Physical/Tech

Physics, technology, and engineering

Physical/TechAugust 11, 2026

Nature's antivenom: Combinations of conserved rattlesnake serum metalloproteinase inhibitors block the lethal action of viper venoms.

Snakebite maims or kills several hundred thousand people each year. For more than a century, treatment has relied on antivenoms derived from animals immunized with whole venoms, but their efficacy, safety, and availability are highly variable, and it is often not well understood which specific venom components must be inhibited to prevent mortality and major morbidities. New therapeutic approaches are needed. Here, we take an evolutionary approach to antivenom design inspired by the longstanding

Physical/TechAugust 4, 2026

Abrupt transition to irreversible damage in the overdrafted Sacramento Valley aquifer system.

Groundwater extraction decreases water pressure in aquifer systems, causing reversible or irreversible deformation of the water-bearing layers that manifests as recoverable or permanent displacements of the land surface, respectively. Detecting and forecasting when and where an aquifer system transitions from a reversible, poroelastic regime, to an irreversible, inelastic regime remains a crucial challenge given the complex, heterogeneous nature of aquifer systems. Here we leverage high-resoluti

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

Synergistic action of different molecular mechanisms causes striking levels of insecticide resistance in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae .

Intensifying insecticide resistance in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae poses a serious threat to the progress achieved the last decades in reducing malaria deaths in Africa. The genetic basis of insecticide resistance is often complex, involving multiple genes and mutations. However, we still lack a clear understanding of how each mechanism contributes to overall resistance and how highly resistant phenotypes arise. In this study, we generated a suite of transgenic An. gambiae strains carry

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

There is no free benchmark: An institutional view of legal AI benchmarking.

Despite substantial excitement around the use of AI in law, little information exists on the performance and associated risks of the domain's widely marketed tools. Recent work, for instance, has demonstrated the significant potential for "hallucinations"-wherein models make up facts, law, and precedent-leading Chief Justice Roberts to spotlight this risk in his annual report on the judiciary. We argue that there is a need for public AI benchmarking in law. First, relative to other AI applicatio

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

A phosphorylation cascade involving ZmSnRK2.10-ZmRIPK2-ZmWRKY38 attenuates drought response by derepressing ZmSUS2 in maize.

Drought stress severely limits crop productivity, with transcription factors (TFs) playing pivotal roles in plant adaptation. Here, we identify the maize TF ZmWRKY38 as a positive regulator of drought tolerance. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of ZmWRKY38 increased plant sensitivity to drought compared with the wild type. We demonstrate that ZmWRKY38 binds to the promoter of the sucrose synthase gene ZmSUS2 and represses its transcription. Conversely, ZmSUS2 functions as a negative regulator of dr

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

The quantum ensemble variational optimization algorithm: Applications to molecular inverse design.

Designing molecules with optimized properties remains a fundamental challenge due to the intricate relationship between molecular structure and properties. Traditional computational approaches that address the combinatorial number of possible molecular designs become unfeasible as the molecular size increases, suffering from the so-called "curse of dimensionality" problem. Recent advances in quantum computing hardware present new opportunities to address this problem. Here, we introduce the quan

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

Mechanostereochemical modulation of polymer mechanical properties.

Stereochemistry profoundly affects the physical and mechanical properties of polymers, illustrated by the contrast between elastic natural rubber ( cis -polyisoprene) and the stiffer, less extensible gutta-percha ( trans -isomer). Traditional stereochemistry such as tacticity and cis / trans isomerism primarily governs polymer properties based on fixed structural or conformational factors. Herein, by incorporating the mechanostereochemistry concept into polymers, we demonstrate a stereochemistry

Physical/TechJuly 28, 2026

Resolving weak moments in canted antiferromagnets via time-domain terahertz emission spectroscopy.

