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Scientists discover new gatekeeper cell in the brain

VIB and Ghent University researchers have identified and characterized a previously unknown cellular barrier in the brain, which sheds new light on how the brain is protected from the rest of the body. In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, the scientists also reveal a new pathway by which the immune system can impact the brain.

Prof. Roosmarijn Vandenbroucke (VIB–UGent Center for Inflammation Research), said, “These findings reveal how vulnerable and protectable the brain is, opening new perspectives for more targeted interventions in brain disorders.”

The brain is protected from the rest of the body by multiple barriers that maintain a stable, tightly regulated environment and defend it against harmful substances and pathogens. The most well-known of these barriers is the blood-brain barrier, but another critical interface is the choroid plexus, a small structure found within the brain’s fluid-filled spaces, which produces cerebrospinal fluid.

Major earthquakes are just as random as smaller ones

For obvious reasons, it would be useful to predict when an earthquake is going to occur. It has long been suspected that large quakes in the Himalayas follow a fairly predictable cycle, but nature, as it turns out, is not so accommodating. A new study published in the journal Science Advances shows that massive earthquakes are just as random as small ones. A team of researchers led by Zakaria Ghazoui-Schaus at the British Antarctic Survey reached this conclusion after analyzing sediments from Lake Rara in Western Nepal.

The team extracted a 4-meter-long tube from the bottom of the lake and identified 50 sediment layers spanning 6,000 years. Whenever a major quake shakes the region, underwater landslides create layers of sediment called turbidites. These deposits are characterized by coarse materials that settle first, followed by sand, then silt and finally clay. Each layer is essentially a snapshot of an individual earthquake, although they can also result from floods and slope failures.

To confirm that these layers were caused by quakes, the team compared them with modern records and computer models. They concluded that only a quake of magnitude 6.5 or higher could trigger underwater landslides. Radiocarbon dating of organic material within each layer revealed roughly when each of the major quakes occurred.

Gravitational lensing technique unveils supermassive black hole pairs

Supermassive black hole binaries form naturally when galaxies merge, but scientists have only confidently observed a very few of these systems that are widely separated. Black hole binaries that closely orbit each other have not yet been measured. In a paper published today in Physical Review Letters, the researchers suggest hunting down the hidden systems by searching for repeating flashes of light from individual stars lying behind the black holes as they are temporarily magnified by gravitational lensing as the binary orbits.

Supermassive black holes reside at the centers of most galaxies. When two galaxies collide and merge, their central black holes eventually form a bound pair, known as a supermassive black hole binary. These systems play a crucial role in galaxy evolution and are among the most powerful sources of gravitational waves in the universe. While future space-based gravitational-wave observatories like LISA will be able to probe such binaries directly, researchers are now showing that they may already be detectable using existing and upcoming electromagnetic surveys.

New 3D printing ink uses 70% lignin and recycles with water

Additive manufacturing (AM) methods, such as 3D printing, enable the realization of objects with different geometric properties, by adding materials layer-by-layer to physically replicate a digital model. These methods are now widely used to rapidly create product prototypes, as well as components for vehicles, consumer goods and medical technologies.

A particularly effective AM technique, called direct ink writing (DIW), entails the 3D printing of objects at room temperature using inks with various formulations. Most of these inks are based on fossil-derived polymers, materials that are neither recyclable nor biodegradable. Recently introduced lignin-derived inks could be a more sustainable alternative. However, they typically need to be treated at high heat or undergo permanent chemical bonding processes to reliably support 3D printing. This prevents them from being re-utilized after objects are printed, limiting their sustainability.

Photonic integrated circuits enable programmable non-Abelian ‘braiding’ of light states

A research team has successfully implemented a programmable spinor lattice on a photonic integrated circuit (PIC). This platform enables the realization of non-Abelian physics, in which the outcome of operations depends on their sequence, within an integrated photonic system.

Through this achievement, the research team led by Prof. Sunkyu Yu and Prof. Namkyoo Park of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in collaboration with Prof. Xianji Piao of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Seoul and Prof. Jensen Li of the University of Exeter (UK), demonstrates that the operating principles of topological qubits can be classically emulated, and further propose the possibility of realizing novel topological physical phenomena that differ from previously known implementations.

The results of this study were published in Physical Review Letters.

The insect-inspired bionic eye that sees, smells and guides robots

The compound eyes of the humble fruit fly are a marvel of nature. They are wide-angle and can process visual information several times faster than the human eye. Inspired by this biological masterpiece, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an insect-scale compound eye that can both see and smell, potentially improving how drones and robots navigate complex environments and avoid obstacles.

Traditional cameras on robots and drones may excel at capturing high-definition photos, but struggle with a narrow field of view and limited peripheral vision. They also tend to be bulky and power-hungry.

A microfluidic chip monitors gases using integrated, motionless pumps

A new microscale gas chromatography system integrates all fluidic components into a single chip for the first time. The design leverages three Knudsen pumps that move gas molecules using heat differentials to eliminate the need for valves, according to a new University of Michigan Engineering study published in Microsystems & Nanoengineering. The monolithic gas sampling and analysis system, or monoGSA system for short, could offer reliable, low-cost monitoring for industrial chemical or pharmaceutical synthesis, natural gas pipelines, or even at-home air quality.

Gas chromatography has long been considered the gold standard for measuring and quantifying volatile organic compounds—gases emitted from industrial processes, fuels, household products and more. Recently, micro gas chromatography miniaturized the technology to briefcase-size or smaller, bringing gas analysis from the laboratory to the source.

Most micro gas chromatography systems use pumps and valves to move gas molecules from an input port to a preconcentrator, which extracts and concentrates samples, then from the preconcentrator to a column for chemical separation, and then to the detector and finally to an exhaust port. Up to this point, pumps and valves have been fabricated and assembled separately, which increases device size, assembly cost and risk of failure at connection points.

Silicon metasurfaces boost optical image processing with passive intensity-based filtering

Of the many feats achieved by artificial intelligence (AI), the ability to process images quickly and accurately has had an especially impressive impact on science and technology. Now, researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have found a way to improve the efficiency and capability of machine vision and AI diagnostics using optical systems instead of traditional digital algorithms.

Mark Lawrence, an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering, and doctoral student Bo Zhao developed this approach to achieve efficient processing performance without high energy consumption. Typically, all-optical image processing is highly constrained by the lack of nonlinearity, which usually requires high light intensities or external power, but the new method uses nanostructured films called metasurfaces to enhance optical nonlinearity passively, making it practical for everyday use.

Their work shows the ability to filter images based on light intensity, potentially making all-optical neural networks more powerful without using additional energy. Results of the research were published online in Nano Letters on Jan. 21, 2026.

Nanolaser on a chip could cut computer energy use in half

Researchers at DTU have developed a nanolaser that could be the key to much faster and much more energy-efficient computers, phones, and data centers. The technology offers the prospect of thousands of the new lasers being placed on a single microchip, thus opening a digital future where data is no longer transmitted using electrical signals, but using light particles, photons. The invention has been published in the journal Science Advances.

“The nanolaser opens up the possibility of creating a new generation of components that combine high performance with minimal size. This could be in information technology, for example, where ultra-small and energy-efficient lasers can reduce energy consumption in computers, or in the development of sensors for the health care sector, where the nanolaser’s extreme light concentration can deliver high-resolution images and ultrasensitive biosensors,” says DTU professor Jesper Mørk, who co-authored the paper together with, among others, Drs. Meng Xiong and Yi Yu from DTU Electro.

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