Geological faults do not only move during earthquakes. Sometimes they slip silently, without generating noticeable shaking, releasing stress over hours or days. A research team led by Dr Zahra Zali (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences), together with Prof. Patricia Martínez-Garzón (GFZ), Dr David Mencin (EarthScope), and Prof. Gregory C. Beroza (Stanford University), has uncovered a previously hidden population of so-called slow slip events beneath the Parkfield section of California’s San Andreas Fault. Using artificial intelligence and highly sensitive strainmeter observations, the researchers identified dozens of short-duration slow slip events and showed that these silent fault movements are systematically followed by increased low-frequency earthquake activity. The study has been published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s National (ORNL) Transportation Research Center have developed a novel electric motor drive design that meets the performance demands of aircraft, marine vessels and heavy-duty trucks while reducing excess heat and premature wear.

Electromagnetic (EM) wave absorbers with strong attenuation over a broad frequency range are critical for radiation protection and military stealth. However, magnetic alloys with high dissipation capacity remain challenging to achieve satisfactory impedance matching and enhanced high-frequency magnetic loss due to the scarcity of rational design for the distribution and size of magnetic particles. Herein, we design Prussian blue analogue (PBA) derived FeCo magnetoelectric composite nanocages by confinement engineering, achieving strong absorption capacity of -47.4 dB and broad bandwidth of 7.10 GHz at a small thickness of 1.9 mm. This work not only sheds light on the fabrication of FeCo magnetoelectric composite nanocages as efficient and wideband EM wave absorbers, but also propose a confinement engineering strategy for rational design of functional nanocomposites in multiple fields such as electromagnetics, electronics and optoelectronics.

Researchers have developed a programmable, multi-responsive soft actuator based on MXene materials that can reversibly deform under humidity, light, and magnetic fields. By introducing micro-ridge structures into a bilayer MXene/paraffin wax composite, the actuator enables controllable and complex shape transformations, offering new possibilities for soft robotics and intelligent devices.

A new Penn-led AI framework could help accelerate peptide drug discovery by generating candidates predicted to have specified effects, such as activating or blocking receptors involved in metabolism, addiction and cancer.