The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), together with 5 international research partners, has demonstrated a record-breaking 450 terabits per second (Tb/s) optical transmission - the first time such a rate has been achieved over a field-deployed legacy fiber. The link, in London, UK, connects University College London (UCL) to the Telehouse North data center. This work is part of a long-standing collaboration between NICT and UCL. The team introduced new optical-amplifier technologies that support ultra-wideband signals. Conventional commercial systems use up to about 10 THz of bandwidth, covering the C- and L-bands. The new system uses the O-, E-, S-, C- and L-bands together, more than quadrupling the available bandwidth to a record 42.4 THz. The resulting data rate of 450 Tb/s surpasses the previous records of 402 Tb/s and 430 Tb/s, set in 2024 and 2025 over laboratory fibers. Unlike those earlier demonstrations, the new experiment used real, already-installed fibers from the UK National Dark Fibre Facility (NDFF). This is therefore the closest demonstration to date of how the full capacity of existing fiber infrastructure could be unlocked, paving the way for the next generation of networks needed to support AI services and beyond-5G mobile systems. This achievement was reported as a postdeadline paper at the 2026 Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC2026) on Thursday, March 19, 2026, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Researchers have developed a new way to generate realistic synthetic training data for agricultural robots by recreating tomato cultivation environments in a virtual world. The approach could help overcome one of the biggest barriers in agricultural robotics: the time and labor required to collect and manually label real-world data under challenging greenhouse conditions such as changing lighting, dense foliage, and fruit occlusion.

Photocatalytic water splitting for H₂ evolution is expected to be a feasible strategy to alleviate environmental and energy pressure. A defect-engineered TiO₂-Ov/Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S S-scheme heterojunction is designed and constructed by in situ growing Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S nanoparticles on flower-like TiO₂ microspheres with oxygen vacancies. The defect-engineered S-scheme heterojunction with dual charge transfer pathways endows excellent light absorption ability, effective spatial separation and transfer of photo-induced charge, and superior redox capacity, thus achieving high-efficiency photocatalytic H₂ evolution.

Researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, pioneered a new method for encapsulating cells within small, soft capsules. This is useful for various kinds of research where the properties of a cell, including its behaviors and interactions, need to be isolated and measured. Previous methods required more specialized equipment, time and expertise. The new method needs only basic lab equipment and can open up access to advanced 3D cell culture research to a broad range of researchers. 

A new technology created by Heriot-Watt University is poised to upend one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in modern manufacturing.

FreeForm Photonics is set to commercialise a laser-based process that builds alignment directly into optical glass components, removing the painstaking manual calibration that currently accounts for more than half of all photonics production costs.

The result is a manufacturing pathway that is faster, cheaper and precise to sub-micron tolerances, a scale far smaller than the width of a human hair. It also removes the complexity that has long made photonic systems prohibitively expensive to scale.

The implications stretch across some of the most consequential technologies of the coming decade. Sectors like Quantum computing systems, next-generation medical diagnostics and the optical communications infrastructure underpinning the modern internet. These all depend on photonic components that are currently largely assembled by hand.

Richard E. Carson, PhD, has been named the 2026 recipient of the prestigious Paul C. Aebersold Award. Carson is professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, as well as emeritus director of the Yale PET Center. The award was announced by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) during its 2026 Annual Meeting.