FAU’s “Art of Science” contest turns research into stunning visual stories. The top image, “First Selfie … Cephie,” shows an octopus seemingly posing for a camera, showcasing its incredible dexterity. Other top winners are the “Sea Turtle Beginning,” capturing embryonic development inside an egg, and “Journey to Space,” a high-altitude balloon bursting nearly 100,000 feet above Earth. The contest celebrates creativity across science, art, and the community, revealing the hidden beauty and wonder of discovery.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) affects approximately 14.1 million people in the U.S. Pharmacological treatment options for AUD have advanced only minimally since 2004, underscoring the urgent need for novel therapeutic targets. To uncover some of these potential targets, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism awarded a two-year grant to TTUHSC’s Dawei Li, Ph.D., who will seek to identify new neurobiological factors for potential intervention, including a possible link between endogenous retroviruses and neuroinflammation.

An AI from the University of Würzburg autonomously controlled a satellite in orbit for the first time, demonstrating the potential of intelligent, self-learning space systems. 

A study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and University College London has found that humans have a form of remote touch, or the ability to sense objects without direct contact, a sense that some animals have.  

Human touch is typically understood as a proximal sense, limited to what we physically touch. However, recent findings in animal sensory systems have challenged this view. Certain shorebirds, such as sandpipers and plovers, use a form of “remote touch” to detect prey hidden beneath the sand (du Toit et al. 2020; de Fouw et al. 2016). Remote touch allows the detection of objects buried under granular materials through subtle mechanical cues transmitted through the medium, when a moving pressure is applied nearby. 

  The study in IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) investigated whether humans share a similar capability. Participants moved their fingers gently through sand to locate a hidden cube before physically touching it. Remarkably, the results revealed a comparable ability to that seen in shorebirds, despite humans lacking the specialized beak structures that enable this sense in birds. 

Mechanoluminescence materials are highly promising for haptic interface sensors. However, they fail to achieve sharp signal generation and high spectral resolution owing to a broad emission spectra. Recently, Hanyang University scientists have innovatively utilized a dual-functional chromatic filtration strategy employing F8BT conjugated polymer shell on copper-doped zinc sulfide to achieve a refined and intensified signal. This work paves the way for a scalable framework for high-resolution mechanoluminescence platforms.

Development in artificial intelligence has paved the path for the integration of computational pathology in clinical workflow, improving the accuracy and reducing the workload for medical practitioners. In recent times, Foundation Models (FMs), trained on large-scale, unlabelled datasets, are considered more suitable than traditional models for diverse clinical tasks. In a review study published in the Chinese Medical Journal, researchers highlight the advancements in pathological FMs and discuss their application in precision oncology.

Sir2, an enzyme belonging to sirtuins, has been effectively involved in the deacetylation of proteins. A tandem allosteric effect of reactant and product is responsible for the efficient deacetylation cycle of the Sir2 enzyme, reveal researchers from Science Tokyo. This finding reveals a new target for modulating Sir2, an enzyme that is essential for many biological processes, including aging, metabolic regulation, and cancer suppression. This finding could potentially lead to new therapeutic applications, including novel cancer treatments.

Dark matter accounts for approximately 85% of the universe’s total mass, yet its “invisibility” continues to challenge our understanding of physics. While the Standard Model has successfully described the structure of the visible universe, its limitations have driven scientists to explore ultralight exotic bosons—such as axions and dark photons—as motivative candidates for dark matter. Theoretical studies suggest that such new bosons could mediate exotic spin-dependent interactions beyond four fundamental forces, providing new avenues for detecting ultralight dark matter. However, terrestrial exotic-interaction searches have long been constrained by a fundamental trade-off: enhancing the signal of exotic spin interactions requires simultaneously increasing both the number of polarized spins and relative velocity, parameters that are inherently inversely coupled under laboratory conditions, leaving vast regions of theoretical parameter space unexplored.

Professor Xinhua Peng and Professor Min Jiang from the University of Science and Technology of China, in collaboration with multiple research institutions, have proposed the SQUIRE (Space-based QuantUm sensing for Interaction and exotic bosons Research Exploration) program—a space-based dark matter detection project. For the first time internationally, SQUIRE plans to deploy ultrasensitive quantum sensors aboard the China Space Station to search for potential exotic interactions mediated by dark matter candidate particles between the Earth’s geoelectron spins and the sensor spins. The scheme is projected to improve detection sensitivity by more than 7 orders of magnitude compared to terrestrial experiments. Furthermore, SQUIRE is expected to pave the way for a “space-ground integrated” quantum sensing network, opening new pathways for dark matter exploration in deep space. This paper was published on September 22 in National Science Review under the title “Quantum Sensors in Space: Unveiling the Invisible Universe.”

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, led by Professors Jian-Wei Pan, Hai-Feng Jiang, and Qiang Zhang, have developed a bistatic dual-comb ranging (BDCR) method achieving nanometer-level absolute ranging over 113 km—the longest verified distance to date. Published in National Science Review, this breakthrough extends the measurable range 2.5× beyond traditional systems, attaining 82 nm precision at 21 s, and promises major advances for satellite constellations, gravity mapping, and space telescope arrays.