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Unexpected pathway for IgA antibody production may help improve vaccines

Scientists led by Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, Ph.D., the Roy and Elaine Patterson Professor of Medicine and director of the Center for Human Immunobiology, have discovered how critical IgA antibodies are produced through unexpected cellular pathways, findings that may help inform the design of more effective vaccines to prevent infections, according to a recent study published in Immunity.

Immunoglobulin (Ig)A is an antibody that serves as the first line of defense for mucosal tissues that comprise the inner lining of organs in the respiratory system and digestive system. IgA antibodies play a role in humoral immunity, in which IgA and other antibodies produced by B-cells fight off and prevent the spread of infection.

However, inducing an IgA-specific immune response, particularly through vaccines, has remained unsuccessful, according to Eisenbarth.

Factor-H-related protein 1 (FHR1), a promotor of para-inflammation in age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a multifactorial type of retinal degeneration represents the most common cause for blindness in elderly. Polymorphisms in complement factor-H increase, while absence of factor-H-related protein-1 (FHR1) decreases the AMD risk, currently explained by their opposing relationship. Here we identify a FHR1-driven pathway fostering chronic cellular inflammation. FHR1 accumulates below the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) in AMD donor tissue and similarly the murine homolog, muFHR1 is abundant in three AMD-relevant mouse models. These mouse models express the muFHR1 receptor EGF-like module-containing mucin-like hormone receptor 1 (Emr1) on the RPE and on invading mononuclear phagocytes (MP), where both cells form clusters via muFHR1/Emr1.

Evidence of rain-driven climate on Mars found in bleached rocks scattered in Jezero crater

Rocks that stood out as light-colored dots on the reddish-orange surface of Mars now are the latest evidence that areas of the small planet may have once supported wet oases with humid climates and heavy rainfall comparable to tropical climates on Earth.

The rocks discovered by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover are white, aluminum-rich kaolinite clay, which forms on Earth after rocks and sediment are leached of all other minerals by millions of years of a wet, rainy climate.

These findings were published Monday (Dec. 1) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment by lead author Adrian Broz, a Purdue University postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Briony Horgan, a long-term planner on NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover mission and professor of planetary science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in Purdue’s College of Science.

Bipolar planetary nebula reveals rare open cluster association

By analyzing the data from the SuperCOSMOS Hα Survey (SHS) and from the Gaia satellite, astronomers have inspected a bipolar planetary nebula designated PHR J1724-3859. Results of the study, published Nov. 19 on the arXiv pre-print server, deliver crucial insights into the properties of this nebula.

Planetary nebulae (PNe) are the final stages of evolution of low-to-intermediate mass stars. They are expanding shells of gas and dust that have been ejected from a star during the process of its evolution from a main sequence star into a red giant or white dwarf. PNe are relatively rare, but important for astronomers studying the chemical evolution of stars and galaxies.

Detecting strong-to-weak symmetry breaking might be impossible, study shows

When a system undergoes a transformation, yet an underlying physical property remains unchanged, this property is referred to as “symmetry.” Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) occurs when a system breaks out of this symmetry when it is most stable or in its lowest-possible energy state.

Recently, physicists realized that a new type of SSB can occur in open quantum systems, systems driven by quantum mechanical effects that can exchange information, energy or particles with their surrounding environment. Specifically, they realized that the symmetry in these systems can be “strong” or “weak.”

A strong symmetry entails that both the open system and its surrounding environment individually obey the symmetry. In contrast, a weak symmetry takes place when the system and the environment only follow a symmetry when they are taken together.

Why your faucet drips: Water jet breakup traced to angstrom-scale thermal capillary waves

Some phenomena in our daily lives are so commonplace that we don’t realize there could be some very interesting physics behind them. Take a dripping faucet: why does the continuous stream of water from a faucet eventually break up into individual droplets? A team of physicists studied this question and reached surprising conclusions.

The breakthrough in understanding how a water jet breaks up into droplets was made by a team consisting of Stefan Kooij, Daniel T. A. Jordan, Cees J. M. van Rijn, and Daniel Bonn from the University of Amsterdam (Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute / Institute of Physics), along with Neil M. Ribe from the Université Paris-Saclay. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Laser-assisted 3D printing can fabricate free-standing thermoset-based electronics in seconds

Thermosets, such as epoxy and silicon rubbers, are a class of polymer (i.e., plastic) materials that harden permanently when they undergo a specific chemical reaction, known as “crosslinking.” These materials are highly durable, heat-resistant with excellent electrical insulation in various applications such as in adhesives, coatings, and automotive parts.

Thermosets are also widely used to fabricate electronic components, including switches, circuit breakers and other core circuit components.

So far, thermoset-based free-standing devices have proved difficult to construct by using conventional 3D printing processes. One key reason for this is that the materials need to be provisionally supported by other supporting objects until they become solid, which adds more steps to the printing process.

On-demand electronic switching of topology achieved in a single crystal

University of British Columbia (UBC) scientists have demonstrated a reversible way to switch the topological state of a quantum material using mechanisms compatible with modern electronic devices. Published in Nature Materials, the study offers a new route toward more energy efficient electronics based on topologically protected currents rather than conventional charge flow.

“Conventional electronics involve currents of electrons that waste energy and generate heat due to electrical resistance. Topological currents are protected by symmetry, and so they are promising for new types of electronics with significantly less dissipation,” said Dr. Meigan Aronson, an investigator with UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

“Our research uncovers a specific mechanism where the addition or subtraction of electrical charge can drive a reversible topological transition in the crystal, switching it from a metal that can conduct charge to an insulator that can’t. This is a key step towards the implementation of a new type of low-dissipation electronics based on symmetry and topology, and not simply on charge.”

New magnetic sensor material discovered using high-throughput experimental method

A NIMS research team has developed a new experimental method capable of rapidly evaluating numerous material compositions by measuring anomalous Hall resistivity 30 times faster than conventional methods. By analyzing the vast amount of data obtained using machine learning and experimentally validating the predictions, the team succeeded in developing a new magnetic sensor material capable of detecting magnetism with much higher sensitivity. This research was published in npj Computational Materials on September 3, 2025.

The anomalous Hall effect is a phenomenon in which a voltage is generated in a magnetic material when an electric current flows through it, appearing in the direction perpendicular to both the current and the material’s magnetization (that is, from the north to the south magnetic pole). By leveraging this property, changes in magnetization can be sensitively detected as electrical signals, making the effect promising for applications such as read heads in next-generation hard disk drives and high-performance magnetic sensors.

Controlling quantum states in germanene using only an electric field

Researchers at the University of Twente and Utrecht University demonstrated for the first time that quantum states in the ultra-narrow material germanene can be switched on and off using only an electric field. The researchers were able to vary the electric field strength very precisely, causing the special ‘topological’ states in nanoribbons to disappear or appear.

The research, titled “Electric-Field Control of Zero-Dimensional Topological States in Ultranarrow Germanene Nanoribbons,” is published in Physical Review Letters.

Quantum computers will not use zeros and ones, but instead use quantum bits that can assume both states simultaneously. In theory, this makes them superfast and powerful, but in practice, building quantum bits is an enormous challenge: they are very sensitive to noise and quickly lose their information.

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