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Bill Gates’ TerraPower gets NRC green light for safety in construction of its first nuclear plant

Nuclear power company TerraPower has passed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s final safety evaluation for a permit to build a reactor in Wyoming. The Washington-based company backed by Bill Gates and NVIDIA could be the first to deploy a utility-scale, next-generation reactor in America.

TerraPower’s Natrium design pairs a small modular reactor (SMR) with an integrated thermal battery. The SMR generates 345 megawatts of continuous electrical power. The thermal battery, which stores excess heat in molten salt, allows the system to surge its output to 500 megawatts for more than five hours, generating enough energy to power 400,000 homes at maximum capacity.

“Today is a momentous occasion for TerraPower, our project partners and the Natrium design,” said company CEO Chris Levesque in a statement issued Monday. The favorable assessment “reflects years of rigorous evaluation, thoughtful collaboration with the NRC, and an unwavering commitment to both safety and innovation.”

[News] Silicon Photonics Momentum Builds: Samsung Ramps R&D in Singapore, UMC Teams With IMEC

With AI compute demands soaring, silicon photonics is emerging as a next-generation technology poised to reshape the landscape. According to Hankyung, sources say that Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) Division has designated the technology as a future strategic priority and begun recruiting experts for its Singapore-based R&D center, led by Vice President King-Jien Chui, a former TSMC executive. The report highlights that Samsung is expanding its team in Singapore and working with Broadcom to move the technology toward commercialization.

As the report indicates, citing industry sources, Samsung’s 2027 target for CPO (Co-Packaged Optics) commercialization suggests that its real contest with TSMC will begin at that point. By 2030—when silicon photonics is expected to be applied at the individual-chip level—the technology will likely become the central battleground of the foundry market. Although TSMC currently leads, Samsung is gearing up, viewing the technology as a key to attracting major foundry clients, the report adds.

Scientists track recent solar flare disruptions in Earth’s ionosphere

As this month’s string of powerful X-class solar flares sparked brilliant auroras that lit up skies across an unusually wide swath of the globe—from northern Europe to Florida—researchers at NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR) captured a less visible, but crucial, record of the storm’s impact on Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Recent measurements recorded by NJIT’s new network of radio telescopes show how a rare sequence of intense flares from Nov. 9–14, including an X5.1 event marking 2025’s strongest flare so far, jolted the ionosphere—the plasma-filled atmospheric layer essential for radio signals, GPS accuracy and satellite orbits.

The flares triggered R3 (strong) radio blackouts across Africa and Europe, with several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) fueling a major geomagnetic storm and aurora at unusually low latitudes.

Scalable thermal drawing method creates liquid metal fibers for wearable electronics

Over the past decades, many research teams worldwide have started working on electronic fibers. These are yarn-like components with electronic properties that can be weaved or assembled to create new innovative textile-based electronics, clothes or other wearable systems that can sense their surroundings, monitor specific physiological signals or perform other functions.

Electronic fibers typically contain both regions via which electric current can flow (i.e., conductive domains) and insulating regions that store electric charge (i.e., dielectric domains). Reliably arranging these domains into complex architectures to produce fibers with desired properties can be difficult and most previously introduced methods are difficult to implement on a large scale.

Researchers at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne recently demonstrated the potential of a scalable technique known as thermal drawing for creating highly performing, elastomer and liquid metal-based electronic fibers. This approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Electronics, allowed them to create electronic fibers that were successfully used to fabricate a new textile-based capacitive strain sensor.

Single molecular membrane can make lithium batteries safer and longer-lasting

A team of Korean scientists has developed a separator technology that dramatically reduces the explosion risk of lithium batteries while doubling their lifespan. Like an ultra-thin bulletproof vest protecting both sides, this molecularly engineered membrane stabilizes both the anode and cathode in next-generation lithium-metal batteries.

The joint research, led by Professor Soojin Park and Dr. Dong-Yeob Han from the Department of Chemistry at POSTECH, together with Professor Tae Kyung Lee of Gyeongsang National University and Dr. Gyujin Song of the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), was recently published in Energy & Environmental Science.

