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A study led by Pompeu Fabra University reveals which brain mechanisms allow psychosis to remit. The results of this pioneering research could have important clinical implications for exploring new intervention strategies in patients with psychosis. The study was carried out in collaboration with one of the main psychiatry groups at Lausanne University Hospital (Switzerland).

The study examines differences in the neural connectivity patterns of patients who have recovered from psychosis and subjects who have not. Identifying these differences using computational models has enabled determining which patterns of neural connectivity facilitate the remission of the disease.

The results of the research have recently been published in an article in the journal Nature Mental Health. Its principal author is Ludovica Mana, a doctor and neuroscientist of the Computational Neuroscience group at the UPF Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC). The main co-investigators are Gustavo Deco and Manel-Vila Vidal, director and researcher with the same research group, respectively.

Advances in high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) platforms together with genotyping technologies have revolutionized breeding of varieties with desired traits relying on genomic prediction. Yet, we lack an understanding of the expression of multiple traits at different time points across the entire growth period of the plant.

A research team, including IPK Leibniz Institute and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, has developed a computational approach to solve this problem. The results were published in the journal Nature Plants.

The phenome of a plant comprises the entirety of traits expressed at any given time, and is the integrated outcome of the effects of genetic factors, and their . Understanding how the crop phenome changes over time can help predict individual traits at specific time points in crop development. However, this problem is challenging not only because of the intricate dependence between individual traits, but also due to differences in how the phenomes of specific genotypes change over the plant life cycle.

RIKEN scientists have discovered how to manipulate molybdenum disulfide into acting as a superconductor, metal, semiconductor, or insulator using a specialized transistor technique.

By inserting potassium ions and adjusting conditions, they could trigger dramatic changes in the material’s electronic state—unexpectedly even turning it into a superconductor or insulator. This new level of control over a single 2D material could unlock exciting breakthroughs in next-gen electronics and superconductivity research.

Unlocking versatility in a single material.

Lithium-ion batteries have been a staple in device manufacturing for years, but the liquid electrolytes they rely on to function are quite unstable, leading to fire hazards and safety concerns. Now, researchers at Penn State are pursuing a reliable alternative energy storage solution for use in laptops, phones and electric vehicles: solid-state electrolytes (SSEs).

According to Hongtao Sun, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering, solid-state batteries—which use SSEs instead of liquid electrolytes—are a leading alternative to traditional . He explained that although there are key differences, the batteries operate similarly at a fundamental level.

“Rechargeable batteries contain two internal electrodes: an anode on one side and a cathode on the other,” Sun said. “Electrolytes serve as a bridge between these two electrodes, providing fast transport for conductivity. Lithium-ion batteries use liquid electrolytes, while solid-state batteries use SSEs.”

Paper link : https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction.
00:49 Breaking the Classical Wall – What the Game Revealed.
02:32 Entanglement at Scale – Knots, Topology, and Robust Design.
03:51 Implications – A New Era of Quantum Machines.
07:37 Outro.
07:47 Enjoy.

MUSIC TITLE : Starlight Harmonies.

MUSIC LINK : https://pixabay.com/music/pulses-starlight-harmonies-185900/

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A discovery by an international team of scientists has revealed room-temperature ferroelectric and resistive switching behaviors in single-element tellurium (Te) nanowires, paving the way for advancements in ultrahigh-density data storage and neuromorphic computing.

Published in Nature Communications, this research marks the first experimental evidence of ferroelectricity in Te nanowires, a single-element material, which was previously predicted only in theoretical models.

“Ferroelectric materials are substances that can store electrical charge and keep it even when the power is turned off, and their charge can be switched by applying an external electric field—a characteristic essential for non-volatile memory applications,” points out co-corresponding author of the paper Professor Yong P. Chen, a principal investigator at Tohoku University’s Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR) and a professor at Purdue and Aarhus Universities.

How can electronic “skin” help advance the electronics and computer industry? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) and funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research developed an ultrathin electronic “skin” that can sense heat and radiation. This study has the potential to expand the electronics industry by enhancing wearable and imaging devices used on smaller scales than at present.

For the study, the researchers designed and built a pyroelectric (temperature changes to create electric current) material that is only 10 nanometers thick while exhibiting superior sensing capabilities for wide ranges of heat and radiation. To accomplish this, the team conducted a series of laboratory experiments to verify the material’s capabilities, including using the material on a computer chip that measured approximately 60 square microns (approximately 0.006 square centimeters) and comprised of 100 ultrathin heat-sensing pixels. The pixels were then subjected to temperature changes to demonstrate its ability to measure those changes, which the researchers noted was successful.

“This film considerably reduces weight and cost, making it lightweight, portable, and easier to integrate,” said Xinyuan Zhang, who is a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and lead author of the study. “For example, it could be directly worn on glasses.”

However, when photons are contained within structures that are smaller than their wavelength, these measures collapse into each other, and so the definition is of total angular momentum (TAM). It’s this feature, only occurring for photons confined in this way, that has now been entangled for the first time.

Researchers at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology used gratings to confine photons within a circular or spiral nanoscale platform and mapped their states, entangling the TAMs of pairs of photons before scattering them to free space. Entangling TAMs might seem like a minor development, seeing that SAMs and OAMs have each been entangled before, but the authors write: “We observe that entanglement in TAM leads to a completely different structure of quantum correlations of photon pairs, compared with entanglement related to the two constituent angular momenta.”

Quantum entanglement is considered key to quantum computing. The authors propose their work could lead to information processing conducted using the entangled TAMs of photons confined to chips. Entangling TAMs allows quantum processors based around photons to be smaller than would be possible if one of the properties that only emerges under less confined conditions was used. That potentially enables the miniaturization of future quantum computers.