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How developing immune cells fine-tune their signals

Researchers at VIB, Ghent University, and VUB have uncovered how two proteins essential for immune cell development work together at the molecular level. The findings provide important insights into a critical mechanism that mediates the integration of molecular signals received from immunological threats. Their work appears in Nature Communications.

T cells undergo a strict selection process in the thymus before they become fully functional. This ensures that healthy T cells can recognize immunological threats while avoiding attacks against the body’s own tissues. Dysregulation of this process can contribute to autoimmune diseases or immune deficiencies.

For nearly two decades, scientists have known that a protein called Themis is essential for this developmental checkpoint. However, exactly how Themis worked at the molecular level remained unclear.

Are Electrons Real?

In 2023, philosopher Philip Goff posed a deceptively simple question on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Do electrons exists?” Physicists, philosophers, and a wide range of commentators responded in droves. Their reactions ranged from curt dismissals to insightful reflections on the nature of scientific knowledge. Against this lively backdrop, three academics conducted a formal investigation into how physicists might answer the question.

Céline Henne is a philosopher working on the epistemology and philosophy of language at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Hannah Tomczyk, a physicist at HighFinesse in Germany, specialized in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Christoph Sperber is a data scientist at Tübingen University Hospital in Germany. Together, they surveyed 384 physicists, publishing their findings under the title “Physicists’ Views on Scientific Realism” [1]. Henne and Tomczyk spoke to Physics Magazine about scientific realism—a philosophical position embraced by many physicists—and about alternative viewpoints.

All interviews are edited for brevity and clarity.

Coral study could help explain infertility and ovarian cancer by decoding cilia-driven fluid flows

A study by researchers at The University of Manchester, carried out alongside the Universities of Melbourne and Copenhagen, could hold the key to understanding the causes of long-term health problems, such as infertility and ovarian cancer.

The study, published in PRX Life, used a combination of high-resolution imaging, flow measurements, and mathematical modeling to examine fluid flows around corals that are driven by cilia—densely packed tiny hairs on the coral’s surface. The collective beating of the cilia contributes to the movement of fluid around the surface of the coral, regulating the animal’s immediate environment through the transport of particles such as oxygen.

The researchers found that heterogeneity in ciliary orientation —small variations in the direction individual cilia beat—can significantly boost transport efficiency. For substances that diffuse slowly through the fluid, this natural variability increased particle transport by more than 50% compared to perfectly aligned cilia. This contrasts with other biological systems, highlighting how coral cilia are uniquely adapted to their environment.

Listening to the sun reveals previously hidden changes to solar cycle

Internal changes due to the sun’s “active biorhythm” have become increasingly “skin-deep” over the past four solar activity cycles, according to a new study.

Publishing its findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team led by the University of Birmingham reveals solar magnetic activity is being squeezed into an increasingly shallow layer just below the visible surface, signposting long-term changes to the sun’s active behavior.

Solar activity rises and falls in 11‑year cycles, producing solar flares, and ejections of highly charged particles and coronal mass ejections that give rise to space weather. This activity, and its cyclic variation, has its origins in the sun’s interior, in processes that regenerate and reorganize the sun’s magnetic field.

Rare observations reveal an X9 solar flare before it erupts

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun’s surface, which can wreak havoc on Earth’s power grids, damage orbiting satellites, and pose serious radiation risks to astronauts. Yet despite decades of study, the processes that trigger these eruptions remain poorly understood.

In a new preprint on arXiv, a team led by Louis Seyfritz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology has captured rare observations of a large flare in the hours before it erupted, offering new clues about what sets these events in motion.

Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere may owe its existence to cold subduction

Earth was mostly devoid of oxygen for much of its 4.5 billion year lifetime. That is, until certain processes started to allow for the eventual buildup of oxygen up to the levels we have now (around 21% of the atmosphere). While scientists have found evidence of the approximate timescales of rises in oxygen over time and are aware of some of the mechanisms behind it, the main driver behind Earth’s long-term oxygenation is still unclear.

A new study explores whether changes in subduction style—how tectonic plates sink—influenced oxygen levels over time. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points to a process called cold subduction as the main driving factor behind Earth’s rise in oxygen levels, which ultimately led to a more habitable Earth.

DNA ‘nicks’ make for safer, more precise genetic analysis

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a safer and more precise way to study how genes function in living tissues by refining a recently developed CRISPR-based genetic technique in fruit flies, enabling researchers to better study how genes contribute to development and disease.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the work highlights a new method that replaces the harsh DNA cuts used in traditional CRISPR analysis with gentler cuts known as “nicks.”

According to Chun Han, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, the approach still allows scientists to study how genes function in living tissues, but with far less unintended cellular damage and greater control over the experiment.

Quantum teleportation carries microwave states at temperatures up to 4 K, beating classical limit

A growing number of quantum engineers worldwide have been trying to realize large-scale quantum networks, which consist of several connected quantum computers or devices that share information with each other. The successful realization of these networks could potentially pave the way for the realization of new high-speed and secure communication systems, or even of a quantum version of the internet.

A key challenge when trying to realize large-scale quantum networks is ensuring that the quantum properties of microwave signals can be reliably transferred from one location to another. These signals are highly sensitive to random energy fluctuations associated with heat. Thus, systems introduced so far typically operate inside cooling machines known as dilution refrigerators.

Researchers at Walther-Meißner-Institute (WMI) and Technical University of Munich have introduced a new approach to successfully transfer quantum microwave states between two separate dilution refrigerators connected by a warmer superconducting cable, with temperatures of up to 4K.

Researchers push back fundamental limit on energy transfer between particles without ‘spilling’ radiation

Researchers at TU/e have demonstrated that energy transfer without loss via light or heat can occur over much greater distances than previously thought possible thanks to vibrations in microscopic gold rods. They succeeded in making energy jump from one particle to another over a distance of several millimeters without “spilling” energy along the way.

In the microscopic world in which this research takes place, that is a giant leap, with promising applications in quantum communication, solar energy, and ultrasensitive medical sensors. The researchers have published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

Normally, a molecule that absorbs energy loses it again as heat through vibrations passed on to the surrounding environment or as a particle of light (known as a photon). In Förster resonance energy transfer (or FRET for short, which is named after the German physicist Theodor Förster), something different happens: the energy jumps directly, without radiation, from one molecule to a specific neighboring molecule through an invisible interaction between their electric fields.

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