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Tiny particles ‘surf’ microcosmic waves to save energy in chaotic environments

Conditions can get rough in the micro- and nanoworld. For example, to ensure that nutrients can still be optimally transported within cells, the minuscule transporters involved need to respond to the fluctuating environment. Physicists at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and Tel Aviv University in Israel have used model calculations to examine how this can succeed. They have now published their results—which could also be relevant for future microscopic machines—in the journal Nature Communications.

AI helps solve decades-old maze in frustrated magnet physics

The study, conducted by Brookhaven theoretical physicist Weiguo Yin and described in a recent paper published in Physical Review B, is the first paper emerging from the “AI Jam Session” earlier this year, a first-of-its-kind event hosted by DOE and held in cooperation with OpenAI to push the limits of general-purpose large language models applied to science research. The event brought together approximately 1,600 scientists across nine host locations within the DOE national laboratory complex. At Brookhaven, more than 120 scientists challenged and evaluated the capabilities of OpenAI’s latest step-based logical reasoning AImodel built for complex problem solving.

Yin’s AI study focused on a class of advanced materials known as frustrated magnets. In these systems, the electron spins—the tiny magnetic moments carried by each electron—cannot settle on an orientation because competing interactions pull them in different directions. These materials have unique and fascinating properties that could translate to novel applications in the energy and information technology industries.

Making lighter work of calculating fluid and heat flow

Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have re-engineered the popular Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) for simulating the flow of fluids and heat, making it lighter and more stable than the state-of-the-art.

By formulating the algorithm with a few extra inputs, they successfully got around the need to store certain data, some of which span the millions of points over which a simulation is run. Their findings might overcome a key bottleneck in LBM: memory usage.

The work is published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

New agentic AI platform accelerates advanced optics design

Stanford engineers debuted a new framework introducing computational tools and self-reflective AI assistants, potentially advancing fields like optical computing and astronomy.

Hyper-realistic holograms, next-generation sensors for autonomous robots, and slim augmented reality glasses are among the applications of metasurfaces, emerging photonic devices constructed from nanoscale building blocks.

Now, Stanford engineers have developed an AI framework that rapidly accelerates metasurface design, with potential widespread technological applications. The framework, called MetaChat, introduces new computational tools and self-reflective AI assistants, enabling rapid solving of optics-related problems. The findings were reported recently in the journal Science Advances.

Near-infrared light enables wireless power and data transfer for medical implants

A new study from a research team at the Center for Wireless Communications Network and Systems (CWC-NS) at the University of Oulu has introduced an approach using near-infrared (NIR) light beyond light therapy to facilitate simultaneous wireless power transfer and communication to electronic implantable medical devices (IMDs). Previously, the research team demonstrated that NIR light for wireless communication is feasible, and now the team made progress by involving wireless charging capabilities using the same light.

Featured in Optics Continuum, the research outlines an approach that promises to enhance the performance and durability of IMDs while providing more secure, safer, more private, and radio interference-free communication. The published paper, authored by Syifaul Fuada, Mariella Särestöniemi, and Marcos Katz at the CWC-NS, has demonstrated research merit as it was designated an Editor’s Pick, highlighting articles of excellent scientific quality and representing the work occurring in a specific field.

The paper is a small part of Syifaul Fuada’s doctoral research. “This is the initial step that could open other ideas to advance the proposed approach,” Fuada says.

Advanced optical model clarifies how complex materials interact with polarized light

Scientists at the University of Oxford demonstrate an approach to interpreting how materials interact with polarized light, which could help advance biomedical imaging and material design.

Their work, reported in Advanced Photonics Nexus, focuses on improving how researchers analyze a key optical property known as the retarder.

In optics, a retarder is a material or device that changes the way light waves are oriented as they pass through. Light waves have an orientation called polarization, and a retarder shifts the phase between different components of that light—essentially delaying one part of the wave compared to another.

Long-hypothesized dynamic transition seen in deeply supercooled water for the first time

In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers have achieved the first experimental observation of a fragile-to-strong transition in deeply supercooled water, resolving a scientific puzzle that has persisted for nearly three decades.

Water has anomalous properties when cooled below freezing without crystallization. Previous studies have tracked how water’s viscosity changes with temperature, predicting it would diverge to infinity around ~227 K (−46°C), meaning liquid water’s motion would essentially freeze.

However, this prediction conflicted with other known properties of water. As a result, scientists proposed that the viscosity trend must undergo a change at a specific low temperature—the so-called fragile-to-strong transition (FST).

Ultrashort laser pulses catch a snapshot of a ‘molecular handshake’

Liquids and solutions are complex environments—think, for example, of sugar dissolving in water, where each sugar molecule becomes surrounded by a restless crowd of water molecules. Inside living cells, the picture is even more complex: tiny liquid droplets carry proteins or RNA and help organize the cell’s chemistry.

Despite their importance, liquid environments are notoriously difficult to study at the level of individual molecules and electrons. The core challenge is that liquids lack a fixed structure, and the ultrafast interactions between solute and solvent—where chemistry actually happens—have remained largely invisible to scientists.

Psychiatric Disorders Share Far More DNA Than Scientists Realized

A global research team co-led by VCU expert Kenneth Kendler has produced the most comprehensive genetic map so far, identifying five families of disorders that show a high degree of overlap. An international team of scientists is offering new insight into why people are so often affected by more

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