Space weather warnings could be received hours before Earth is hit rather than minutes with the help of a miniature UK-built instrument soon to be stationed in deep space. MAGIC (MAGnetometer from Imperial College) is part of the European Space Agency's Heliospheric Pioneer for Solar and Interplanetary Threats Defence (HENON) CubeSat mission, which is scheduled for launch in early 2027. By measuring the Sun's magnetic field much farther upstream than current real-time space weather monitors, the mission aims to extend advance warning of severe solar storms from just tens of minutes to several hours. The research is being presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting this week in Birmingham by Jonathan Eastwood, Professor of Space Physics in the Department of Physics (Blackett Laboratory) at Imperial College London.

Silicon photonics has emerged as a promising technology for addressing bandwidth and latency bottlenecks of conventional electrical interconnects and therefore are being explored for future artificial intelligence infrastructure. However, heterogenous integration of multiple material systems remains a challenge. Now, researchers show how micro-transfer printing can enable highly versatile heterogenous integration to expand the functionality of silicon photonics, paving the way for advanced photonic systems.

Researchers have developed a single machine-learning turbulence model that predicts a wide range of turbulent flows—without the manual zoning, switching, or tuning that conventional models require. Led by researchers at the University of Stuttgart, the work advances a long-sought goal in computational fluid dynamics: a unified turbulence model that handles many flow mechanisms within one framework. Details of the findings were published in National Science Review.

EPFL researchers have developed a new way to use holograms for 3D printing, enabling much faster, more precise, and energy-efficient fabrication than existing methods. The innovation shows promise for supporting affordable, biocompatible volumetric printing for biomedical and microengineering applications.

Carbohydrate-based vaccines are an effective means for combating bacterial infections, particularly in the face of rising antibiotic resistance. This perspective provides an overview of carbohydrate vaccine against bacterial infections, from the earliest polysaccharide formulations to the latest synthetic constructs, and highlights the full engineering continuum encompassing carbohydrate antigen production, epitope mapping, conjugation chemistry, formulation, preclinical and clinical evaluation, and regulatory approval. By introducing the integrative framework of carbohydrate-based vaccine engineering (CVE), a unified perspective is provided to support both the optimization of current vaccine platforms and the rational design of next-generation glycoconjugate vaccines.

QUT researchers have overcome a challenge that has limited next-generation energy-harvesting materials for more than two decades, opening the door to more powerful wearable electronics and new ways of turning wasted heat into electricity.

The human brain performs perception, memory, learning and decision-making with only about 20 watts of power. A new study in National Science Review proposes a physics-based framework to explain this extraordinary efficiency. By modeling cooperative neuronal activity, the researchers suggest that brain information may be stored and processed through dynamic electrical patterns, offering new clues for brain science and energy-efficient artificial intelligence.