Canted antiferromagnets host weak net magnetization arising from spin canting while preserving the ultrafast response of antiferromagnetic order. Probing such minute moments-especially in thin films-remains challenging, as conventional magneto-optical and electrical techniques lack sufficient sensitivity. Here, we employ time-domain terahertz emission spectroscopy as a contact-free probe of such weak magnetism. Using epitaxial TmFeO 3 /Pt heterostructures as a model system, the emitted THz signa

Physical/TechJuly 27, 2026

A Rhodium-Catalyzed Cyclization of Sulfonimidamides and Sulfondiimidamides: Synthesis and Exploration of Chiral Aromatic Heterocycles.

Although cyclic SIAs have demonstrated promising medicinal potential, methodologies for their construction remain relatively scarce. SIAs have proven to be suitable nitrene precursors for aziridination and C-H amination, when mixed with hypervalent iodine and a metal catalyst. Herein, we report the intramolecular cyclization of SIAs featuring N -acyl-type substitution via a dirhodium nitrene intermediate, forming a new N -heteroatom bond. The reaction leads to a diverse array of aromatic heteroc

Physical/TechJuly 27, 2026

Trimethylammonium-Substituted Amphiphilic Pillar[ n ]arene Channels for Selective Water Permeation.

Artificial water channels (AWCs) are synthetic systems biomimicking natural aquaporins (AQPs) that selectively transport water while rejecting ions. Amphiphilic rim-differentiated pillar[5]arenes and pillar[6]arenes, featuring cationic methylammonium and alkyl substituents on opposite rims, spontaneously assemble into two-dimensional channels with tunable pore sizes and channel lengths. Herein, we considered the alkyl chains (butyl-C4 and decatyl-C10) of these channels in relation to membrane pa

Physical/TechJuly 27, 2026

Discovery of Noninhibitory Macrocyclic Ligands for Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase 1B Using a Function-Based, Iterative Screening Strategy.

Chemically induced proximity is a powerful modality for manipulating protein function. Most of the effort in this field has focused on targeted protein degradation, but recruitment of other types of post-translational modification enzymes to a target protein is also of interest. To construct such reagents, one would ideally like to have ligands that engage the enzyme without inhibiting its activity. In this study, we describe a screening platform for the discovery of noninhibitory macrocyclic li

Physical/TechJuly 23, 2026

Balancing N 2 Activation in Two-Dimensional Electrides for Ammonia Synthesis.

Two-dimensional (2D) electrides, featuring interlayer-delocalized anionic electrons, hold promise for N 2 activation but face challenges in catalytic ammonia synthesis due to structural instability under reaction conditions. Here, we introduce a dual-site catalyst using the robust 2D metal carbide Y 2 C electride as a platform, where N 2 is activated at electron-rich interlayers and H 2 dissociates on supported Ni nanoparticles, enabling efficient and stable ammonia production. Through Raman spe

Physical/TechJuly 22, 2026

Structural basis of the RNA-editing cascade in trypanosome mitochondria.

The molecular mechanism of uridine insertion-and-deletion mRNA editing in trypanosome mitochondria 1-4 has remained unclear because of the highly dynamic nature of the underlying multi-enzyme machinery 5 . Here, we define editosomes as supramolecular assemblies formed by the RNA-editing substrate-binding complex (RESC) and either RNA-editing catalytic complex 1 or 2 (RECC1 or RECC2) 6 , and present cryo-electron microscopy structures of the approximately 1-MDa RECC1 and RECC2. Resembling dragonf

Physical/TechJuly 22, 2026

Insulator-free topological photonic multi-lane highways.

Topological protection in photonic structures enables robust unidirectional propagation immune to structural disorder 1-20 . However, conventional implementations obtain this protection from topological-insulator domains whose interfaces host narrow guiding channels, leaving much of the insulating bulk inactive for transport. This imposes a fundamental trade-off between topological robustness and spatial footprint 21-25 . Here we introduce an insulator-free topological waveguide architecture tha

Physical/TechJuly 22, 2026

Non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter across a phase transition.

