A study published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry presents a new family of candidate compounds for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and pain, which have shown promising effects in animal models. Researchers of the University of Barcelona led a multidisciplinary team that designed, synthetized and pharmacologically validated these molecules that modulate a therapeutic target which has been little studied, the imidazoline I2 receptors, which are altered in many diseases without efficient pharmacological treatments. According to the researchers, the new compound has the “necessary characteristics to progress in pre-clinical phases and to be positioned as a potential anti-Alzheimer’s drug or analgesic with a novel mechanism of action”.

A surprising connection has been found, between two seemingly very different classes of superconductors. In a new material, atoms are distributed irregularly, but still manage to create long-range magnetic order.

Researchers in Japan have developed a digital laboratory (dLab) system that fully automates the material synthesis and structural, physical property evaluation of thin-film samples. With dLab, the team can autonomously synthesize thin-film samples and measure their material properties. The team’s dLab system demonstrates advanced automatic and autonomous material synthesis for data- and robot-driven materials science.

An international team of scientists has identified an unexpected region of heavy, neutron-deficient isotopes in the nuclear chart where nuclear fission is predominantly governed by an asymmetric mode. The experiment was conducted by the R3B-SOFIA collaboration at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany, within the FAIR Phase 0 program. The results are published in the journal Nature.

In response to the growing demands of advanced 5G/6G communication technologies, millimeter-wave vortex beams have emerged as a promising solution to increase channel capacities. This paper introduces a novel and efficient method for vortex beam generation by leveraging the intrinsic singularities of dipole scatterers and enhancing their performance through non-local coupling. We demonstrate that the intrinsic singularities—amplitude-zero points in the scattering patterns of electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole (MD) resonances -- enable the conversion of spin angular momentum (SAM) into orbital angular momentum (OAM), generating a vortex electric field distribution. By arranging these dipolar units into a periodic array, we establish a dual-resonance non-local metasurface that improves directivity and efficiency via non-local collective interactions and the generalized Kerker effect. This configuration significantly enhances forward scattering, producing highly directional vortex beams. Our experimental results show that the non-local metasurface achieves a vortex conversion efficiency approximately 2.2 times higher than that of a reference structure around 40 GHz. This alignment-free, high-efficiency solution offers great potential for expanding millimeter-wave communication capacity and advancing photonic applications.

 

Collagen, a prevalent and predominant part of the structure of bodies, still has some mystique surrounding the finer aspects of its existence. Here, researchers look into the mechanism of orientation within collagen to elucidate some of the lesser-known aspects of this protein and how it can be used in future applications.