The properties of human cells are determined by their mechanical environment, which they sense when they make contact with it. A new study shows how cells adhere to surfaces presenting heterogeneous nanomechanical environments.

A quantum system can jump into its ground state by emitting a photon. Now, scientists produce a superposition of ground and excited states by just measuring the emitted light.

Ensuring efficient pedestrian streams through transit corridors such as subway hallways is a problem of significant relevance to many cities. By modeling self-driven particles, scientists show that modulating the shape of a hallway’s walls might help to separate opposite pedestrian flows.

Casimir and van der Waals forces, induced by dipolar fluctuations, are commonplace, and now a new study shows that fluctuations induced by monopolar charges can create similar or stronger forces in solid-state devices.

The transition that an amorphous solid undergoes to become a fluid flow is central to many real-world applications such as landslides and earthquakes. Now, researchers model the stability of amorphous solids in three and four dimensions.

Cerenkov radiation is ubiquitous in a range of applications from nuclear reactors to biological imaging. New work shows that the quantum attributes of the charged particles result in important changes to the traditional Cerenkov theory.

Double-layer capacitors can be used to harness wind and solar energy, and now new measurements reveals the electrical double-layer structure of silica-electrolyte interfaces that controls capacitance.

A robot group clusters together or disperses based on each robot’s reaction time for sensing light, a finding useful for search-and-rescue missions.

Many biological molecules exhibit rare events such as protein folding between long-lived states. A new approach allows the kinetics of these rare events to be efficiently simulated with readily achievable computational times.

Foams contain suspended bubbles and are therefore susceptible to degradation over time. Scientists show how a “suit of armor” that coats individual bubbles can stabilize them.

Light-emitting diodes are in widespread use in both commercial and residential settings. New research shows that applying a small magnetic field to some devices can boost their luminescence efficiency.

Rotation is a ubiquitous concept in physics. A new approach shows how the concept of angular momentum spread among many particles can be simplified and approximated.

Tests of the standard model of particle physics rely on measurements with highly polarized electron beams. A new instrument achieves the highest known precision for determining the beam polarization of low-energy (~1 GeV) electron beams.

A fluid consisting of solid particles that is confined within a narrow channel undergoes changes in, for example, its thermodynamic properties. Researchers investigate the density fluctuations and isothermal compressibilities of spherical silica particles suspended in a solvent that is subjected to nanoscopic confinement.

Complex ensembles of multiple components are found in many biological systems, such as brains. Researchers model a population of oscillators acting like firing neurons to study the onset of irregular collective dynamics.

Quasicrystals are a class of materials that exhibit long-range order but no periodicity. A study of topological transport in quasicrystals shows that, surprisingly, a two-dimensional photonic quasicrystal exhibits a topological insulating phase.

Reducing the time necessary for experimental measurements allows more data to be obtained, which in turn leads to a more sensitive result. A roughly twofold speedup in differentiating between two charge states of a point defect in diamond is demonstrated, which could substantially facilitate the detection of small magnetic fields.

Researchers study oscillating quartz crystals to search for physics not explained by the standard model, and they recover results that are 6 orders of magnitude more precise than any previous laboratory experiment.

Estimating errors is a fundamental component of science. Researchers present a new framework for quantifying uncertainties associated with nuclear interactions for low-mass nuclei.

Cryptographic science and lotteries both rely on the generation of random numbers. Researchers demonstrate a photonic setup that can reliably generate random numbers.

Drawing inferences from data is at the heart of many fields of science. A new kind of data analysis, free of assumptions from underlying models, is proposed and its use demonstrated on weather data.

Error correction by feedback is crucial in quantum computation, and an experiment now shows that two such methods can be integrated in a nested feedback protocol to obtain the best properties of both.

String breaking refers to flux strings breaking, resulting in the production of particle-antiparticle pairs. Now, investigators quantitatively analyze the real-time evolution of string breaking and study the growth of the system entanglement.

Unconditionally secure communication between remote parties has many applications in finance and industry. Now, a quantum key distribution network spread over a metropolitan area is shown to be secure against untrustworthy relays.

The frequency of a laser based on trapped ultracold atoms can be made insensitive to fluctuations in the laser cavity’s length.

The emission from a polariton laser shows the coherence that is common to conventional lasers, a step toward using them as high-efficiency alternative light sources.

Simulations show that the interface between two perovskite oxides can be a much stronger ferroelectric than either oxide on its own.

An electric field can launch shock waves that create a fast and nonvolatile resistivity change in transition-metal oxides.

The metal-insulator transition is an important aspect of quantum mechanics. Using lattice models populated with Dirac electrons, researchers present a numerically exact investigation of this transition.

Natural systems such as the brain and the heart can occasionally switch to harmful patterns. Now, researchers suggest a new mechanism for these changes with the goal of better predicting what modulates pattern switchings.

A new quantum device uses a superconducting circuit to monitor a 2D gas of electrons floating on the surface of superfluid helium.

Light-mediated interactions are commonplace in both the laboratory and nature, and now researchers show how to harness them to generate and sustain large-scale quantum entanglement in extended networks of qubits.

A variety of linelike structures in orientationally ordered materials are identified by researchers as umbilic lines, a natural set of geometric singularities that reveal the topological structure of these materials.

$U(1)$ quantum spin liquids represent quantum phases of matter associated with different electric and magnetic particles. A theoretical study shows how these phases can be distinguished in the presence of time-reversal symmetry.

An analysis of data spanning 29 orders of magnitude in gravitational-wave frequency provides insights into the physics of the early cosmos.

Multiple interaction layers are a fact of life in real-world networks. Scientists model how well networks can be represented using superpositions of layers assembled using either AND or OR logic.

Studies of molecular motors and their cargo moving within cells have revealed that they can be trapped for long periods of times. Researchers show that this trapping can occur when the motors encounter intersections of cytoskeletal filaments within cells.