Researchers from the SNI network have discovered a novel way to fuse lipid vesicles at neutral pH. By harnessing a fragment of the diphtheria toxin, the team achieved vesicle membrane fusion without the need for pre-treatment or harsh conditions. Their work, recently published in Communications Chemistry, opens the door to new applications in lab-on-a-chip technologies, biosensors, and artificial cell prototypes.

Producing this critical item consumes vast amounts of electricity, with current electrodes relying on noble metals that are costly and limited. However, a research group has used “volcano” modeling to identify new catalyst candidates that do not require scarce metals.

 Physicists at The University of Osaka have unveiled a breakthrough theoretical framework that uncovers the hidden physical rule behind one of the most powerful compression methods in laser fusion science — the stacked-shock implosion. While multi-shock ignition has recently proven its effectiveness in major laser facilities worldwide, this new study identifies the underlying law that governs such implosions, expressed in an elegant and compact analytic form.

Professor Zaifa Shi's team at Xiamen University developed an ultra-high temperature flash vacuum pyrolysis (UT-FVP) device to form giant fullerenes from single-carbon molecules within a short time (15 s) at extremely high temperatures (∽3000 ℃). Due to the strong intermolecular forces between giant fullerene molecules and soot, traditional ultrasonic or Soxhlet extraction methods cannot separate most giant fullerenes from soot in toluene. To overcome these strong intermolecular forces, two separation techniques—mechanical grinding and sublimation—were optimized to separate the giant fullerenes from the pyrolysis products, and laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-TOFMS) was used for comprehensive and thorough detection. These methods extended the mass distribution of synthesized giant fullerenes to 2760 Da (greater than C₂₃₀). Notably, the separation technology can also recover giant fullerenes that have long been neglected due to incomplete separation in flame and arc discharge methods. This separation strategy has broad applicability in the synthesis of giant fullerenes, providing a new perspective for the synthesis and utilization of these carbon materials. The article was published as an open access research article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

Everyday life on the internet is insecure. Hackers can break into bank accounts or steal digital identities. Driven by AI, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Quantum cryptography promises a more effective protection against cyber threats. It makes communication secure against eavesdropping by relying on the laws of quantum physics. However, the path toward a quantum internet is still fraught with technical hurdles. Researchers at the Institute of Semiconductor Optics and Functional Interfaces (IHFG) at the University of Stuttgart have now made a decisive breakthrough in one of the most technically challenging components, the ‘quantum repeater’. They report their results in Nature Communications.

Acoustic frequency filters, which convert electrical signals into miniaturized sound waves, separate the different frequency bands for mobile communications, Wi-Fi, and GPS in smartphones. Physicists at RPTU have now shown that such miniaturized sound waves can couple strongly with spin waves in yttrium iron garnet. This results in novel hybrid spin-sound waves in the gigahertz frequency range. The use of such nanoscale hybrid spin-sound waves provides a pathway for agile frequency filters for the upcoming 6G mobile communications generation. The fundamental study by the RPTU researchers has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from the Inorganic Chemistry Departments of the Fritz Haber Institute revealed how structural changes on the surface and in the bulk region of the cobalt oxide catalyst Co₃O₄ influence its selectivity in the production of industrially relevant chemicals like acetone. They discovered that a metastable, structurally “trapped” state exhibits the highest catalytic activity - an important finding for catalyst design.

The IPCC has developed the Global Warming Potential metric, a unit that compares a specific gas’s contribution to climate change to that of carbon dioxide. Nitrogen trifluoride is particularly bad, with a GWP about 17,000 times higher than carbon dioxide. But NF3 is critical in the semiconductor industry for etching and cleaning, and its use has increased more than twentyfold over the past 30 years. In the JVST:B, researchers develop a machine learning framework to predict the GWP of potential alternative materials.

When aggressive cancer cells spread through the body, they cause metastasis, which significantly reduces a person’s chance of survival. For this spreading to take place, they can switch between different cell states that move with different strategies. In Biomicrofluidics, by AIP Publishing, a team of researchers from the Delft University of Technology and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience explored the mechanics at play that enable two types of metastatic cancer cells to achieve the same result of movement, with only one doing so via tissue manipulation. The research is among the first to reveal a direct link between cancer cell deformability and active migration through small gaps.