Researchers Samuel Poincloux (currently at Aoyama Gakuin University) and Kazumasa A. Takeuchi of the University of Tokyo have clarified the conditions under which large numbers of “squishy” grains, which can change their shape in response to external forces, transition from acting like a solid to acting like a liquid. Similar transitions occur in many biological processes, including the development of an embryo: cells are “squishy” biological “grains” that form solid tissues and sometimes flow to form different organs. Thus, the experimental and theoretical framework elaborated here will help separate the roles of mechanical and biochemical processes, a critical challenge in biology. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Researchers led by the University of Melbourne, Australia, are winners of the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize in supercomputing for conducting a quantum molecular dynamics simulation 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any previous simulation of its kind. Using Frontier, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the team calculated a system containing more than 2 million correlated electrons.

Cyanobacteria, an ancient lineage of bacteria that perform photosynthesis, have been found to regulate their genes using the same physics principle used in AM radio transmission. 

Not all plastics are equal — some types and colors are easier to recycle than others. For instance, black foam and black coffee lids, which are often made of polystyrene, usually end up in landfills because color additives lead to ineffective sorting. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science the ability to leverage one additive in black plastics, with the help of sunlight or white LEDs, to convert black and colored polystyrene waste into reusable starting materials.

Physical reservoir computing (PRC) utilizing synaptic devices shows significant promise for edge AI. Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science have introduced a novel self-powered dye-sensitized solar cell-based device that mimics human synaptic behavior for efficient edge AI processing, inspired by the eye's afterimage phenomenon. The device has light intensity-controllable time constants, helping it achieve high performance during time-series data processing and motion recognition tasks. This work is a major step toward multiple time-scale PRC.

A research team at European XFEL and DESY has achieved a major advance in X-ray science by generating unprecedented high-power attosecond hard X-ray pulses at megahertz repetition rates. This advancement opens new frontiers in the study of ultrafast electron dynamics and enables non-destructive measurements at the atomic level.

A group of scientists from IOCB Prague, led by Dr. Miloslav Polášek, have created compounds that are up to a million times more stable than similar substances used in contemporary medicine to treat tumours or as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging. They have found a new way to securely bind metal elements, known as lanthanides, inside molecules of medical drugs. Their study has recently been published in the journal Nature Communications.