An FQxI cofunded study suggests hidden connections between quantum mechanics, gravity, and time.
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The Immune System Impacts Longevity: What To Measure
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Boosting good gut bacteria population through targeted interventions may slow cognitive decline
The origin of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia isn’t limited to the brain. The state of your gut can quietly set off a cycle of chronic, system-wide inflammation that nudges the brain toward cognitive decline. But how does the pathogenesis of a disease that seems purely brain-based begin in the gut—an organ that is mostly busy producing chemicals for digesting food?
It turns out these two entities are linked by the gut-brain axis, a two-way communication superhighway that constantly sends signals between the digestive tract and the central nervous system. It runs on chemical messengers like neurotransmitters and fatty acids, sharing information that shapes our memory, mood, and inflammation triggers.
An analysis of 15 studies involving more than 4,200 participants found that the gut-brain highway can be put to work as a drug-free route to support cognitive health. Tuning the gut microbiota through diet, supplements, or medical interventions such as fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) can help improve memory, executive function, and overall cognitive performance, particularly in early or mild cases of cognitive impairment.
TESS discovers an Earth-sized planet orbiting nearby M-dwarf star
Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting TOI-4616—a nearby M-dwarf star. The newfound alien world, which received designation TOI-4616 b, is slightly larger than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 11 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Launched in 2018, TESS is in the process of scanning about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun, searching for potential transiting exoplanets. To date, it has identified more than 7,900 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 760 have been confirmed.
Nearby M dwarf draws attention of planet seekers One of the stars observed by TESS is TOI-4616—an M dwarf of spectral type M4 at a distance of some 91.8 light years away from Earth. TESS has identified a transit signal with a period of approximately 1.5 days in the light curve of this star. Now, follow-up observations of TOI-4616 conducted by a group of astronomers led by Francis Zong Lang of the University of Bern, Switzerland, have validated the planetary nature of this transit signal.
Neutrinos caught on camera: Testing the first prototype of a new elementary particle detector
Some innovations in physics come from entirely new technologies, others from fresh theoretical insights. Others still take shape by bringing together existing tools in new ways, working out how to combine them to outperform other solutions. The branch of particle physics that studies weakly interacting particles—such as neutrinos and some types of dark-matter candidates—could use innovative detection approaches: technological challenges in this research area quickly become practical as well as economic, as increases in detector volume and spatial resolution improve the sensitivity to the processes producing the particles of interest. Similarly, demanding targets on instrument capability apply to the calorimeters used in collider experiments.
Three-dimensional (3D) tracking of elementary particles in large-volume, dense materials is required in most particle physics experiments. In a scintillator, this is commonly achieved through fine segmentation of the material into many smaller active units, with each unit emitting light in the visible frequency range when a charged particle passes through it. Typically, the photons produced in every active unit are collected by optical fibers and carried outside of the scintillator to the photomultiplier tubes or silicon photomultipliers used for photon counting.
In the T2K neutrino-oscillation experiment in Japan, for example, one detector boasts about two tons of sensitive volume assembled from approximately two million cubes and 60,000 fibers. Over at CERN and the Paul Scherrer Institute, the LHCb and Mu3e experiments achieve sub-millimeter spatial resolution thanks to millions of thin scintillating optical fibers. With these figures, it’s clear that the scalability of this kind of scintillator material segmentation may turn into a bottleneck when larger volumes become necessary.
Phage therapy case reveals hidden antibodies can block treatment of drug-resistant infections
A new treatment for patients with life-threatening infectious diseases is being pioneered in Melbourne by researchers at The Alfred and Monash University. VICPhage, a clinical partnership between The Alfred and Monash, is one of the first in Australia to offer end-to-end capacity in phage therapy to treat some of the most challenging infections.
It involves injecting a patient with viruses called bacteriophages, or phages for short, to kill bacterial infections that have not responded to other treatments.
Professor Anton Peleg, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at The Alfred and Monash University and the Center to Impact AMR at Monash University, is co-lead of VICPhage and senior author of a new paper published in Nature Medicine.
How parasites exit host cells
After infecting host cells and reproducing, the parasite life cycle requires them to egress so that they can move to the next host. Past studies on the genes required for this process have been conducted but show conflicting results.
The methodology of past studies often involved opening the host cells during the screening process. Consequently, researchers were unable to reliably identify when mutations prevent parasites from egressing.
To avoid the same limitations, the team used an in vivo approach to screen for essential genes instead.
“Our in vivo screen, based on CRISPR, identified for the first time that the MIC11 gene is essential for host cell membrane permeabilization and parasite egress.” Explains the lead author.
Further tests demonstrated that deleting the MIC11 gene led the parasites to be unable to rupture the host cell membrane. By incapacitating parasites in this way, they could no longer exit the host cells, majorly disrupting the parasite life cycle.
“We also found evidence that MIC11 interacts with PLP1, providing further evidence of MIC11’s crucial role,” explains the senior author. “PLP1 is another parasite protein that was already known to be essential for egress.” ScienceMission sciencenewshighlights.
Bridging structure and function: artificial intelligence-based modelling of kidney proteins
Advances in artificial intelligence-driven algorithms and experimental technologies have revolutionized the field of protein modelling. This Review describes how these developments have provided unprecedented insights into the structure of key proteins within the kidney, improved understanding of the relationships between protein structure and stability, and enabled mechanistic interpretation of variants that underlie a variety of kidney pathologies.
Quantum Simulations Now Model Energy Loss With Greater Accuracy
A new computational technique accurately models decoherence’s impact on light–matter interactions within waveguide quantum electrodynamics. Matias Bundgaard-Nielsen and colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark present a matrix product state (MPS) method capable of modelling decoherence processes via density matrices, representing a key advancement over previous approaches. The method utilises collision quantum optics and efficiently incorporates various loss mechanisms, including emitter pure dephasing and off-chip radiative decay, to simulate complex waveguide QED systems such as two-level systems and multi-emitter setups. By modelling these realistic dissipation dynamics, the research offers vital insights into the behaviour of quantum systems and enables improved designs for quantum technologies.
A six-fold increase in simulated timescales for waveguide quantum electrodynamics has been achieved, surpassing limitations that previously restricted simulations to Markovian dynamics. This advancement results from employing a density matrix-based matrix product state (MPS) method, enabling accurate modelling of non-Markovian effects arising from time delays and memory effects within the system.
Traditionally, waveguide QED simulations have relied on the Markov approximation, which assumes that the system’s memory of past events is negligible. However, in many realistic scenarios—particularly those involving long propagation delays within the waveguide or slow emitter dynamics—this approximation breaks down. The method explicitly accounts for the system’s history, allowing the simulation of phenomena that depend on non-Markovian effects. In particular, it incorporates realistic decoherence mechanisms such as pure dephasing, which perturbs the phase coherence of quantum states, and off-chip radiative decay, where excitation energy is lost to the environment outside the waveguide.