Tag Archives: University of Oxford

Telling the story of Islam’s legacy (including the science) in a new way: Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC) in Uzbekistan

An August 24, 2026 Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC; in Uzbekistan) press release (also received by email) announces an international forum as part of the Center’s programming, which is aimed at enriching public perception of Islam, Note: The Center for Islamic Civilization opened in March 2026,

Up to 300 media representatives from 50 countries gather in Tashkent and Samarkand today for the start of the International Media Forum “Islamic Civilization: New Look – New Discoveries,” organized by the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan.

The Forum brings together global media, cinema, publishing, science and digital technology to present Islamic civilization’s contribution to human progress to international audiences in new and compelling ways – through the works of great scientists and thinkers, ancient manuscripts, unique artifacts, documentary films, publishing projects and artificial intelligence. Its aim is to make this heritage understood and valued by audiences worldwide.

The initiative builds on a proposal by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the UN General Assembly in 2017, to present Islam as a religion of peace, knowledge and tolerance. At a time when global media increasingly shape how societies understand one another, that idea carries particular international weight. The Forum sets out to show that the achievements of Islamic civilization – from Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Fergani and Ibn Sina [emphasis mine] to the intellectual and cultural legacy of the Timurid and Baburid eras – belong not to one region or religion alone, but to the shared heritage of humanity.

Participants include heads and representatives of 26 television and radio companies, 24 international publications, 14 newspapers, and five international media associations. CNN and Euronews are the Forum’s general media partners.

The programme combines plenary sessions and professional discussions, documentary screenings, presentations of international media and publishing projects, and meetings between journalists, directors, producers and publishers, alongside the signing of cooperation agreements. A central question running through the sessions is how to tell the story of historical and spiritual heritage in today’s language – through documentary filmmaking, television, publishing, museum technology, artificial intelligence, digital avatars and immersive formats.

Delegates will view the Center’s manuscript and artifact collections firsthand, record interviews, and identify subjects for future documentaries, books and digital projects. The programme also includes a visit to Samarkand – among other sites, the Imam al-Bukhari Memorial Complex and UNESCO World Heritage landmarks – timed alongside events marking the 35th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence.

Beyond showcasing existing work, the Forum is designed as a launchpad for new international partnerships – joint films, television programmes, books and digital media projects.

“The International Media Forum continues the initiative of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, voiced at the UN General Assembly in 2017, to reveal to the world the true humanistic essence of Islam – grounded in knowledge, enlightenment, peace and tolerance,” said Dr. Firdavs Abdukhalikov, Director General of the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan. “At the initiative of the head of state, extensive work is under way to study and preserve the legacy of great scientists and thinkers. Today, it is essential to tell that story in a modern language – through world media, cinema, books, digital technology and artificial intelligence. This is how the President’s vision translates into concrete international media projects reaching millions of people worldwide.”

The Forum marks a new stage in the Center’s long-term strategy: from informing the world about Uzbekistan to co-creating international content that reveals the country’s historical, scientific and cultural heritage through contemporary media.

A growing global network

The Center’s materials and projects have reached media in 65 countries, including 246 news items and sponsored features, seven full-length co-produced documentaries, 27 video projects, 23 television stories and more than 60 books.

The Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan initiates and sponsors a number of international media partnership projects aimed at promoting Uzbekistan’s cultural, historical and intellectual heritage on the global stage. With the Center’s sponsorship, Euronews and CNN have produced more than 25 television and digital features on its history, architecture and collections, and on the return of cultural treasures to Uzbekistan – reaching a combined television audience of over 400 million viewers. Further documentary and special projects have been produced with TRT World and TRT Avaz, while sponsored coverage of Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage has appeared on the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic. Cooperation with Al Jazeera Media Network is currently under discussion.

Among the Center’s flagship projects is the documentary series Echo of Enlightenment, featuring Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley, which traces the legacy of Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Fergani, Ibn Sina and other Central Asian scientists [emphases mine] alongside the cultural achievements of the Timurid and Baburid eras. Broadcast on the BBC, CNN and Euronews, the series has reached a combined audience of more than 418 million viewers, and one instalment, Whispers of Wisdom, has won international recognition including the official SILKFEST 26 award in Belgrade and the Terres Travel Festival in Tortosa, Catalonia.

The Tashkent and Samarkand Forum builds directly on this record – moving from individual media projects toward systematic cooperation with the world’s leading newsrooms, broadcasters, directors, producers and publishers, and the joint creation of new global media content on Islamic civilization.

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About the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan

Opened in March 2026, the Center for Islamic Civilization is located on the historical site of Shash, in the heart of Tashkent, next to the spiritual center of the capital, the Hazrati Imam complex. The three-story building measures 145 by 115 meters, and its central dome rises 65 meters.

The Center’s exposition is based on the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest surviving handwritten copies of the Quran in the world. The manuscript is included in the UNESCO Memory of the World program, dedicated to the preservation and promotion of documentary heritage of world importance.

The area of the main museum exposition is about 15,000 square meters; In addition, the complex includes a research center, digitization laboratories, as well as conservation and restoration workshops. Visitors will be able to see rare artifacts of different historical periods, returned from abroad, including those purchased at international auctions and from private collectors at the initiative of the President of Uzbekistan. The exposition also presents collections of museums from around the world and the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Promotion of the Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan (WOSCU). Interactive exhibitions tell about the outstanding achievements of the Islamic Golden Age in the fields of algebra, astronomy and medicine.

Even before the official opening, the Center received wide international recognition. In 2026, it was named one of the most beautiful museums in the world by the Prix Versailles, included by Smithsonian Magazine and BBC Travel in the list of the most anticipated new museums of the year, and also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest museum dedicated to Islamic civilization.

A December 29, 2025 news item (partner content: Tourism Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan) on Euro News highlights some of “Echo of Enlightenment’s|” science content, Note: All emphases are mine,

A new cultural project from Uzbekistan is challenging how the history of science is usually told. Known as Echo of Enlightenment, the initiative places Central Asian scholars back into a global narrative that often begins in Europe and skips several centuries of intellectual exchange along the way.

Led by the Center for Islamic Civilization in Tashkent, the project is part of a broader effort to present Uzbekistan not only as a historical crossroads, but as a birthplace of global ideas that continue to shape modern life – from algebra and astronomy to medicine and cartography.

…

At the centre of the project is a 10-part documentary series, each episode dedicated to a scholar or cultural figure from the Islamic Golden Age with connections to the territory of present-day Uzbekistan. The films combine dramatic reenactment, expert commentary, historical research and modern animation to explain complex ideas and bring the stories to life.

…

Among the featured figures are Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, whose work laid the foundations for algebra and algorithms; Ahmad al-Fergani, whose astronomical calculations later influenced explorers like Columbus; and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a polymath and early pioneer of fields such as geography and anthropology.

Another episode focuses on Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine remained a standard university text well into the early modern period.

The series also devotes significant attention to the Timurid era, often described by historians as Central Asia’s “Second Renaissance”. Viewers are introduced to figures such as Amir Timur, the first Timurid ruler who turned Samarkand into a centre of learning; Mirzo Ulugbek, the 15th-century astronomer whose calculations of the Earth’s year were among the most accurate of his time; and Ali Kushchi, who helped spread astronomical knowledge westward.

Cultural life is not neglected. Episodes on Alisher Navoi, Kamoliddin Behzad and Zahiriddin Muhammad Babur explore how literature, miniature painting and political leadership developed alongside scientific inquiry, reinforcing the idea that knowledge systems rarely exist in a vacuum.

One of the most visually striking instalments recreates Ulugbek’s 15th-century observatory and astronomy school in Samarkand, highlighting their influential role as beacons for scientific inquiry.

…

In doing so, Echo of Enlightenment makes a broader argument: that modern science emerged through centuries of cross-cultural exchange, not in isolation. For European audiences, the series offers a reminder that ideas long taught in Western universities often have roots further east.

Rather than nostalgia, the project presents continuity – a case for seeing Islamic civilization not as a closed chapter, but as an active contributor to the shared intellectual history of today’s world.

The Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC) in Uzbekhistan was previewed in a December 5, 2025 article by Rebecca Cairns for CNN (also a CISC partner), Note: Links have been removed,

Four times taller than the Hollywood sign and around seven times larger than the White House, Uzbekistan’s newest cultural center is a monument of epic proportions.

Part museum, part academic research facility, the three-story Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC) in Tashkent will be open to the public in March 2026, and is intended to celebrate and revive Uzbekistan’s historical role as a center of Islamic scholarship.

“This region has been home to many ancestors who influenced world civilization,” said Firdavs Abdukhalikov, director of CISC. “The big question was how to present their influence to the world, to younger generations, in an engaging and modern way.”

Over the past eight years, while the building was under construction, CISC engaged 1,500 specialists from more than 40 countries to help develop the center’s scientific, architectural and cultural elements.

For example, through an “interactive educational zone” that leverages virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence technologies for exhibits such as conversations with “living portraits” of historical scholars and thinkers, the center hopes to inspire children to explore astronomy, medicine, literature and art.

The second floor will be dedicated to research, where international academics can access more than 200,000 books in its library.

“It’s not just a museum — it’s a cultural and educational platform. Here, we don’t only engage with artifacts, but also with the lives and ideas of influential figures,” Abdukhalikov added.

Reviving the past

While Uzbekistan is a secular nation, Islam is a key part of its history and cultural identity.

Arab conquests brought Islam to Central Asia in the 7th century, replacing earlier Zoroastrian and Buddhist traditions, and between the 9th and 12th centuries, the region experienced a golden age of science, literature, and architecture.

Medieval Uzbekistan, and the wider Central Asian region, was “a globalized world before globalization,” said historian Farhan Ahmad Nizami, founding director of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, who’s not connected to the CISC.

Uzbek cities like Bukhara and Samarkand were important stops on the Silk Road, a cross-continental trade route that stretched from Venice to Xi’an for 1,500 years (130 BCE to 1453 CE), and became a confluence of culture and ideas from both the East and West.

“(Uzbekistan’s) contribution in science and arts is obvious, and now people are rediscovering it, although it had not received sufficient attention,” Nizami added.

Later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Timurid Empire would see a second renaissance of art, science, and diplomacy, with Samarkand at its center, an era that the CISC’s architecture draws inspiration from with its grand, mosaic-covered archways, blue tile-covered domes and intricate ornamentation.

The building, designed by Abdukakhkhor Turdiev, draws inspiration from classical Islamic architecture of Central Asia, particularly the Timurid era.

The building, designed by Abdukakhkhor Turdiev, draws inspiration from classical Islamic architecture of Central Asia, particularly the Timurid era.CNN

In the 19th century, Russian expansion saw many parts of Central Asia incorporated into the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, which imposed secular rule and suppressed Islamic practices.

“A significant portion of our cultural treasures left the country during the Soviet times,” says Abdukhalikov.

It wasn’t until 1991 that Uzbekistan regained independence and began reviving its Islamic heritage and cultural identity. To this end, CISC was given a directive to recover its historic items.

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There are criticisms of the center, relating to its cost, the sources of its funding, and the limited religious freedom in the country.

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Cairns’s December 5, 2025 article includes more information and many more embedded images of the stunning CISC.

You can find the Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC; also known as Islamic Civilization Center; ICC) here and its (Islamic Civilization Center) Wikipedia entry here.

I have three relatively recent stories about the influence Middle Eastern scientists have had on European science,

  • An April 22, 2025 posting: “Arabic manuscript containing lost works of Apollonius discussed in new book about Middle Eastern science (etc.) scholarship” about a hidden debt to Arabic and Muslim scientists such as Ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini
  • A July 9, 2025 posting: “Copernicus’ cosmological model strongly influenced by ancient Muslim astronomer Ibn al-Shatir?”
  • A July 24, 2024 posting: “11th century Arab-Muslim optical scientist laid groundwork for modern-day physics,” scientist al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham known in Latin as “Alhazen”

Going back further,

  • A November 9, 2015 posting: “Science in Muslim universities report, a science and Islam exhibit, and a debate about science and Islam”

The exhibit, “1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World” is also an organization called 1001 Inventions and it has a website. It seems that long ago exhibit was the first in a series of 1001 Inventions programmes. Here’s more from the organization’s About 1001 Inventions page, Note: A link has been removed,

…

1001 Inventions is a UK based not-for-profit science and cultural heritage organisation co-founded in 2006 by award-winning British producer, philanthropist and social entrepreneur Ahmed Salim.

1001 Inventions creates and delivers global educational initiatives aiming to spark young people’s interest in science while promoting diversity and inclusion. 

Through a network of strategic partners, 1001 Inventions has engaged and educated more than 500 million people globally through world-class transmedia productions including interactive exhibits, films, immersive live shows, hands-on workshops, digital content, books and learning material.

…

About 1001 Inventions

1001 Inventions is an award-winning international science and cultural heritage organisation that raises awareness of the creative golden age of Arabic Science.

From the 7th century onwards, men and women of different faiths and cultures built on knowledge from ancient civilisations making breakthroughs that have left their mark on our world.

Join us on a journey to the past to inspire a better future!

This really is a reminder that science is a collaborative endeavour (with many influences such as literature, poetry, architecture, etc.) and that knowledge flows back and forth amongst many peoples as it is enriched by that collaboration.

“Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art,”a transdisciplinary conference from October 17-18, 2026 at the University of Oxford, UK and online

Somehow, I must have missed the earlier notices but, on the upside, the folks at the London Arts-Based Research Centre (LABRC) have extended the deadline to September 1, 2026 for anyone wanting to submit a proposal in response to the Call for Papers. Here’s more from an August 13 2026 LABRC notice (received via email),

We would like to announce that the proposal deadline for our Science and Sensibility transdisciplinary conference has now been extended to September 1. Kindly find the conference details below, or visit the conference webpage on https://labrc.co.uk/science-and-sensibility-2026/

For further queries, kindly contact our conference team on conferences@labrc.co.uk 

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Kind regards,

The LABRC Team

“Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art”
 A Transdisciplinary Conference

When: October 17-18, 2026
Where: University of Oxford, UK and online

Fees (for both attendees and presenters):
£180 (In person participation)
£100 (Online participation)
Prices exclude Eventbrite fees

Proposal Submission Deadline: September 1, 2026

Proposal form on: https://forms.gle/xyGsPLShekVkNtZ29

Call for Papers

“Art and science bear intrinsic similarities in their attempts to illuminate aspects of the human condition. Grounded in exploration, revelation, and representation, art and science work toward advancing human understanding”, Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art.
 

According to Richard Dawkins, “There’s real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality”. So why are art and science sometimes considered as two separate fields, rather than two different sides of the same coin? And who says that scientists, engineers, and medical researchers take interest only in matters within the boundaries of the laboratories and hospitals? How might the perspective of art provide fresh avenues for understanding and contribute significantly to the enrichment of scientific knowledge? For poets, writers, and artists there are no such boundaries, for there is poetic wisdom in scientific knowledge, beauty in anatomy, and concepts worth celebrating in writing. And for biographers and memoirists, the medical humanities offer experiences that are worth preserving in prose. Our forthcoming conference seeks to deconstruct the common divide between two seemingly distinct disciplines of art and science, building bridges instead of boundaries, and showing the importance of creatively contemplating, cherishing, and preserving the beauty of what we learn and experience.

This conference, therefore, aims to bring together scholars, creatives, and other arts-based researchers from different disciplines working on topics related to transdisciplinarity, with a focus on the bridging of science with the arts. You may be a scientist or a medical practitioner who writes poems and stories or takes on another art (such as music, sculpture, the visual arts, etc.) or alternatively, you may be a creative inspired by science, or a practioner [sic] in a field that utilises creative approaches for scientific purposes—so the intertwining of your thoughts, ideas, and creativity are welcome, and we can’t wait to hear about your work that combines your creativity with science!

Send us your proposals by August 31st.[extended to September 1, 2026]  Presenters can either share academic papers and/or creative work (poetry, prose, photography, music, painting, etc.), as we highly encourage arts-based research. We welcome proposals from scholars (of all disciplines), creatives, graduate students, practitioners and professionals.

So whether you are working on research bridging art with creativity, or you have a piece containing astronomical images, eco-poetry, aesthetic reflections on chemicals and substances, lunar photography, artistic depictions of the human body, alchemical musings, art and arithmetic, psychological fiction (or non-fiction), an ode to omicron, or any other creative pieces arising from “scientific” inspiration, please share them with us!

We welcome 15-minute presentations on topics related (but certainly not limited to) the following fields:

  • Fiction as a mode for knowledge
  • Transdisciplinarity in its various forms
  • Music-based practices
  • A/r/tography
  • Physics as an inspiration in literature
  • Chemistry and the culinary, literary or visual arts
  • Astrophotography
  • Alchemy as an art and science
  • Psychology and the arts
  • Symbolic healing
  • Ecopoetics
  • Anatomy in painting
  • The medical humanities
  • Poetry and medicine
  • Photography and medical technology
  • Ruminations based on scientific theories
  • Space poetry
  • Art therapy
  • Music and mathematical formulas
  • Viruses and philosophy
  • The human body
  • Mental illness and the arts
  • Quantum physics and artistic expression
  • Technological advancements and their impact on artistic creation
  • Mathematical patterns in visual arts
  • Neuroscience and creativity
  • Climate change and environmental art
  • Data visualization as an art form
  • Ethical considerations in scientific art collaborations
  • Evolutionary biology and literature
  • Augmented reality and immersive storytelling
  • Artificial intelligence and its role in creative processes
  • Bioart and biotechnology in artistic practice
  • Intersection of robotics and performance art
  • Astronomy and music composition
  • Psychology of color in visual arts
  • Medical imaging techniques and artistic interpretation
  • Intersection of archaeology and art history
  • Cognitive science and theater/performance studies
  • Genetics and contemporary art practices
  • Philosophy of science and its influence on artistic discourse
  • Ecological activism through artistic interventions
  • Anthropology and the representation of cultures in art
  • Social sciences and documentary photography
  • Nanotechnology and its implications for artistic materials
  • Ethnomusicology and cultural expressions of scientific knowledge
  • Marine biology and marine-inspired art forms

Kindly fill out the proposal form by September 1, 2026.

For further queries, please email us on conferences@labrc.co.uk, and kindly allow us at least 2-3 working days to respond.

Want more inspiration? Check out our recently released issue of our literary and arts journal, Indelible, with the special theme of “Science and Sensibility”!

Conference Webpage

Lots of options. Good luck with your submissions.

‘Brain-free’ robots that move in synchronization, powered entirely by air

This brain-free robot reminds me of a (battery-powered) toy I loved,

A November 18, 2025 University of Oxford press release (a similar version is also on EurekAlert but published November 4, 2025) announces a new type of soft robot, Note: Links have been removed,

A team led by the University of Oxford has developed a new class of soft robots that operate without electronics, motors, or computers – using only air pressure. The study, published today (05 Nov) in Advanced Materials, shows that these ‘fluidic robots’ can generate complex, rhythmic movements and even automatically synchronise their actions.

Professor Antonio Forte (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Lead of RADLab) said: “We are excited to see that brain-less machines can spontaneously generate complex behaviours, decentralising functional tasks to the peripheries and freeing up resources for more intelligent tasks.”

Overcoming a key challenge in soft robotics

Soft robots (made from flexible materials) are ideal for tasks like navigating uneven terrain or handling delicate objects. A major goal in soft robotics is to encode behaviour and decision-making directly into the robot’s physical structure, enabling more adaptive and responsive machines. This kind of automatic behaviour – emerging from body-environment interactions – is often difficult to replicate with traditional electronic circuits, which require complex sensing, programming and control systems.

To address this challenge, the researchers took inspiration from nature, where body parts often perform multiple roles and synchronised behaviour can emerge without central control. Their key innovation was to develop a small, modular component that uses air pressure to perform mechanical tasks – similar to how an electronic circuit uses electrical current. Depending on how it is set up, this single block can either:

  • Actuate (move or deform) in response to air pressure changes – functioning like a muscle.
  • Sense pressure changes or contact – similar to a touch sensor.
  • Switch air flow between ON/OFF states – like a valve or a logic gate.

Similar to LEGO pieces, multiple identical units (each one a few centimetres in size) can be connected to form different robots without changing the basic hardware design. In the study, the researchers constructed tabletop robots (roughly the size of a shoebox), that could hop, shake, or crawl.

In a particular configuration, the researchers found that each individual unit can automatically combine all three roles at once, enabling it to generate rhythmic movement entirely on its own once constant pressure is applied. When several of these responsive units are linked together, their movements began to synchronize naturally, without any computer control or programming.

These behaviours were used to make a shaker robot (able to sort beads into different containers by tilting a rotating platform) and a crawler robot (which could detect the edge of a table and automatically stop, preventing a fall). In each case, the coordinated movements were achieved entirely mechanically, with no external electronic control.

Lead author Dr Mostafa Mousa (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford) said: “This spontaneous coordination requires no predetermined instructions but arises purely from the way the units are coupled to each other and upon their interaction with the environment.”

Laying the groundwork for embodied intelligence

Crucially, the synchronised behaviour is only seen when the robots are linked together and touching the ground. The researchers used a mathematical framework called the Kuramoto model, which describes how networks of oscillators can synchronize, to explain this behaviour.

This revealed that complex, coordinated motion can emerge in the robots purely from their physical design when they are mechanically coupled through the environment. In this case, the motion of each robotic leg subtly affects the others through the shared body and ground reaction forces. This creates a feedback loop where the forces transmitted via friction, compression, and rebound link the motions of the limbs together, leading to spontaneous coordination.

Dr Mousa said: “Just as fireflies can begin flashing in unison after watching one another, the robot’s air-powered limbs also fall into rhythm, but in this case through physical contact with the ground rather than visual cues. This emergent behaviour has previously been observed in nature, and this new study represents a major step forward towards programmable, self-intelligent robots.”

Although the soft robots developed are currently at tabletop scale, according to the researchers the design principles are scale-independent. In the near future, the researchers aim to investigate these dynamical systems to build energy-efficient untethered locomotors. This would be one step forward towards the large-scale deployment of these robots in extreme environments where energy is scarce and adaptability is needed.

Professor Forte added: “Encoding decision-making and behaviour directly into the robot’s physical structure could lead to adaptive, responsive machines that don’t need software to ‘think.’ It is a shift from ‘robots with brains’ to ‘robots that are their own brains.’ That makes them faster, more efficient, and potentially better at interacting with unpredictable environments.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Multifunctional Fluidic Units for Emergent, Responsive Robotic Behaviors by Mostafa Mousa, Alberto Comoretto, Johannes T.B. Overvelde, Antonio E. Forte. Advanced Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202510298 First published: 06 November 2025

This paper is open access.

Precise knee motion tracking in wearable device with boron nitride nanotubes

A July 2, 2025 news item on Nanowerk announces research that employs boron nitride nanotubes in a device for monitoring joint health, Note: Links have been removed,

A research team from the University of Oxford and University College London has developed a wearable device that can track joint torque with precision, potentially transforming the way clinicians and patients monitor joint health.

Reported in Nano-Micro Letters (“AI-Enabled Piezoelectric Wearable for Joint Torque Monitoring”), the new technology integrates advanced materials and artificial intelligence to provide real-time data from everyday movements.

The device relies on boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) embedded in a soft polymer called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). These nanotubes possess exceptional mechanical strength and piezoelectric properties, meaning they generate electrical signals in response to movement or pressure. When worn on the knee, the composite material responds to joint motion by producing signals that can be interpreted to measure torque—the rotational force exerted on the joint.

…

Caption: Artificial intelligence-enabled wearable device with boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs)-based piezoelectric film for accurate joint torque sensing. Inverse-designed structure optimizes biomechanical compatibility for enhanced knee motion tracking. High-sensitivity BNNTs/polydimethylsiloxane composite enables precise and dynamic knee motion signal detection. Lightweight neural network processes complex signals for accurate torque, angle, and load estimation. Real-time monitoring system provides instant knee torque assessment for daily use. Credit: Jinke Chang, Jinchen Li, Jiahao Ye, Bowen Zhang, Jianan Chen, Yunjia Xia, Jingyu Lei, Tom Carlson, Rui Loureiro, Alexander M. Korsunsky, Jin-Chong Tan, Hubin Zhao.

A July 7, 2025 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Journal Center press release on EurekAlert provides information about the research in bullet point form,

In the pursuit of more effective and accessible solutions for joint health monitoring, researchers are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance the capabilities of wearable devices. A recent article published in Nano-Micro Letters, authored by Professor Jin-Chong Tan and Professor Hubin Zhao from the University of Oxford and University College London, presents a groundbreaking AI-enabled piezoelectric wearable device for accurate joint torque sensing, leveraging the unique properties of boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs).

Why This Research Matters

  • Enhanced Joint Health Monitoring: Traditional methods for assessing joint torque are often confined to laboratory settings or require complex setups, limiting their feasibility for real-world applications. This new wearable device offers a portable, non-invasive solution for continuous joint torque monitoring, crucial for evaluating joint health, guiding interventions, and monitoring rehabilitation progress.
  • High Sensitivity and Accuracy: The device’s high-sensitivity BNNTs/polydimethylsiloxane composite enables precise and dynamic knee motion signal detection, while the lightweight neural network processes complex signals for accurate torque, angle, and load estimation, providing reliable data for joint health assessment.
  • Low-Cost and Accessible Solution: The compatibility of the materials and design with low-power, resource-limited settings makes this wearable device a cost-effective and accessible solution for diverse populations across regions with varying levels of development, potentially revolutionizing joint health monitoring on a global scale.

Innovative Design and Mechanisms

  • Boron Nitride Nanotubes and Polydimethylsiloxane: BNNTs are highlighted as ideal materials for constructing high-performance piezoelectric sensors due to their exceptional mechanical strength, thermal stability, and intrinsic piezoelectric properties. The uniform dispersion of BNNTs in a PDMS matrix results in a highly sensitive piezoelectric film capable of capturing complex knee motion signals.
  • Inverse Design Structure: The wearable device employs an inverse-designed structure with a negative Poisson’s ratio, precisely matched to the biomechanics of the knee joint. This unique design ensures optimal biomechanical compatibility, enhancing motion tracking fidelity and enabling detailed sensing of complex loading conditions during knee movements.
  • Artificial Intelligence Integration: The integration of a lightweight on-device artificial neural network allows for real-time processing and analysis of the complex piezoelectric signals generated during movement. The AI algorithm accurately extracts targeted signals and maps them to corresponding physical characteristics, such as torque, angle, and loading, providing valuable insights into joint health.

Applications and Future Outlook

  • Joint Health Monitoring: This wearable device can continuously monitor joint torque, offering valuable data for the evaluation of joint health and early detection of potential issues. It can be particularly beneficial for individuals with musculoskeletal conditions, the elderly, and athletes, enabling timely interventions and personalized rehabilitation plans.
  • Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention: By providing real-time torque assessment and risk assessment of joint injury, the device can play a crucial role in rehabilitation programs, ensuring safe and effective recovery. It can also help in preventing injuries by alerting users to potentially harmful joint movements or excessive torque.
  • Future Research Directions: Future research should focus on further optimizing the sensing materials, device design, and AI algorithms to enhance the performance, accuracy, and adaptability of the wearable device. Exploring additional complementary modalities and integrating the device with wearable robotics or exoskeletons could further expand its applications and utility in various fields.

