Americans, on average, replace their mobile phones every 22 months, junking more than 150 million phones a year in the process. Now researchers are on the path to creating biodegradable electronics by using organic components in screen displays. The researchers’ advancements could one day help reduce electronic waste in the world’s landfills.

An international team of researchers has developed a method for fabricating nano-scale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons.

Physicists have developed a new way to control the transport of electrical currents through high-temperature superconductors — materials discovered nearly 30 years ago that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable low temperatures.

Scientists have solved an almost century-old problem that could further help downscale the size of electronic devices. The work focused on the low-frequency electronic 1/f noise, also known as pink noise and flicker noise. It is a signal or process with a power spectral density inversely proportional to the frequency. It was first discovered in vacuum tubes in 1925 and since then it has been found everywhere from fluctuations of the intensity in music recordings to human heart rates and electrical currents in materials and devices.