Light grazing an ultrathin conductive film can be absorbed much more strongly than previously thought.
Category: futurism – Page 49
CERN chief upbeat on funding for new particle collider
Mark Thomson, the new head of Europe’s physics laboratory CERN, voiced confidence Tuesday about raising the billions of dollars needed to build by far the world’s biggest particle accelerator.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.
The planned Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be an electron-positron collider ring with a circumference of 91 kilometers and an average depth of 200 meters.
Laser beam flips a ferromagnet’s polarity without heating the material
Researchers at the University of Basel and the ETH in Zurich have succeeded in changing the polarity of a special ferromagnet using a laser beam. In the future, this method could be used to create adaptable electronic circuits with light.
In a ferromagnet, combined forces are at work. In order for a compass needle to point north or a fridge magnet to stick to the fridge door, countless electrons spin inside them, each of which only creates a tiny magnetic field, all need to line up in the same direction. This happens through interactions between the spins, which have to be stronger than the disordered thermal motion inside the ferromagnet. If the temperature of the material is below a critical value, it becomes ferromagnetic.
Conversely, to change the polarity of a ferromagnet, one usually needs to first heat it up above its critical temperature. The electron spins can then reorient themselves, and after cooling down, the magnetic field of the ferromagnet eventually points in a different direction.
Individual trapped-ion addressing with adjoint-optimized multimode photonic circuits
Momenzadeh, M., Sun, K., Wu, Q. et al. Individual trapped-ion addressing with adjoint-optimized multimode photonic circuits. npj Nanophoton. 3, 3 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44310-025-00102-4
Real-time imaging reveals new mechanisms for pancreatic ductal establishment and remodeling
Abigail Laura Jackson, Silja Heilmann, Pia Nyeng (Roskilde Universitet – RUC) and colleagues use a new apical polarity reporter mouse & high-resolution live imaging to demonstrate that pancreatic tubulogenesis is driven by dynamic transformations of existing lumens, which establish and remodel the pancreatic duct.
Jackson and Heilmann et al. use a new apical polarity reporter mouse and high-resolution live imaging to demonstrate that pancreatic tubulogenesis is drive.
Netflix Invests €240,000 in Blender
The generous contribution will be dedicated to Blender core development.
MIM triggers formin to Arp2/3-based actin assembly in membrane remodeling in Drosophila embryos
Debasmita Mitra, Georgina K. Goddard, Sanjana S, Aparna K, Tom H. Millard, and Richa Rikhy (IISER Pune) show that Drosophila Missing-in-Metastasis (DMIM) (also called MTSS1) promotes Rac1 mediated branched actin network formation and endocytosis to drive rapid, cyclical plasma membrane remodeling during syncytial divisions in Drosophila embryos. Actin-rich villous protrusions in the apical caps in interphase are depleted in metaphase, concurrent with furrow extension between adjacent nuclei. MIM depletion results in a loss of furrow extension and in longer, more abundant apical protrusions containing the formin diaphanous. Branched actin networks promoted by MIM are in balance with bundled actin networks induced by RhoGEF2 and diaphanous. Cyclical recruitment of MIM to the cortex promotes localization of active Rac, the WAVE regulatory complex, and the Arp2/3 complex to drive endocytic membrane remodeling. These findings identify MIM as an integrator of actin and endocytic dynamics that enables rapid membrane remodeling during Drosophila syncytial division cycles.