This innovative AI-enabled piezoelectric wearable device represents a significant step forward in joint health monitoring, offering a low-cost, high-sensitivity solution with broad potential applications. Stay tuned for more groundbreaking research from Professor Jin-Chong Tan and Professor Hubin Zhao’s team as they continue to push the boundaries of wearable technology and contribute to improved joint health and rehabilitation outcomes.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

AI-Enabled Piezoelectric Wearable for Joint Torque Monitoring by Jinke Chang, Jinchen Li, Jiahao Ye, Bowen Zhang, Jianan Chen, Yunjia Xia, Jingyu Lei, Tom Carlson, Rui Loureiro, Alexander M. Korsunsky, Jin-Chong Tan & Hubin Zhao. Nano-Micro Lett. 17, 247 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-025-01753-w Published: 03 May 2025

This paper is open access.

It’s a golden world

I have a number of stories concerning gold where researchers seemed to have had an extraordinarily rich set of findings within the last month. One of these is especially interesting in light of what I published yesterday (August 11, 2025 “Turning lead into gold (for approximately a microsecond“) about an event in May 2025.

I will be providing my usual citations and links but will not be tagging all the researchers (there are far too many) other than those mentioned in the news releases.

Two from SLAC (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California)

While both projects took place at SLAC, there’s virtually no crossover between the team members and the findings are of an entirely different nature.

Defying the limits and surviving the entropy catastrophe

An August 11, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces that physics limits have been defied,

Scientists have simultaneously broken a temperature record, overturned a long-held theory and utilized a new laser spectroscopy method for dense plasmas in a groundbreaking article published on July 23 in the journal Nature.

In their research article, “Superheating gold beyond the predicted entropy catastrophe threshold,” physicists revealed they were able to heat gold to over 19,000 Kelvin (33,740 degrees Fahrenheit), over 14 times its melting point, without it losing its solid, crystalline structure.

…

A July 23, 2025 University of Nevada news release, which originated the news item, delves further into the topic,

“This is possibly the hottest crystalline material ever recorded,” Thomas White, lead author and Clemons-Magee Endowed Professor in Physics at the University of Nevada, Reno said.

This result overturns the long-held theoretical limit known as the entropy catastrophe. The entropy catastrophe theory states that solids cannot remain stable above approximately three times their melting temperature without spontaneously melting. The melting point of gold, 1,337 Kelvin (1,947 degrees Fahrenheit), was far more than tripled in this experiment utilizing an extremely powerful laser at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

“I was expecting the gold to heat quite significantly before melting, but I wasn’t expecting a fourteen-fold temperature increase,” White said.

To heat the gold, researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast, the European XFEL and the University of Warwick designed an experiment to heat a thin gold foil using a laser fired for 50 quadrillionths of a second (one millionth of a billionth). The speed with which the gold was heated seems to be the reason the gold remained solid. The findings suggest that the limit of superheating solids may be far higher – or nonexistent – if heating occurs quickly enough. The new methods used in this study open the field of high energy density physics to more exploration, including in areas of planetary physics and fusion energy research.

White and his team expected that the gold would melt at its melting point, but to measure the temperature inside the gold foil, they would need a very special thermometer.

“We used the Linac Coherent Light Source, a 3-kilometer-long X-ray laser at SLAC, as essentially the world’s largest thermometer,” White said. “This allowed us to measure the temperature inside the dense plasma for the first time, something that hasn’t been possible before.”

“This development paves the way for temperature diagnostics across a broad range of high-energy-density environments,” Bob Nagler, staff scientist at SLAC and coauthor on the paper, said. “In particular, it offers the only direct method currently available for probing the temperature of warm dense states encountered during the implosion phase of inertial fusion energy experiments. As such, it is poised to make a transformative contribution to our understanding and control of fusion-relevant plasma conditions.”

Along with the experimental designers, the research article is the result of a decade of work and collaboration between Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Padova and the University of California, Merced.

“It’s extremely exciting to have these results out in the world, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what strides we can make in the field with these new methods,” White said.

The research, funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, will open new doors in studies of superheated materials.

“The National Nuclear Security Administrations’ Academics Program is a proud supporter of the groundbreaking innovation and continued learning that Dr. White and his team are leading for furthering future critical research areas beneficial to the Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Jahleel Hudson, director at the Techology and Partnerships Office of the NNSA said.

White and his colleagues returned to the Linac Coherent Light Source in July to measure the temperature inside hot compressed iron and are using those results to gain insights into the interiors of planets.

Several of White’s graduate students and one undergraduate student were coauthors on the study, including doctoral student Travis Griffin, undergraduate student Hunter Stramel, Daniel Haden, a former postdoctoral scholar in White’s lab, Jacob Molina, a former undergraduate student currently pursuing his doctoral degree at Princeton University and Landon Morrison, a former undergraduate student pursuing his master’s degree at the University of Oxford. Jeremy Iratcabal, research assistant professor in the Department of Physics, was also a coauthor on the paper.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to such cutting-edge science using billion-dollar experimental platforms alongside world-class collaborators,” Griffin said. “This discovery highlights the power of this technique, and I’m excited by the possibilities it opens for the future of high-energy-density physics and fusion research. After graduation, I’ll be continuing this work as a staff scientist at the European XFEL.”

SLAC issued a July 23, 2025 news release (by Erin Woodward) of its own and UK’s University of Warwick also issued a July 23, 2025.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Superheating gold beyond the predicted entropy catastrophe threshold by Thomas G. White, Travis D. Griffin, Daniel Haden, Hae Ja Lee, Eric Galtier, Eric Cunningham, Dimitri Khaghani, Adrien Descamps, Lennart Wollenweber, Ben Armentrout, Carson Convery, Karen Appel, Luke B. Fletcher, Sebastian Goede, J. B. Hastings, Jeremy Iratcabal, Emma E. McBride, Jacob Molina, Giulio Monaco, Landon Morrison, Hunter Stramel, Sameen Yunus, Ulf Zastrau, Siegfried H. Glenzer, Gianluca Gregori, Dirk O. Gericke & Bob Nagler. Nature volume 643, pages 950–954 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09253-y Published: 23 July 2025 Issue Date: 24 July 2025

This paper is open access.

Gold’s secret chemistry

An August 11, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces how researchers at SLAC unexpectedly created gold hydride,

Scientists at SLAC unexpectedly created gold hydride, a compound of gold and hydrogen, while studying diamond formation under extreme pressure and heat. This discovery challenges gold’s reputation as a chemically unreactive metal and opens doors to studying dense hydrogen, which could help us understand planetary interiors and fusion processes. The results also suggest that extreme conditions can produce exotic, previously unknown compounds, offering exciting opportunities for future high-pressure chemistry research.

Serendipitously and for the first time, an international research team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory formed solid binary gold hydride, a compound made exclusively of gold and hydrogen atoms.

…

An August 4, 2025 SLAC news release by Chris Patrick, which originated the news release, provides more details, Note: Links have been removed,

The researchers were studying how long it takes hydrocarbons, compounds made of carbon and hydrogen, to form diamonds under extremely high pressure and heat. In their experiments at the European XFEL (X-ray Free-Electron Laser) in Germany, the team studied the effect of those extreme conditions in hydrocarbon samples with an embedded gold foil, which was meant to absorb the X-rays and heat the weakly absorbing hydrocarbons. To their surprise, they not only saw the formation of diamonds, but also discovered the formation of gold hydride. 

“It was unexpected because gold is typically chemically very boring and unreactive – that’s why we use it as an X-ray absorber in these experiments,” said Mungo Frost, staff scientist at SLAC who led the study. “These results suggest there’s potentially a lot of new chemistry to be discovered at extreme conditions where the effects of temperature and pressure start competing with conventional chemistry, and you can form these exotic compounds.”

The results, published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, provide a glimpse of how the rules of chemistry change under extreme conditions like those found inside certain planets or hydrogen-fusing stars.

Studying dense hydrogen

In their experiment, the researchers first squeezed their hydrocarbon samples to pressures greater than those within Earth’s mantle using a diamond anvil cell. Then, they heated the samples to over 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit by hitting them repeatedly with X-ray pulses from the European XFEL. The team recorded and analyzed how the X-rays scattered off the samples, which allowed them to resolve the structural transformations within.

As expected, the recorded scattering patterns showed that the carbon atoms had formed a diamond structure. But the team also saw unexpected signals that were due to hydrogen atoms reacting with the gold foil to form gold hydride. 

Under the extreme conditions created in the study, the researchers found hydrogen to be in a dense, “superionic” state, where the hydrogen atoms flowed freely through the gold’s rigid atomic lattice, increasing the conductivity of the gold hydride. 

Hydrogen, which is the lightest element of the periodic table, is tricky to study with X-rays because it scatters X-rays only weakly. Here, however, the superionic hydrogen interacted with the much heavier gold atoms, and the team was able to observe hydrogen’s impact on how the gold lattice scattered X-rays. “We can use the gold lattice as a witness for what the hydrogen is doing,” Mungo said. 

The gold hydride offers a way to study dense atomic hydrogen under conditions that might also apply to other situations that are experimentally not directly accessible. For example, dense hydrogen makes up the interiors of certain planets, so studying it in the lab could teach us more about those foreign worlds. It could also provide new insights into nuclear fusion processes inside stars like our sun and help develop technology to harness fusion energy here on Earth.

Exploring new chemistry

In addition to paving the way for studies of dense hydrogen, the research also offers an avenue for exploring new chemistry. Gold, which is commonly regarded as an unreactive metal, was found to form a stable hydride at extremely high pressure and temperature. In fact, it appears to be only stable at those extreme conditions as when it cools down, the gold and hydrogen separate. The simulations also showed that more hydrogen could fit in the gold lattice at higher pressure.

The simulation framework could also be extended beyond gold hydride. “It’s important that we can experimentally produce and model these states under these extreme conditions,” said Siegfried Glenzer, High Energy Density Division director and professor for photon science at SLAC and the study’s principal investigator. “These simulation tools could be applied to model other exotic material properties in extreme conditions.” 

The team also included researchers from Rostock University, DESY, European XFEL, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Frankfurt University and Bayreuth University, all in Germany; the University of Edinburgh, UK; the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University and the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES). Parts of this work were supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Synthesis of Gold Hydride at High Pressure and High Temperature by Mungo Frost, Kilian Abraham, Alexander F. Goncharov, R. Stewart McWilliams, Rachel J. Husband, Michal Andrzejewski, Karen Appel, Carsten Baehtz, Armin Bergermann, Danielle Brown, Elena Bykova, Anna Celeste, Eric Edmund, Nicholas J. Hartley, Konstantin Glazyrin, Heinz Graafsma, Nicolas Jaisle, Zuzana Konôpková, Torsten Laurus, Yu Lin, Bernhard Massani, Maximilian Schörner, Maximilian Schulze, Cornelius Strohm, Minxue Tang, Zena Younes, Gerd Steinle-Neumann, Ronald Redmer, Siegfried H. Glenzer. Angewandte Chemie International Edition DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202505811 First published: 04 August 2025

This paper is behind a paywall.

Gold and a quantum revolution?

An August 11, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces joint research from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and Colorado State University,

The efficiency of quantum computers, sensors and other applications often relies on the properties of electrons, including how they are spinning. One of the most accurate systems for high performance quantum applications relies on tapping into the spin properties of electrons of atoms trapped in a gas, but these systems are difficult to scale up for use in larger quantum devices like quantum computers. Now, a team of researchers from Penn State and Colorado State has demonstrated how a gold cluster can mimic these gaseous, trapped atoms, allowing scientists to take advantage of these spin properties in a system that can be easily scaled up.

…

A July 22, 2025 Penn State news release (also on EurekAlert) by Gail McCormick, which originated the news item, reveals more about the work which resulted in two published papers, Note: Links have been removed,

“For the first time, we show that gold nanoclusters have the same key spin properties as the current state-of-the-art methods for quantum information systems,” said Ken Knappenberger, department head and professor of chemistry in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “Excitingly, we can also manipulate an important property called spin polarization in these clusters, which is usually fixed in a material. These clusters can be easily synthesized in relatively large quantities, making this work a promising proof-of-concept that gold clusters could be used to support a variety of quantum applications.”

Two papers describing the gold clusters and confirming their spin properties appeared in ACS Central Science, ACS Central Science and The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

“An electron’s spin not only influences important chemical reactions, but also quantum applications like computation and sensing,” said Nate Smith, graduate student in chemistry in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and first author of one of the papers. “The direction an electron spins and its alignment with respect to other electrons in the system can directly impact the accuracy and longevity of quantum information systems.”

Much like the Earth spins around its axis, which is tilted with respect to the sun, an electron can spin around its axis, which can be tilted with respect to its nucleus. But unlike Earth, an electron can spin clockwise or counterclockwise. When many electrons in a material are spinning in the same direction and their tilts are aligned, the electrons are considered correlated, and the material is said to have a high degree of spin polarization. 

“Materials with electrons that are highly correlated, with a high degree of spin polarization, can maintain this correlation for a much longer time, and thus remain accurate for much longer,” Smith said.

The current state-of-the-art system for high accuracy and low error in quantum information systems involve trapped atomic ions — atoms with an electric charge — in a gaseous state. This system allows electrons to be excited to different energy levels, called Rydberg states, which have very specific spin polarizations that can last for a long period of time. It also allows for the superposition of electrons, with electrons existing in multiple states simultaneously until they are measured, which is a key property for quantum systems. 

