Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

3D imaging technique examines nuclear fuel rod corrosion at nanoscale resolution

The cladding tubes of the fuel rods used in nuclear reactors must remain leak-tight—despite the risk of corrosion from the surrounding cooling water and despite the radiation they are exposed to during operation. It is therefore important to know how quickly corrosion layers form and how porous they are.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now used a new technique to visualize these changes in the cladding material in three dimensions for the first time, achieving a resolution in the nanometer range.

Another distinguishing feature of their experiment is that the samples they examined were taken from cladding tubes that had actually been in service in a nuclear power plant. The tubes were able to withstand the stresses involved: They were still leak-tight.

3D map of rice development charts gene activity across plant’s entire life cycle

Rice is one of the world’s most familiar staple foods, but how does a single cell develop into a rice plant with specialized tissues and organs? A new study offers a detailed look at this process through a three-dimensional (3D) spatiotemporal atlas covering 10 organs and 61 developmental stages across the rice life cycle, from seed to seed.

The study, published in Cell, was conducted by a research team led by professor Yang Weicai from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with several other research teams.

The plant life cycle alternates between a haploid phase, which produces sperm and egg cells, and a diploid phase, which develops following fertilization. In plants, the diploid zygote develops into a multicellular organism through coordinated cell divisions and cell fate specification. Understanding how these processes are regulated across different tissues and developmental stages is a fundamental goal of developmental biology.

New electrochemical sensor could make food quality testing faster and less expensive

Researchers at the Oregon State University College of Science have developed a new electrochemical sensor for rapidly and accurately detecting a naturally occurring compound widely used in the food, beverage and fragrance industries.

The compound is eugenol, which gives cloves their telltale flavor and smell, and measuring its presence in commercial products is important for manufacturers and regulators.

The findings are published in Materials Today Chemistry.

Winged insect evolution: New evidence sheds light on century-old debate

A new study combining genomic analyses and fossil evidence sheds light on the century-old “Palaeoptera Problem,” a longstanding debate over the evolutionary relationships among major groups of winged insects.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct. 12, support the hypothesis that mayflies (Ephemeroptera) and dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) form a single evolutionary group, Palaeoptera, which is the sister group of Neoptera, the lineage comprising insects capable of folding their wings over their bodies.

The study, conducted by Cai Chenyang’s team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and professor Zhou Changfa’s team from Nanjing Normal University, reconstructs the early evolutionary history of winged insects and provides new estimates for when their major lineages emerged.

Chemical surroundings, not size alone, help glucose-processing enzyme stay active as temperatures rise

Cells must produce energy despite changing conditions. But what keeps metabolic enzymes functional during temperature fluctuations? A team led by professor Simon Ebbinghaus and Dr. Harshita Rastogi at Ruhr University Bochum and the Research Center for Chemical Sciences and Sustainability investigated this question using the platelet isoform of phosphofructokinase-1 (PFKP), a central enzyme in glucose metabolism.

They found that thermal protection depends less on the size of crowding molecules than on the subtle chemical interactions among them, which can determine how well the enzyme remains active as temperatures rise. Their work was published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Humans and songbirds hear the same sounds, but organize them differently

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University have discovered that humans and songbirds use markedly different strategies to recognize sequences of complex sounds. The findings shed new light on how biology and experience shape the way we perceive complex sounds, with implications for music and speech.

When people hear a familiar melody, they generally follow its pitch pattern (how high or low a sound is), even when it is played on another instrument. But do songbirds recognize sound patterns in the same way?

A new study by researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University suggests that they do not. Using a listening task in which humans and zebra finches were exposed to the same artificial sounds, the researchers found that humans attend predominantly to pitch, whereas zebra finches combine pitch with changes in the spectral structure—or formants—of these sounds. The study is published in Communications Biology.

Ultrashort laser pulses offer a new way to probe electrons’ quantum geometry

Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Regensburg have developed a method for determining, using light, a quantum property of electrons that has hitherto been difficult to access. The focus is on what is known as Berry curvature—a quantity that describes certain geometric properties of the quantum mechanical states of electrons. The researchers measured it in a layer of the semiconductor tungsten diselenide, just one atomic layer thick, using ultrashort laser pulses. The results have been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Photonics.

Electrons in a crystal do not simply move like tiny particles along fixed paths. Their behavior is determined by quantum mechanical states. Researchers summarize the geometric properties of these states under the term “quantum geometry.” An important parameter here is the Berry curvature. Among other things, it influences how electrons react to light or electric fields.

Until now, Berry curvature has mainly been calculated theoretically or investigated using comparatively complex experimental methods. The team from Jena and Regensburg is taking a different approach: it combines optical measurements with an analytical model and is thus able to quantitatively estimate the local Berry curvature of the material.

Variations in the human vocal tract could have influenced language diversity

The anatomical differences in our vocal tracts could be one of the sources of our Tower of Babel—the vast difference in languages spoken around the world, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Steven Moran and Tiena Danner from the University of Neuch tel, Switzerland, and colleagues.

Many variations exist in the human voice. People vary in the size and shape of the tissues in the head and neck and also shape that anatomy differently to produce similar sounds. Developmental and cultural factors will shape the way people speak.

Optical skyrmions can control the motion of magnetic skyrmions

Magnetic skyrmions (MSks) are swirling patterns of magnetization that form inside certain magnetic materials. They can behave like actual particles in many ways, exhibiting a stable internal structure and distinct boundaries. Because they are extremely small and can be pushed around with relatively little energy, MSks are regarded as promising information carriers in emerging technologies, including low-power memories and logic circuits. However, a major goal in the field has been to find practical ways to control their motion with high precision.

Interestingly, MSks have a counterpart in light called optical skyrmions (OSks). These are structured polarization textures of electromagnetic fields that share the same underlying topological description as MSks. Despite their common topology, the two have been largely studied separately in their respective fields of magnetism and photonics. This raises a fundamental question: Can the topology of light control the dynamics of a MSk?

A research team led by professor Masahito Mochizuki in the Department of Applied Physics at Waseda University, Japan, and Dr. Lan Bo, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at Waseda University, attempted to fill the knowledge gap using micromagnetic simulations. Their study, co-authored by Dr. Xichao Zhang, a former research associate professor at Waseda University, was published online in the journal Physical Review Letters on Sept. 14, 2026.

Computational model guides lighting design to improve color discrimination in aging eyes

Researchers have developed a new computational model that accounts for the effects of aging on our eyes’ ability to discriminate color. It could help guide lighting designs that make it easier for older adults to perceive colors while preserving the expected appearance for people with typical color vision.

“As people age, the lens inside the eye gradually yellows and absorbs more short-wavelength light, which can make similar colors harder to discriminate,” said research team leader Qi Dai from Fudan University in China. “We incorporated these age-related changes into a model that can be used to guide the spectrum, or mixture of wavelengths, used for white lighting to make it easier for older adults to perceive colors.”

In the journal Optics Express, researchers from Fudan University and OPPLE Lighting report results from a study that used the new model to design lighting spectra that account for how aging eyes perceive color. In a group of adult volunteers ages 70 and older, the resulting lighting improved color discrimination compared with an LED-simulated D50 daylight reference at nearly the same color temperature, while familiar colors still looked natural.