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Researcher improves century-old equation to predict movement of dangerous air pollutants

A new method developed at the University of Warwick offers the first simple and predictive way to calculate how irregularly shaped nanoparticles—a dangerous class of airborne pollutant—move through the air.

Every day, we breathe in millions of , including soot, dust, pollen, microplastics, viruses, and synthetic nanoparticles. Some are small enough to slip deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream, contributing to conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

Most of these are irregularly shaped. Yet the mathematical models used to predict how these particles behave typically assume they are perfect spheres, simply because the equations are easier to solve. This makes it difficult to monitor or predict the movement of real-world, non-spherical—and often more hazardous—particles.

Gravitational wave events hint at ‘second-generation’ black holes

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration reports on the detection of two gravitational wave events in October and November of 2024 with unusual black hole spins. This observation adds an important new piece to our understanding of the most elusive phenomena in the universe.

Gravitational waves are “ripples” in that result from cataclysmic events in deep space, with the strongest waves produced by the collision of black holes.

Using sophisticated algorithmic techniques and mathematical models, researchers are able to reconstruct many physical features of the detected black holes from the analysis of gravitational signals, such as their masses and the distance of the event from Earth, and even the speed and direction of their rotation around their axis, called spin.

Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation coincide with a flushing of fluid from the brain, research reveals

Nearly everyone has experienced it: After a night of poor sleep, you don’t feel as alert as you should. Your brain might seem foggy, and your mind drifts off when you should be paying attention.

A new study from MIT reveals what happens inside the brain as these momentary failures of attention occur. The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of (CSF) flows out of the brain—a process that typically occurs during sleep and helps to wash away waste products that have built up during the day. This flushing is believed to be necessary for maintaining a healthy, normally functioning brain.

When a person is sleep-deprived, it appears that their body attempts to catch up on this cleansing process by initiating pulses of CSF flow. However, this comes at a cost of dramatically impaired attention.

Skin-inspired organic biosensors can reliably track health-related signals in real-time

The rapid advancement of sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) systems has paved the way for the introduction of increasingly sophisticated wearable devices, such as fitness trackers and technologies that closely monitor signals associated with specific diseases or medical conditions. Many of these wearable electronics rely on so-called biosensors, devices that can convert biological responses into measurable electrical signals in real-time.

While and other are now widely used, the signals that many existing devices pick up are sometimes inaccurate or distorted. This is because the bending of sensors, moisture and temperature fluctuations sometimes produce inaccurate readings and drifts (i.e., gradual changes that are unrelated to a measured signal).

Researchers at Stanford University have developed new skin-inspired biosensors based on organic field effect transistors (OFETs), devices based on organic semiconductors that control the flow of current in electronics.

RNA modifications control how stem cells develop into retinal cells, research demonstrates

Cells contain a blueprint in the form of DNA that dictates what they can make. This blueprint is converted into a message (mRNA), which is then converted into a protein. Although DNA remains the same in all cells, how it is read depends on specific signals that can change the DNA itself, mRNA or proteins. These signals are often in the form of chemical modifications.

Study may lead to improved networked quantum sensing

Could global positioning systems become more precise and provide more accurate details on distances for users to get from point A to point B?

A study by University of Rhode Island assistant physics professor Wenchao Ge in collaboration with Kurt Jacobs, a physicist of quantum tech with the U.S. Army, which was recently published by Physical Review Letters, may lead to more enhanced quantum sensing and make such detection data more definitive.

Ge’s study, “Heisenberg-Limited Continuous-Variable Distributed Quantum Metrology with Arbitrary Weights” published by in September, looked at networked quantum sensing, which explores advanced sensor technology in an entangled network that could improve accuracy on how to measure, navigate and explore the world, such as by sensing changes in motion, and electric or magnetic fields.

Mirrorless laser: Physicists propose a new light source

A team of physicists from the University of Innsbruck and Harvard University has proposed a fundamentally new way to generate laser light: a laser without mirrors. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that quantum emitters spaced at subwavelength distances can constructively synchronize their photon emission to produce a bright, very narrow-band light beam, even in the absence of any optical cavity.

In conventional lasers, mirrors are essential to bounce light back and forth, stimulating coherent emission from excited atoms or molecules, and thus light amplification. But in the new “mirrorless” concept, the atoms interact directly through their own electromagnetic dipole fields, given that interatomic spacing is smaller than the emitted light’s wavelength. When the system is pumped with enough energy, these interactions cause the emitters to lock together and radiate collectively—a phenomenon called superradiant emission.

The team led by Helmut Ritsch found that this collective emission generates light that is both highly directional and spectrally pure, with a single narrow spectral line, in cases where only a fraction of emitters are excited by a laser and the rest of atoms remain unpumped. Since this passive emitter fraction is not broadened by the driving laser or power broadening, it effectively acts as an for the active emitters, in analogy with a conventional laser where the optical resonator and the gain medium are separate physical entities.

Scientists Solve Decades-Old Puzzle of Electron Emission

What occurs when electrons escape from a solid material? Though it may appear straightforward, this process has long resisted accurate theoretical explanation, until now. Researchers have finally uncovered the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Picture a frog inside a box with a high openin

This Chip Computes With Light, Breaking the 10 GHz Barrier for AI

Researchers have developed an optical computing system that performs feature extraction for quantitative trading with unprecedentedly low latency. Many advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including those used in surgical robotics and high-speed financial trading, rely on processing lar

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