https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.199232 Here, Savita G. Pahwa & team demonstrate high-dose vaccination for influenza strengthens immunity in older adults with HIV after prior standard dosing, but not all strain-specific weaknesses were overcome.
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
2Division of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences; and.
3Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity with a resistance of zero. In so-called conventional superconductors, this occurs at low temperatures when electrons become bound into pairs, known as Cooper pairs.
In some other materials, however, superconductivity (SC) emerges via other electron pairing mechanisms that are still poorly understood. These materials, called unconventional superconductors, include twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG), a two-dimensional material created by stacking two single sheets of graphene on top of each other, one of which is rotated in relation to the other by a precise small angle.
One factor that plays a role in unconventional SC is the so-called dielectric constant. This is the measure of how well a material reduces the electric forces between charged particles.
An international research team, including scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), has achieved a methodological breakthrough in the study of superhydrides, a promising class of superconductors. For the first time, the team succeeded in analyzing lanthanum superhydrides under extreme pressure using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
The research is published in the journal Advanced Science.
Superconductors are characterized by the fact that their electrical resistance vanishes below a material-specific critical temperature, allowing them to conduct electricity without loss. For most known materials, this transition temperature is below about 140 Kelvin (minus 133 degrees Celsius), which requires complex cooling technology for practical applications. Consequently, researchers are actively searching for materials that exhibit superconductivity at significantly higher temperatures.
An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy.
The study, published in Nature Astronomy, presents a powerful framework called CIGaRS that allows scientists to extract more information from exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, primarily through imaging rather than costly spectroscopic observations. The results pave the way for making the most of the vast amount of data expected from the next generation of astronomical surveys, especially from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Scientists have discovered the cause of a persistent glitch that continues to disrupt superconducting quantum computers, even when they have built-in defenses. For all their advanced hardware, superconducting quantum computers are vulnerable to errors caused by ionizing radiation from space or the environment. Radiation particles interfere with the chip substrate (the silicon base the processor is built on), which leads to the creation of rogue particles (quasiparticles) that disrupt the qubits, the basic units of quantum computers.
To protect against this, scientists developed a technique called gap engineering. This involves creating an energy barrier in the superconducting material of the qubits, making it harder for these particles to reach sensitive parts of the device.
However, it is not foolproof. Even with this defense, radiation can still cause sudden widespread errors affecting many qubits at once (error bursts). But it was not clear why.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and collaborators have developed a predictive design strategy for creating graphene-like molecules with multiple interacting spins and enhanced resilience to magnetic perturbations, opening new avenues for molecular-scale quantum information technologies and next-generation spintronics.
The research team was led by Professor Lu Jiong from the NUS Department of Chemistry and the NUS Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, together with Professor Wu Jishan from the NUS Department of Chemistry, and international collaborators, including key contributor Professor Pavel Jelínek from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
Magnetic nanographenes, which are molecules composed of fused benzene rings, are of growing interest for quantum technologies because they can host unpaired electrons, or spins, that may be used to store and process information. Unlike conventional magnetic materials based on metal atoms, these carbon-based systems offer chemical versatility and long spin coherence times. However, engineering a single molecule that contains multiple strongly coupled spins in a stable and controlled manner remains a major challenge.
In the era of big data and artificial intelligence, a new approach has emerged for solving combinatorial optimization problems, which involves finding the most efficient solution among many possible options and can otherwise take thousands of years to compute.
A KAIST research team has developed computational hardware that can be implemented entirely using existing silicon processes, enabling deployment on existing fabrication lines without additional facilities. This is expected to enable faster and more accurate decision-making across various industries, including logistics, finance, and semiconductor design.
The research is published in Science Advances.
A recent study shows a new and potentially more energy-efficient way for information to be transmitted inside electronic systems, including computers and phones—without relying on electric currents or external magnetic fields.
In today’s electronics, information is transmitted by moving electrons through circuits, where ones and zeros are represented by high or low electrical signals. While this approach has enabled modern computing, the movement of electrical charge inevitably generates heat, leading to energy loss and limiting how much devices can be miniaturized and improved.
In the new study, published in Nano Letters, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and international collaborators demonstrate that simply twisting two layers of certain atom-thin magnetic materials allows magnetic signals to carry information instead of relying on electrical currents to do the work.