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Phagocytosis and neuroinflammation: orchestrating central nervous system homeostasis, repair, and the resolution of inflammation

Brain phagocytosis and neuroinflammation.

Phagocytes in the central nervous system (CNS), including astrocytes, microglia, and macrophages, shape development and homeostasis by pruning synapses and removing apoptotic debris.

Phagocytosis is mediated by various ligand–receptor dyads and signaling pathways, enabling CNS phagocytes to respond to neuroimmune shifts across the lifespan and during pathology.

Phagocytosis pathways regulate recovery in various models of CNS pathology, including multiple sclerosis, CNS injury, ischemic stroke, and age-associated neurodegeneration.

Phagocytosis pathways are intimately integrated with the inflammatory cell state and remove viable cells in pathology-adjacent tissue, highlighting the complexity of targeting these systems.

To maximize benefit and minimize off target damage, new phagocytic-based approaches should optimize drug delivery timing and location, tailored to each CNS pathology. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/resolution-of-inflammation

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Building a National Quantum Strategy

Andrea Damascelli has always been fascinated by light. He uses it to probe materials on an atomic level, and his observations have contributed to the condensed-matter community’s understanding of high-temperature superconductors and quantum materials. His research group at the University of British Columbia (UBC) uses time-, spin-, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, an intricate technique that maps the energy and velocity of electrons as they propagate through materials.

In 2015, Damascelli spearheaded efforts that brought one of the first Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) grants to UBC’s Quantum Matter Institute. As the institute’s scientific director, he found himself at the helm of a full-blown research center—hiring faculty, expanding staff, and upgrading facilities. A few months later, he received a special request from Canada’s National Research Council: join leaders from across Canada’s quantum ecosystem to advise on a strategy for growing the country’s quantum community as a whole.

Physics Magazine chatted with Damascelli as he looked back on the beginning of Canada’s first National Quantum Strategy (NQS) and looked forward to developing a self-sustaining quantum research and training powerhouse.

Organocatalytic strategy provides a metal-free route to antiviral candidates

A research team led by Prof. Sun Jianwei has achieved an advancement in organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry by developing an air-stable chiral phosphine-catalyzed enantioselective approach to synthesize enantioenriched S(IV)-stereogenic vinyl sulfinamides—an under-explored class of organosulfur compounds with promising antiviral activity.

The importance of chiral-at-sulfur compounds in drug discovery and organic synthesis is indisputable. More than a quarter of top-selling small molecule pharmaceuticals contain sulfur atoms, and chiral sulfinamides bearing S(IV) chirality are key building blocks for medicinal chemistry, asymmetric synthesis auxiliaries, and catalytic ligands. However, current methods to access enantioenriched sulfinamides rely on transition metal catalysis with organometallic nucleophiles, and efficient organocatalytic strategies have long remained unexplored, creating a critical gap in synthetic chemistry for this valuable chemical space.

To address this challenge, Prof. Sun’s team published a study in Nature Chemistry detailing the design and synthesis of a novel C₂-symmetric chiral phosphine catalyst—QianPhos—derived from the SPHENOL chiral skeleton. This custom catalyst exhibits extraordinary air stability and structural rigidity, which enables highly chemo-, enantio-, and diastereoselective C−S bond formation via a [3+2] annulation between Morita–Baylis–Hillman (MBH) esters and sulfinylamines.

Silicon nanospheres boost WS₂ second-harmonic generation 40-fold while preserving polarization

A research team has demonstrated that silicon nanospheres can strongly enhance second-harmonic generation (SHG) from an atomically thin semiconductor while preserving the circular polarization information tied to its valley degree of freedom. The study, published in Nano Letters, provides design guidelines for efficient, polarization-preserving nonlinear light sources at the nanoscale.

SHG is a nonlinear optical process that converts light to twice its original frequency. Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) such as tungsten disulfide (WS2) possess valley-dependent optical selection rules that link circular polarization directly to the electronic valley index, making the SHG polarization state a direct readout of valley information.

To harness the valley degree of freedom as an information carrier in valleytronics, it is essential to enhance the SHG signal while preserving its circular polarization. However, the atomic-scale thickness of monolayer TMDs severely limits conversion efficiency, and previous approaches using nanostructures to boost the signal have disrupted the valley-polarization information—a dilemma of “enhance the signal, lose the polarization.”

Hearing research traces evolution of key inner ear protein

In the intricate machinery of the inner ear, hearing begins with a protein that moves a few billionths of a meter up to 100,000 times per second. That protein, called TMC1, sits at the tips of sensory hair cells deep in the snail-shaped cochlea. When sound waves move these microscopic hairs, TMC1 acts as a channel, opening and allowing charged particles to flow into the cell and trigger an electrical signal to the brain.

