Instead of sitting in a tattoo chair for hours enduring painful punctures, imagine getting tattooed by a skin patch containing microscopic needles. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed low-cost, painless, and bloodless tattoos that can be self-administered and have many applications, from medical alerts to tracking neutered animals to cosmetics. “We’ve miniaturized the needle so that it’s ...

Although people have decorated their bodies for millennia with tattoo images as a form of self-expression but the inks used remained unregulated, resulting in products whose components are largely a mystery. Now, researchers have analyzed almost 100 inks and report that even when these products include an ingredient label, the lists often aren’t accurate. The team also detected small particles ...