Second-order phase transitions are characterized by critical scaling and universality 1 . The singular behaviour of thermodynamic quantities at the transition, in particular, is determined by critical exponents of the universality class of the transition. However, critical properties are also characterized by the probability distribution of the order parameter across the transition 2,3 , in which non-Gaussian statistics are expected 4-6 , but remain largely unexplored 7 . Here, making use of sin

Physical/TechJuly 22, 2026

Precise DNA base editing using AlphaFold3-based contact modelling.

Achieving high specificity in biochemical transformations is crucial for research and therapeutics. This is particularly important for genome editing, where enhancing tool specificity ensures effective and precise editing outcomes 1,2 . Current strategies are constrained by activity-specificity trade-offs, high labour intensity and low success rates 3,4 . Here we present ContactSeek, an artificial-intelligence-driven framework that uses AlphaFold3 (AF3)-predicted contact probability 5 to improve

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Uninterrupted optical resolution of identical point scatterers undergoing nanometric changes in distance.

In established superresolution fluorescence microscopy or nanoscopy, resolving identical fluorescent molecules at subdiffraction distances requires the molecules to emit sequentially so that they briefly become discernible from their neighbors one after another. Simultaneous tracking of multiple fluorophores that are only a few nanometers apart is thus conceptually and practically impossible. We have recently shown that probing a subdiffraction region with an excitation beam featuring an intensi

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Sequential evolution of antidote and toxin links genetic incompatibility with immune responses.

Toxin-antidote (TA) systems are selfish genetic elements that ensure their own inheritance by eliminating offspring that do not inherit the module, thereby creating postzygotic genetic incompatibilities both within and between species. Despite their ubiquity and substantial fitness costs, the origin and persistence of TA systems remain poorly understood. Here, we report a TA gene pair in the nematode Caenorhabditis nigoni . The antidote gene, Cni-shls-2 , is a C. nigoni -specific F-box gene that

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Repurposing trazodone for Alzheimer's disease to modulate soluble ST2 levels and alleviate Alzheimer's pathology.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a multifactorial disorder involving various pathological mechanisms, such as amyloidosis, immune dysfunctions, and synaptic impairments, which are important therapeutic targets. Repurposing drugs to target these mechanisms offers a promising approach to reduce the costs and duration of drug development. Genetic studies underscore the critical role of microglial clearance of amyloid-beta (Aβ) in AD pathogenesis. Specifically, soluble ST2 (sST2)-one of the two maj

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Dopaminergic neurons preferentially accumulate mtDNA rearrangements.

High levels of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions have been described in the substantia nigra. However, the mechanisms involved are poorly understood. We found that transient expression of a mitochondrial targeted restriction endonuclease (mitoPstI) in mice leads to an accumulation of mtDNA rearrangements that involve both the PstI cleavage sites and unrelated specific regions of the mtDNA, including the MTERF1 binding site and the edge of the D-loop. This pattern of rearrangements after double

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Fly navigational responses exploit plume-specific odor motion and gradient cues.

Odor cues guide animals to food and mates. Different environmental conditions can create differently patterned odor plumes, making navigation more challenging. Prior work has shown that animals turn upwind when they detect odor and cast crosswind when they lose it. Animals with bilateral olfactory sensors can also detect directional odor cues, such as odor gradient and odor motion. It remains unknown how animals use these two directional odor cues to guide crosswind navigation in odor plumes wit

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Virtual ultrasound machine operating in a GHz to MHz frequency range for particle-based biomedical simulations.

Ultrasound-matter interactions underpin numerous biomedical and soft-matter applications, yet simulating these phenomena is challenging due to the large separation of viscous and sonic time scales. Continuum methods capture large-scale wave propagation but cannot resolve microscale interactions, while particle-based approaches offer molecular resolution but struggle with efficiency and stability at larger scales. We introduce a particle-based virtual ultrasound machine that uses a smoothed dissi

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Rapidly evolving composition of nebular infall recorded by magnesium isotopes in refractory inclusions.