“These trapped gaseous ions are by nature dilute, which makes them very difficult to scale up,” Knappenberger said. “The condensed phase required for a solid material, by definition, packs atoms together, losing that dilute nature. So, scaling up provides all the right electronic ingredients, but these systems become very sensitive to interference from the environment. The environment basically scrambles all the information that you encoded into the system, so the rate of error becomes very high. In this study, we found that gold clusters can mimic all the best properties of the trapped gaseous ions with the benefit of scalability.”

Scientists have heavily studied gold nanostructures for their potential use in optical technology, sensing, therapeutics and to speed up chemical reactions, but less is known about their magnetic and spin-dependent properties. In the current studies, the researchers specifically explored monolayer-protected clusters, which have a core of gold and are surrounded by other molecules called ligands. The researchers can precisely control the construction of these clusters and can synthesize relatively large amounts at one time. 

“These clusters are referred to as super atoms, because their electronic character is like that of an atom, and now we know their spin properties are also similar,” Smith said. “We identified 19 distinguishable and unique Rydberg-like spin-polarized states that mimic the super-positions that we could do in the trapped, gas-phase dilute ions. This means the clusters have the key properties needed to carry out spin-based operations.”

The researchers determined the spin polarization of the gold clusters using a similar method used with traditional atoms. While one type of gold cluster had 7% spin polarization, a cluster with different a ligand approached 40% spin polarization, which Knappenberger said is competitive with some of the leading two-dimensional quantum materials.

“This tells us that the spin properties of the electron are intimately related to the vibrations of the ligands,” Knappenberger said. “Traditionally, quantum materials have a fixed value of spin polarization that cannot be significantly changed, but our results suggest we can modify the ligand of these gold clusters to tune this property widely.”

The research team plans to explore how different structures within the ligands impact spin polarization and how they could be manipulated to fine tune spin properties.

“The quantum field is generally dominated by researchers in physics and materials science, and here we see the opportunity for chemists to use our synthesis skills to design materials with tunable results,” Knappenberger said. “This is a new frontier in quantum information science.”

In addition to Smith and Knappenberger, the research team includes Juniper Foxley, graduate student in chemistry at Penn State; Patrick Herbert, who earned a doctoral degree in chemistry at Penn State in 2019; Jane Knappenberger, researcher in the Penn State Eberly College of Science; as well as Marcus Tofanelli and Christopher Ackerson at Colorado State

Funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. National Science Foundation supported this research.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress. [Research or Regress can found here]

Here are links to and citation for the paper,

The Influence of Passivating Ligand Identity on Au25(SR)18 Spin-Polarized Emission by Nathanael L. Smith, Patrick J. Herbert, Marcus A. Tofanelli, Jane A. Knappenberger, Christopher J. Ackerson, Kenneth L. Knappenberger Jr. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2025, 16, 20, 5168–5172 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c00723 Published May 15, 2025 Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Diverse Superatomic Magnetic and Spin Properties of Au144(SC8H9)60 Clusters by Juniper Foxley, Marcus Tofanelli, Jane A. Knappenberger, Christopher J. Ackerson, Kenneth L. Knappenberger Jr ACS Central Science 2025, XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.5c00139
Published May 29, 2025 © 2025 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 .

This paper is open access.

Lead into gold, the second time around

There are reasons why news releases are issued twice and/or months after a research paper was published. Whoever is scanning for news may have missed it or it was a big news day and science was not top of mind or e.g., a number of teams are publishing research in your field and are generating a lot of interest and you hope your institution will benefit from it.

This August 11, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily resuscitates a story from May 2025,

Nuclear physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider recently made headlines by achieving the centuries-old dream of alchemists (and nightmare of precious-metals investors): They transformed lead into gold.

At least for a fraction of a second. The scientists reported their results in Physical Reviews.

The accomplishment at the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile particle accelerator buried under the French-Swiss border, happened within a sophisticated and sensitive detector called ALICE, a scientific instrument roughly the size of a McMansion.

…

A July 30, 2025 University of Kansas news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the August 11, 2025 news item, adds new details about the work, Note: A link has been removed,

It was scientists from the University of Kansas, working on the ALICE experiment, who developed the technique that tracked “ultra-peripheral” collisions between protons and ions that made gold in the LHC.

“Usually in collider experiments, we make the particles crash into each other to produce lots of debris,” said Daniel Tapia Takaki, professor of physics and leader of KU’s group at ALICE. “But in ultra-peripheral collisions, we’re interested in what happens when the particles don’t hit each other. These are near misses. The ions pass close enough to interact — but without touching. There’s no physical overlap.”

The ions racing around the LHC tunnel are heavy nuclei with many protons, each generating powerful electric fields. When accelerated, these charged ions emit photons — they shine light.

“When you accelerate an electric charge to near light speeds, it starts shining,” Tapia Takaki said. “One ion can shine light that essentially takes a picture of the other. When that light is energetic enough, it can probe deep inside the other nucleus, like a high-energy flashbulb.”

The KU researcher said during these UPC “flashes” surprising interactions can occur, including the rate event that sparked worldwide attention.

“Sometimes, the photons from both ions interact with each other — what we call photon-photon collisions,” he said. “These events are incredibly clean, with almost nothing else produced. They contrast with typical collisions where we see sprays of particles flying everywhere.”

However, the ALICE detector and the LHC were designed to collect data on head-on collisions that result in messy sprays of particles.

“These clean interactions were hard to detect with earlier setups,” Tapia Takaki said. “Our group at KU pioneered new techniques to study them. We built up this expertise years ago when it was not a popular subject.”

These methods allowed for the news-making discovery that the LHC team transmuted lead into gold momentarily via ultra-peripheral collisions where lead ions lose three protons (turning the speck of lead into a gold speck) for a fraction of a second.

Tapia Takaki’s KU co-authors on the paper are graduate student Anna Binoy; graduate student Amrit Gautam; postdoctoral researcher Tommaso Isidori; postdoctoral research assistant Anisa Khatun; and research scientist Nicola Minafra.

The KU team at the LHC ALICE experiment plans to continue studying the ultra-peripheral collisions. Tapia Takaki said that while the creation of gold fascinated the public, the potential of understanding the interactions goes deeper.

“This light is so energetic, it can knock protons out of the nucleus,” he said. “Sometimes one, sometimes two, three or even four protons. We can see these ejected protons directly with our detectors.”

Each proton removed changes the elements: One gives thallium, two gives mercury, three gives gold.

“These new nuclei are very short-lived,” he said. “They decay quickly, but not always immediately. Sometimes they travel along the beamline and hit parts of the collider — triggering safety systems.”

That’s why this research matters beyond the headlines.

“With proposals for future colliders even larger than the LHC — some up to 100 kilometers in Europe and China — you need to understand these nuclear byproducts,” Tapia Takaki said. “This ‘alchemy’ may be crucial for designing the next generation of machines.”

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics.

Here’s a new link and citation, which includes each team member’s name, for the paper,

Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 TeV by S. Acharya, A. Agarwal, G. Aglieri Rinella, L. Aglietta, M. Agnello, N. Agrawal, Z. Ahammed, S. Ahmad, S. U. Ahn, I. Ahuja, A. Akindinov, V. Akishina, M. Al-Turany, D. Aleksandrov, B. Alessandro, H. M. Alfanda, R. Alfaro Molina, B. Ali, A. Alici, N. Alizadehvandchali, A. Alkin, J. Alme, G. Alocco, T. Alt, A. R. Altamura, I. Altsybeev, J. R. Alvarado, C. O. R. Alvarez, M. N. Anaam, C. Andrei, N. Andreou, A. Andronic, E. Andronov, V. Anguelov, F. Antinori, P. Antonioli, N. Apadula, L. Aphecetche, H. Appelshäuser, C. Arata, S. Arcelli, R. Arnaldi, J. G. M. C. A. Arneiro, I. C. Arsene, M. Arslandok, A. Augustinus, R. Averbeck, D. Averyanov, M. D. Azmi, H. Baba, A. Badalà, J. Bae, Y. Bae, Y. W. Baek, X. Bai, R. Bailhache, Y. Bailung, R. Bala, A. Baldisseri, B. Balis, Z. Banoo, V. Barbasova, F. Barile, L. Barioglio, M. Barlou, B. Barman, G. G. Barnaföldi, L. S. Barnby, E. Barreau, V. Barret, L. Barreto, C. Bartels, K. Barth, E. Bartsch, N. Bastid, S. Basu, G. Batigne, D. Battistini, B. Batyunya, D. Bauri, J. L. Bazo Alba, I. G. Bearden, C. Beattie, P. Becht, D. Behera, I. Belikov, A. D. C. Bell Hechavarria, F. Bellini, R. Bellwied, S. Belokurova, L. G. E. Beltran, Y. A. V. Beltran, G. Bencedi, A. Bensaoula, S. Beole, Y. Berdnikov, A. Berdnikova, L. Bergmann, M. G. Besoiu, L. Betev, P. P. Bhaduri, A. Bhasin, B. Bhattacharjee, L. Bianchi, J. Bielčík, J. Bielčíková, A. P. Bigot, A. Bilandzic, A. Binoy, G. Biro, S. Biswas, N. Bize, J. T. Blair, D. Blau, M. B. Blidaru, N. Bluhme, C. Blume, F. Bock, T. Bodova, J. Bok, L. Boldizsár, M. Bombara, P. M. Bond, G. Bonomi, H. Borel, A. Borissov, A. G. Borquez Carcamo, E. Botta, Y. E. M. Bouziani, D. C. Brandibur, L. Bratrud, P. Braun-Munzinger, M. Bregant, M. Broz, G. E. Bruno, V. D. Buchakchiev, M. D. Buckland, D. Budnikov, H. Buesching, S. Bufalino, P. Buhler, N. Burmasov, Z. Buthelezi, A. Bylinkin, S. A. Bysiak, J. C. Cabanillas Noris, M. F. T. Cabrera, H. Caines, A. Caliva, E. Calvo Villar, J. M. M. Camacho, P. Camerini, F. D. M. Canedo, S. L. Cantway, M. Carabas, A. A. Carballo, F. Carnesecchi, R. Caron, L. A. D. Carvalho, J. Castillo Castellanos, M. Castoldi, F. Catalano, S. Cattaruzzi, R. Cerri, I. Chakaberia, P. Chakraborty, S. Chandra, S. Chapeland, M. Chartier, S. Chattopadhay, M. Chen, T. Cheng, C. Cheshkov, D. Chiappara, V. Chibante Barroso, D. D. Chinellato, E. S. Chizzali, J. Cho, S. Cho, P. Chochula, Z. A. Chochulska, D. Choudhury, S. Choudhury, P. Christakoglou, C. H. Christensen, P. Christiansen, T. Chujo, M. Ciacco, C. Cicalo, F. Cindolo, M. R. Ciupek, G. Clai, F. Colamaria, J. S. Colburn, D. Colella, A. Colelli, M. Colocci, M. Concas, G. Conesa Balbastre, Z. Conesa del Valle, G. Contin, J. G. Contreras, M. L. Coquet, P. Cortese, M. R. Cosentino, F. Costa, S. Costanza, P. Crochet, M. M. Czarnynoga, A. Dainese, G. Dange, M. C. Danisch, A. Danu, P. Das, S. Das, A. R. Dash, S. Dash, A. De Caro, G. de Cataldo, J. de Cuveland, A. De Falco, D. De Gruttola, N. De Marco, C. De Martin, S. De Pasquale, R. Deb, R. Del Grande, L. Dello Stritto, W. Deng, K. C. Devereaux, G. G. A. de Souza, P. Dhankher, D. Di Bari, A. Di Mauro, B. Di Ruzza, B. Diab, R. A. Diaz, Y. Ding, J. Ditzel, R. Divià, Ø. Djuvsland, U. Dmitrieva, A. Dobrin, B. Dönigus, J. M. Dubinski, A. Dubla, P. Dupieux, N. Dzalaiova, T. M. Eder, R. J. Ehlers, F. Eisenhut, R. Ejima, D. Elia, B. Erazmus, F. Ercolessi, B. Espagnon, G. Eulisse, D. Evans, S. Evdokimov, L. Fabbietti, M. Faggin, J. Faivre, F. Fan, W. Fan, A. Fantoni, M. Fasel, G. Feofilov, A. Fernández Téllez, L. Ferrandi, M. B. Ferrer, A. Ferrero, C. Ferrero, A. Ferretti, V. J. G. Feuillard, V. Filova, D. Finogeev, F. M. Fionda, E. Flatland, F. Flor, A. N. Flores, S. Foertsch, I. Fokin, S. Fokin, U. Follo, E. Fragiacomo, E. Frajna, U. Fuchs, N. Funicello, C. Furget, A. Furs, T. Fusayasu, J. J. Gaardhøje, M. Gagliardi, A. M. Gago, T. Gahlaut, C. D. Galvan, S. Gami, D. R. Gangadharan, P. Ganoti, C. Garabatos, J. M. Garcia, T. García Chávez, E. Garcia-Solis, S. Garetti, C. Gargiulo, P. Gasik, H. M. Gaur, A. Gautam, M. B. Gay Ducati, M. Germain, R. A. Gernhaeuser, C. Ghosh, M. Giacalone, G. Gioachin, S. K. Giri, P. Giubellino, P. Giubilato, A. M. C. Glaenzer, P. Glässel, E. Glimos, D. J. Q. Goh, V. Gonzalez, P. Gordeev, M. Gorgon, K. Goswami, S. Gotovac, V. Grabski, L. K. Graczykowski, E. Grecka, A. Grelli, C. Grigoras, V. Grigoriev, S. Grigoryan, F. Grosa, J. F. Grosse-Oetringhaus, R. Grosso, D. Grund, N. A. Grunwald, G. G. Guardiano, R. Guernane, M. Guilbaud, K. Gulbrandsen, J. J. W. K. Gumprecht, T. Gündem, T. Gunji, W. Guo, A. Gupta, R. Gupta, R. Gupta, K. Gwizdziel, L. Gyulai, C. Hadjidakis, F. U. Haider, S. Haidlova, M. Haldar, H. Hamagaki, Y. Han, B. G. Hanley, R. Hannigan, J. Hansen, M. R. Haque, J. W. Harris, A. Harton, M. V. Hartung, H. Hassan, D. Hatzifotiadou, P. Hauer, L. B. Havener, E. Hellbär, H. Helstrup, M. Hemmer, T. Herman, S. G. Hernandez, G. Herrera Corral, S. Herrmann, K. F. Hetland, B. Heybeck, H. Hillemanns, B. Hippolyte, I. P. M. Hobus, F. W. Hoffmann, B. Hofman, M. Horst, A. Horzyk, Y. Hou, P. Hristov, P. Huhn, L. M. Huhta, T. J. Humanic, A. Hutson, D. Hutter, M. C. Hwang, R. Ilkaev, M. Inaba, G. M. Innocenti, M. Ippolitov, A. Isakov, T. Isidori, M. S. Islam, S. Iurchenko, M. Ivanov, M. Ivanov, V. Ivanov, K. E. Iversen, M. Jablonski, B. Jacak, N. Jacazio, P. M. Jacobs, S. Jadlovska, J. Jadlovsky, S. Jaelani, C. Jahnke, M. J. Jakubowska, M. A. Janik, T. Janson, S. Ji, S. Jia, T. Jiang, A. A. P. Jimenez, F. Jonas, D. M. Jones, J. M. Jowett, J. Jung, M. Jung, A. Junique, A. Jusko, J. Kaewjai, P. Kalinak, A. Kalweit, A. Karasu Uysal, D. Karatovic, N. Karatzenis, O. Karavichev, T. Karavicheva, E. Karpechev, M. J. Karwowska, U. Kebschull, M. Keil, B. Ketzer, J. Keul, S. S. Khade, A. M. Khan, S. Khan, A. Khanzadeev, Y. Kharlov, A. Khatun, A. Khuntia, Z. Khuranova, B. Kileng, B. Kim, C. Kim, D. J. Kim, D. Kim, E. J. Kim, J. Kim, J. Kim, J. Kim, M. Kim, S. Kim, T. Kim, K. Kimura, S. Kirsch, I. Kisel, S. Kiselev, A. Kisiel, J. L. Klay, J. Klein, S. Klein, C. Klein-Bösing, M. Kleiner, T. Klemenz, A. Kluge, C. Kobdaj, R. Kohara, T. Kollegger, A. Kondratyev, N. Kondratyeva, J. Konig, S. A. Konigstorfer, P. J. Konopka, G. Kornakov, M. Korwieser, S. D. Koryciak, C. Koster, A. Kotliarov, N. Kovacic, V. Kovalenko, M. Kowalski, V. Kozhuharov, G. Kozlov, I. Králik, A. Kravčáková, L. Krcal, M. Krivda, F. Krizek, K. Krizkova Gajdosova, C. Krug, M. Krüger, D. M. Krupova, E. Kryshen, V. Kučera, C. Kuhn, P. G. Kuijer, T. Kumaoka, D. Kumar, L. Kumar, N. Kumar, S. Kumar, S. Kundu, P. Kurashvili, A. B. Kurepin, A. Kuryakin, S. Kushpil, V. Kuskov, M. Kutyla, A. Kuznetsov, M. J. Kweon, Y. Kwon, S. L. La Pointe, P. La Rocca, A. Lakrathok, M. Lamanna, S. Lambert, A. R. Landou, R. Langoy, P. Larionov, E. Laudi, L. Lautner, R. A. N. Laveaga, R. Lavicka, R. Lea, H. Lee, I. Legrand, G. Legras, J. 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Vinogradov, T. Virgili, M. M. O. Virta, A. Vodopyanov, B. Volkel, M. A. Völkl, S. A. Voloshin, G. Volpe, B. von Haller, I. Vorobyev, N. Vozniuk, J. Vrláková, J. Wan, C. Wang, D. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Wang, Z. Wang, A. Wegrzynek, F. T. Weiglhofer, S. C. Wenzel, J. P. Wessels, P. K. Wiacek, J. Wiechula, J. Wikne, G. Wilk, J. Wilkinson, G. A. Willems, B. Windelband, M. Winn, J. R. Wright, W. Wu, Y. Wu, Z. Xiong, R. Xu, A. Yadav, A. K. Yadav, Y. Yamaguchi, S. Yang, S. Yano, E. R. Yeats, Z. Yin, I.-K. Yoo, J. H. Yoon, H. Yu, S. Yuan, A. Yuncu, V. Zaccolo, C. Zampolli, F. Zanone, N. Zardoshti, A. Zarochentsev, P. Závada, N. Zaviyalov, M. Zhalov, B. Zhang, C. Zhang, L. Zhang, M. Zhang, M. Zhang, S. Zhang, X. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. Zhang, M. Zhao, V. Zherebchevskii, Y. Zhi, D. Zhou, Y. Zhou, J. Zhu, S. Zhu, Y. Zhu, S. C. Zugravel, N. Zurlo. Physical Review C, 2025; 111 (5) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.111.054906

