” from the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) in Berlin, published in Communications Psychology. First author Helene Ackermann, together with Anna L. Lange, Hanna Dumont, Verena V. Hafner, and Rebecca Lazarides, investigated how 90 adult learners responded to automated feedback in a robot-supported learning task.

The study comes at a time when humanoid robots and AI tutors are increasingly discussed as future assistants in classrooms, workplaces, and everyday life. But while public debate often focuses on what robots may soon be able to do, the new findings point to a wider question: when does robotic support actually help a human learner?

The answer is actually more nuanced: Robot-delivered feedback helped learners recover from mistakes, but more personalized feedback was not automatically more helpful in the next moment.

“Our study shows that automated feedback can support learning after mistakes,” says Helene. “But it also shows that help has to fit the moment. Right after an error, more information is not always better.”

The timing of help

The researchers compared three feedback settings. In one, the robot gave additional feedback after every mistake without considering the learner’s current needs. In another, the amount of feedback was adapted to the learner’s most recent performance and self-reported enjoyment. In a third, the feedback was also personalized to the learner’s specific errors and previous steps in the task.

At first, this sounds like the smartest version: a robot that remembers what the learner has done before and responds more specifically, for example by reminding the learner that they have tried that exact position for the object already. But the findings, in fact, were more complex.

Personalized feedback made task-focused hints less effective for the learner’s very next response. One possible reason is cognitive load. The personalized messages contained more specific information and were therefore longer and harder to process. Directly after a mistake, this extra detail may have been too much to process before the learner’s next attempt.

At the same time, personalized feedback was linked to better overall performance across the whole task. This suggests a trade-off: detailed feedback can slow learners down in the moment, while still helping them build understanding over time.

“The personalized feedback was not seen as just good or bad,” says Anna Lange. “It rather seems to depend on the time scale. In the moment after a mistake, more specific feedback could make focusing on the next step harder. But across the task, it was still connected to better performance.”

Robots need to read the situation, not just the error

The study also found that the same feedback did not help everyone equally. Learners with higher cognitive ability benefited less from task-focused feedback, possibly because they were already able to work through the relevant steps on their own. For them, additional hints may have added little or even distracted them.

Another finding was more surprising: learners who reported feeling more bored benefited more from task-focused feedback. In this case, the robot’s hint may have helped redirect their attention and bring them back into the task.

Together, the results show how much effective robotic support depends on the amount and quality of information provided, and the learner’s cognitive and emotional state in the moment.

“Educational technologies are often discussed as if personalization were the final goal,” says Rebecca Lazarides. “Our findings show that the real challenge is more dynamic: systems need to combine personalization with a sensitive assessment of the learners’ situative cognitive and emotional states, and adjust the timing of personalized support.”

What robot tutors still need to learn

As humanoid robots become more visible in public debates about the future of education and assistance, the study reminds us: intelligent support is not the same as more support.

The findings do not suggest that robots should replace teachers, or that personalized feedback should be avoided. In fact, personalized feedback was the most effective strategy for overall performance, even though it may have increased situational cognitive load. The challenge is to balance the benefits of personalization with the risk of overwhelming learners and to design human-robot interactions with attention to learners’ situative cognitive and emotional states.

For SCIoI, the study contributes to a broader understanding of intelligent interaction. A robot may become a helpful partner in solving complex learning tasks, but the quality of its support depends on whether it can respond to the cognitive and affective dynamics of the human in front of it.

The most intelligent tutor may not be the one that always knows what to say, but rather the one that knows when to say less.

At a glance

Robot-delivered feedback helped learners recover from mistakes.
Personalized feedback did not always improve the learner's immediate next response.
Personalized feedback improved overall performance across the learning task.
Feedback was most effective when it matched learners' cognitive characteristics and situational emotional state.
The findings show that effective robot support depends on both personalization and learners' moment-to-moment needs.
The study offers insights for designing future AI tutors and educational robots.

Journal

Communications Psychology

DOI

10.1038/s44271-026-00487-8

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Real-time cognitive-affective dynamics of failure feedback in a technology-based learning task

A better future rather than faster robots: DGIST proposes “Sustainable Robotics” as a new academic field

DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology)

□ Prof. Sukho Song of the Department of Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering at DGIST (President Kunwoo Lee) has proposed “Sustainability Robotics,” a new academic field that evaluates robots not only in terms of their technical performance but also their contributions to environmental, social, and economic sustainability. The manifesto was published in Nature Machine Intelligence (top 0.3% in the 2025 JCR), a world-leading journal in AI and robotics, and was selected as the cover article for its July 2026 issue.

□ While robotics and physical AI are advancing rapidly, environmental and social issues—including climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion—are also intensifying. The researchers emphasized that, rather than continuing the conventional focus on improving robot performance, the central question going forward should be ”What role should robots play in creating a sustainable future?”

□ Conventional “Green Robotics” has focused on reducing the environmental impact of robots themselves through the use of biodegradable materials, reduced energy consumption, and improved recyclability and repairability of components. In contrast, Sustainability Robotics goes a step further by enabling robots to directly contribute to addressing sustainability challenges in areas such as environmental monitoring, ecosystem restoration, disaster response, healthcare, and critical infrastructure maintenance.

□ The researchers proposed three principles that future robots should uphold: (1) “Minimally Invasive,” minimizing their impact on ecosystems and society; (2) “Universally Accessible,” enabling robots to be readily deployed wherever they are needed regardless of income or location; and (3) “Symbiotic,” fostering positive relationships among humans, the environment, and the economy.

□ Among these principles, the researchers placed particular emphasis on “Symbiotic.” They argued that robots should be evaluated not only in terms of performance and task efficiency but also their environmental and social impacts, including whether they contribute to ecosystems, like coral reef restoration robots, or impose environmental costs, like deep-sea mining robots. They stated that this requires looking beyond “what robots can do” to consider “who benefits and what costs they leave behind.”