The 26 Al- 26 Mg systematics in calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs)-the oldest known Solar System solids-has traditionally been used to provide high-resolution temporal constraints on the early Solar System evolution. More recently, the study of variations in the initial Mg isotope composition has emerged as a means to probe for potential compositional heterogeneity in the nascent solar nebula. Here, we report high-precision magnesium isotope data for a collection of 19 CAIs that captures th

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Relative Thom conjectures, symplectic and beyond.

We establish a criterion that ensures a bounded almost complex curve in a bounded almost complex 4-manifold minimizes genus among all smooth surfaces that share its homology class and the transverse link on its boundary. An immediate corollary affirms the relative symplectic Thom conjecture and, moreover, yields obstructions coming from knot Floer homology to a link bounding a symplectic surface in a symplectic filling. Our results are applicable to knots in manifolds equipped with plane fields

Physical/TechJuly 21, 2026

Active thermodynamics of inertial chiral active gases: Equation of state and edge currents.

One of the most fundamental quests in the physics of active matter concerns the existence of a comprehensive theory for its macroscopic properties, i.e. an "active thermodynamics." Recently, despite progress in developing this field, crucial questions, such as the influence of chirality on the thermodynamics of active matter, remain open-even in the simplest and most generic case of the ideal active gas. Here, we derive and experimentally verify key elements of the active thermodynamics of ideal

Physical/TechJuly 19, 2026

Programmable Helicity and Spin Polarization in Pt 6 L 4 Coordination Capsules through Guest-Mediated Chiral Control.

Programmable regulation of spin polarization enables molecular-scale spin filtering, yet reversible control of its sign in supramolecular systems remains challenging. Herein, a chiral-directing strategy modulates multiple helical states of octahedral capsules, enabling programmable and reversible control of chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS). The strategy transfers ( R )-1,1'-bi-2-naphthol chirality to induce capsule helicity, followed by controlled helicity inversion upon introduction of

Physical/TechJuly 19, 2026

Chiral 3d-4f Clusters with NIR-III Magneto-Optical Activity Driven by Lanthanide f-f Transition.

Chiral molecular materials with strong magneto-optical responses in the near-infrared III (NIR-III, 1600-2500 nm) region are attractive for applications in photonics, biomedicine, and advanced optical materials, but molecular magneto-optical phenomena in this spectral window remain largely unexplored. Here, we report six pairs of chiral 3d-4f molecular clusters, R/S -Ln 3 Mn 4 and R/S -Ln 12 Mn 12 (Ln = Ho III , Tb III , and Y III ), and systematically investigate their chiroptical and magneto-o

Physical/TechJuly 18, 2026

Electrochemical Fluorescence Switching in Rhodamine-Ferrocene Dyads: Spatiotemporal Control in Biomimetic Membranes.

The electrochemical control of fluorescence has been extensively developed in homogeneous media, yet its implementation within electrically insulating lipid bilayers remains largely unexplored. Here we establish that an electrochemically gated fluorescence switch can be implemented in individual giant unilamellar vesicles using a rhodamine-ferrocene dyad that modulates emission through redox-controlled photoinduced electron transfer. A membrane-anchored derivative enables direct visualization of

Physical/TechJuly 17, 2026

One-Step Integration of Sulfonated Polymer Films with Separators for Shuttle Mitigation in Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

Interfacial polymerization (IP) offers a rapid and inexpensive method for fabricating thin polymer films. In this work, a one-step IP reaction between a triacyl chloride monomer and sulfonated diamine monomer is employed to add a dense, charge-selective sulfonated thin-film coating onto a commercial separator to improve selective transport in lithium-sulfur batteries. The coating effectively suppresses polysulfide shuttling, enhancing capacity retention, although at the expense of compromised ra

Physical/TechJuly 15, 2026

Ultrabright Near-Infrared Lead-Free Perovskite Light-Emitting Diodes with Negligible Efficiency Roll-Off.