This paper is open access. A PDF version is available here. h/t to ScienceDaily for the complete list of names

A Multidisciplinary Centre for Neuromorphic (brainlike) Computing in the UK

A May 6, 2025 Aston University press release (also on EurekAlert but published May 7, 2025) announces a UK ‘neuromorphic initiative’, Note: Links have been removed,

  • Aston University to lead the UK’s new centre to pioneer brain-inspired, energy-efficient computing technologies 
  • The initiative will receive £5.6 million over four years from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EPSRC]
  • The aim of the centre is to become a focal point for networking and collaboration on fundamental research and technology.

The UK will be getting a new centre to pioneer brain-inspired, energy-efficient computing technologies.

The UK Multidisciplinary Centre for Neuromorphic Computing is led by Aston University and will receive £5.6 million over four years from the UKRI [UK Research and Innovation] Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The aim of the centre is to become a focal point for networking and collaboration on fundamental research and technology of neuromorphic computing to address the sustainability challenges facing today’s digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence systems.

The centre will be led by the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies (AIPT) and will include the world-leading researchers from Aston University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of Southampton, Queen Mary University of London, Loughborough University and the University of Strathclyde. 

Neuromorphic computing seeks to replicate the brain’s structural and functional principles, however scientists currently lack a deep, system-level understanding of how the human brain computes at cellular and network scales. The researchers aim to tackle that challenge directly, blending stem-cell-derived human neuron experiments with advanced computational models, low-power algorithms and novel photonic hardware.

The centre team includes world-leading researchers with broad and complementary expertise in neuroscience, non-conventional computing algorithms, photonics, opto- and nano-electronics and materials science. In collaboration with policymakers and industrial partners the scientists and engineers aim to demonstrate the capabilities of neuromorphic computing across a range of sectors and applications. The centre will be supported by a broad network of industry partners including Microsoft Research, Thales, BT, QinetiQ, Nokia Bell Labs, Hewlett Packard Labs, Leonardo, Northrop Grumman and a number of small to medium enterprises. Their contribution will focus on enhancing the centre’s impact on society.

Professor Rhein Parri, co-director and neurophysiologist at Aston University said: “For the first time, we can combine the study of living human neurons with that of advanced computing platforms to co-develop the future of computing. 

“This project is an exciting leap forward, learning from biology and technology in ways that were not previously possible.”

The experts aim to co-design brain-inspired neuromorphic systems by studying human neuronal function using the latest human induced pluripotent stem cell – or hiPSC technologies – and developing new computational paradigms and low-power AI algorithms. They also plan to create devices and hardware that are inspired by biological systems, like the human brain. These devices will use light – or photonic hardware – to process information. This approach will be the next big step in making computing more energy-efficient and capable of handling many tasks at the same time. They also aim to create a sustainable UK research ecosystem through training, road mapping, and international collaboration.

Professor Sergei K. Turitsyn, director of the centre and AIPT, said: “The project’s ambition is not only to develop future technologies, but also to create a new internationally known UK research brand in neuromorphic computing that will unite the UK’s best minds across disciplines and will lead to sustainable operation and a long-term impact. It’s a proud moment for AIPT and Aston University to lead this national effort.”

Professor Natalia Berloff, co-director of the centre who is based at the University of Cambridge said: “One of the most exciting aspects of neuromorphic computing is the potential of photonic hardware to deliver truly brain-like efficiency. 

“Light-based processors can exploit massive parallelism and ultrafast signal propagation to outperform conventional electronics on demanding AI workloads, while consuming far less power. By combining these photonic architectures with insights from living human neurons, we aim to co-design neuromorphic systems that move beyond incremental improvements and toward a genuinely transformative computing paradigm.”

In addition, the researchers aim to tackle the increasing global energy footprint of information and communication technologies which is developing at an unsustainable pace, driven partly by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Today’s AI systems are built on traditional computing hardware with increasingly high-power consumption (kW), posing a barrier to scalability and sustainability. In contrast, the human brain performs complex computation and communication tasks using just 20 watts.

Professor Dimitra Georgiadou, co-director of the centre who is based at the University of Southampton added: “To address the challenge of substantially lowering the power consumption in electronics, novel materials and device architectures are needed that can effectively emulate computation in the brain and cellular responses to certain stimuli.”

The centre’s ambition goes beyond technology development as it aims to serve as a foundation for a long-term, interdisciplinary research ecosystem – actively expanding its membership and reach over time. It aims to establish a sustainable centre that continues to be a focal point for the community and will thrive beyond the initial funding period, reinforcing innovation, partnership, and impact in the field of neuromorphic computing.

…

Good luck to this effort to lower power consumption.

The nuclear fusion energy race

In addition to the competition to develop commercial quantum computing, there’s the competition to develop commercial nuclear fusion energy. I have four stories about nuclear fusion, one from Spain, one from Chine, one from the US, and one from Vancouver. There are also a couple of segues into history and the recently (April 2, 2025) announced US tariffs (chaos has since ensued as these have become ‘on again/off again’ tariffs) but the bulk of this posting is focused on the latest (January – early April 2025) in fusion energy.

Fission nuclear energy, where atoms are split, is better known; fusion nuclear energy is released when a star is formed. For anyone unfamiliar with the word tokamak as applied to nuclear fusion (which is mentioned in all the stories), you can find out more in the Tokamak Wikipedia entry.

Spain

A January 21, 2025 news item on phys.org announces the first plasma generated by a tokamak,

In a pioneering approach to achieve fusion energy, the SMART device has successfully generated its first tokamak plasma. This step brings the international fusion community closer to achieving sustainable, clean, and virtually limitless energy through controlled fusion reactions.

…

A January 21, 2025 University of Seville press release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides some explanations and more detail about the work, Note: Links have been removed,

The SMART tokamak, a state-of-the-art experimental fusion device designed, constructed and operated by the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory of the University of Seville, is a worldwide unique spherical tokamak due to its flexible shaping capabilities. SMART has been designed to demonstrate the unique physics and engineering properties of Negative Triangularity shaped plasmas towards compact fusion power plants based on Spherical Tokamaks.

Prof. Manuel García Muñoz, Principal Investigator of the SMART tokamak, stated: “This is an important achievement for the entire team as we are now entering the operational phase of SMART. The SMART approach is a potential game changer with attractive fusion performance and power handling for future compact fusion reactors. We have exciting times ahead!
Prof. Eleonora Viezzer, co-PI of the SMART project, adds: “We were all very excited to see the first magnetically confined plasma and are looking forward to exploiting the capabilities of the SMART device together with the international scientific community. SMART has awoken great interest worldwide.

When negative becomes positive and compact

The triangularity describes the shape of the plasma. Most tokamaks operate with positive triangularity, meaning that the plasma shape looks like a D. When the D is mirrored (as shown in the figure on the right), the plasma has negative triangularity.

Negative triangularity plasma shapes feature enhanced performance as it suppresses instabilities that expel particles and energy from the plasma, preventing severe damage to the tokamak wall. Besides offering high fusion performance, negative triangularity also feature attractive power handling solutions, given that it covers a larger divertor area for distributing the heat exhaust. This also facilitates the engineering design for future compact fusion power plants.

Fusion2Grid aimed at developing the foundation for the most compact fusion power plant

SMART is the first step in the Fusion2Grid strategy led by the PSFT team and, in collaboration with the international fusion community, is aimed at the most compact and most efficient magnetically confined fusion power plant based on Negative Triangularity shaped Spherical Tokamaks.

SMART will be the first compact spherical tokamak operating at fusion temperatures with negative triangularity shaped plasmas.

The objective of SMART is to provide the physics and engineering basis for the most compact design of a fusion power plant based on high-field Spherical Tokamaks combined with Negative Triangularity. The solenoid-driven plasma represents a major achievement in the timeline of getting SMART online and advancing towards the most compact fusion device.

The Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab of the University of Seville hosts the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) and leads several worldwide efforts on energetic particles and plasma transport and stability towards the development of magnetically confined fusion energy.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Performance prediction applying different reduced turbulence models to the SMART tokamak by D.J. Cruz-Zabala, M. Podestàa, F. Polib, S.M. Kaye, M. Garcia-Munoz, E. Viezzer and J.W. Berkery. Nuclear Fusion, Volume 64, Number 12DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/ad8a70 Published 7 November 2024 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)

This paper is open access.

China

Caption: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. Credit: Image by HFIPS ( Hefei Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

China has made a business announcement and there is no academic paper mentioned in their January 21, 2025 press release on EurekAlert (also available on phys.org as a January 21, 2025 news item), Note: A link has been removed,

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), commonly known as China’s “artificial sun,” has achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This accomplishment, reached on Monday, sets a new world record and marks a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.

