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Category: materials

Microscopic sensors uncover how liquids turn glassy without structural change

A scientific discovery by researchers at Tel Aviv University’s School of Chemistry offers a new perspective on a long-standing scientific mystery: how does a flowing liquid suddenly become a rigid, almost frozen material, without changing its structure? This phenomenon, known as the “glass transition,” has puzzled physicists for over a hundred years. The study proposes a new experimental approach to observing this elusive process—by tracking the motion of tiny particles that serve as microscopic “sensors” within the material.

The study was conducted by Prof. Haim Diamant and Prof. Yael Roichman of the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, together with the research group of Prof. Stefan Egelhaaf at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The findings were published in the journal Nature Physics.

A drug discovery bottleneck? How cheaper reagents could speed branched molecule synthesis

When chemists design drug candidates, shape matters enormously. Many active pharmaceutical ingredients contain branched carbon structures—points where the molecular chain forks in a specific direction—that are critical to whether a molecule will bind to its biological target and whether it will be safe. The challenge is that the branched building blocks used to create these structures are not very abundant or commercially available. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have devised a new approach to building these branched molecular structures found in many medicines and materials: one that could make the early stages of drug discovery faster and more efficient.

The method, published in Science, overcomes a stubborn technical obstacle that has limited chemists’ ability to assemble complex molecules from simple, inexpensive starting materials.

“This work solves a selectivity problem that challenged us for years,” says Ryan Shenvi, professor at Scripps Research and senior author of the study. “We’ve now laid the groundwork to access iteratively branching materials that occur in metabolites, fragrances and drugs.”

Investigating the disordered heart of glass

Recent research led by the University of Trento reveals that fundamental atomic vibrations remain unchanged also in ultra-stable glasses. This discovery advances the decade-long debate on the physics of disorder and opens the way to new applications, from electronics to pharmaceuticals. The research work was carried out by the Department of Physics in collaboration with other European research institutions and published in Physical Review X.

We are used to thinking of glass as a fragile and common material, but glass is still one of the greatest enigmas for physics. In crystals, atoms are arranged in geometric order, while chaos reigns in glass. This disorder generates unique properties, especially near absolute zero, where the glass behaves very differently from crystals. A study conducted by the Department of Physics of the University of Trento in collaboration with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble and other European research centers sheds new light on this mystery.

The working group analyzed the so-called ultra-stable glasses, which are produced with advanced techniques that make them perfect candidates for the title of “ideal glass.” The first author of the paper is Irene Festi, who worked on the project for her Ph.D. thesis at the Department of Physics of the University of Trento. Giacomo Baldi, professor of Experimental Physics of Matter and head of the Laboratory of Structure and Dynamics of Complex Systems at the same Department of UniTrento, is the scientific coordinator of the study.

Why stars spin down, or up, before they die

From birth to death, stars generally slow by 100 to 1,000 times their initial rotation rates; in other words, they “spin down.” The sun’s total angular momentum has declined as material is gradually blown off at the surface as solar wind. By observing this, astronomers have theorized the interaction between magnetic fields and plasma flow to be the most efficient way to spin down stars.

Why and how this happens has long interested astronomers, and recently an observational technique called asteroseismology, which measures a star’s natural oscillation frequencies, has made it possible to measure the internal rotation rates and magnetic fields of other stars in our galaxy.

From this huge population, a picture of how stellar rotation decreases with stellar age has emerged, one that suggests that current theory is insufficient to explain the dramatic decrease in rotation.

Breakthrough Crystal Lets Scientists “Write” Nanoscale Patterns With Light

A team of scientists has uncovered a crystal that can be reshaped and programmed using ordinary light, opening a new path for building optical technology.

