Soft Electronics That Shape-Shift

Vidhika Damani and assistant professor Laure Kayser inspect a sample of the reversible conductive hydrogel they developed for bioelectronics applications.
Photo Credit: Evan Krape

What if a doctor could inject an electricity-conducting liquid into the body, let it temporarily solidify to record nerve signals or jump-start healing, and then return it to liquid form for easy removal?

That vision is edging closer to reality. University of Delaware researchers have developed a reversible conductive hydrogel, a material that can alternate between liquid and gel states. The hydrogel is designed to serve as an interface between conventional electronics and the body’s tissues, offering promise for both injectable implants and wearable devices.

The research team, led by Laure Kayser, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at UD’s College of Engineering, describes the new material in Nature Communications.

Historical geography helps researchers solve 2,700-year old eclipse mystery

Artist’s interpretation of an ancient total solar eclipse. This illustration is based on artistic imagination and does not represent the exact appearance of the eclipse recorded in 709 BCE.
Image Credit: Kano Okada, Nagoya University
Based on an image by Phil Hart / NASA

Humanity’s earliest datable record for a total solar eclipse allows scientists to derive accurate measurements of Earth’s ancient rotation speed and provides independent validation of solar cycle reconstruction in the 8th century BCE.

An international team of researchers has used knowledge of historical geography to reexamine the earliest datable total solar eclipse record known to the scientific community, enabling accurate measurements of Earth’s variable rotation speed from 709 BCE. The researchers calculated how the Sun would have appeared from Qufu, the ancient Chinese capital of the Lu Duchy, during the total solar eclipse. Using this information, they analyzed the ancient description of what has been considered the solar corona—the dim outer atmosphere of the Sun visible to the naked eye only during total eclipses—and found that its morphology supports recent solar cycle reconstructions for the 8th century BCE. 

Their findings, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, provide reliable new data about Earth’s rotation speed during this period and suggest the Sun was becoming more active after a long quiet period, independently confirming what other scientists have found using radiocarbon analysis. 

Researchers identify kidney sensor that helps control fluid balance

Rose Hill, Ph.D., second from left,studies sensory nerves within the kidneys at OHSU. Her new study identified a protein that acts as a pressure sensor in the kidneys, which helps the body control fluids and blood pressure. With her are lab team members: Taylor Krilanovich, Lily Schainker and Janelle Doyle.
 Photo Credit: OHSU/Christine Torres Hicks

A new study has identified a critical “pressure sensor” inside the kidney that helps the body control blood pressure and fluid levels. The finding helps explain how the kidneys sense changes in blood volume — something scientists for decades have known occurs but didn’t have a mechanistic explanation.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and collaborating institutions discovered that a protein called PIEZO2 acts as a mechanical sensor in the kidney. When blood volume changes, this protein helps trigger the release of renin, a hormone that starts a chain reaction known as the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, or RAAS. The system is one of the body’s main tools for keeping blood pressure stable and making sure the body has the right balance of salt and water.

SwRI may have solved a mystery surrounding Uranus’ radiation belts

SwRI scientists compared space weather impacts of a fast solar wind structure (first panel) driving an intense solar storm at Earth in 2019 (second panel) with conditions observed at Uranus by Voyager 2 in 1986 (third panel) to potentially solve a 39-year-old mystery about the extreme radiation belts found. The "chorus wave" is a type of electromagnetic emission that may accelerate electrons and could have resulted from the solar storm.
Image Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists believe they may have resolved a 39-year-old mystery about the radiation belts around Uranus. 

In 1986, when Voyager 2 made the first and only flyby of Uranus, it measured a surprisingly strong electron radiation belt at significantly higher levels than anticipated. Based on extrapolations from other planetary systems, Uranus’ electron radiation belt was off the charts. Since then, scientists have wondered how the Uranian system could support such an intense trapped electron radiation belt, at a planet unlike anything else in the solar system. 

A New Kind of Copper from the Research Reactor

In front of the nuclear reactor at TU Wien
Photo Credit: © TU Wien

The copper isotope Cu-64 plays an important role in medicine: it is used in imaging processes and also shows potential for cancer therapy. However, it does not occur naturally and must be produced artificially — a complex and costly process. Until now, Cu-64 has been generated by bombarding nickel atoms with protons. When a nickel nucleus absorbs a proton, it is transformed into copper. At TU Wien, however, a different pathway has now been demonstrated: Cu-63 can be converted into Cu-64 by neutron irradiation in a research reactor. This works thanks to a special trick — so-called “recoil chemistry.” 

