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Unity Spark Puts Artist-Made Assets Inside an AI-Assisted Game Editor
Unity Spark combines AI-assisted game creation with artist-made Asset Store content, but Unity CEO Matt Bromberg stresses that creators must still design, iterate, polish, and finish their experiences.
Gravity and light reveal how liquids turn into thin fibers
From spiders spinning their webs to the manufacturing of textiles, the formation of fibers from liquids plays an important role in both nature and industry. Yet accurately predicting the properties of such fibers remains a challenge. The fiber is often much thinner than the nozzle from which a polymer or solution is extruded. Factors such as temperature, flow conditions and chemical reactions ultimately determine a fiber’s thickness and strength.
In a new experimental study, researcher Jan Siemen Smink (Faculty of Engineering Technology) demonstrates the physical processes involved in the formation of fibers from liquids. To investigate this phenomenon, he developed an experimental setup in which gravity continuously stretches a jet of highly reactive liquid resin. Ultraviolet (UV) light is then used to solidify the liquid at a precisely controlled moment, transforming it into a thin fiber.
Using this approach, Smink and his fellow researchers were able to study in detail how factors such as UV light intensity, gravity, inertia and capillary forces influence both the rate at which the liquid solidifies and the properties of the resulting fiber.
Liquid-crystal-like magnetism explains puzzling properties in a rare-earth compound
In some materials, physical properties don’t emerge from their individual particles, but from the collective behavior of their quantum spins. Now, researchers led by Pengcheng Dai at Rice University in the U.S. have discovered that in one compound containing the rare-earth element ytterbium, these spins can behave much like the molecules in a liquid crystal: favoring a certain direction without lining up to create magnetism on larger scales.
Their research has been published in Physical Review X.
Harmless amoeba’s tight-space crawling offers clues to how its deadly relative invades the brain
Tiny, shapeless invaders can find their way from ponds to the human brain and cause an infection so severe that it has a 95% fatality rate. The amoeba Naegleria fowleri naturally lives in ponds, feasting on bacteria, but once it enters the human body, it makes a run for the brain tissue, traversing complex, tight spaces to reach its destination.
A recent study set out to crack the secret of how a tiny amoeba steers itself through unfamiliar terrain without any guide.
Researchers built a microscopic obstacle course for the amoebas and filmed their every move, tracking how they squeeze through tight spaces and tackle different environments. They identified a few core mechanisms behind their navigational success. First, a love for tight spaces.
Tracking down cellular gene functions with AI and microscopy
A new technology promises to enable more comprehensive investigations into how individual genes determine the appearance and behavior of cells. Researchers led by professor Veit Hornung at LMU’s Gene Center and professor Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, together with professor Fabian Theis at Helmholtz Munich, have developed SPARCS, a technology that combines artificial intelligence with microscopy and genetic screening.
It enables researchers to screen millions of genetically modified cells for complex visual features and then selectively isolate individual cells of interest. Using SPARCS, cellular effects can thus be linked to the genetic changes that cause them. The findings have now been published in the journal Cell.
Electronic stripes linked to unusual vortex states in a superconductor
Superconductors, materials that can carry electric current with an electrical resistance of zero, have proved to be promising for the development of various technologies, including medical devices, particle accelerators and quantum computers. Studying these materials could help researchers uncover new physical states that could be useful for specific applications.
Magnetic fields can enter some superconductors, known as type-II superconductors, via regions called vortices. Each of these vortices carries a fixed amount of magnetic flux (i.e., a measure of the magnetic field passing through an area), with electrical currents circulating around its center.
Researchers at Tsinghua University, Southern University of Science and Technology, Boston College and other institutions investigated electronic states trapped near magnetic vortex centers in an iron-based superconductor.
Layered semiconductor unlocks magnetic control of light emitted by quantum condensates
Quantum technologies are considered key technologies of the future. However, research in this field requires not only scientific expertise but sometimes also highly specialized laboratory conditions. Bose–Einstein condensates are a remarkable example, in which atoms move in lockstep, making quantum-mechanical effects visible not only at the level of individual atoms but also on a macroscopic scale. The first Bose–Einstein condensates were observed in ultracold atomic gases at temperatures close to absolute zero. The cooling required to achieve this was technically demanding, costly and restricted to specialized laboratories.
Today, quantum research is increasingly focusing on Bose–Einstein condensates in solid-state materials, which can also exist at moderate temperatures. Typically, electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor, known as excitons, are used for this purpose and can be selectively generated using laser pulses.
Excitons, however, are too sluggish, so to speak, to move in lockstep and are therefore coupled to the light field of an optical resonator to reduce their effective mass. The result is a hybrid state of matter and light known as exciton–polaritons. They offer the best of both worlds: They can be controlled using laser pulses and, because they are significantly lighter, can more easily be brought into a collective quantum-mechanical state.