By studying a bacterium responsible for a severe heart infection, the scientists show that disrupting bacterial communication can be associated with adverse clinical outcomes. Published in Nature Communications, these findings open the door to more targeted – and potentially more effective – therapeutic strategies against this type of infection. A team from NTU’s SCELSE (Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences and Engineering), a multidisciplinary biofilm and microbiome research centre, and UNIGE’s Faculty of Medicine is challenging a widely held assumption in infectious disease research: that blocking bacterial communication is always beneficial. Scientists found that when Enterococcus faecalis can no longer communicate with neighbouring bacteria, it forms larger, more resilient biofilms on heart valves, resulting in more severe clinical outcomes.

Qubits combine two states at the same time - but quantum physics allows much more: A new experiment now shows how photons with four quantum states can be entangled and processed reliably, opening a path to more compact and efficient photonic quantum technologies.

Recent research reveals that engineered microstructures within piezoelectric electrospun fibers, combined with piezoelectric enhancement strategies, are unlocking unprecedented therapeutic potential for tissue regeneration. Researchers from the Li Zhou team at Tsinghua University have pioneered a comprehensive review revealing how piezoelectric electrospun fibers harness mechanical energy to generate bioelectric signals, thereby accelerating tissue regeneration. This review presents a novel and systematic analysis of integrated multidimensional approaches to enhance piezoelectric performance in electrospun fibers. Additionally, various methods for generating electrical signals within these fibers are detailed, along with their diverse applications in tissue engineering.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have now discovered for the first time that large blackwater lakes in the extensive peatlands of the central Congo Basin are releasing ancient carbon.  To date, climate researchers had assumed that carbon was stored safely for millenia in the peat. How the carbon is mobilised from the peat to the lake, where it is finally released to the atmosphere, is still unknown. Climate changes and altered land use, especially the conversion of forest to cropland, could exacerbate this trend – with consequences for the global climate.