Scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology produced the finest images of the Sun’s corona to date. To make these high-resolution images and movies, the team developed a new ‘coronal adaptive optics’ system that removes blur from images caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. Their ground-breaking results were recently published in Nature Astronomy and pave the way for deeper insight into coronal heating, solar eruptions, and space weather, and open an opportunity for new discoveries in the Sun’s atmosphere.

Scientists create a floss pick that samples cortisol within saliva as a marker of stress and quantifies it with a built-in electrode. The system uses a polymer casting technology that can be adapted to capture a wide a range of markers, such as estrogen for tracking fertility, or glucose for tracking diabetes. Ease of use allows monitoring to be incorporated into many areas of treatment