□ “The key is not to build faster and more powerful robots, but to build robots that reach the places where they are needed most and benefit both people and nature,” said Prof. Sukho Song. “Sustainability Robotics is a proposal to place at the center of robot design not the performance of robots, but the relationships they establish with the world.”

□ The manifesto was the result of an international collaborative study involving Prof. Sukho Song (DGIST; first author), Prof. Barbara Mazzolai (Italian Institute of Technology), and Prof. Mirko Kovač (Empa and EPFL, Switzerland; corresponding author). The study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources.

Journal

Nature Machine Intelligence

DOI

10.1038/s42256-026-01260-6

Article Title

A Manifesto for Sustainability Robotics

Article Publication Date

13-Jul-2026

SPAGYRIC HERBALISM

Unlocking nature's pharmacy: Key regulator found for boosting active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine

Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science

A model for the role of PnMYB38 in MeJA-induced saponin biosynthesis. — image:
A model for the role of *PnMYB38* in MeJA-induced saponin biosynthesis.
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Credit: Horticulture Research

Sanchi ginseng (Panax notoginseng) is a cornerstone of traditional Chinese medicine, prized for its saponins—bioactive compounds with anti-inflammatory, cardiovascular, and anticancer properties. Yet the molecular machinery controlling saponin production has remained largely unknown. Now, researchers have identified a master regulator, the transcription factor PnMYB38, that acts as a molecular switch linking plant hormone signals to saponin biosynthesis. This discovery opens the door to precision breeding and metabolic engineering strategies that could boost the medicinal quality of this valuable herb.

For decades, scientists have known that methyl jasmonate (MeJA)—a plant hormone involved in stress responses—can significantly enhance saponin accumulation in P. notoginseng. However, the specific transcription factors (TFs) that translate this hormonal signal into increased saponin production remained unidentified. Transcription factors are proteins that bind to DNA and control which genes are turned on or off. Among them, the MYB family is one of the largest and most important in plants, regulating everything from growth to stress responses to the production of medicinal compounds. Due to these challenges, there is an urgent need for systematic research into how MeJA signaling is connected to saponin biosynthesis through MYB transcription factors.

A team of researchers from Kunming University of Science and Technology, in collaboration with the Wenshan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, published (DOI: 10.1093/hr/uhag052) their findings in Horticulture Research (Volume 13, Issue 6, 2026). The study combined genome-wide screening, multi-omics profiling, and molecular experiments to identify and characterize the MYB transcription factor family in P. notoginseng and pinpoint the key regulator responsible for MeJA-induced saponin production.

The research team identified 110 MYB genes in the P. notoginseng genome and found that MeJA treatment significantly altered the expression of 84 of them. By integrating transcriptomic and metabolomic data, they pinpointed PnMYB38 as a central hub in the regulatory network. Functional experiments confirmed that PnMYB38 directly binds to and activates the promoters of two critical saponin biosynthesis genes: PnSE (squalene epoxidase) and PnDS (dammarenediol-II synthase). This activation triggers a cascade that boosts the production of dammarane-type saponins, including notoginsenoside R₁—one of the most pharmacologically active compounds in Sanchi ginseng. The study also revealed that PnMYB38 is localized in the cell nucleus, consistent with its role as a transcriptional regulator. Through yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) assays, electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA), and dual-luciferase (LUC) reporter assays, the researchers provided multiple lines of evidence confirming the direct and specific interaction between PnMYB38 and the target gene promoters.

"We've essentially found the missing link between the plant hormone signal and the production of these valuable medicinal compounds," the authors said. "PnMYB38 is the master switch that translates the methyl jasmonate cue into a blueprint for saponin biosynthesis. Understanding this mechanism not only solves a long-standing puzzle in plant biology but also gives us a precise molecular tool to improve the quality of Sanchi ginseng through breeding and genetic engineering."

This discovery has immediate and far-reaching implications for the cultivation and improvement of P. notoginseng. By targeting PnMYB38, breeders could develop varieties with consistently higher saponin content, reducing the variability that currently plagues commercial production. The findings also establish a clear regulatory model—the "MeJA–PnMYB38–saponin biosynthesis" pathway—that could guide metabolic engineering efforts in other medicinal plants. Furthermore, the study provides a foundation for using CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to precisely modulate saponin production. As demand for plant-based medicines continues to grow worldwide, this research offers a pathway to more sustainable, reliable, and high-quality production of one of traditional medicine's most treasured resources. The RNA-seq data generated in this study are publicly available through the China National GeneBank (CNGBdb) under project number PRJCA048040.

###

References

DOI

10.1093/hr/uhag052

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1093/hr/uhag052

Funding information

Financial support from the Major Science and Technology Special Project of Yunnan Province (Grant No. 202202AG050021) and National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 32360151). The Ability Establishment of Sustainable Use for Valuable Chinese Medicine Resources (Grant No. 2060302). Kunming University of Science and Technology Research Startup Fund (Grant No. KKZ3202560055).

About Horticulture Research

Horticulture Research is an open access journal of Nanjing Agricultural University and ranked number one in the Horticulture category of the Journal Citation Reports ™ from Clarivate, 2023. The journal is committed to publishing original research articles, reviews, perspectives, comments, correspondence articles and letters to the editor related to all major horticultural plants and disciplines, including biotechnology, breeding, cellular and molecular biology, evolution, genetics, inter-species interactions, physiology, and the origination and domestication of crops.

Journal

Horticulture Research

DOI

10.1093/hr/uhag052

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The transcription factor PnMYB38 orchestrates methyl jasmonate-induced saponin biosynthesis in Panax notoginseng