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In 2025, she will be one of four astronauts who will head to the moon as a part of Artemis II. The North Carolina State University graduate stopped by the WUNC studio during a recent visit back to the Tar Heel State.

Around the world, many pets and working animals are microchipped. It’s a simple process: A tiny transponder with an identification number is enclosed in a rice-grain-sized cylinder and injected under the skin, so that if an animal is lost it can be identified. This new devices does more, including tracking and reporting heart rate, breathing, movement, and temperature sensing in a 4-mm-wide package.

In a forthcoming paper to be published in IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics(TAFE), James Reynolds, a postdoctoral research scholar at NC State’s iBionicS Lab and first author of the paper, and fellow researchers at North Carolina State University explored how plant tissue’s impeding of electrical current can be monitored to identify plants under stress with relative immediacy—less than an hour, in some cases.

Superconductors, the other prominent approach to quantum computing, are the focus of North Carolina State University and its partner corporation, IBM. Nicknamed “chandeliers,” IBM’s machines are gold-plated, multi-level apparatuses with a progression of wires and tubes funneling down to single silicon processor chips. While Duke has ion-trap computers in the Triangle, NC State researchers remotely access the chandeliers, which are housed at the IBM facility in Yorktown Heights, New York. “Each technology kind of has its strength,” said Daniel Stancil, executive director of the IBM Quantum Hub at NC State. “I think there have been some significant developments in the hardware in the past year.”

Wearable devices, like nearly every other piece of tech, need energy. Fortunately, though, at wearables’ modest power budgets, energy is effectively everywhere. It’s in the sun’s rays and radio waves, the skin’s sweat and body heat, a person’s motion and their footfalls. And today, technology is maturing to the point that meaningful amounts of these energy giveaways can be harvested to liberate wearables from ever needing a battery. Which seems plenty attractive to a range of companies and researchers.