Without TMC1, that signal never starts. Mutations in the TMC1 gene are a well-known cause of hereditary hearing loss in humans. Because of this central role, TMC1 is an attractive target for researchers designing gene therapies aimed at restoring hearing. Several groups are testing ways to supply working copies of the gene or fix harmful mutations.

For these efforts to be safe and effective, scientists need to know in detail how TMC1 is built, how it opens, and which parts of the protein are most sensitive to change. However, the hair-cell system that includes TMC1 is so complex, sensitive, and hard to access that it is notoriously difficult to take apart and study directly.

‘Cool’ detectors cut neutrino mass upper limit by an order of magnitude

Their mass is extremely low, but how light are neutrinos really? A collaboration comprising German and international research groups has optimized its experiments to determine the mass of these “ghost particles.” In doing so, they succeeded in further adjusting downward the upper limit on the neutrino mass scale that had previously been determined in similar experiments. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

As part of the “Electron Capture in Ho-163 Experiment” (ECHo), the researchers are using the isotope Holmium-163 (Ho-163), whose decay processes allow for conclusions on the neutrino mass. According to ECHo spokesperson Prof. Dr. Loredana Gastaldo, a scientist at Heidelberg University’s Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, the current results verify that even larger-scale investigations will be feasible in future to get even closer to the mass of neutrinos and ultimately precisely determine it.

Neutrinos are elementary particles with extremely low mass that have no electrical charge. Because their interaction with matter is very weak, the properties of these “ghost particles” are very difficult to determine. This is especially true for the neutrino mass, which has yet to be precisely measured, with only its upper limit being known. According to Gastaldo, determining the mass could pave the way for new theoretical models beyond the standard model of particle physics and thereby contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of our universe.

JWST reveals most distant red galaxy yet at redshift 11.45

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a new red galaxy at a redshift of approximately 11.45. The newfound galaxy, which received designation EGS-z11-R0, turns out to be the most distant red galaxy detected to date. The discovery was detailed in a paper published March 18 on the arXiv pre-print server.

High-redshift galaxies (with redshifts above 10.0) identified by JWST, therefore when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, are predominantly characterized by extremely blue rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) slopes. This is due to the fact that they are composed of very young, massive stars that emit intense UV light, with minimal dust attenuation.

However, recent observations have revealed the existence of a small population of high-redshift red galaxies, therefore exhibiting significantly redder UV continua. It is assumed that these galaxies are already full of dust and mature stars.

Webb and Hubble share the most comprehensive view of Saturn to date

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Observing in complementary wavelengths of light, the two space observatories provide scientists with a richer, more layered understanding of the gas giant’s atmosphere.

Both sense sunlight reflected from Saturn’s banded clouds and hazes, but where Hubble reveals subtle color variations across the planet, Webb’s infrared view senses clouds and chemicals at many different depths in the atmosphere, from the deep clouds to the tenuous upper atmosphere.

Together, scientists can effectively “slice” through Saturn’s atmosphere at multiple altitudes, like peeling back the layers of an onion. Each telescope tells a different part of Saturn’s story, and the observations together help researchers understand how Saturn’s atmosphere works as a connected three-dimensional system. Both complement previous observations done by NASA’s Cassini orbiter during its time studying the Saturnian system from 1997 to 2017.

DNA origami precisely positions single-photon emitters for quantum technologies

An international research team led by scientists from Skoltech has developed a method to position molecules on the surface of ultrathin materials with unprecedented precision using molecular DNA self-assembly, enabling the creation of quantum light sources. The results, published in the journal Light: Science & Applications, pave the way for the production of compact and efficient components for future quantum computers and secure communication networks.

Two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum disulfide are promising candidates for quantum light sources due to their ability to emit photons under laser excitation. However, until now, scientists have been unable to precisely control the location of emission centers—they emerged randomly upon ion beam irradiation or mechanical deformation of the material.

The authors of the study proposed a different approach. The research is based on the DNA origami method, which allows the construction of nanoscale objects of a specified shape from DNA molecules. Triangular structures measuring 127 nanometers were assembled, each carrying 18 thiol molecules. These structures were placed onto a silicon chip with a lithographic pattern. The positioning yield of each DNA origami structure at its designated location exceeded 90%, significantly surpassing the statistical limit of traditional single molecule deposition methods.

Asking AI to act like an expert can make it less reliable

To get the best out of AI, some users tell it to provide answers as if it were an expert. Others ask it to adopt a persona, such as a safety monitor, to guide its responses. However, this approach can sometimes hurt performance, according to a study available on the arXiv preprint server.

To see how well large language models (LLMs) behave when they are told to be someone else, researchers from the University of California ran a huge test using 12 different personas across six language models. These included experts in fields like math, coding and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) as well as general roles such as creative writer or safety monitor.

The team found that adopting a persona was something of a double-edged sword. While it makes AI sound more professional and keeps it safer (more likely to follow rules and less likely to generate harmful content), it sometimes performs worse at recalling facts.

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