The duration of 1,066 seconds is a critical advancement in fusion research. This milestone, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Scienece [sic] (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, far surpasses the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023.

The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occurr [sci] in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system.

Scientists worldwide have dedicated over 70 years to this ambitious goal. However, generating electricity from a nuclear fusion device involves overcoming key challenges, including reaching temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, maintaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring precise control of the fusion process.

“A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is essential for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants,” said SONG Yuntao, ASIPP director and also vice president of HFIPS. He said that the recent record is monumental, marking a critical step toward realizing a functional fusion reactor.

According to GONG Xianzu, head of the EAST Physics and Experimental Operations division, several systems of the EAST device have been upgraded since the last round of experiments. For example, the heating system, which previously operated at the equivalent power of nearly 70,000 household microwave ovens, has now doubled its power output while maintaining stability and continuity.

Since its inception in 2006, EAST has served as an open testing platform for both Chinese and international scientists to conduct fusion-related experiments and research.

China officially joined the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program in 2006 as its seventh member. Under the agreement, China is responsible for approximately 9 percent of the project’s construction and operation, with ASIPP serving as the primary institution for the Chinese mission.

ITER, currently under construction in southern France, is set to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor upon completion.

In recent years, EAST has consistently achieved groundbreaking advancements in high-confinement mode, a fundamental operational mode for experimental fusion reactors like ITER and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). These accomplishments provide invaluable insights and references for the global development of fusion reactors.

“We hope to expand international collaboration via EAST and bring fusion energy into practical use for humanity,” said SONG.

In Hefei, Anhui Province, China, where EAST is loacated [sic], a new generation of experimental fusion research facilities is currently under construction. These facilities aim to further accelerate the development and application of fusion energy.

I always feel a little less confident about the information when there are mistakes. Three typos in the same press release? Maybe someone forgot to give it a final once over?

US

Despite the Cambridge University Press mention, this March 27, 2025 Cambridge University Press press release (also on EurekAlert) is about a US development,

Successfully harnessing the power of fusion energy could lead to cleaner and safer energy for all – and contribute substantially to combatting [UK spelling] the climate crisis. Towards this goal, Type One Energy has published a comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis for a practical fusion pilot power plant.  

This groundbreaking research is presented in a series of six peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), published by Cambridge University Press. 

The articles serve as the foundation for the company’s first fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing with the Tennessee Valley Authority utility in the United States.  

Alex Schekochihin, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Editor of the JPP, spoke with enthusiasm about this development: 

“JPP is very proud to provide a platform for rigorous peer review and publication of the papers presenting the physics basis of the Infinity Two stellarator — an innovative and ground-breaking addition to the expanding family of proposed fusion power plant designs.  

“Fusion science and technology are experiencing a period of very rapid development, driven by both public and private enthusiasm for fusion power. In this environment of creative and entrepreneurial ferment, it is crucial that new ideas and designs are both publicly shared and thoroughly scrutinised by the scientific community — Type One Energy and JPP are setting the gold standard for how this is done (as we did with Commonwealth Fusion Systems 5 years ago for their SPARC physics basis).” 

The new physics design basis for the pilot power plant is a robust effort to consider realistically the complex relationship between challenging, competing requirements that all need to function together for fusion energy to be possible.  

This new physics solution also builds on the operating characteristics of high-performing stellarator fusion technology – a stellarator being a machine that uses complex, helical magnetic fields to confine the plasma, thereby enabling scientists to control it and create suitable conditions for fusion. This technology is already being used with success on the world’s largest research stellarator, the Wendelstein 7-X, located in Germany, but the challenge embraced by Type One Energy’s new design is how to scale it up to a pilot plant. 

Building the future of energy 

Functional fusion technology could offer limitless clean energy. As global energy demands increase and energy security is front of mind, too, this new physics design basis comes at an excellent time.  

Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy, is cognisant of the landmark nature of his company’s achievement and proud of its strong, real-world foundations. 

“The physics basis for our new fusion power plant is grounded in Type One Energy’s expert knowledge about reliable, economic, electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organisation that understands this isn’t only about designing a science project.” 

This research was developed collaboratively between Type One Energy and a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. Collaborating organisations included the US Department of Energy, for using their supercomputers, such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to perform its physics simulations. 

While commercial fusion energy has yet to move from theory into practice, this new research marks an important and promising milestone. Clean and abundant energy may yet become reality.  

You can read the six papers and the accompanying Editorial (all of which are open access) in this special issue, Physics Basics of the Infinity Two Fusion Power Plant of the Journal of Plasma Physics.

Bull Run, eh?

This is not directly related to fusion energy, so, you might want to skip this section.

Caption: Type One Energy employees at the Bull Run [emphasis mine] Fossil Plant, soon to be home to the prototype Infinity One. Credit: Type One Energy

I wonder if anyone argued for a change of name given how charged the US history associated with ‘Bull Run’ is, from the the First Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

The First Battle of Bull Run, called the Battle of First Manassas[1] by Confederate forces, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of what is now the city of Manassas and about thirty miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union Army was slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops. The battle was a Confederate victory and was followed by a disorganized post-battle retreat of the Union forces.

…

A Confederate victory the first time and the second time (Second Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry)? For anyone unfamiliar with the history, the US Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederate states had seceded from the union (US) and were fighting to retain their slavery-based economy and they lost the war.

Had anyone consulted me I would have advised changing the name from Bull Run to some thing less charged (pun noted) to host your prototype fusion energy pilot plant.

Back to the usual programme.

Type One Energy

Type One Energy issued a March 27, 2025 news release about the special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), Note 1: Some of this redundant; Note 2: Links have been removed,

Type One Energy announced today publication of the world’s first comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis, with conservative design margins, for a practical fusion pilot power plant. This physics basis is presented in a series of seven peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP). They serve as the foundation for the company’s first Infinity Two stellarator fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) utility in the U.S.

The Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant physics design basis realistically considers, for the first time, the complex relationship between competing requirements for plasma performance, power plant startup, construction logistics, reliability, and economics utilizing actual power plant operating experience. This Infinity Two baseline physics solution makes use of the inherently favorable operating characteristics of highly optimized stellarator fusion technology using modular superconducting magnets, as was so successfully proven on the W7-X science machine in Germany.

“Why are we the first private fusion company with an agreement to develop a potential fusion power plant project for an energy utility? Because we have a design anchored in reality,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy. “The physics basis for Infinity Two is grounded in the knowledge of what is required for application to, and performance in, the demanding environment of reliable electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organization that understands this isn’t about designing a science project.”

Led by Chris Hegna, widely recognized as a leading theorist in modern stellarators, Type One Energy performed high-fidelity computational plasma physics analyses to substantially reduce the risk of meeting Infinity Two power plant functional and performance requirements. This unique and transformational achievement is the result of a global development program led by the Type One Energy plasma physics and stellarator engineering organization, with significant contributions from a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. The company made use of a spectrum of high-performance computing facilities, including access to the highest-performance U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to perform its stellarator physics simulations.

“We committed to this ambitious fusion commercialization milestone two years ago and today we delivered,” said John Canik, Chief Science and Engineering Officer for Type One Energy. “The team was able to efficiently develop deep plasma physics insights to inform the design of our Infinity Two stellarator, by taking advantage of our access to high performance computing resources. This enabled the Type One Energy team to demonstrate a realistic, integrated stellarator design that moves far beyond conventional thinking and concepts derived from more limited modeling capabilities.”

The consistent and robust physics solution for Infinity Two results in a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fueled, burning plasma stellarator with 800 MW of fusion power and delivers a nominal 350 MWe to the power grid. It is characterized by fusion plasma with resilient and stable behavior across a broad range of operating conditions, very low heat loss due to turbulent transport, as well as tolerable direct energy losses to the stellarator first wall. The Infinity Two stellarator has sufficient room for both adequately sized island divertors to exhaust helium ash and a blanket which provides appropriate shielding and tritium breeding. Type One Energy has high confidence that this essential physics solution provides a good baseline stellarator configuration for the Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant.

“The articles in this issue [of JPP] represent an important step towards a fusion reactor based on the stellarator concept. Thanks to decades of experiments and theoretical research, much of the latter published in JPP, it has become possible to lay out the physics basis for a stellarator power plant in considerable detail,” said Per Helander, head of Stellarator Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “JPP is very happy to publish this series of papers from Type One Energy, where this has been accomplished in a way that sets new standards for the fidelity and confidence level in this context.”

Important to successful fusion power plant commercialization, this stellarator configuration has enabled Type One Energy to architect a maintenance solution which supports good power plant Capacity Factors (CF) and associated Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). It also supports favorable regulatory requirements for component manufacturing and power plant construction methods essential to achieving a reasonable Over-Night Cost (ONC) for Infinity Two.

About Type One Energy

Type One Energy Group is mission-driven to provide sustainable, affordable fusion power to the world. Established in 2019 and venture-backed in 2023, the company is led by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists with a strong track record of building state-of-the-art stellarator fusion machines, together with veteran business leaders experienced in scaling companies and commercializing energy technologies. Type One Energy applies proven advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its optimized stellarator fusion energy system. Its FusionDirect development program pursues the lowest-risk, shortest-schedule path to a fusion power plant over the coming decade, using a partner-intensive and capital-efficient strategy. Type One Energy is committed to community engagement in the development and deployment of its clean energy technology. For more information, visit www.typeoneenergy.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

While the company is currently headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, it was originally a spinoff company from the University of Wisconsin-Madison according to a March 30, 2023 posting on the university’s College of Engineering website,

Type One Energy, a Middleton, Wisconsin-based fusion energy company with roots in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, recently announced its first round of seed funding, raising $29 million from investors. The company has also onboarded a new, highly experienced CEO [Christofer Mowry].

Type One, founded in 2019 by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists and business leaders, is hoping to commercialize stellarator technology over the next decade. Stellarators are a type of fusion reactor that uses powerful magnets to confine ultra-hot streams of plasma in order to create the conditions for fusion reactions. Energy from fusion promises to be clean, safe, renewable power. The company is using advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its stellarator through an initiative called FusionDirect.

…

According to the Type One Energy’s About page, there are four offices with the headquarters in Tennessee,

Knoxville (Headquarters)
2410 Cherahala Blvd.
Knoxville, TN 37931

Madison
316 W Washington Ave. Suite 300
Madison, WI 53703

Boston
299 Washington St. Suites C & E
Woburn, MA 01801

Vancouver
1140 West Pender St.
Vancouver, BC V6E 4G1

The mention of an office in Vancouver, Canada piqued my curiosity but before getting to that, I’m going to include some informative excerpts about nuclear energy (both fission and fusion) from this August 31, 2023 article written by Tina Tosukhowong on behalf of TDK Ventures, which was posted on Medium,

Fusion power is the key to the energy transformation that humanity needs to drive decarbonization, clean, and baseload energy production that is inherently fail-safe, with no risk of long-lived radioactive waste, while also delivering on ever-growing energy-consumption demands at the global scale. Fusion is hard and requires exceptional conditions for sustained reaction (which is part of what makes it so safe), which has long served as a deterrent for technical maturation and industrial viability. …

…

The current reality of our world is monumental fossil-fuel dependence. This, coupled with unprecedented levels of energy demand has resulted in the over 136,700 TWh (that’s 10¹²) of energy consumed via fossil fuels annually [1]. Chief repercussion among the many consequences of this dependence is the now very looming threat of climate catastrophe, which will soon be irreversible if global temperature rise is not abated and held to within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels. To do so, the nearly 40 gigatons of CO2 emissions generated each year must be steadily reduced and eventually mitigated entirely [2]. A fundamental shift in how power is generated globally is the only way forward. Humanity needs an energy transformation — the right energy transformation.

Alternative energy-generation techniques, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric approaches have all made excellent strides, and indeed in just the United States electricity generated by renewable methods doubled from 10 to 20% of total between 2010 and 2020 [3–4]. These numbers are incredibly encouraging and give significant credence in the journey to net-zero emission energy generation. However, while these standard renewable approaches should be championed, wind and solar are intermittent and require a large amount of land to deploy, while geothermal and hydroelectric are not available in every geography.

By far the most viable candidates for continuous clean energy generation to replace coal-fired power plants are nuclear-driven technologies, i.e. nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission has been a proven effective method ever since it was first demonstrated almost 80 years ago underneath the University of Chicago football Stadium by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi [5]. Heavier atomic elements, in most cases Uranium-235, are exposed to and bombarded by neutrons. This causes the Uranium to split resulting in two slightly less-heavy elements (like Barium and Krypton). This in turn causes energy to be released and more neutrons to be ejected and bombard other nearby Uranium-235, at which point the process cascades into a chain reaction. The released energy (heat) is utilized in the same way coal is burned in a traditional power plant, being subsequently used to generate electricity usually via the creation of steam to drive a turbine [6]. While already having reached viable commercial maturity, fission carries inherent and nontrivial safety concerns. An unhampered chain reaction can quickly lead to meltdown with disastrous consequences, and, even when properly managed, the end reaction does generate radioactive waste whose half-life can last hundreds of thousands of years.

Figure 1. Breakdown of a nuclear fission reaction [6]. Incident neutron bombards a fissile heavy element, splitting it and release energy and more nuclei setting off a chain reaction.

Especially given modernization efforts and meteoric gains in safety (thanks to advents in material science like ceramic coatings), fission will continue to be a critical piece to better, greener energy transformation. However, in extending our vision to an even brighter future with no such concerns — carbon emissions or safety — nuclear fusion is humanity’s silver bullet. Instead of breaking down atoms leading to a chain reaction, fusion is the combining of atoms (usually isotopes of Hydrogen) into heavier elements which also results in energy release / heat generation [7]. Like fission, fusion can be designed to be a continuous energy source that can serve as a permanent backbone to the power grid. It is extremely energy dense, with 1 kg of fusion fuel producing the same amount of energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal, and it is inherently fail-safe with no long-term radioactive waste.

