Oxygen isotope analysis of lunar soil shows meteorites delivered only a limited amount of water to the Earth–Moon system after about 4 billion years ago.
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New DNA tools outperform traditional methods for detecting genetic risk in wildlife
Wildlife populations that become small and isolated, often due to habitat loss, inevitably experience inbreeding which can lead to the loss of fitness and eventual extinction. One solution is to perform a genetic rescue: a management intervention where new blood is brought in by introducing outsiders to a population to reduce inbreeding and restore diversity. But how do researchers know the inbreeding problem has been solved?
A new long-term study from Western, led by biology professor and chair David Coltman, shows DNA-based tools detected changes in inbreeding more accurately than traditional pedigree methods in a wild population of bighorn sheep that was recently genetically rescued. The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Applications.
Pedigree approaches estimate genetic health from family history, whereas genomic approaches directly analyze DNA.
A 100-solar-mass black hole merger ripples spacetime, and may flash in gamma rays
An international team from China and Italy has reported a possible cosmic encore to the landmark 2017 multi-messenger discovery. In November 2024, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories detected gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, designated S241125n. Remarkably, just seconds later, satellites recorded a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) from the same region of the sky.
Typically, binary black hole mergers are not expected to produce electromagnetic counterparts. S241125n could be a very rare gravitational-wave event that has been linked to a GRB across multiple wavelengths, extending multi-messenger astronomy into a new regime. Although the association is not yet definitive and will require further follow-up, the probability of a chance coincidence appears low, making the result statistically intriguing while warranting caution.
Quantum dots generate entangled photon pairs on demand
For the first time, researchers in China have demonstrated how quantum dots can be engineered to consistently generate pairs of entangled photons. By carefully tailoring the photonic environment surrounding a single quantum dot, the team showed that it is possible to produce highly correlated photon pairs with remarkable efficiency, potentially opening new opportunities for emerging quantum technologies. The work, led by Zhiliang Yuan at the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, is reported in Nature Materials.
In recent years, technologies capable of generating single photons on demand have advanced at an impressive pace. Already, these sources have led to substantial progress in fields ranging from quantum computing and secure communications, to advanced sensing and biomedical imaging.
A natural next step will be the ability to produce pairs of photons that are identical and strongly entangled. Even when separated by large distances, the properties of entangled photons remain linked: an effect that lies at the heart of many quantum technologies.
Quantum computers must overcome major technical hurdles before tackling quantum chemistry problems
Although the potential applications of quantum computing are widespread, a new feasibility study suggests quantum computers still face major hurdles in solving quantum chemistry problems. The study, published in Physical Review B, evaluates what criteria are needed for a quantum advantage in searching for the ground state energy of molecules. The researchers attempt this feat using two different algorithms with differing strengths and weaknesses.
The team first determined the criteria for the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm, which is used for noisy, near-term devices and sets an upper bound to the level of imprecision or decoherence in quantum hardware. The researchers derived quantitative criteria for VQE and QPE based on error rates, energy scales, and overlap with the ground state.
Results showed that VQE is extremely sensitive to hardware errors and decoherence. The team says that achieving chemical accuracy would require error rates far below current hardware capabilities. Available error mitigation techniques offer only limited improvement and scale poorly with system size.
Researchers realize room-temperature two-dimensional multiferroic metal
Multiferroic metals are materials that exhibit both electric polarization and magnetic order in the same crystal—a state known as multiferroicity. Because these properties coexist, they can interact through magnetoelectric (ME) coupling, allowing electric fields to influence magnetism.
Unfortunately, bulk multiferroic materials face limitations, including relatively small spontaneous polarization, weak ME coupling coefficients, and limited operational stability under ambient conditions due to oxygen-vacancy-induced leakage currents, which restrict their practical applications.
Now, however, researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with their collaborators from Zhejiang University, have realized electric-field control of magnetic states using a two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals material, while demonstrating intrinsic room-temperature (RT) multiferroicity with strong ME coupling.
From guesswork to guidance: How machine learning speeds dopant design for water-splitting photocatalysts
MLIP calculations successfully identify suitable dopants for a novel photocatalytic material, report researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo. As demonstrated in their study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a materials informatics approach could predict which ions can be stably introduced into orthorhombic Sn3O4, a promising and recently discovered photocatalytic tin oxide.
Their experiments revealed that aluminum-doped samples achieved 16 times greater hydrogen production than the undoped material, paving the way for next-generation clean energy applications.
Building a sustainable hydrogen economy requires clean and efficient ways to produce hydrogen at scale. One particularly attractive approach is photocatalysis—using materials called photocatalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen utilizing sunlight.
New chip lets robots see in 4D by tracking distance and speed simultaneously
Current vision systems for robots and drones rely on 3D sensors that, although powerful, do not always keep up with the fast-paced, unpredictable movement of the real world. These systems often struggle to measure speed instantly or are too bulky and expensive for everyday use. Now, in a paper published in the journal Nature, scientists report how they have developed a 4D imaging sensor on a chip that creates 3D maps of an environment while simultaneously tracking the speed of moving objects.
The researchers built a focal plane array (FPA), a physical grid of 61,952 stationary pixels etched onto a single silicon chip. Each one is a tiny sensor that emits laser light toward a scene and detects the reflected signal.
To “see” its surroundings, laser light from an external source is fed into the chip. This light is routed across the chip through a network of optical switches that sequentially direct it to groups of pixels. Each pixel then uses a technique called FMCW LiDAR to measure the returning signal, which is later processed to determine distance and speed. In many LiDAR systems, one set of pixels sends the light, and another receives it, but here, all pixels both send and receive, making the system much more compact.
Real-time protein quality control keeps cells healthy
Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a biochemical technique that captures fleeting “handshakes” between newly made proteins and the cellular helpers. These short interactions are important because they can determine whether a protein turns out healthy and useful or is faulty and in need of removal. The research has been published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Cells produce vast numbers of proteins to sustain life. But building a protein is not only about assembling a chain of amino acids in the right order. As the protein chain is being produced, it must begin folding into the correct three-dimensional shape and avoid attaching to the wrong partners.
When folding goes wrong, misfolded proteins can become sticky, clump together, and disrupt cellular health. Cells reduce this risk by running “quality checks” even while proteins are still being made. However, identifying the key players in this early surveillance has been challenging because their interactions with newly forming protein chains are brief and easily missed.
Bacterial strain breaks decades-old bottleneck in chemotherapy drug manufacturing
An international team of researchers has achieved a breakthrough in the production of doxorubicin, a vital chemotherapy agent. The study identifies and resolves molecular “bottlenecks” that have limited the natural production of this drug for over 50 years. The research is published in Nature Communications.
Doxorubicin is a chemotherapy drug that was first approved for medical use in the 1970s. It is a cornerstone in treating various cancers, including breast cancer, bladder cancer, lymphomas and carcinomas, with over one million patients receiving the treatment annually. However, bacteria naturally produce this important drug very inefficiently. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry has relied on expensive, multi-step semi-synthetic processes.
“We have uncovered several independent factors that limit the formation of doxorubicin,” says researcher Keith Yamada, Ph.D., from the University of Turku in Finland, a lead scientist on the study.