Researchers at the XPANCEO Emerging Technologies Research Center, working alongside Nobel Laureate Prof. Konstantin Novoselov (University of Manchester and the National University of Singapore), have identified unusual optical behavior in arsenic trisulfide (As2S3), a crystalline van der Waals semiconductor. Their work shows that this material can be permanently altered by light and even shaped at the nanoscale using simple continuous-wave (CW) light. This approach eliminates the need for expensive cleanroom lithography or advanced femtosecond laser systems.

Understanding Refractive Index and Photorefractivity.

New BlackFile extortion group linked to surge of vishing attacks

A new financially motivated hacking group tracked as BlackFile has been linked to a wave of data theft and extortion attacks against retail and hospitality organizations since February 2026.

The group, also tracked as CL-CRI-1116, UNC6671, and Cordial Spider, is impersonating corporate IT helpdesk staff to steal employee credentials and demand seven-figure ransoms, according to information shared by cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 with the Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC).

Unit 42 security researchers have also linked BlackFile with moderate confidence to “The Com,” a loose-knit network of English-speaking cybercriminals known for targeting and recruiting young people for extortion, violence, and the production of child sexual exploitation material (CSAM).

Real-time impedance-based cell migration measurements with integrated electrodes on porous membranes for next generation microphysiological systems

A new laboratory technique for measuring how quickly cells penetrate and pass through a porous membrane and reach the opposite side could help identify cancer cells with the greatest potential to spread in the human body.

The method relies on tiny electrodes placed on either side of an artificial membrane. The electrodes measure changes in electrical resistance as cells pass through the material. The most aggressive cancer cells pass through the membrane more rapidly than other cells.

The illustration depicts cells (green and blue) moving through a membrane (grey) studded with microelectrodes (gold rings).

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We present a novel microfluidic device capable of electrically interrogating both surfaces of a porous membrane quantitatively and in real time using electrical impedance spectroscopy to monitor cell migration. This device holds patterned gold electrodes on both sides of the membrane, which enable independent impedance measurements on each side of the membrane. We introduce the term cross-over cell migration (CoCM) to describe this dual-sided approach, which allows precise monitoring of cells at their seeding location and as they move through a porous membrane. To ensure reliable tracking, we developed a normalization method, the CoCM index, that allows us to compare both membrane surfaces directly in real-time. Human renal carcinoma cells (786-O) were passively seeded in the device’s top microfluidic chamber, and we collected impedance data from both sides of the membrane surfaces simultaneously over a three-day period. These measurements successfully captured the onset and progression of cell migration across the membrane interface. We tracked the cells with fluorescence imaging in parallel to validate our impedance data. As cells appeared in focus on the bottom-side electrode surface, their numbers kept increasing over the course of our experiment. The CoCM index decreased by about 20% in the top chamber and increased by approximately 15% in the bottom chamber. Symmetrical CoCM index trends appeared after 40 h, consistent with the fluorescent images captured. Finally, we performed live-cell fluorescence assays to confirm post-experiment cell viability and to quantify migrated cells, further validating our CoCM platform measurements. This platform is a valuable tool not only for real-time and quantitative cell migration studies of cancer and other cells in bulk but also for future studies of single-cell migration processes.

Physicists revive 1990s laser concept to propose a next-generation atomic clock

Researchers in the US and Germany have unveiled a theoretical blueprint for an atomic clock driven by a highly synchronized laser, where atoms work in concert rather than independently. Publishing their results in Physical Review Letters, Jarrod Reilly at the University of Colorado, Simon Jäger at the University of Bonn, and their colleagues in the US and Germany revived an idea first proposed in the 1990s—possibly charting a course toward the narrowest-linewidth lasers ever achieved.

In a conventional laser, a mirrored cavity bounces light back and forth between atoms, building up a bright, coherent beam. A superradiant laser works differently: rather than relying on the cavity to maintain coherence, the atoms themselves act as single coordinated emitters, collectively synchronizing their light emission.

Following early theoretical ideas emerged in the 1990s, the concept didn’t gain concrete traction until 2008, when researchers at the University of Colorado proposed that superradiant lasers could serve as a new kind of atomic clock.

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