New research from DTU in Denmark could change the way the food industry manufactures dairy based yoghurt—making it both more cost-effective and more sustainable. Researchers have developed a simple yet powerful method that has the potential to reduce the use of expensive bacterial cultures by up to 80%, while also extending shelf life.

Micro light sources are crucial tools for studying the interactions between light and matter at the micro/nanoscale, encompassing diverse applications across multiple disciplines. Despite numerous studies on reducing the size of micro light sources and enhancing optical resolution, the efficient and simple fabrication of ultra-high-resolution micro light sources remains challenging due to its reliance on precise micro-nano processing technology and advanced processing equipment. In this study, a simple approach for the efficient fabrication of submicron light sources is proposed, namely shadow-assisted sidewall emission (SASE) technology. The SASE utilizes the widely adopted UV photolithography process, employing metal shadow modulation to precisely control the emission of light from polymer sidewalls, thereby obtaining photoluminescent light sources with submicron line widths. The SASE eliminates the need for complex and cumbersome manufacturing procedures. The effects of process parameters, including exposure dose, development time, and metal film thickness, on the linewidth of sources are investigated on detail. It is successfully demonstrated red, green, and blue submicron light sources. Finally, their potential application in the field of optical anti-counterfeiting is also demonstrated. We believe that the SASE proposed in this work provides a novel approach for the preparation and application of micro light sources.

Currently, the main method of combatting CoTS outbreaks is by manually culling each starfish one-by-one, which is highly inefficient, labor-intensive, and costly. But now, a team of researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan have discovered that CoTS use their characteristic spines to ‘smell’ peptides and communicate with one another, even outside mating seasons. Building on this finding, the team has created a synthetic peptide that consistently attracts CoTS at very low concentrations and with no toxicity. The results are published in iScience. Their discovery could lead to the further development of potent pest-management peptides – dubbed Acanthaster attractins – that prompts the starfish to congregate at one spot, enabling the efficient removal of many CoTS in one sweep.

UBC researchers are proposing a solution to a key hurdle in quantum networking: a device that can “translate” microwave to optical signals and vice versa. The technology could serve as a universal translator for quantum computers—enabling them to talk to each other over long distances and converting up to 95 per cent of a signal with virtually no noise. And it all fits on a silicon chip, the same material found in everyday computers.

Using the now-decommissioned Summit supercomputer, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the largest and most accurate molecular dynamics simulations yet of the interface between water and air during a chemical reaction.