New deep-sea species discovered during mining test

A small marine bristle worm. The group from the University of Gothenburg has been working with this species. It is one of the few species that is slightly more common in this area. The animal is about 1-2 mm long.
Photo Credit: Natural History Museum, London & Göteborgs Universitet

There is a high demand globally for critical metals, and many countries want to try extracting these sought-after metals from the seabed. An international study, which has discovered large numbers of new species at a depth of 4,000 meters, shows that such mining has less of a negative impact than expected. However, species diversity declined by a third in the tracks of the mining machine. 

In a major research project, marine biologists from several countries have attempted to map life in one of the least explored places on Earth: the deep-sea floor of the Pacific Ocean. 

UCLA study uncovers how a key protein helps breast cancer cells survive in hostile conditions

NBCn1 (purple) sits in the cell membrane and brings two sodium ions (2Na⁺) and one carbonate ion (CO₃²⁻) into the cell, raising its internal pH. This helps breast cancer cells stay alkaline and survive in low-oxygen, acidic tumor environments.
Illustration Credit: Courtesy of UCLA/Health

UCLA scientists have characterized the structure and function of a key survival protein in breast cancer cells that helps explain how these tumors resist environmental stress and thrive in acidic, low-oxygen environments that would normally be toxic to healthy cells.

Breast cancer cells rely on a transporter protein called NBCn1 to bring alkali ions into the cell and maintain a favorable internal pH. Using advanced cryo-electron microscopy combined with computational modeling, the researchers showed that NBCn1 moves two sodium ions and one carbonate ion through an efficient “elevator-like” motion that minimizes energy use. This allows NBCn1 to achieve a high transport rate of approximately 15,000 ions per second, helping tumor cells maintain an internal pH that promotes survival, division and resistance to acidic stress. 

Icy Hot Plasmas: Fluffy, Electrically Charged Ice Grains Reveal New Plasma Dynamics

Ice grains, illuminated by a green sheet of laser light, are suspended in the plasma discharge (purple). Insets show individual ice grains imaged with 20x magnification.
Image Credit: Bellan Plasma Group/Caltech

When a gas is highly energized, its electrons get torn from the parent atoms, resulting in a plasma—the oft-forgotten fourth state of matter (along with solid, liquid, and gas). When we think of plasmas, we normally think of extremely hot phenomena such as the Sun, lightning, or maybe arc welding, but there are situations in which icy cold particles are associated with plasmas. Images of distant molecular clouds from the James Webb Space Telescope feature such hot–cold interactions, with frozen dust illuminated by pockets of shocked gas and newborn stars.

Now a team of Caltech researchers has managed to recreate such an icy plasma system in the lab. They created a plasma in which electrons and positively charged ions exist between ultracold electrodes within a mostly neutral gas environment, injected water vapor, and then watched as tiny ice grains spontaneously formed. They studied the behavior of the grains using a camera with a long-distance microscope lens. The team was surprised to find that extremely "fluffy" grains developed under these conditions and grew into fractal shapes—branching, irregular structures that are self-similar at various scales. And that structure leads to some unexpected physics.

A speed camera for the universe

The stars (or rather galaxies) of the show.
A montage of eight time-delay gravitational lens systems. There’s an entire galaxy at the center of each image, and the bright points in rings around them are gravitationally lensed images of quasars behind the galaxy. These images are false-color and are composites of data from different telescopes and instruments.
Image Credit: ©2025 TDCOSMO Collaboration et al.
(CC BY-ND 4.0)

There is an important and unresolved tension in cosmology regarding the rate at which the universe is expanding, and resolving this could reveal new physics. Astronomers constantly seek new ways to measure this expansion in case there may be unknown errors in data from conventional markers such as supernovae. Recently, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo measured the expansion of the universe using novel techniques and new data from the latest telescopes. Their method exploits the way light from extremely distant objects takes multiple pathways to get to us. Differences in these pathways help improve models on what happens at the largest cosmological scales, including expansion.

New marine sponges provide clues about animal evolution

Paco Cárdenas and Julio A. Díaz have described new sponges found off the coast of Spain. The researchers discovered that the sponges produce a substance of potential interest for drug development.
 Photo Credit: Mikael Wallerstedt

A completely new order of marine sponges has been found by researchers at the Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. The sponge order, named Vilesida, produces substances that could be used in drug development. The same substances support the hypothesis that sponges – and therefore animals – emerged 100 million years earlier than previously thought. 

Sponges are among the most challenging animals in the tree of life to identify and classify. For this reason, many sponges lack a formal name, which is unusual in other animal groups. While the discovery by scientists of new species of marine invertebrates is an everyday occurrence, it is far less common to identify entirely new genera or families. The discovery of a completely new order is rare: only twelve new animal orders have been described in the last five years. 

