The study also identifies the chemical compounds present in acorns, which could help determine which are best for consumption, thus boosting the consumption of an underutilized and undervalued food

Researchers have developed a new tool, FibrilPaint combined with the FibrilRuler test, that allows scientists to directly measure the length of toxic Tau amyloid fibrils in tiny fluid samples, from the earliest aggregation stages to mature fibrils and even at very low concentrations. Because Tau fibrils are tightly linked to Alzheimer’s and other dementias, yet have been extremely difficult to quantify in solution, this “molecular ruler” represents a major advance. It works in complex, patient-derived samples and selectively recognizes amyloid fibrils from several neurodegenerative diseases, enabling far more precise studies of how these fibrils grow, break, and respond to potential drugs and, in the longer term, could underpin new diagnostic tools or biomarkers that track disease progression or treatment response via fibril length.

Weyl semimetals, hosting chiral Weyl fermions with momentum-locked spin textures, offer a promising platform for developing quantum information technologies based on chiral degrees of freedom. Recently, Professor Dong Sun’s group at Peking University demonstrated selective injection of chiral Weyl fermions in the magnetic Weyl semimetal Co₃Sn₂S₂ using circularly polarized mid-infrared light through a third-order nonlinear optical process under a static electric field. By tuning both the external electric field and the ferromagnetic order, they achieved flexible and reversible control of chiral optical responses. Helicity-dependent photocurrent measurements revealed strong mid-infrared chiral signals, including wavelength-dependent sign reversals associated with imbalanced excitation of oppositely polarized Weyl fermions, confirming their Weyl-cone origin. This work highlights the exceptional tunability of magnetic Weyl semimetals for chiral regulation and establishes a foundation for future quantum devices based on chiral information carriers. The study was published in National Science Review (2025), with the School of Physics at Peking University as the first affiliation; Zipu Fan is the first author, and Professors Dong Sun, Jinluo Cheng, and Enke Liu are the corresponding authors.

An international team of researchers led by The University of New Mexico set out to understand how these mature faults break during massive seismic events, focusing on a long-debated phenomenon known as the “shallow slip deficit.” In many earthquakes, the surface shifts far less than the rocks deep underground, leaving scientists to question whether the missing energy is absorbed by surrounding rock or simply unmeasured. By analyzing the 2025 Myanmar earthquake, the team aimed to determine how a simple, ancient fault system releases energy, and whether that energy reaches the surface.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists has uncovered new evidence showing that the health impacts of the Industrial Revolution varied more widely across England than previously believed. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, challenge the longstanding narrative that industrial cities were uniformly polluted while rural communities remained comparatively untouched during the rise of polluting industries. 

Harvard atmospheric scientists directly sampled 5-day old wildfire smoke in the upper troposphere and found large particles that are not reflected in current climate models.