Controlled manipulation of the fibers that are as thin as or even thinner than human hair is a real challenge. Despite the technology development, the precise and reversible change of the microfibers' orientation, like the tweezers, is not easy. The interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, has recently developed a way to control the shape of microfibers with electricity. This brings us closer to a novel technical solution in micromechanics and soft robotics. Their recent work, published in the Nature Communications journal, demonstrates the first proof-of-concept results on the motion of pristine carbon fibers caused by asymmetric electrochemical processes occurring in the material.

On 2 July, 2025, the China-led Einstein Probe (EP) space telescope detected an exceptionally bright X-ray source whose brightness varied rapidly during a routine sky survey. Its unusual signal immediately set it apart from ordinary cosmic sources, triggering rapid follow-up observations by telescopes worldwide.

This research was coordinated by the EP Science Center of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), with participation from multiple research institutions in China and abroad. Astrophysicists from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), who are integral members of the EP scientific team, worked together with the broader collaboration to interpret the event, proposing that it may mark the moment when an intermediate-mass black hole tears apart and consumes a white dwarf star. If confirmed, this would be the first observational evidence of such an extreme black hole “feeding” process. The findings have been published as a cover article in Science Bulletin.

Constructed with tubulin heterodimers connected into a hollow cylinder, the microtubule, an essential component of the cytoskeleton, plays a vital role in various intracellular processes. In a groundbreaking study, a cross-disciplinary research team led by Professor Yuan Lin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, and Professor Jeff Ti from the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has revealed how the biological function of microtubules is achieved through mechanical regulation at the tubulin level.

A high-level scientific panel moderated by the Financial Times titled: “How the human exposome will unlock better health and medicine”, gathers three leaders of the Global Exposome Forum from the United States and Europe, to brief delegates from the global scientific community on progress made since its launch in Washington D.C. in May, 2025.

High-entropy alloys are promising advanced materials for demanding applications, but discovering useful compositions is difficult and expensive due to the vast number of possible element combinations. Now, researchers have developed a novel AI-driven framework that integrates experimental data, computational modeling, and cross-disciplinary expert knowledge extracted from scientific literature. By combining these sources in a way that accounts for uncertainty, their approach can make reliable predictions even for poorly studied alloy compositions, outperforming conventional data-driven machine learning methods that rely on training data alone.