By creating a 'little bit of the Universe in a bottle' in her lab, a PhD student in physics has reverse-engineered the chemical cocktails produced by stars to better understand how cosmic dust might have provided the building blocks of life.

Conventional nanoscale electroplasmonic structures provide limited electrical tunability of nonlinear optical responses. Scientists at Japan's Institute for Molecular Science have demonstrated an angstrom-scale electroplasmonic platform enabling giant modulation (2000% V^-1) of near-field nonlinear optical effects across a broad spectral range. The breakthrough provides a novel scheme of highly efficient electro-optical conversion in an infinitesimal spatial scale, laying the foundation for atomic-scale ultracompact electrophotonic information-processing technology.

Researchers have measured the prompt fission neutron spectra from ²⁵²Cf correlated with neutrons of different energies, verifying that neutrons emitted from individual fission events are energetically correlated.

Employing Generalized Reduced R-matrix theory, the research team performed a comprehensive nuclear data evaluation of the five-nucleon ⁵He system, a key intermediate in fusion reactions. By integrating a global multi-channel analysis with uncertainty propagation theory, the study presents evaluated cross sections, complete with uncertainty and covariance data, over a broad energy range.

A Chinese-led research team has unveiled the conceptual design of the Muonium-to-Antimuonium Conversion Experiment (MACE), an ambitious initiative aimed at detecting one of the rarest processes ever predicted. By enhancing experimental sensitivity by over two orders of magnitude, MACE seeks to either uncover new physics beyond the Standard Model or establish the world’s most stringent limits on muonium-to-antimuonium conversion—a phenomenon that could profoundly reshape our understanding of fundamental symmetries and particle interactions.

 

Using a pioneering method they developed to directly measure viscosity in a group of cells, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have made a surprising discovery that upends understanding of how cells move.

Professor Jian Wang's research group at Tsinghua University reported a photocatalyzed/nitrogen heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed asymmetric radical α-alkoxycarbonylation reaction of amines. Using dibenzylaniline derivatives and readily available pyrocarbonates as starting materials, chiral α-amino acid esters can be synthesized in one step. Further deprotection reactions yield chiral α-amino acids containing primary, secondary, or tertiary amine groups. This research provides a novel method for obtaining structurally diverse chiral α-amino acid derivatives and has significant potential applications in drug development (especially peptide drugs) using chiral α-amino acids as basic structural units. The article was published as an open access communication in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

Harvard researchers have experimentally shown that a beam of light can repeatedly focus and defocus itself in free space without a lens, confirming a 1960s theoretical prediction called the Montgomery effect.