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Chinese scientists employ new technology to scan cultural heritage sites for first time

Chinese scientists have successfully employed 3D hyperspectral imaging technology for the first time to create comprehensive digital archives of two ancient Buddhist grottoes at the Yungang Grottoes in Shanxi Province. This was reported by Science and Technology Daily, a partner of TV BRICS.

According to Li Lihong, a researcher at the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute, the technology can simultaneously record the geometric shapes, materials and distribution of defects in the heritage sites, creating a “spectral fingerprint” for every point on the surface.

Caves No. 7 and No. 8, carved between 471 and 494 AD, constitute the first pair of twin caves at Yungang. They blend Greek-style columns, Indian Gandhara Buddhist statues and traditional architectural elements from the Central Plains, bearing witness to the exchange between Eastern and Western civilisations and holding great significance in the history of the Yungang Grottoes. However, due to their complex curved surfaces and vast surface area, it had long been impossible to create a complete digital replica using standard equipment.

Spaceflight could change how astronauts swallow, eat and drink in subtle ways

Imagine trying to swallow a sip of water while your face feels stuffed with congestion, your sense of taste is dulled and your body is floating 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

That scenario is part of everyday life for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Spaceflight changes the human body in dramatic ways. Muscles shrink, bones lose density and bodily fluids shift toward the head. Astronauts often return with puffy faces, stuffy noses and a feeling similar to a lingering cold. When you’re congested, you might have more difficulty swallowing—but does microgravity also affect this important body function?

Deep-learning tissue clocks reveal how organs age and leave disease-linked signals in blood

Deep learning applied to more than 25,000 histopathology slides revealed tissue-specific structural signatures of biological aging that tracked telomere attrition, pathology, comorbidity, and molecular changes more closely than chronological age alone.

Anomalous quantum oscillations reveal new physics in a topological insulator

A study has been published in Nature Communications that identifies an unusual regime of quantum oscillations in a three-dimensional topological insulator. The results show that, when subjected to temperatures near absolute zero and extreme magnetic fields, electrons in the material zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe₅) exhibit behavior that deviates from the pattern predicted by conventional theory.

The study, led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Washington, among other U.S. institutions, combines electrical transport experiments conducted in magnetic fields of up to 60 tesla and at temperatures around 0.7 kelvin (−272.45 °C) with detailed theoretical modeling.

“This work expands our understanding of electron transport in exotic phases of matter and suggests that topological insulators support the transport of not only electric charge, but also another fundamental degree of freedom: electron spin,” says Julio Larrea Jiménez, a professor at USP’s Physics Institute (IF) and co-founder and director of the Laboratory for Quantum Matter under Extreme Conditions (LQMEC).

Gluons may play a central role in baryon number conservation—and matter’s stability

New results from the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) suggest that gluons, the glue-like particles that hold quarks together inside protons, play a central role in the conservation of baryon number—an essential part of a particle’s quantum identity.

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