Eastern Africa’s Turkana Rift is both a hotbed for fossil discoveries of our earliest ancestors and a literal hotbed of volcanic activity caused by shifting tectonic plates. Now researchers have found that Earth’s underlying crust in the region has been significantly thinned, presaging Africa’s eventual breakup—and with that finding, the researchers offer a new perspective on how Turkana’s world-famous fossil record of human evolution came to be.

Just as wave-like patterns can appear on computer screen when pixels do not align, new research led by Flinders University is investigating atomic-scale ‘moiré patterns’ in the promising field of ferroelectricity.

The new study, with experts at Monash University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, seeks inroads into electrical and optical science by exploring these complex ‘superlattice’ patterns in various ways to create new energy and material capabilities.