Molly McHugh writes with this story about sensors that can be attached to temporary tattoos to monitor various medical information. “The Center for Wearable Sensors at the University of California San Diego has been experimenting with attaching sensors to temporary tattoos in order to extract data from the body. The tattoos are worn exactly as a regular temporary tattoo would be worn. The sensors simply sit atop the skin without penetrating it and interact with Bluetooth or other wireless devices with a signal in order to send the data….A biofuel battery applied as a temporary tattoo converts sweat into energy, and a startup within the center has developed a strip that extracts data from sweat to explain how your body is reacting to certain types of exercise. Amay Bandodkar, a fourth year PhD student at UCSD, explains that the sensors are programmed to react to the amount of lactate the body produces.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How High-Tech Temporary Tattoos Will Hack Your Skin
mrspoonsi writes The global race is on to develop 5G, the fifth generation of mobile network. While 5G will follow in the footsteps of 4G and 3G, this time scientists are more excited. They say 5G will be different — very different. “5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonization of the radio spectrum, ” says Prof Rahim Tafazolli who is the lead at the UK’s multimillion-pound government-funded 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. To pave the way for 5G the ITU is comprehensively restructuring the parts of the radio network used to transmit data, while allowing pre-existing communications, including 4G and 3G, to continue functioning. 5G will also run faster, a lot faster. Prof Tafazolli now believes it is possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800Gbps — that’s 100 times faster than current 5G testing. A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films — in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018’s Winter Olympic Games. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Freshly Exhumed writes A bizarre and oddly beautiful display of spider webs have been woven across a large field along a walking trail in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. “Well it’s acres and acres; it’s a sea of web, ” said Allen McCormick. Prof. Rob Bennett, an expert on spiders who works at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada, said tiny, sheet-web weaver spiders known as Erigoninae linyphiidae most likely left the webs. Bennett said the spiders cast a web net to catch the wind and float away in a process known as ballooning. The webs in the field are the spiders’ drag lines, left behind as they climb to the top of long grass to be whisked away by the wind. Bennett said it’s a mystery why these spiders take off en masse. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
For hundreds of years, x has been the go-to symbol for the unknown quantity in mathematical equations. So who started this practice? Read more… 
Using sound to hunt for food is a pretty ingenious adaptation for bats flying at night. But it doesn’t work if another bat is messing with you. Scientists have discovered that a species of bats can purposely jam the sonars of others to keep rivals away from their insect prey. Read more… 