Farell Keiser, a high-school student at Gymnasium Leopoldinum in Detmold, has reached a milestone that usually comes much later in a scientific career. While still at school, he has published his first peer-reviewed research article as first author in Physical Review B. He previously received the Best Student Paper Award for the same work at an international conference. Both achievements stem from his participation in Bielefeld University’s “Studieren ab 15” (“Studying from the age of 15”) programme.

Key facts at a glance:

While still at school, Farell Keiser has published his first peer-reviewed research article as first author in Physical Review B.

He has been conducting research in a research group at the Faculty of Physics for three years.

This path was made possible by Bielefeld University’s “Studieren ab 15” programme.

Open ecosystems — nonforested landscapes such as grasslands, shrublands, and savannas — can store vast amounts of carbon while supporting water supply, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services. Yet the potential of open ecosystems to serve as natural climate solutions remains ignored by policies that privilege forests. So reports a team of researchers in a policy brief published today in Plants, People, Planet.

Research published in the Journal of Risk and Financial Management shows that crises do more than cause financial market volatility and falling share prices – they lead to markets becoming far more interconnected.

The study examined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, FTSE 100 and DAX during the Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Rather than study correlation (market A causes a movement in market B), the research used a technique derived from chaos theory, known as convergent cross-mapping, to look at whether the dynamics of one market contained recoverable information about another.

The most striking results came from the Covid-19 pandemic, where the average coupling measure increased by 16% from pre-crisis to crisis period.

Grapevine trunk diseases threaten sustainable viticulture, and effective chemical control has been lacking since sodium arsenite was banned because of its risks to human health, while wine lees remain an underexploited by-product of the wine industry. Researchers have now developed an integrated bioprocess that upgrades lees into antifungal biomolecule mixtures, combining fermentation design with Saccharomyces monocultures and sequential inoculation with non-Saccharomyces strains.

Lithium-rich cathodes could be key to developing batteries with higher energy densities. However, transition metal ions can drift out of place during operation, blocking lithium transport. In a recent study, researchers from Korea tackled this issue by intentionally introducing disorder in the cathode’s atomic structure. This strategy resulted in improved performance and stability, highlighting a potential new route toward higher-energy batteries for applications like electric vehicles and energy storage. 

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers. One reason for its resistance to therapy is the dense tissue surrounding the tumor, which acts as a protective barrier and suppresses the immune response. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now identified a molecular mechanism that regulates this tumor-supporting environment. At the heart of this mechanism is CD44, a molecule that controls the behavior of cancer-associated fibroblasts, specialized connective tissue cells that play a crucial role in shaping the tumor microenvironment.The results have been published in Cell Death & Disease (DOI: 10.1038/s41419-026-09155-5).

Using 448.1 million ψ(3686) events collected with the BESIII detector, researchers have determined the complete spin density matrix of a Λ-Λ̄   pair for the first time in this decay. The measurement reveals significant transverse Λ polarization and provides evidence of quantum nonlocality through a 3.7 sigma violation of the CHSH inequality.