Lead-free halide perovskite semiconductors show great promise for light-emitting diodes (LEDs), benefiting from tunable optoelectronic properties and solution processability. However, their practical applications in high-current-density LEDs are fundamentally constrained by severe efficiency roll-off, primarily caused by nonradiative recombination and carrier-induced structural instabilities. In this study, we introduce a molecular N , N '-diphenylthiourea (DPTA)-engineered tin perovskite semico

Physical/TechJuly 15, 2026

Selectivity Emerges from Indiscriminate Photoreduction.

Single electron transfer (SET) reduction is amongst the most fundamental strategies for the activation of organic compounds. The design of selective reactions that leverage SET is grounded by the premise that differences in substrate redox potentials predict relative rates of SET, with more favorable reductions occurring faster. 1 However, across the diverse modes of redox catalysis, 2,3 devising reactions that require SET to the harder-to-reduce of two reactants remains challenging. This restri

Physical/TechJuly 15, 2026

An ATPγS recycling strategy for practical biocatalytic thiophosphorylation.

In light of its superior metabolic stability, the thiophosphate motif is widely regarded as a valuable substitute for its native phosphate counterpart 1-3 . This property has led to the incorporation of thiophosphates and phosphorothioates in various therapeutic modalities, such as antisense oligonucleotides 4,5 and cyclic dinucleotide analogs 6 . Biochemically, thiophosphates can be installed on proteins by combining protein kinases and adenosine-5'-O-(3-thio-triphosphate) (ATPγS) 7 , but

Physical/TechJuly 15, 2026

Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy.

A long-standing debate in neuroscience concerns whether individual neurons are organized into functionally distinct populations that encode information differently (categorical representations 1-3 ) and the implications for neural computation. Here we systematically analysed how cortical neurons encode cognitive, sensory and movement variables across 43 cortical regions during a complex task (14,000+ units from the International Brain Laboratory public Brainwide Map dataset 4 ) and studied how t

Physical/TechJuly 14, 2026

Provable cluster-preserving visualizations with curvature-based stochastic neighbor embeddings.

Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (SNE) algorithms like UMAP and tSNE often produce visualizations that do not preserve the geometry of noisy and high dimensional data. In particular, they can spuriously separate connected components of the underlying data submanifold and can fail to find clusters in well-clusterable data. To address these limitations, we propose EmbedOR, a SNE algorithm that incorporates discrete graph curvature. Our algorithm stochastically embeds the data using a curvature-enhanc

Physical/TechJuly 14, 2026

Localized sample-based quantum diagonalization for strongly correlated chemistry.

We develop a hybrid quantum-classical workflow combining sample-based quantum diagonalization (SQD) and the localized active space self-consistent field method (LASSCF) to solve for the ground states of transition-metal complexes, a longstanding challenge for both classical and quantum algorithms. The resulting approach, named LASSQD, integrates quantum sampling with fragment-based multireference theory to reduce the computational cost of solving strongly correlated active spaces. We test LASSQD

Physical/TechJuly 14, 2026

Topological expansion of Boehm's brushes via structured light.

We report an entoptic phenomenon in which the classical two-lobed Boehm's brushes are transformed into a multilobed structure by projecting spin-orbit-coupled light onto the human retina. These structured beams, composed of nonseparable superpositions of circular polarization and orbital angular momentum, produce azimuthally modulated entoptic patterns through polarization-dependent scattering in the retina. Unlike Haidinger's brushes, which arise from dichroic absorption in the macula, the obse

Physical/TechJuly 14, 2026

A DNA break-5mC cycle activates transposable elements in Arabidopsis .

Plant genomic and epigenomic integrity are perpetually threatened by exogenous and endogenous DNA damage. However, the interplay between DNA damage, DNA methylation (5mC), and transposable element (TE) activity remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that defective single-strand break (SSB) repair acts as a potent trigger for genome-wide TE derepression and extensive de novo DNA methylation in Arabidopsis . Mutations in ZDP/APE2, which encode conserved DNA 3'-end repair enzymes, impair t

Physical/TechJuly 14, 2026

Identifying Disordered Intermediates in the Reaction of Cu 3- x P and Dibenzyl Diselenide to form Cu 3 PSe 4 Nanoparticles.

