The headset transmits the player’s brain activity data to the app, which responds by changing the color of the water around the jellyfish, providing the player with real-time feedback on their mental state. Image: Elva Darnell
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Homing pigeon navigation relies on superparamagnetic macrophages under overcast conditions
Birds use a variety of navigational strategies, including the geomagnetic field, especially when other cues are not available, such as under overcast or nocturnal conditions. Magnetite particles in the beak, cryptochromes in the eye, cellular ion-channel alterations, and changes in the vestibular system have been proposed to explain magnetoreception, but the exact mechanisms remain debated. Here, we used physical, morphological, functional, and genomic assays to identify the presence of superparamagnetic macrophages in the liver. We found that after macrophage depletion, pigeons flying under overcast conditions lacked their usual orientation capabilities. Orientation was unimpaired in birds without macrophages when the sun was visible, suggesting that this was their primary cue.
Mouse moves unlock realistic AI video control with no extra computing cost
A technology developed at the Technion enables ordinary users to create realistic video clips intuitively, without the need for massive computing resources. Called Time-to-Move (TTM), it offers unprecedented control over the movement of objects and characters in AI-generated videos using nothing more than mouse movements, eliminating the need for complex and expensive infrastructure or training on millions of videos.
Dr. Or Litany of the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, who led the research together with faculty colleague Prof. Ron Kimmel and students Asaf Singer, Noam Rotstein and Amir Mann, presented the work at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2026 conference, held in Brazil last month. ICLR is one of the world’s leading conferences in deep learning and AI.
“Our development,” Litany explains, “solves one of the main limitations of AI-based video generation: the difficulty of precisely controlling the movement of objects and characters over time. TTM does not require retraining and can be integrated as a plug-in into existing video models. Unlike previous approaches, which require model-specific adaptation and substantial computing resources, this technology operates with no additional computational cost. In doing so, it helps democratize AI video creation by expanding access beyond giant companies such as Google and Meta.”
Feeding data to AI to speed up drug discovery
Developing new medicines can require thousands of chemistry experiments to identify the right recipe for a safe, effective and ideally affordable drug.
The process is slow and labor-intensive, and many of the reactions depend on hard-to-source metals that act as essential catalysts.
While artificial intelligence is helping speed up the process of drug discovery, it can only learn from the data available, and when it comes to chemical reactions, the large, high-quality data sets needed to train powerful AI tools aren’t there.
Can String Theory Be Explained with No Strings Attached?
Using a “bootstrap” approach, researchers show that a small set of assumptions may naturally lead to a string-theory description of certain high-energy processes.
String theory has been a remarkably influential conceptual framework for modern theoretical physics. While its description of nature in terms of tiny strings captures the imagination, the string framework has had profound impact in a broad range of subfields, going well beyond its lead role as a viable theory of quantum gravity. For instance, it has led to deeper understanding of black holes and their relation to entanglement and quantum information [1], and it has provided theoretical benchmarks for explaining quark–gluon plasma observations in quantum chromodynamics [2]. As a complement to direct calculations, theoretical physicists would like to understand string theory as emerging from a set of fundamental principles that any theory of nature must respect. Consistency with these bedrock conditions, so goes the idea, could perhaps make string theory inevitable.
Broken time-reversal symmetry phase in kagome metals may establish conditions for superconductivity
Physicists have long suspected that a peculiar quantum state lurks inside a class of materials known as kagome metals, but proving its existence has been elusive. Now, a team led by Yeongkwan Kim at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has performed experiments on a kagome metal that provide the strongest evidence yet for this exotic state.
Published in Nature Physics, the team’s results could shed new light on how these materials transition into superconductivity.
Experiment upends beliefs on how electrons actually behave in warm dense matter
Researchers at European XFEL, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Rostock University and other collaborating institutions have used high-precision experiments to demonstrate that the most widely used models for the behavior of electrons in warm dense matter are inaccurate. Warm dense matter is challenging to study, but also is of key importance for a plethora of research, including the investigation of planetary interiors, materials science and laser fusion experiments. The study is published in Physical Review Letters.
In warm dense matter, electron density oscillates. The collective oscillations are called plasmons. They carry important information and can be observed using X-rays, resulting in scattering spectra—abstract images captured by a detector. In many experiments, these spectra are interpreted using simplified uniform electron gas models. However, the new measurements show that for warm dense aluminum, these models consistently overestimate the plasmon energy by up to about 25% (about 8 electronvolts) and fail to reproduce the full measured shape of the signal.
“Our measurements are precise enough to clearly distinguish between competing models,” says Dr. Thomas Preston of European XFEL. “That is important because these models are widely used to diagnose extreme states of matter. If the model is incorrect, that leads to inaccurately inferred properties.”
Room-temperature device synchronizes distant laser spots into single coherent ‘supermode’
Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make spatially separated lasers synchronize and act as a single coherent light source—without extreme conditions or complex materials.
A team of physicists from the University of Southampton (UK), University of Warsaw (PL), Military University of Technology (PL), Institut Pascal, Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS (FR), and CNR (IT) has developed a new class of tunable photonic devices in which multiple tiny laser beams spontaneously synchronize and behave as a unified, spatially extended and coherent light source. Remarkably, this effect is achieved at room temperature using a simple system based on liquid crystals and organic dye molecules, opening new possibilities for low-cost and reconfigurable optical technologies.
The work is published in the journal Nature Communications. The study demonstrates that spatially separated laser spots inside an optical microcavity can spontaneously phase-lock—that is, align (or synchronize) their oscillations—and form a collective state known as a “supermode.” Traditionally, such behavior has been observed only in highly specialized semiconductor systems operating at cryogenic temperatures and in the so-called strong light-matter coupling regime.
Investigating quantum and molecular plumbing in nanofluidics research
Our body contains an intricate system of tiny vessels through which blood, water and other molecules flow. When the size of the pipes shrinks to the nanoscale, where only a few molecules can fit side by side, the classical laws of physics governing the behavior of water are influenced by the atomic structure of the walls. “It’s not that classical hydrodynamics breaks down, but rather that it gets mixed with the condensed matter physics of the solid walls,” says Nikita Kavokine, tenure-track assistant professor and leader of the EPFL Quantum Plumbing Lab.
How liquids, and water in particular, behave at scales of a few nanometers is one of the big gaps in modern physics. For example, in some experiments, it has been observed that water flows through carbon nanotubes orders of magnitude faster than expected. Scientists are trying to understand phenomena that biology has mastered after millions of years of evolution.
“At the nanometer scale, our body leverages specific properties of water to filter molecules with high energy efficiency,” explains Kavokine. Aquaporins, for example, are protein channels embedded in cell membranes that use these molecular-scale interactions to let water pass while blocking ions and other molecules.
Electron-Ion Collider’s radiofrequency controls system passes first real-world test
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has reached a key early milestone in developing radiofrequency control systems for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)—a next-generation research facility that will collide electrons with ions to reveal how the building blocks of matter are held together.
At the heart of any particle accelerator are radiofrequency (RF) systems, which use electromagnetic waves to accelerate particle beams to near-light speed and keep them tightly controlled. The system tested here—known as low-level radiofrequency (LLRF)—acts as the “brain,” precisely controlling those RF fields to ensure stable and accurate operation.
This milestone marks the first successful test of the newly built EIC common platform-based LLRF electronics on a real accelerator cavity. The common platform is a shared hardware and control system for accelerator operations, allowing teams to use the same technology rather than create separate electronics for each system.