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Microscale mixing without turbulence: Scientists discover limits to information erasure in viscous fluids

In turbulent fluids, mixing of the components happens easily. However, in more viscous fluids such as those enclosed within cellular compartments, the intermixing of particles and molecules is much more challenging. As time also plays a role in such systems, the slow mixing by molecular movement is typically not sufficient and efficient stirring strategies are thus required to maintain functionality.

In the department of Living Matter Physics at MPI-DS, scientists investigated the universal physical principles underlying such mixing dynamics. They identified that allow for the optimal mixing of the system when energetic costs or are limiting factors. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“We found that the most effective stirring share a universal structure and are symmetric in time,” says Luca Cocconi, first author of the study. “These optimal protocols reveal a fundamental limit on how efficiently information—for example about the identity and position of particles—can be erased in such systems.”

Capturing language change through the genes

Throughout human history, there have been many instances where two populations came into contact—especially in the past few thousand years because of large-scale migrations as a consequence of conquests, colonialization, and, more recently, globalization. During these encounters, not only did populations exchange genetic material, but also cultural elements.

When populations interact, they may borrow technologies, beliefs, practices, and also, crucially, aspects of language. With this, sounds, words or grammatical patterns can be exchanged from one language to the other. For example, English borrowed “sausage” from French after the Norman conquests, while French later borrowed “sandwich” from English.

However, studying these linguistic exchanges can be challenging due to the limited historical records of human contacts, especially on a global scale. As a result, our understanding of how languages evolved over time through such interactions remains incomplete.

For the first time, scientists observed the ‘hidden swirls’ that affect the flow of sand, rocks and snow

What looks like ordinary sand, rocks or snow flowing in one direction can actually hide swirling currents that move in multiple directions beneath the surface.

When grains move in a landslide, most follow the steepest downhill path. This is the “primary flow,” where particles largely follow the herd. But some grains move sideways or swirl in hidden patterns, forming “secondary flows” that subtly influence how far and fast the material travels.

Understanding how grains move beneath the surface could help explain the physics of avalanches and landslides, and even improve how we handle everyday materials like wheat in silos or powders in pharmaceuticals.

Bon voyage: General Atomics set to ship final piece of giant battery to nuclear fusion project in France

The final section of what scientists and engineers say will be the largest and most powerful pulsed, superconducting magnet in the world has been completed at the Poway campus of San Diego-based General Atomics.

The 270,000-pound module is poised for shipment to France, where it will join six other identical sections at the ITER project—an ambitious international effort aimed at determining whether the so-far-untapped potential of as an energy source can be practical or not.

“This is a momentous achievement,” General Atomics Chief Executive Officer Neal Blue said Thursday during a news conference at the company’s Magnet Technologies Center in Poway.

Using exoplanets to study dark matter

More than 5,000 planets have been discovered beyond our solar system, allowing scientists to explore planetary evolution and consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Now, a UC Riverside study published in Physical Review D suggests that exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, could also serve as tools to investigate dark matter.

The researchers examined how dark matter, which makes up 85% of the universe’s matter, might affect Jupiter-sized exoplanets over long periods of time. Their theoretical calculations suggest dark matter particles could gradually collect in the cores of these planets. Although dark matter has never been detected in laboratories, physicists are confident it exists.

“If the dark matter particles are heavy enough and don’t annihilate, they may eventually collapse into a tiny black hole,” said paper first author Mehrdad Phoroutan-Mehr, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who works with Hai-Bo Yu, a professor of physics and astronomy. “This black hole could then grow and consume the entire planet, turning it into a black hole with the same mass as the original planet. This outcome is only possible under the superheavy non-annihilating dark matter model.”

Malicious npm Package nodejs-smtp Mimics Nodemailer, Targets Atomic and Exodus Wallets

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious npm package that comes with stealthy features to inject malicious code into desktop apps for cryptocurrency wallets like Atomic and Exodus on Windows systems.

The package, named nodejs-smtp, impersonates the legitimate email library nodemailer with an identical tagline, page styling, and README descriptions, attracting a total of 347 downloads since it was uploaded to the npm registry in April 2025 by a user named “nikotimon.” It’s currently no longer available.

“On import, the package uses Electron tooling to unpack Atomic Wallet’s app.asar, replace a vendor bundle with a malicious payload, repackage the application, and remove traces by deleting its working directory,” Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said.

Teenager with hyperthymesia exhibits extraordinary mental time travel abilities

Scientists in France have documented the case of a teenager with extraordinary autobiographical memory. She can vividly reexperience past events and imagine future ones in detail, highlighting a rare form of mental time travel and emotional memory organization.

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