…

As a concept, if fusion is a silver bullet to answer humanity’s energy transformation needs, then why haven’t we done so already? The appeal seems so obvious, what’s the hold up? Simply put, nuclear fusion is hard for the very same reason the process is inherently safe. Atoms in the process must have enough energy to overcome electrostatic repulsive forces between the two positive charges of their nuclei to fuse. The key figure of merit to evaluate fusion is the so-called “Lawson Triple Product.” Essentially, this means in order to generate energy by fusion more than the rate of energy oss to the environment, the nuclei must be very close together (as represented by n — the plasma density), kept at a high enough temperature (as represented by T — temperature), and for long enough time to sustain fusion (as represented by τ — the confinement time). The triple product required to achieve fusion “ignition” (the state where the rate of energy production is higher than the rate of loss) depends on the fuel type and occurs within a plasma state. A deuterium and tritium (D-T) system has the lowest Lawson Triple product requirement, where fusion can achieve a viable threshold for ignition when the density of the fuel atoms, n, multiplied by the fuel temperature, T, multiplied by the confinement time, τ, is greater than 5×10²¹ (nTτ > 5×10²¹ keV-s/m³) [8–9]. For context, the temperature alone in this scenario must be higher than 100-million degrees Celsius.

Figure 2. (Left) Conceptual illustration of a fusion reaction with Deuterium (²H) and Tritium (³H) forming an Alpha particle (⁴He) and free neutron along with energy released as heat (Right). To initiate fusion, repelling electrostatic charge must be overcome via conditions meeting the minimum Lawson Triple Product threshold

…

Tosukhowong’s August 31, 2023 article provides a good overview keeping in mind that it is slanted to justify TDK’s investment in Type One Energy.

Why a Vancouver, Canada office?

As for Type One Energy’s Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) connection, I was reminded of General Fusion, a local fusion energy company while speculating about the connection. First speculative question: could Type One Energy’s presence in Canada allow it to access Canadian government funds for its research? Second speculative question: do they want to have access to people who might hesitate to move to the US or might want to move out of the US but would move to Canada?

The US is currently in an unstable state as suggested in this April 3, 2025 opinion piece by Les Leyne for vancouverisawsome.com

Les Leyne: Trump’s incoherence makes responding to tariff wall tricky

Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details

B.C. officials were guarded Wednesday [April 2, 2025] about the impact on Canada of the tariff wall U.S. President Donald Trump erected around the U.S., but it appears it could have been worse.

Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details. So cabinet ministers begged for more time to check the impacts.

“It’s still very uncertain,” said Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, who chairs the “war room” committee responsible for countering tariff threats. “It’s hard to make sense from President Trump’s speech.” [emphasis mine]

Kahlon said the challenge is that tariff policies change hour by hour, “and anything can happen.”

…

On April 2, 2025 US President Donald Trump announced tariffs (then paused some of the tariffs on April 9, 2025) and some of the targets seemed a bit odd, from an April 2, 2025 article by Alex Galbraith for salon.com, Note: Links have been removed,

“Trade war with penguins”: Trump places 10% tariff on uninhabited Antarctic islands

Planned tariffs shared by the White House included a 10% duty on imports from the barren Heard and McDonald Islands

For once in his life, Donald Trump underpromised and over-delivered. 

The president announced a 10% duty on all imports on Wednesday [April 2, 2025], along with a raft of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners. An extensive graphic released by the White House showed how far Trump was willing to take his tit-for-tat trade war, including a shocking levy of 10% on all imports from the Heard and McDonald Islands. 

If you haven’t heard of this powerhouse of global trade and territory of Australia, you aren’t alone. Few have outside of Antarctic researchers and seals. These extremely remote islands about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica consist mostly of barren tundra. They’re also entirely uninhabited. 

The news that we were starting a trade war with penguins spread quickly after Trump’s announcement. …

U.S. stock futures crumbled following the news of Trump’s widespread tariffs. Dow futures fell by nearly 1,000 points while NASDAQ and S&P futures fell by 3 to 4%. American companies’ stock values rapidly tumbled after the announcement, with large retail importers seeing significant losses. …

No word from the penguins about the ‘pause’. I’m assuming Donald Trump’s next book will be titled, “The art of negotiating trade deals with penguins.” Can’t wait to read it.

(Perhaps someone should tell him there are no penguins in the Arctic so he can’t bypass Canadians or Greenlanders to make a deal.)

Now for the local story.

General Fusion

There’ve been two recent developments at General Fusion. Most recently, an April 2, 2025 General Fusion news release announces a new hire, Note: Links have been removed,

Bob Smith is joining General Fusion as a strategic advisor. Smith brings more than 35 years of experience developing, scaling, and launching world-changing technologies, including spearheading new products and innovation in the aerospace industry at United Space Alliance, Sandia Labs, and Honeywell before serving as CEO of Blue Origin. He joins General Fusion as the company’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) fusion demonstration begins operations and progresses toward transformative technical milestones on the path to commercialization.

“I’ve been watching the fusion energy industry closely for my entire career. Fusion is the last energy source humanity will ever need, and I believe its impact as a zero-carbon energy source will transform the global energy supply at the time needed to fight the worst consequences of climate change,” said Smith. “I am thrilled to work with General Fusion. Their novel approach has inherent and distinctive benefits for the generation of commercially competitive fusion power. It’s exciting to join at a time when the team is about to demonstrate the fundamental physics behind their system and move to scaling up to a pilot plant.”

The LM26 program marks a significant step towards commercialization, as the company’s unique Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies—because it practically addresses barriers to fusion commercialization, such as neutron material degradation, sustainable fuel production, and efficient energy extraction. As a strategic advisor, Smith will leverage his experience advancing game-changing technologies to help guide General Fusion’s technology development and strategic growth.

“Bob’s insights and experience will be invaluable as we execute the LM26 program and look beyond it to propel our practical technology to powering the grid by the mid-2030s,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion. “We are grateful for his commitment of his in-demand time and expertise to our mission and look forward to working together to make fusion power a reality!”

About Bob Smith:

Bob is an experienced business leader in the aerospace and defense industry with extensive technical and operational expertise across the sector. He worked at and managed federal labs, led developments at a large government contractor, grew businesses at a Fortune 100 multinational, and scaled up a launch and space systems startup. Bob also has extensive international experience and has worked with suppliers and OEMs in all the major aerospace regions, including establishing new sites and factories in Europe, India, China, and Puerto Rico.

Bob’s prior leadership roles include Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Origin, President of Mechanical Systems & Components at Honeywell Aerospace, Chief Technology Officer at Honeywell Aerospace, Chairman of NTESS (Sandia Labs), and Executive Director of Space Shuttle Upgrades at United Space Alliance.

Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M, a Master of Science degree in engineering/applied mathematics from Brown University, a doctorate from the University of Texas in aerospace engineering, and a business degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Bob is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and an Academician in the International Academy of Astronautics.

Quick Facts:  

  • Fusion energy is the ultimate clean energy solution—it is the energy source that powers the sun and stars. Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier one, producing a massive amount of energy.
  • General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology is designed to scale for cost-efficient power plants. It uses mechanical compression to create fusion conditions in short pulses, eliminating the need for expensive lasers or superconducting magnets. An MTF power plant is designed to produce its own fuel and inherently includes a method to extract the energy and put it to work.
  • Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) is a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration. Launched, designed, and assembled in just 16 months, the machine is now forming magnetized plasmas regularly at 50 per cent commercial scale. It is advancing towards a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way: 10 million degrees Celsius (1 keV), 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), and scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson).

About General Fusion
General Fusion is pursuing a fast and practical approach to commercial fusion energy and is headquartered in Richmond, Canada. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com.

…

Bob Smith and Blue Origin: things did not go well

Sometimes you end up in a job and things do not work out well and that seems to have been the case at Blue Origin according to a September 25, 2023 article by Eric Berger for Ars Tecnica,

After six years of running Blue Origin, Bob Smith announced in a company-wide email on Monday that he will be “stepping aside” as chief executive of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.

“It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us,” Smith wrote in an email. “We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business.”

Shortly after Smith’s email, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company’s new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon’s vice president of devices and services last month.

…

To put things politely, Smith has had a rocky tenure as Blue Origin’s chief executive. After being personally vetted and hired by Bezos, Smith took over from Rob Meyerson in 2017. The Honeywell engineer was given a mandate to transform Blue Origin into a large and profitable space business.

He did succeed in growing Blue Origin. The company had about 1,500 employees when Smith arrived, and the company now employs nearly 11,000 people. But he has been significantly late on a number of key programs, including the BE-4 rocket engine and the New Glenn rocket.

As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith’s tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, “Anything is better than Bob.”

Although it is very far from an exact barometer, Smith has received consistently low ratings on Glassdoor for his performance as chief executive of Blue Origin. And two years ago, a group of current and former Blue Origin employees wrote a blistering letter about the company under Smith. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors wrote.

With any corporate culture, there will be growing pains, of course. But Smith brought a traditional aerospace mindset into a company that had hitherto been guided by a new space vision, leading to a high turnover rate. And Blue Origin remains significantly underwater, financially. It is likely that Bezos is still providing about $2 billion a year to support the company’s cash needs.

Crucially, as Blue Origin meandered under Smith’s tenure, SpaceX soared, launching hundreds of rockets and thousands of satellites. Smith, clearly, was not the leader Blue Origin needed to make the company more competitive with SpaceX in launch and other spaceflight activities. It became something of a parlor game in the space industry to guess when Bezos would finally get around to firing Smith.

…

On the technical front, a March 27, 2025 General Fusion news release announces “Peer-reviewed publication confirms General Fusion achieved plasma energy confinement time required for its LM26 large-scale fusion machine,” Note: Links have been removed,

New results published in Nuclear Fusion confirm General Fusion successfully created magnetized plasmas that achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds. The published energy confinement time results were achieved on General Fusion’s PI3 plasma injector — the world’s largest and most powerful plasma injector of its kind. Commissioned in 2017, PI3 formed approximately 20,000 plasmas in a machine of 50 per cent commercial scale. The plasma injector is now integrated into General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) — a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration tracking toward game-changing technical milestones that will advance the company’s ultimate mission: generating zero-carbon fusion energy for the grid in the next decade.

The 10-millisecond energy confinement time is the duration required to compress plasmas in LM26 to achieve key temperature thresholds of 1 keV, 10 keV, and, ultimately, scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson). These results were imperative to de-risking LM26. The demonstration machine is now forming plasmas regularly, and the company is optimizing its plasma performance in preparation for compressing plasmas to create fusion and heating from compression.    

Key Findings: 

  • The plasma injector now integrated into General Fusion’s LM26 achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds, the pre-compression confinement time required for LM26’s targeted technical milestones. These results were achieved without requiring active magnetic stabilization or auxiliary heating. This means the results were achieved without superconducting magnets, demonstrating the company’s cost-effective approach.  
  • The plasma’s energy confinement time improved when the plasma injector vessel was coated with natural lithium. A key differentiator in General Fusion’s commercial approach is its use of a liquid lithium wall to compress plasmas during compression. In addition to the confinement time advantages shown in this paper, the liquid lithium wall will also protect a commercial MTF machine from neutron damage, enable the machine to breed its own fuel, and provide an efficient method for extracting energy from the machine.
  • The maximum energy confinement time achieved by PI3 was approximately 12 milliseconds. The machine’s maximum plasma density was approximately 6×1019 m-3, and maximum plasma temperatures exceeded 400 eV. These strong pre-compression results support LM26’s transformative targets.

Quotes:  

“LM26 is designed to achieve a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way. Following LM26’s results, our unique approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies because we have front-loaded the work to address the barriers to commercialization.”  

Dr. Michel Laberge
Founder and Chief Science Officer

“For over 16 years, I have worked hand in hand with Michel to advance General Fusion’s practical technology. This company is entrepreneurial at its core. We pride ourselves on building real machines that get results that matter, and I’m thrilled to have the achievements recognized in Nuclear Fusion.”

Mike Donaldson
Senior Vice President, Technology Development

…

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Thermal energy confinement time of spherical tokamak plasmas in PI3 by A. Tancetti, C. Ribeiro, S.J. Howard, S. Coop, C.P. McNally, M. Reynolds, P. Kholodov, F. Braglia, R. Zindler, C. Macdonald. Nuclear Fusion, Volume 65, Number 3DOI: 10.1088/1741-4326/adb8fb Published 28 February 2025 • © 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]

This paper is open access.

For anyone curious about General Fusion, I have a brief overview and history of the company and their particular approach to fusion energy in my February 6, 2024 posting (scroll down to ‘The Canadians’).

Miniature, soft lithium-ion battery constructed from biocompatible hydrogel droplets for bio-integrated devices

The original headline for the University of Oxford press release was “Batteries for miniature bio-integrated devices and robotics” but it’s not clear to me what they mean by robotics (soft robots? robotic prostheses? something else?).

An October 25, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announces the research,

University of Oxford researchers have made a significant step towards realising miniature, soft batteries for use in a variety of biomedical applications, including the defibrillation and pacing of heart tissues. The work has been published today [October 25, 2024] in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering.

…

An October 28, 2024 University of Oxford press release (also on EurekAlert but published October 25, 2024), which originated the lightly edited news item and posting on EurekAlert, provides more technical detail about this advance, Note: Links have been removed,

The development of tiny smart devices, smaller than a few cubic millimeters, demands equally small power sources. For minimally invasive biomedical devices that interact with biological tissues, these power sources must be fabricated from soft materials. Ideally, these should also have features such as high capacity, biocompatibility and biodegradability, triggerable activation, and the ability to be controlled remotely. To date, there has been no battery that can fulfil these requirements all at once.