Developing a detailed understanding of ternary nanoparticle (TNP) formation is essential for their optimized rational synthesis and development of synthetic routes for new TNPs. Herein, we explore the reaction of Cu 3- x P and dibenzyl diselenide (Bn 2 Se 2 ) to form colloidal Cu 3 PSe 4 TNPs. Temperature-resolved X-ray scattering (XRD and PDF), electron microscopy (TEM and STEM), and spectroscopy (EDS, EELS, XPS, and MAS NMR) reveal that Cu 3- x P reacts by surface coordination of Se leading to

Physical/TechJuly 13, 2026

Controlled Synthesis of Chiral β-Chloramines and Aziridines via an Organo- and Biocatalytic Cascade.

Chiral organochlorides bearing C-Cl stereocenters are highly desirable motifs in synthetic and medicinal chemistry, yet their direct asymmetric synthesis from simple starting materials via biocatalysis alone remains challenging. Here, we report an integrated organo- and biocatalytic cascade that converts readily available aldehydes into enantiomerically enriched β-chloramines. Under optimized near-neutral conditions, the method delivers a broad array of β-chloramines in high yield (u

Physical/TechJuly 13, 2026

Platelet-Activating Anti-Platelet Factor 4 Disorders.

Platelet-activating antibodies against platelet factor 4 (PF4) cause highly prothrombotic disorders with reduced platelet counts. In heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), these antibodies bind PF4-heparin complexes, causing heparin-dependent platelet activation. Less common autoimmune and spontaneous HIT variants that are triggered by heparin and nonpharmacologic polyanions, respectively, have atypical clinical features and antibodies with additional heparin-independent platelet-activating pro

Physical/TechJuly 12, 2026

Rivaroxaban Then Aspirin vs. Aspirin Alone after Total Hip or Knee Arthroplasty.

Aspirin after an initial short course of rivaroxaban has been shown to be safe and effective for the prevention of venous thromboembolism after total hip or total knee arthroplasty, but uncertainty remains about the use of aspirin alone. In this multicenter, double-blind, randomized, controlled trial, we assigned patients to receive once-daily thromboprophylaxis with either 81 mg of aspirin or 10 mg of oral rivaroxaban for the first 5 days after total hip or total knee arthroplasty. All the pati

Physical/TechJuly 11, 2026

Electrochemical C-N Bond Formation from CO 2 and Nitrate Using Molecular Catalysis.

The emerging direction of electrochemical C-N bond formation from CO 2 and small N-containing molecules has gained wide attention in recent years as a sustainable route in producing high-value products such as amines and amides. To date, the majority of C-N bond electrocatalysts discovered have been heterogeneous and/or solid-state in nature, which have some limitations when investigating structure-activity relationships toward the buildup of a fundamental knowledge base. Molecular electrocataly

Physical/TechJuly 11, 2026

A Ce 4+ Aluminum Hydride Complex.

Complexes of reducing hydride ligands by high-oxidation state cerium are unknown due to the fundamental mismatch in their redox chemistry. Herein we report the synthesis, characterization, and reactivity of the first example of a Ce 4+ aluminum hydride complex. Synthetic strategies adapted from the preparation of Ce 4+ alkyl complexes facilitated the isolation of [Ce 4+ (κ 2 -H 3 AlC(TMS) 3 )(NP( t Bu) 3 ) 3 ] ( CeHAl ). The bonding and structure of this complex is characterized by single-

Physical/TechJuly 8, 2026

Diet-microbiome synergy underlies obesity-associated immunotherapy efficacy.

Physiological host factors, such as the gut microbiome and obesity, independently influence anti-tumour immunity and responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) 1 , with high body mass index (BMI) having an unexpected link with greater ICI efficacy 2-6 . However, how these factors interact across diverse dietary contexts remains unclear. Here, using 12 mouse diet models that reflect a spectrum of obesity biology, we characterize diet-driven metabolic, immune and gut microbiota features