In their search for dark matter, scientists from the XENON Collaboration are using one of the world’s most sensitive dark matter detectors, XENONnT at the Gran Sasso Laboratory of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics INFN in Italy, to detect extremely rare particle interactions. These could provide clues about the nature of dark matter. The problem, however, is that tiny amounts of natural radioactivity generate background events that can mask these weak signals.

The XENONnT experiment has made a breakthrough by significantly reducing one of the most problematic contaminants— radon, a radioactive gas. For the first time, the research team has succeeded in reducing the detector’s radon-induced radioactivity to a level a billion times lower than the very low natural radioactivity of the human body.

The underlying technology, which the XENONnT consortium reports in the current issue of the Physical Review X, was developed by a team led by particle physicist Prof Christian Weinheimer from the University of Münster.

For over three decades, HIV has played an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with researchers, making treating—and possibly even curing—the disease a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to achieve.

But scientists at Case Western Reserve University have made a breakthrough discovery that could fundamentally change strategies for treating HIV.

The team identified for the first time how HIV enters a dormant state in infected cells that allows the virus to “hide” from the immune system and current treatments.