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For effective molecular sensing, imaging, and signaling, materials must meet strict crystalline quality requirements. Researchers found an improved way to make high-quality ribbon-shaped nanocrystals that resonate strongly with infrared light. They tested these nanoribbons using a unique, ultrabroadband infrared probe and found the highest quality reported for such materials to date. This quality makes the crystals excellent prospects for use in high-performance infrared devices.

Predictions based on the Standard Model of particle physics don’t always agree with what scientists see in experimental data. One way to examine these differences is emissions of neutrinos from nuclear reactors. As part of this research agenda, scientists in the PROSPECT Collaboration have reported the most precise measurement ever of the energy spectrum of antineutrinos emitted from the fission of uranium-235, providing a new reference energy spectrum and new constraints on the origin of the disagreements between data and models.

Conventional sensors usually lack the sensitivity needed for studies of quantum phenomena and other complex cases. One solution is to use superconducting sensors, but amplifying their signals is challenging. Researchers built on advances from quantum computing to add a special type of amplifiers, superconducting traveling-wave parametric amplifiers, to superconducting sensors. These amplifiers are almost noiseless and operate at relatively high temperatures.

In a plant microbiome, the microbial community assembles and changes by exchanging signals between the host plant and the microbes. Researchers have gathered and filtered a large amount of data using a combination of computational approaches to identify new mechanisms in this signaling process. The study discovered a host transport mechanism and a chemical signal that influences beneficial bacterial colonization of plants’ roots.

Lithium-ion batteries are useful for electric vehicles but use raw materials that are costly and face potential supply chain issues. The performance of one alternative, sodium-ion batteries, declines rapidly with repeated charges and discharges. In this study, researchers used a combination of electron microscopy and X-ray scattering to find a cause of this decline in performance: defects introduced in making the cathode material.