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A missing link in how the brain regulates appetite

Bile acids at the center of hepato-ocular crosstalk.

Hepatic dysfunction with ocular pathology has been linked to dysregulated bile acid metabolism.

Bile acid imbalance has been shown to drive ocular injury along the gut-liver-eye axis through direct cytotoxicity, disruption of retinal and lens homeostasis mediated by FXR and TGR5 signaling, and immune activation and these mechanisms are implicated across a spectrum of conditions, ranging from inborn metabolic disorders to acquired cholestatic diseases.

The researchers in this review discuss translational potential of targeting bile acid homeostasis and summarize emerging therapeutic strategies, including bile acid-based interventions, targeted drug delivery, and microbiome modulation, that aim to restore systemic bile acid balance.

Thus, bile acid homeostasis act as a unifying therapeutic framework for hepato-ocular comorbidities. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Hepato-ocular-crosstalk

Health sciences.

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AI + Synthetic Biology: The Most Transformative Technology in Human History | Ben Lamm (Colossal)

This episode was filmed at the 2026 Abundance360 Summit.

This interview explores the groundbreaking work of Colossal in synthetic biology, de-extinction, and AI integration. Colossal CEO Ben Lamm explains how the company is revolutionizing biodiversity preservation, tackling plastic pollution, and creating living products with immense potential.

Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else — https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends.

Ben Lamm is Co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences

Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is the Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University, ZeroG, and A360.

Chapters:

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Reducing Wires in Quantum Computers

A wire-sharing protocol can minimize the number of wires in a quantum processor without significantly reducing speed, a new theoretical study shows.

As quantum computers continue to grow in size, one of the bottlenecks is the number of control wires that need to be connected to the quantum bits (qubits). A new theoretical study explores so-called time multiplexing, where one wire controls several qubits [1]. The researchers found that although this strategy requires extra processing time, the delays are less than expected, in part because control signals can be scheduled when certain qubits are busy with computations. The results could spur development of the electronic switches needed for time multiplexing in superconducting quantum computers.

Many state-of-the-art quantum computers consist of 100 or more superconducting qubits that operate inside dilution refrigerators at temperatures near absolute zero. Photos of these devices often show a tall, shiny column filled with dozens and dozens of connected wires—which might be mistaken for the qubits. Instead, these wires carry microwave signals from the room-temperature electronics that control the quantum processors to the micrometer-sized qubits inside the cryogenic refrigerator. The number of control wires can limit increases in the sizes of quantum computers. “You would like to have one wire going down to each qubit,” says Anton Frisk Kockum from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. “But that takes up a lot of space and brings heat into the fridge.”

Using atomic nuclei could allow scientists to read time more precisely than ever

Most clocks, from wristwatches to the systems that run GPS and the internet, work by tracking regular, repeating motions.

To build a clock, you need something that ticks in a perfectly repeatable way. In a pendulum clock, that tick is the regular swinging of the pendulum: back and forth, back and forth, at nearly the same rate each time.

Our team of physicists studies whether an even better kind of clock could one day be built from the atomic nucleus. Today’s best clocks already use atoms to keep extraordinarily accurate time. But in principle, a clock based on a nucleus—the tiny, dense core at the center of an atom—rather than an atom’s electrons, could keep a steadier rhythm because it would be less sensitive to environmental disturbances such as temperature changes. In our research, published in the journal Nature, we measured and interpreted a unique nuclear property of thorium-229 in a crystal that could help make such nuclear clocks possible.

Quantum simulations tackle photon polarization flip, but today’s hardware falls short

For the last 80 years, the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which describes all electromagnetic interactions, has been a cornerstone of the standard model, withstanding the scrutiny of countless experiments and agreeing with observations down to the smallest known precisions. Yet, some high-intensity scales of QED remain unexplored, prompting some to wonder if quantum computers could deal with these scales’ inherent complexity.

Physicists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are now testing quantum simulations of these so-called strong-field QED (SFQED) processes, recently translating several processes into the language of quantum computing. Their latest work introduces an innovative method for simulating an SFQED process known as polarization flip on a quantum computer, setting a new benchmark for quantum simulations of high-energy phenomena. The research was published in Physical Review D on March 9, 2026.

