Conditions can get rough in the micro- and nanoworld. To ensure that e.g. nutrients can still be optimally transported within cells, the minuscule transporters involved need to respond to the fluctuating environment. Physicists at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and Tel Aviv University in Israel have used model calculations to examine how this can succeed. They have now published their results – which could also be relevant for future microscopic machines – in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

In a new Nature Physics study, researchers created particle-like so-called “vortex knots” inside chiral nematic liquid crystals, a twisted fluid similar to those used in LCD screens. For the first time, these knots are stable and could be reversibly switched between different knotted forms, using electric pulses to fuse and split them.

Visible light can be used to create electrodes from conductive plastics completely without hazardous chemicals. This is shown in a new study carried out by researchers at Linköping and Lund universities, Sweden. The electrodes can be created on different types of surfaces, which opens up for a new type of electronics and medical sensors.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers enhanced Saccharomyces cerevisiae to increase its tolerance for high 2,3-butanediol concentrations. This was achieved by introducing mutations into the genomic DNA and successfully obtaining a mutant strain that proliferates 122 times more than the parent strain.

Ocean data assimilation systems combine data assimilation with numerical ocean models to predict ocean conditions. Researchers recently created the Yin-He Global Ocean Data Assimilation and Forecast System (YHGO) to provide more accurate estimations of oceanic conditions than older platforms.

Researchers at Peking University and collaborators have revealed evidence of Mott insulator with thermally induced melting behavior in kagome compound Nb₃Cl₈. Using graphene-based chemical potential mapping, the team directly measured a strongly temperature-dependent Mott gap that remains robust up to 300 K, providing a new platform to study strong electron correlations and flat-band physics under ambient conditions.

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have re-engineered the popular Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) for simulating the flow of fluids and heat, making it lighter and more stable than the state-of-the-art. By formulating the algorithm with a few extra inputs, they successfully got around the need to store certain data, some of which span the millions of points over which a simulation is run. Their findings might overcome a key bottleneck in LBM: memory usage.

Fluorine is critical for biomedicine. This element can help drug compounds be more potent and last longer in the body, and its radioactive isotope, fluorine-18, powers medical imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET). But scientists have long struggled with adding fluorine to the most common chemical bonds—carbon–hydrogen (C–H) bonds—in a way that’s precise, efficient and compatible with the molecules used to create many modern medicines. There’s been particular interest in constructing carbon–fluorine bonds stereoselectively—that is, attaching fluorine from a specific direction in space to create the needed fluorinated stereoisomer (“mirror image” form) of the target molecule. Stereoselective C–H fluorination has remained one of the most challenging synthetic transformations, and the limited approaches developed to date have relied on expensive specialty chemicals or complicated, multi-step procedures. Now, chemists at Scripps Research have developed a long-sought method to stereoselectively attach fluorine atoms to complex, drug-like molecules in a single step using cheap, readily available fluoride salts.