The U.S. National Science Foundation Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO) near the summit of Maui’s Haleakalā, recently reached a major milestone as one of its groundbreaking instruments, the Visible Tunable Filter (VTF) achieved first light. The VTF is the world’s largest imaging spectro-polarimeter - a highly sophisticated instrument designed and built by a team at the Institut für Sonnenphysik (KIS) in Freiburg, Germany. It is the fifth and final first-generation instrument to be integrated, emerging as a crucial one among the Inouye’s instrument suite.

African sleeping sickness is a serious infection caused by a parasitic microbe called Trypanosoma brucei.

Using an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy along with artificial intelligence, a team at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA mapped the hairlike flagellum that the microbe uses to propel itself, identifying 154 composite proteins.

Findings revealed that the parasite moves in a distinctive style, similar to a dragon boat, with unique adaptations that are essential to its ability to infect its hosts.

Inspired by the movements of a tiny parasitic worm, Georgia Tech engineers have created a 5-inch soft robot that can jump as high as a basketball hoop. Their device, a silicone rod with a carbon-fiber spine, can leap 10 feet high even though it doesn’t have legs. The researchers made it after watching high-speed video of nematodes pinching themselves into odd shapes to fling themselves forward and backward

The invention is a metamaterial, which is a material engineered to feature new and unusual properties that depend on the material’s physical structure rather than its chemical composition. In this case, the researchers built their metamaterial using a combination of simple plastics and custom-made magnetic composites. Using a magnetic field, the researchers changed the metamaterial’s structure, causing it to expand, move and deform in different directions, all remotely without touching the metamaterial.

MIT engineers have fabricated a metamaterial that is not only strong but also stretchy. Their new method could enable stretchable ceramics, glass, and metals, for tear-proof textiles or stretchy semiconductors.