Heat and drought change what forests breathe out

Qingyuan County forest research site
Photo Credit: Kai Huang/UCR

Scientists have long warned that rising global temperatures would force forest soils to leak more nitrogen gas into the air, further increasing both pollution and warming while robbing trees of an essential growth factor. But a new study challenges these assumptions. 

After six years of UC Riverside-led research in a temperate Chinese forest, researchers have found that warming may be reducing nitrogen emissions, at least in places where rainfall is scarce.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the result of UCR’s collaboration with a large team of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers stationed in China’s Shenyang City. These researchers maintained the infrastructure used to take more than 200,000 gas measurements from forest soil over six years.

New Method Uncovers How Viruses Evade Immune Responses — and How We Might Fight Back

Co-first authors Erin Doherty (left) and Jason Nomburg (right)
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Innovative Genomics Institute

Viruses and their hosts — whether bacteria, animals, or humans — are locked in a constant evolutionary arms race. Cells evolve defenses against viral infection, viruses evolve ways around those defenses, and the cycle continues.

One important weapon that cells use in the fight against viruses is a set of tiny molecular “alarm signals” made of nucleotides: the same chemical building blocks that make up DNA and RNA. When a virus infects a cell, these nucleotide messengers activate powerful immune defenses. To survive, viruses must find ways to shut these signals down. In a new study published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, IGI researchers reveal that viruses have evolved a surprisingly large and diverse set of enzymes specifically designed to destroy these immune alarm signals, helping them hide from or disable the host’s antiviral defenses.

A new approach links quantum physics and gravitation

Quantum-Geodesics 
Large masses – such as a galaxy – curve space-time. Objects move along a geodesic. If we take into account that space-time itself has quantum properties, deviations arise (dashed line vs. solid line).
Image Credit: © TU Wien  

A team at TU Wien combines quantum physics and general relativity theory – and discovers striking deviations from previous results. 

It is something like the “Holy Grail” of physics: unifying particle physics and gravitation. The world of tiny particles is described extremely well by quantum theory, while the world of gravitation is captured by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But combining the two has not yet worked – the two leading theories of theoretical physics still do not quite fit together. 

There are many ideas for such a unification – with names like string theory, loop quantum gravity, canonical quantum gravity or asymptotically safe gravity. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses. What has been missing so far, however, are observable predictions for measurable quantities and experimental data that could reveal which of these theories describes nature best. A new study from TU Wien may now have brought us a small step closer to this ambitious goal. 

Contraceptive pills may affect women's mental health

Photo Credit: Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition

The contraceptive pill has been hailed as one of the most revolutionary health technologies of the 20th century – a tool that gave women control over their fertility and paved the way for education and careers. But a new study suggests that this freedom may have come at a hidden cost: impaired mental health. 

Access to the contraceptive pill during adolescence is associated with an increased risk of depression later in life. Women who are genetically predisposed to mental illness are particularly at risk of suffering from this side effect. 

This is shown by a new study from the University of Copenhagen, which builds on previous research from the same university – and demonstrated links between hormonal contraceptives and mental health problems. 

‘We know that the contraceptive pill has had enormous societal consequences and positively affected women’s careers. But we have overlooked the fact that it can also have a negative impact on mental health – and that has implications for how we understand its overall effect,’ says the researcher behind the study, Franziska Valder, assistant professor at the Department of Economics and CEBI. 

Our brains recognize the voices of our primate cousins

When participants heard chimpanzee vocalisations, this response was clearly distinct from that triggered by bonobos or macaques.
Image Credit: © L. Ceravolo

The brain doesn’t just recognize the human voice. A study by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) shows that certain areas of our auditory cortex respond specifically to the vocalizations of chimpanzees, our closest cousins both phylogenetically and acoustically. This finding, published in the journal eLife, suggests the existence of subregions in the human brain that are particularly sensitive to the vocalizations of certain primates. It opens a new window on the origin of voice recognition, which could have implications for language development. 

Our voice is a fundamental sign of social communication. In humans, a large part of the auditory cortex is dedicated to its analysis. But do these skills have older roots? To find out, scientists from the UNIGE’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences adopted an approach based on the evolution of species. By comparing the neural processing of vocalizations emitted by species close to humans, such as chimpanzees, bonobos and macaques, it is possible to observe what our brain shares, or does not share, with that of other primates and thus to investigate the emergence of the neural bases of vocal communication, long before the appearance of language.