In an environment of radiation, extreme temperatures and razor-sharp dust, researchers are designing how humans will build, and ultimately survive, on the moon.

Researchers have developed a fully light-controlled artificial synapse that could improve how computers process visual information. The device uses a rare-earth-doped crystal to mimic how biological synapses strengthen and weaken connections based on past activity, but operates entirely with optical signals rather than electricity. By modeling and validating how trapped charge carriers govern this behavior, the team demonstrated both signal enhancement and suppression, key features of neural function. Integrated with an imaging sensor, the system can reduce noise and enhance contrast directly at the point of capture. When applied to a neural network, the approach achieved nearly 96% accuracy on handwritten digit recognition, highlighting its potential for low-power, efficient neuromorphic vision systems.

New research reveals a potential link between the gut microbes of a fish and global ocean processes, offering new insight into how marine ecosystems help regulate ocean chemistry and the marine carbon cycle.

The synthesis of materials can serve as a tool for developing smart, adaptive electrocatalysts. This rapidly evolving field of research involves in-situ analytics, data-driven discoveries and autonomous robotics. These new approaches could accelerate the discovery of long-lasting and efficient catalysts for future energy conversion and the decarbonisation of the chemical industry. A recent article by Dr Prashanth Menezes and his team in the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie provides an overview of this research.

University of Texas at Arlington physics doctoral student Tapendra Sodari has been selected for a prestigious fellowship to fund his NASA-relevant research.

The team developed a new optical measurement technique, “Atom Camera,” using a single ultracold atom at near absolute zero temperature as a camera. The technique visualizes not only light intensity distributions but also polarization distributions with a high spatial resolution below 100 nanometers. The method is expected to be useful in quantum computing and other emerging quantum technologies.

In honor of Prof. Gerhard Ertl, Chemistry Nobel Prize laureate in 2007, the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and the three Berlin universities (FU, HU and TU Berlin) annually bestow the Gerhard Ertl Lecture Award. This year, Dutch chemist Prof. Marc Koper is being honored for his achievements in the fields of electrochemistry and catalysis.

By electrochemically introducing phosphonate ester groups into conductive polymer films, researchers at Science Tokyo have addressed a fundamental trade-off between electronic charge transport and ion transport, overcoming a key performance limitation in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). The method enables precise tuning of polymer properties and can be applied to semicrystalline materials without redesigning monomers, supporting the development of improved biosensors and flexible electronic devices.

Professor Jin-Quan Yu of Scripps Research has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the U.K.’s national academy of sciences and one of the world’s oldest scientific institutions.