What do these two things have in common? According to MIT’s Technology review, a new material inspired by sea cucumbers “switches rapidly between rigid and flexible states.” This is important because “such a material may be useful in the design of implantable electrodes able to record brain activity over long stretches of time, with minimal scarring compared with conventional electrodes.” This is a cool advance.
An equally cool new tech is electronic skin. Also from MIT’s Review:
A postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, “fabricated thin gold strips on elastic rubber substrates that could be stretched like a rubber band without losing electrical conductivity. The Princeton group, led by electrical-engineering professor Sigurd Wagner, then used these strips as the foundation of the first stretchable integrated circuit.”