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A research team has revealed that ultrashort laser pulses can magnetize iron alloys, a discovery with significant potential for applications in magnetic sensor technology, data storage, and spintronics.

To magnetize an iron nail, one simply has to stroke its surface several times with a bar magnet. Yet, there is a much more unusual method: A team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) discovered some time ago that a certain iron alloy can be magnetized with ultrashort laser pulses. The researchers have now teamed up with the Laserinstitut Hochschule Mittweida (LHM) to investigate this process further. They discovered that the phenomenon also occurs with a different class of materials – which significantly broadens potential application prospects. The working group presents its findings in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Breakthrough Discovery in Magnetization.

A non-organic intelligent system has for the first time designed, planned and executed a chemistry experiment, Carnegie Mellon University researchers report in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Nature.

“We anticipate that intelligent agent systems for autonomous scientific experimentation will bring tremendous discoveries, unforeseen therapies and new materials. While we cannot predict what those discoveries will be, we hope to see a new way of conducting research given by the synergetic partnership between humans and machines,” the Carnegie Mellon research team wrote in their paper.

The system, called Coscientist, was designed by Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Gabe Gomes and chemical engineering doctoral students Daniil Boiko and Robert MacKnight. It uses large language models (LLMs), including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude, to execute the full range of the experimental process with a simple, plain language prompt.

Jack Ma urged Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to correct course in a surprise internal memo, in which the billionaire called for fundamental change across the company he co-founded decades ago.

Ma, who has mostly stayed away from day-to-day operations since 2020, stunned employees Wednesday by replying to a staff post on Alibaba’s internal forum. In his brief message, the entrepreneur praised decisions taken in recent years by rival PDD Holdings Inc. to wrest market share from China’s e-commerce leader. But Ma was convinced Alibaba will change and “correct its course,” he said in a post confirmed by people familiar with the forum.

Alibaba, once China’s best candidate to become a trillion-dollar company, is trading near its lowest value this year, at a fraction of its peak in 2020. The company is navigating turmoil both internally and externally, as a weaker-than-anticipated economic recovery and up-and-coming rivals such as PDD and ByteDance Ltd. undermine its once-dominant online retail business.

In a new breakthrough, researchers have used a novel technique to confirm a previously undetected physics phenomenon that could be used to improve data storage in the next generation of computer devices.

Spintronic memories, utilized in advanced computers and satellites, leverage the magnetic states produced by the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons for data storage and retrieval. Depending on its physical motion, an electron’s spin produces a magnetic current. Known as the “spin Hall effect,” this has key applications for magnetic materials across many different fields, ranging from low-power electronics to fundamental quantum mechanics.

More recently, scientists have found that electrons are also capable of generating electricity through a second kind of movement: orbital angular momentum, similar to how Earth revolves around the sun. This is known as the “orbital Hall effect,” said Roland Kawakami, co-author of the study and a professor in physics at The Ohio State University.

“The R in R30 stands for Revolution; we decided to offer something radically different, radically better,” say the creators of the boat.


The Blue Innovations Group, founded by the former Global Head of Manufacturing at Tesla, has officially launched the R30 electric boat.

John Vo, founder and CEO of the Blue Innovations Group, proudly introduced the R30, emphasizing its radical departure from conventional boat designs.

Vo highlighted the distinctiveness of the R30, stating, “The R30 was designed from scratch. We threw out the playbook most boatbuilders follow because if you squint your eyes at a boat show, most boats look the same. The R in R30 stands for Revolution; we decided to offer something radically different, radically better.”