UVA’s Silvia Blemker elected to lead the American Society of Biomechanics
Business Announcement
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 19-Dec-2025 16:11 ET (19-Dec-2025 21:11 GMT/UTC)
UVA biomechanics expert aims to build on the organization’s culture of collaboration to expand knowledge of the field and its impact.
A form of vitamin B3 and an antioxidant found in green tea help brain cells eliminate damaged bits and boost energy levels.
Compounds reduce protein plaques linked to Alzheimer’s disease in aging brains.
The National Institutes of Health and the UC Irvine Foundation funded the projectIn nanophotonics, tiny structures are used to control light at the nanoscale and render it useful for technological applications. A key element here is optical resonators, which trap and amplify light of a certain color (wavelength). Previous methods of controlling these resonances were more like a dimmer switch: You could weaken the resonance or slightly shift its color. However, genuine on-and-off switching was not possible, as the resonators always remain fundamentally coupled with the light. A team led by Andreas Tittl, Professor of Experimental Physics at LMU, has now achieved precisely this breakthrough together with partners from Monash University in Australia. As the researchers report in the journal Nature, they have developed a new method for controlling the coupling between nanoresonators and light in a targeted manner on ultrafast timescales. In this way, a resonance can be created from nothing within a few picoseconds or made to vanish completely again.
Researchers recruited medical students and got them to train for neurosurgery on simulators. They divided them into three groups: one trained with AI-only verbal feedback, one with expert instructor feedback, and one with expert feedback informed by real-time AI performance data. The team recorded the students’ performance, including how well and how quickly their surgical skills improved while undergoing the different types of training.
They found that students receiving AI-augmented, personalized feedback from a human instructor outperformed both other groups in surgical performance and skill transfer.