3D-printing electronics with focused microwaves redefines possibilities in materials

In a recently published paper in Science Advances, a team led by Rice University’s Yong Lin Kong describes a new 3D-printing process with focused microwaves that overcomes a fundamental constraint of electronics 3D printing that has limited the field’s potential for more than a decade: the inability to heat printed ink—a crucial processing step—without damaging the materials underneath.

The ability to integrate functional materials and spatially program their properties governs both device performance and the limits of what can be built. Existing manufacturing approaches are fundamentally limited in both respects. Electronic components, for instance, are fabricated in massive, centralized foundries, often decoupled from the final device. Integrating them requires complex, labor-intensive assembly that constrains both the form and the function of what can ultimately be created.

Multimaterial 3D printing should, in principle, allow fabrication of free-form architectures in which electronic and mechanical properties are programmed directly into the structure. However, the thermal processing required to render printed electronic inks functional destroys the very materials these devices require.

Next-generation atomic clock successfully tested at sea

Adelaide University researchers have successfully tested a new type of portable atomic clock at sea for the first time, using technology that could help power the next generation of navigation, communications and scientific systems. The research team, from the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS), developed the highly precise device and trialed it aboard a vessel provided by the Royal Australian Navy in July 2024. They have reported their findings in a new paper published in the journal Optica.

Atomic clocks are the world’s most accurate timekeepers and are essential for technologies such as GPS navigation, telecommunications networks and radio astronomy. However, most high-performance atomic clocks operate in carefully controlled laboratory environments and are not designed to be easily transported or used in challenging real-world conditions. The newly developed device changes that.

Photonics researchers created a portable optical atomic clock that uses laser-cooled atoms of the element ytterbium to keep time with extreme precision. By cooling the atoms with lasers and measuring a very specific atomic transition, the clock can track time far more accurately than conventional systems.

A ‘blob’ in a tank is helping scientists tease out the secrets of turbulence

In a tank on the bottom floor of a University of Chicago research laboratory, scientists summon “The Blob” into existence by firing water jets to create an artfully choreographed series of rings.

First created three years ago in the laboratory of UChicago Prof. William Irvine, in collaboration with graduate student Takumi Matsuzawa, The Blob is one of the only ways that researchers can study the strange properties of turbulence —the chaotic swirling of fluids such as air and water—in its purest form: stationary in a lab and isolated from boundaries.

Turbulence is a bit of a paradox. It governs everything from the movements of ocean currents and hurricane clouds to the swirling of cream in your coffee and blood in your veins. But as widespread as it is, turbulence has been fiendishly difficult for scientists to understand, compared with most other everyday physics phenomena.

Copper blasted into a million-degree plasma strips away 22 electrons in a flash before atoms recover

When laser flashes hit matter, electrons are knocked off their orbits around the atomic nuclei. This can generate extremely hot plasmas composed of charged particles—ions and electrons. Researchers at HZDR have now observed this ionization process in more detail than ever before. To do so, they combined two state-of-the-art lasers: the X-ray free-electron laser and the high-intensity optical laser ReLaX at the HED-HiBEF experiment station at the European XFEL in Schenefeld, near Hamburg. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, deliver fundamental insights into the interaction of high-energy lasers and matter under extreme conditions.

Ionization takes place extremely quickly—in picoseconds, within a few trillionths of seconds. In order to monitor this process in detail, laser pulses must be significantly shorter. “These are exactly the conditions provided by the two lasers that have pulse durations of just 25 and 30 femtoseconds—that is, trillionths of a second,” explains Dr. Lingen Huang, head of experimentation in HZDR’s Division of High-Energy Density.

Initially, an extremely intense flash of light strikes a delicate copper wire that is only about one-seventh the thickness of a human hair. The pulse intensity is approximately 250 trillion megawatts per square centimeter—concentrated on a tiny surface for an extremely short time. Values like this are otherwise achieved only under exceptional conditions, such as in extreme astrophysical environments like the immediate vicinity of neutron stars or during gamma-ray bursts.

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