Conventional lithium-ion batteries, which power today’s electric vehicles and energy storage systems, are approaching their theoretical energy limits. In contrast, lithium-metal batteries can store about 1.5 times more energy within the same volume, potentially extending an electric vehicle’s driving range from 400 km to approximately 700 km per charge. However, their practical use has been hindered by serious safety issues.

Stem cell organoids mimic aspects of early limb development

Scientists at EPFL have created a scalable 3D organoid model that captures key features of early limb development, revealing how a specialized signaling center shapes both cell identity and tissue organization.

During early development, the embryo builds the body’s organs by exchanging chemical signals between different cell types. When developing limbs, a thin band of skin cells at the limb’s surface, called the “apical ectodermal ridge” (AER), sends signals that guide the underlying population as it grows and forms bone, cartilage, and connective tissue.

The AER is hard to study because it forms only briefly in the embryo and secretes several types of signaling molecules at once. Studying these interactions in embryos is difficult, so scientists often turn to organoids, tiny lab-grown organs that offer researchers a controlled way to study how cells behave and interact as tissues form.

Electrotherapy using injectable nanoparticles offers hope for glioblastoma treatment

Electrotherapy using injectable nanoparticles delivered directly into the tumor could pave the way for new treatment options for glioblastoma, according to a new study from Lund University in Sweden.

Glioblastoma is the most common and most aggressive form of brain tumor among adults. Even with intensive treatment, the average survival period is 15 months. The tumor has a high genetic variation with multiple mutations, which often makes it resistant to radiation therapy, chemotherapy and many targeted drugs. The prognosis for glioblastoma has not improved over the past few decades despite extensive research.

Ancient dirty dishes reveal decades of questionable findings

Olive oil is the Swiss army knife of foodstuffs. It can dress salads, sauté vegetables, even grease squeaky hinges. And for archaeologists, its ubiquitous presence in excavated pottery offers a window into the economic, political and social organization of the ancient world.

But perhaps, in certain environments, that prevalence has been overstated.

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell researchers—ranging from classicists to food scientists to engineers—has determined that organic residues of plant oils are poorly preserved in calcareous soils from the Mediterranean. This means decades of archaeologists have likely misidentified olive oil in ceramics, failing to recognize other plant oils or perhaps mistaking them for animal fat.

Switching risk and protective alleles improves Alzheimer’s-disease-like signatures and disruptions in mice

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the progressive degradation of brain cells, as well as an associated decline in memory and other mental functions. Earlier research found that different forms (i.e., alleles) of a gene known as apolipoprotein E (APOE) are associated with an increased or decreased risk of developing AD.

The APOE gene can be mutated into different variants (i.e., alleles), including APOE2, APOE3 and APOE4. Past studies have linked the presence of two APOE4 alleles to a higher risk of developing AD, while two APOE2 alleles were linked to a significantly lower risk of AD.

Researchers at the University of Kentucky and other institutes genetically engineered a type of mouse that carries a genetic “switch” that can be activated with a drug and that converts the harmful APOE4 allele into the protective APOE2 allele.

Hormone-disrupting chemicals from plastics shown to promote a chronic inflammatory skin condition

A Johns Hopkins Medicine study involving a dozen people with the inflammatory skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), which mostly affects skin folds, is believed to be the first to provide evidence that hormone-disrupting chemicals commonly found in ultra-processed food and single-use water bottles may contribute to the development of or worsen the condition in some people.

The new findings about the disorder build on previous reports about the role of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a common environmental contaminant known to mimic, block or alter the body’s hormones, in human health. Researchers believe their findings suggest that reducing exposure could ease HS symptom severity and provide a new avenue of relief for a disease with limited FDA-approved treatment options that include biologic therapy and surgery.

The full report on the study was published in Nature Communications on Nov. 28 and includes insights into the molecular mechanisms that are involved in the disease.

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