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Novel method for controlling Faraday rotation in conductive polymers

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have developed a novel method for controlling the optical rotation of conductive polymer polythiophene in a magnetic field at low voltage. This method combines the “Faraday rotation” phenomenon, in which a polarizing plane rotates in response to a magnetic field, with the electrochemical oxidation and reduction of conductive polymers.

The study is published in the journal Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals.

Conductive polymers possess various properties in addition to conductivity, with applications in light-emitting devices, electromagnetic wave shielding, and anticorrosion materials.

View a PDF of the paper titled Vision-Zero: Scalable VLM Self-Improvement via Strategic Gamified Self-Play, by Qinsi Wang and 8 other authors

Although reinforcement learning (RL) can effectively enhance the reasoning capabilities of vision-language models (VLMs), current methods remain heavily dependent on labor-intensive datasets that require extensive manual construction and verification, leading to extremely high training costs and consequently constraining the practical deployment of VLMs. To address this challenge, we propose Vision-Zero, a domain-agnostic framework enabling VLM self-improvement through competitive visual games generated from arbitrary image pairs. Specifically, Vision-Zero encompasses three main attributes: Strategic Self-Play Framework: Vision-Zero trains VLMs in “Who Is the Spy”-style games, where the models engage in strategic reasoning and actions across multiple roles. Through interactive gameplay, models autonomously generate their training data without human annotation. Gameplay from Arbitrary Images: Unlike existing gamified frameworks, Vision-Zero can generate games from arbitrary images, thereby enhancing the model’s reasoning ability across diverse domains and showing strong generalization to different tasks. We demonstrate this versatility using three distinct types of image datasets: CLEVR-based synthetic scenes, charts, and real-world images. Sustainable Performance Gain: We introduce Iterative Self-Play Policy Optimization (Iterative-SPO), a novel training algorithm that alternates between Self-Play and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), mitigating the performance plateau often seen in self-play-only training and achieving sustained long-term improvements. Despite using label-free data, Vision-Zero achieves state-of-the-art performance on reasoning, chart question answering, and vision-centric understanding tasks, surpassing other annotation-based methods. Models and code has been released at https://github.com/wangqinsi1/Vision-Zero.

New Sodium Battery Design Works Even at Subzero Temperatures

A new technique stabilizes a metastable form of sodium solid electrolyte, enabling all-solid-state sodium batteries to maintain performance even at subzero temperatures. All-solid-state batteries are considered a safe and powerful option for running electric vehicles, electronics, and even storin

How diamond fails under extreme electrical fields

A research team from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed the failure mechanism of diamond under extreme electrical fields through in situ experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. The study, published in Cell Reports Physical Science, provides critical insights for the design of robust diamond devices.

Diamond is known for its exceptional physical properties, including ultra-high breakdown field strength and , making it a promising material for and high-power electronics. However, its failure process under extreme electrical fields has remained poorly understood before now.

Led by Profs. Yan Qingbo and Chen Guangchao, the researchers used an in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) method to observe the breakdown process in real time. They found that diamond failure begins preferentially along the (111) crystal plane due to stress-induced lattice distortion and subsequent amorphization, rather than transforming into graphite.

Microsoft’s new AI feature will organize your photos automatically

Microsoft has begun testing a new AI-powered feature in Microsoft Photos, designed to categorize photos automatically on Windows 11 systems.

Dubbed Auto-Categorization, it is currently limited to sorting screenshots, receipts, identity documents, and notes, and it’s rolling out to Copilot+ PCs across all Windows Insider channels with Microsoft Photos version 2025.11090.25001.0 or higher.

Microsoft says the feature utilizes a language-agnostic AI model that identifies document types regardless of the language used in the image. It works by grouping photos into predefined folders automatically, based on their visual content, such as handwritten notes, receipts, or printed documents.

CWM: An Open-Weights LLM for Research on Code

We release Code World Model (CWM), a 32-billion-parameter open-weights LLM, to advance research on code generation with world models. To improve code understanding beyond what can be learned from training on static code alone, we mid-train CWM on a large amount of observation-action trajectories from Python interpreter and agentic Docker environments, and perform extensive multi-task reasoning RL in verifiable coding, math, and multi-turn software engineering environments. With CWM, we provide a strong testbed for researchers to explore the opportunities world modeling affords for improving code generation with reasoning and planning in computational environments. We present first steps of how world models can benefit agentic coding, enable step-by-step simulation of Python code execution, and show early results of how reasoning can benefit from the latter.

The CRITICAL RoboTaxi Milestone Tesla Stock Investors CAN’T Ignore

Tesla’s upcoming robo-taxi milestone of deploying 2,000 vehicles is expected to significantly boost its margins and potentially double or triple its free cash flow, marking a critical point in the company’s expansion and growth ##

## Questions to inspire discussion.

Tesla’s Robo Taxi Strategy.

🚕 Q: What is Tesla’s approach to deploying robo taxis across the US? A: Tesla plans to seed robo taxis across multiple cities nationwide, rather than focusing on a single market, to demonstrate benefits to regional regulators, define drop-off and pickup zones, and establish presence before scaling up.

🏙️ Q: Which cities are part of Tesla’s initial robo taxi expansion plans? A: Tesla’s robo taxi expansion includes Austin, Bay Area, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and other states, with Austin and Bay Area currently offering invite-only services.

Financial Impact and Pricing.

China develops fabric that withstands 2,192°F heat with ease

A Chinese company has showcased new types of fabrics that can withstand extreme temperatures. Some of the fabric materials presented were waterproof and windproof while remaining breathable.

Safmax presented these advanced fabrics at the second Public Security Tech Expo in Lianyungang, China.

The company’s new flame-retardant material can withstand temperatures up to 2,192 degree Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius). This fabric can maintain its structure without deforming, shrinking, or melting.

This type of fabric can be used in firefighting suits and fire blankets to isolate airflow during battery fires in new energy vehicles.


Safmax’s new flame-retardant material can withstand high temperatures maintaining its structure without deforming, shrinking, or melting.

Robotaxi Wars Just Got BLOODY

Waymo’s partnership with Lyft in Nashville highlights advancements in robo-taxi safety, but the company faces significant challenges from Tesla’s established infrastructure and competitive landscape in the rapidly evolving autonomous vehicle market ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Tesla’s Robotaxi Advantage.

🚗 Q: How does Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency give it an edge in the robotaxi market? A: Tesla can build cars for one-third the price of competitors, with built-in Shepherds and the ability to manufacture at cost for FSD or robotaxi network use.

🌐 Q: What makes Tesla’s global expansion strategy unique? A: Tesla’s global approach and rapid execution allow it to go anywhere once FSD works, making it difficult for competitors to match its scale and speed.

🧠 Q: How significant is Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology? A: Tesla’s FSD is a gigantic advantage, with take rates tripling to double digits and expected to triple again, making it hard for others to compete.

Waymo’s Progress and Challenges.

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