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Unlocking the ‘black box’ of carbon materials: Study reveals origins of defect peaks

Carbon materials, such as carbon fibers and activated carbons, are essential across a wide variety of fields, encompassing everything from aerospace engineering to fuel cells and thermal insulation. For decades, Raman, infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been the primary tools used to analyze carbon materials. However, because of their diverse structural conditions and inconsistencies in their interpretation, researchers have found it challenging to assign specific spectral peaks to exact, localized chemical structures.

The detailed origin and nature of these peaks, and their exact effect on important material characteristics, have often remained unclear.

To tackle this issue, a research team led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Yamada from the Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Japan, used isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber—a cost-effective material widely used for high-temperature thermal insulation—as a general model to analyze carbon materials prepared at high temperatures of 1,473 K (1,200 °C) or higher.

Network-driven discovery of repurposable drugs targeting hallmarks of aging

The authors introduce a network medicine framework showing that the hallmarks of aging form interconnected molecular modules in the human interactome. This new approach can help to identify existing drugs that might influence aging-associated transcriptional changes.

Safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines: a mechanistic and public health perspective

MRNA vaccines represent a transformative advance in vaccinology, combining rapid development timelines, scalable manufacturing, and strong immunogenicity with a favourable safety profile. Global deployment of mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic provided an unprecedented real-world evaluation of this platform, with billions of doses administered across diverse populations. In this Review, we critically examine the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines from mechanistic, preclinical, clinical, and public health perspectives.

Cliff Pickover (@pickover) on X

We aren’t the authors of our thoughts. We’re just the user interface. We look at the universe and see a solid reality. The universe looks at us and sees a line of code. We spend our lives trying to leave a mark on the surface of reality. Oblivious to the fact that our existence is being computed from beneath. We aren’t separate individuals. We’re just the localized tips of a single, massive mathematical architecture.👇

Russian physicists study laser beam compressed into thin filament

A group of Russian scientists recently presented their research into the process of laser pulse filamentation—the effect produced when a laser beam propagating in air focuses into a filament. The researchers discovered how this process influences the preliminary transition of a beam passing through quartz glass, which has applications in the field of nonlinear optics.

Light propagates in straight lines, and beams of are only reflected or refracted to the side when the properties of the medium it is passing through change. This is the basis of linear optics: it is called ‘linear’ because the division of that occurs when light passes through a medium is linearly dependent on the intensity of the fields in the light wave itself. In other words, the stronger the electric field, the more the different charges are dispersed within the material—the material becomes polarized.

The of a material should not be confused with the . This polarization is characterised by the degree to which the positive and negative charges are dispersed in a substance, and in this way, the presence of specific directions within the electromagnetic wave within which the electric fields vibrate is called polarization.

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