Science Highlights

Leaf-cutter ants tend fungal gardens that convert lipids in leaves into lipids the ants can use for energy, building cells, and communication between organisms. New research has found that different regions of the ants' fungal gardens were enriched with different lipids. This helps scientists understand communications between organisms in different kingdoms of life.

Scientists have found that lithium vanadium oxide can rapidly charge and discharge energy. The material has a structure similar to table salt but with a more random atomic arrangement. It charges and discharges without growing lithium metal "dendrites" that can cause dangerous short circuits. This could lead to safer, faster-charging batteries for electric vehicles.

Creating an efficient fusion plasma in a tokamak requires a plasma with an extremely hot core but edges cool enough to protect the tokomak walls. Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility developed a solution that uses the active injection of gases to cool the edge coupled with enhanced core confinement.

The soil surrounding and including the roots of plants is a hotspot for bacteria that help plants resist infections, survive drought, and take up nutrients. However, scientists did not fully understand how bacteria assist plants. A new study provides new insights into the spots on roots where bacteria attach. This could help scientists understand and control how plants and bacteria interact.

Soot in the atmosphere absorbs sunlight, warming the Earth's atmosphere. This analysis shows that soot particles' shape and composition can vary significantly. This creates discrepancies between real-world observations and predictions from models. This research used measurement and modeling to provide a framework that explains variation in atmospheric soot.

: Plants synthesize thousands of metabolites that help them adapt to their environments. Mass spectrometry can detect and measure metabolites in a sample, but this is difficult with complex samples. One solution is to add labeled chemicals to a sample. This research developed an easy-to-use computational tool that locates labeled chemicals, simplifying analysis.

A machine learning system is helping operators resolve routine faults at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). The system monitors the accelerator cavities, where faults can trip off the CEBAF. The system identified which cavities were tripping off about 85% of the time and identified the type of fault about 78% of the time.

Scientists don't know how exotic hadrons with a larger number of quarks are structured--are they tightly bound hadrons or a compound of two hadrons similar to molecules? Now, scientists have developed a new technique to identify the nature of the χc1(3872, a four-quark hadron. This is the first time scientists have discovered the structure of a particle by observing how it interacts with nearby particles.

Scientific rules about "chiral symmetry" predict the existence of subatomic particles called pions. The lifetime of a neutrally charged pion is tied to breaking of chiral symmetry. Until recently, measurements of this lifetime have been much less precise than calculations from theory. Physicists have now measured a pion's lifetime more precisely than ever before.

A new analysis of collisions of gold ions shows signs of a "critical point," a change in the way one form of matter changes into another. The results hint at changes in the type of transition during the shift from particles to the quark-and-gluon "soup" that filled the early universe. This helps scientists understand how particles interact and what holds them together.