Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds of individual cells in specific patterns, the approach could allow futuristic robotics to alter their mechanical properties and functionalities on the fly.

A reconstruction of temperature in Colombia during the Pliocene, when CO2 levels were similar to today, suggests that parts of the tropics might soon experience more dramatic warming than previously expected.

Every particle in our universe seems to fit strictly into two categories: bosonic or fermion. Why are there no others? Two new papers have, for the first time, identified and described the theoretical properties of one-dimensional anyons, particles that are neither fermionic nor bosonic, and provide the ‘recipe’ for observing these enigmatic particles using present-day experimental setups. Their work opens an exciting new path to improving our understanding of the fundamental properties of the quantum world.

Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers identified an ongoing merger event of at least five galaxies about 800 million years after the Big Bang, along with evidence that the collision was redistributing heavy elements beyond the galaxies themselves. Before JWST, astronomers expected complex galaxy mergers and widespread enrichment by oxygen and other products of stellar fusion to become common well over a billion years after the Big Bang. This discovery shows those processes were already underway far earlier than models predicted.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have reported a breakthrough in nickel catalysis that harnesses a rare oxidation state of nickel that has proved challenging to control yet is highly valued for its potential to facilitate important chemical reactions.

An international team of scientists has unlocked a formula that enables vines to search for and attach to host plants—rapid elongation, directional movement, and the production of specialized contacting cells—and identified the gene family that engineers this formula. 

Using a pioneering method they developed to directly measure viscosity in a group of cells, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have made a surprising discovery that upends understanding of how cells move.