Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a platform that lets lab-grown muscle tissues train themselves to record-breaking strength, with no external stimulation required. By mechanically coupling two muscle tissues so they continuously pull against each other, their own natural contractions become a round-the-clock workout. The resulting muscles powered OstraBot, an ostraciiform (a type of fish locomotion) swimming robot that reached 467 millimetres per minute — the fastest speed reported for any skeletal muscle-driven biohybrid robot.

The advance removes a long-standing bottleneck in biohybrid robotics — machines driven by living cells rather than conventional motors. Because muscle-based actuators are soft, quiet and efficient at small scales, stronger versions could unlock minimally invasive biomedical tools, soft environmental sensors and fully biodegradable robots that safely degrade after completing their task.

Semiconductor chips are built layer by layer, with each film typically under 100 nm thick—thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Ensuring these layers are perfectly uniform across an entire wafer is critical, but existing metrology tools are too slow for mass production. Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology have developed a new optical instrument that measures wafer thin films with picometer precision in a single snapshot, enabling dynamic measurement 100 times faster than current commercial tools.

Many next-generation materials for solar cells, batteries, and quantum devices are so sensitive that they degrade instantly in air—and even the electron microscopes used to study them can destroy their atomic structure. Researchers at Southern University of Science and Technology have developed a complete workflow that solves both problems. By continuously protecting materials from air—from preparation through imaging—and using ultra-low electron doses combined with advanced image processing, they have achieved atomic-resolution images of materials previously considered impossible to study.