To address these requirements, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry and Department of Pharmacology have developed a miniature, soft lithium-ion battery constructed from biocompatible hydrogel droplets. Surfactant-supported assembly (assembly aided by soap-like molecules), a technique reported by the same group last year in the journal Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06295-y), is used to connect three microscale droplets of 10 nanolitres volume. Different lithium-ion particles contained in each of the two ends then generate the output energy.

‘Our droplet battery is light-activated, rechargeable, and biodegradable after use. To date, it is the smallest hydrogel lithium-ion battery and has a superior energy density’ said Dr Yujia Zhang (Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford), the lead researcher for the study and a starting Assistant Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. ‘We used the droplet battery to power the movement of charged molecules between synthetic cells and to control the beating and defibrillation of mouse hearts. By including magnetic particles to control movement, the battery can also function as a mobile energy carrier.’

Proof-of-concept heart treatments were carried out in the laboratory of Professor Ming Lei (Department of Pharmacology), a senior electrophysiologist in cardiac arrhythmias. He said: ‘Cardiac arrhythmia is a leading cause of death worldwide. Our proof-of-concept application in animal models demonstrates an exciting new avenue of wireless and biodegradable devices for the management of arrhythmias.’

Professor Hagan Bayley (Department of Chemistry), the research group leader for the study, said: ‘The tiny soft lithium-ion battery is the most sophisticated in a series of microscale power packs developed by Dr Zhang and points to a fantastic future for biocompatible electronic devices that can operate under physiological conditions.’

The researchers have filed a patent application through Oxford University Innovation. They envisage that the tiny versatile battery, particularly relevant to small-scale robots for bioapplications, will open up new possibilities in various areas including clinical medicine.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A microscale soft lithium-ion battery for tissue stimulation by Yujia Zhang, Tianyi Sun, Xingyun Yang, Linna Zhou, Cheryl M. J. Tan, Ming Lei & Hagan Bayley. Nature Chemical Engineering volume 1, pages 691–701 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44286-024-00136-z Published online: 25 October 2024 Issue Date: November 2024

This paper is open access.

Now, I want to highlight a few items from the paper’s introduction, Note: Links have been removed,

The miniaturization of electronic devices is a burgeoning area of research1,2,3. Therefore, the development of tiny batteries to power these devices is of critical importance, and techniques such as three-dimensional (3D) printing4,5,6 and micro-origami assembly7 [emphases mine] are beginning to have an impact. For minimally invasive applications in biomedicine, batteries are also preferred to be soft, biocompatible and biodegradable, with additional functionality and responsiveness, such as triggerable activation and remote-controlled mobility8. However, at present, such a multifunctional microscale soft battery is not available. Although hydrogel-based lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries demonstrate some of these features9,10,11,12, none currently exhibits microscale fabrication of the battery architecture, in terms of self-assembled integration of hydrogel-based cathode, separator and anode at the submillimeter level. Manual assembly of precrosslinked compartments11 or multistep deposition and crosslinking4 is necessary to avoid the mixing of materials from different compartments at the pregel (liquid) state or during the gelation process. This limitation not only makes it difficult to shrink hydrogel-based functional architectures but also hinders the implementation of high-density energy storage.

Toward that end, Zhang et al. have reported a miniaturized ionic power source by depositing lipid-supported networks of nanoliter hydrogel droplets13. The power source mimics the electrical eel [emphasis mine] by using internal ion gradients to generate ionic current14, and can induce neuronal modulation. However, the ionic power source has several limitations [emphasis mine] that should be addressed. First, the stored salt gradient produces less power than conventional Li-ion batteries, and the device cannot be fully recharged. Second, activation of the power source relies on temperature-triggered gelation and oil for buffer exchange, which is a demanding requirement. Third, the functionality of the power source is limited to the generation of ionic output, leaving the full versatility of synthetic tissues unexploited15,16,17. Last, but not least, while the power source can modulate the activity of neural microtissues, organ-level stimulation necessitates a higher and more stable output performance in physiological environments18.

Here, we present a miniature, soft, rechargeable Li-ion droplet battery (LiDB) made by depositing self-assembling [emphasis mine], nanoliter, lipid-supported, silk hydrogel droplets. The tiny hydrogel compartmentalization produces a superior energy density. The battery is switched on by ultraviolet (UV) light, which crosslinks the hydrogel and breaks the lipid barrier between droplets. The droplets are soft, biocompatible and biodegradable. The LiDBs can power charge molecule translocation between synthetic cells, defibrillate mouse hearts with ventricular arrhythmias and pace heart rhythms. Further, the LiDB can be translocated from one site to another magnetically.

This team has integrated a number of cutting edge (I think you can still call them that) techniques such as 3D printing and origami along with inspiration from electric eels (biomimicry) for using light as a power source. .Finally, there’s self-assembly or, as it’s sometimes known, bottom-up engineering, just like nature.

This work still needs to be tested in human clinical trials but taking that into account: Bravo to the researchers!

FrogHeart’s 2024 comes to an end as 2025 comes into view

First, thank you to anyone who’s dropped by to read any of my posts. Second, I didn’t quite catch up on my backlog in what was then the new year (2024) despite my promises. (sigh) I will try to publish my drafts in a more timely fashion but I start this coming year as I did 2024 with a backlog of two to three months. This may be my new normal.

As for now, here’s an overview of FrogHeart’s 2024. The posts that follow are loosely organized under a heading but many of them could fit under other headings as well. After my informal review, there’s some material on foretelling the future as depicted in an exhibition, “Oracles, Omens and Answers,” at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Human enhancement: prosthetics, robotics, and more

Within a year or two of starting this blog I created a tag ‘machine/flesh’ to organize information about a number of converging technologies such as robotics, brain implants, and prosthetics that could alter our concepts of what it means to be human. The larger category of human enhancement functions in much the same way also allowing a greater range of topics to be covered.

Here are some of the 2024 human enhancement and/or machine/flesh stories on this blog,

Other species are also being rendered ‘machine/flesh’,

The year of the hydrogel?

It was the year of the hydrogel for me (btw, hydrogels are squishy materials; I have more of a description after this list),

As for anyone who’s curious about hydrogels, there’s this from an October 20, 2016 article by D.C.Demetre for ScienceBeta, Note: A link has been removed,

Hydrogels, materials that can absorb and retain large quantities of water, could revolutionise medicine. Our bodies contain up to 60% water, but hydrogels can hold up to 90%.

It is this similarity to human tissue that has led researchers to examine if these materials could be used to improve the treatment of a range of medical conditions including heart disease and cancer.

These days hydrogels can be found in many everyday products, from disposable nappies and soft contact lenses to plant-water crystals. But the history of hydrogels for medical applications started in the 1960s.

Scientists developed artificial materials with the ambitious goal of using them in permanent contact applications , ones that are implanted in the body permanently.

For anyone who wants a more technical explanation, there’s the Hydrogel entry on Wikipedia.

Science education and citizen science

Where science education is concerned I’m seeing some innovative approaches to teaching science, which can include citizen science. As for citizen science (also known as, participatory science) I’ve been noticing heightened interest at all age levels.

Artificial intelligence

It’s been another year where artificial intelligence (AI) has absorbed a lot of energy from nearly everyone. I’m highlighting the more unusual AI stories I’ve stumbled across,

As you can see, I’ve tucked in two tangentially related stories, one which references a neuromorphic computing story ((see my Neuromorphic engineering category or search for ‘memristors’ in the blog search engine for more on brain-like computing topics) and the other is intellectual property. There are many, many more stories on these topics

Art/science (or art/sci or sciart)

It’s a bit of a surprise to see how many art/sci stories were published here this year, although some might be better described as art/tech stories.

There may be more 2024 art/sci stories but the list was getting long. In addition to searching for art/sci on the blog search engine, you may want to try data sonification too.

Moving off planet to outer space

This is not a big interest of mine but there were a few stories,

A writer/blogger’s self-indulgences

Apparently books can be dangerous and not in a ‘ban [fill in the blank] from the library’ kind of way,

Then, there are these,

New uses for electricity,

Given the name for this blog, it has to be included,

  • Frog saunas published September 15, 2024, this includes what seems to be a mild scientific kerfuffle

I’ve been following Lomiko Metals (graphite mining) for a while,

Who would have guessed?

Another bacteria story,

New crimes,

Origins of life,

Dirt

While no one year features a large number of ‘dirt’ stories, it has been a recurring theme here throughout the years,

Regenerative medicine

In addition to or instead of using the ‘regenerative medicine’ tag, I might use ’tissue engineering’ or ’tissue scaffolding’,

To sum it up

It was an eclectic year.

Peering forward into 2025 and futurecasting

I expect to be delighted, horrified, thrilled, and left shaking my head by science stories in 2025. Year after year the world of science reveals a world of wonder.

More mundanely, I can state with some confidence that my commentary (mentioned in the future-oriented subsection of my 2023 review and 2024 look forward) on Quantum Potential, a 2023 report from the Council of Canadian Academies, will be published early in this new year as I’ve almost finished writing it.

As for more about the future, I’ve got this, from a December 3, 2024 essay (Five ways to predict the future from around the world – from spider divination to bibliomancy) about an exhibition by Michelle Aroney (Research Fellow in Early Modern History, University of Oxford) and David Zeitlyn (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford) in The Conversation (h/t December 3, 2024 news item on phys.org), Note: Links have been removed

Some questions are hard to answer and always have been. Does my beloved love me back? Should my country go to war? Who stole my goats?

Questions like these have been asked of diviners around the world throughout history – and still are today. From astrology and tarot to reading entrails, divination comes in a wide variety of forms.

Yet they all address the same human needs. They promise to tame uncertainty, help us make decisions or simply satisfy our desire to understand.

Anthropologists and historians like us study divination because it sheds light on the fears and anxieties of particular cultures, many of which are universal. Our new exhibition at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Oracles, Omens & Answers, explores these issues by showcasing divination techniques from around the world.

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1. Spider divination

In Cameroon, Mambila spider divination (ŋgam dù) addresses difficult questions to spiders or land crabs that live in holes in the ground.

Asking the spiders a question involves covering their hole with a broken pot and placing a stick, a stone and cards made from leaves around it. The diviner then asks a question in a yes or no format while tapping the enclosure to encourage the spider or crab to emerge. The stick and stone represent yes or no, while the leaf cards, which are specially incised with certain meanings, offer further clarification.

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2. Palmistry

Reading people’s palms (palmistry) is well known as a fairground amusement, but serious forms of this divination technique exist in many cultures. The practice of reading the hands to gather insights into a person’s character and future was used in many ancient cultures across Asia and Europe.

In some traditions, the shape and depth of the lines on the palm are richest in meaning. In others, the size of the hands and fingers are also considered. In some Indian traditions, special marks and symbols appearing on the palm also provide insights.

Palmistry experienced a huge resurgence in 19th-century England and America, just as the science of fingerprints was being developed. If you could identify someone from their fingerprints, it seemed plausible to read their personality from their hands.

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3. Bibliomancy

If you want a quick answer to a difficult question, you could try bibliomancy. Historically, this DIY [do-it-yourself] divining technique was performed with whatever important books were on hand.

Throughout Europe, the works of Homer or Virgil were used. In Iran, it was often the Divan of Hafiz, a collection of Persian poetry. In Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions, holy texts have often been used, though not without controversy.

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4. Astrology

Astrology exists in almost every culture around the world. As far back as ancient Babylon, astrologers have interpreted the heavens to discover hidden truths and predict the future.

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5. Calendrical divination

Calendars have long been used to divine the future and establish the best times to perform certain activities. In many countries, almanacs still advise auspicious and inauspicious days for tasks ranging from getting a haircut to starting a new business deal.

In Indonesia, Hindu almanacs called pawukon [calendar] explain how different weeks are ruled by different local deities. The characteristics of the deities mean that some weeks are better than others for activities like marriage ceremonies.

…

You’ll find logistics for the exhibition in this September 23, 2024 Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford press release about the exhibit, Note: Links have been removed,

Oracles, Omens and Answers

6 December 2024 – 27 April 2025
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library

The Bodleian Libraries’ new exhibition, Oracles, Omens and Answers, will explore the many ways in which people have sought answers in the face of the unknown across time and cultures. From astrology and palm reading to weather and public health forecasting, the exhibition demonstrates the ubiquity of divination practices, and humanity’s universal desire to tame uncertainty, diagnose present problems, and predict future outcomes.

Through plagues, wars and political turmoil, divination, or the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown, has remained an integral part of society. Historically, royals and politicians would consult with diviners to guide decision-making and incite action. People have continued to seek comfort and guidance through divination in uncertain times — the COVID-19 pandemic saw a rise in apps enabling users to generate astrological charts or read the Yijing [I Ching], alongside a growth in horoscope and tarot communities on social media such as ‘WitchTok’. Many aspects of our lives are now dictated by algorithmic predictions, from e-health platforms to digital advertising. Scientific forecasters as well as doctors, detectives, and therapists have taken over many of the societal roles once held by diviners. Yet the predictions of today’s experts are not immune to criticism, nor can they answer all our questions.

Curated by Dr Michelle Aroney, whose research focuses on early modern science and religion, and Professor David Zeitlyn, an expert in the anthropology of divination, the exhibition will take a historical-anthropological approach to methods of prophecy, prediction and forecasting, covering a broad range of divination methods, including astrology, tarot, necromancy, and spider divination.

Dating back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, the exhibition will show us that the same kinds of questions have been asked of specialist practitioners from around the world throughout history. What is the best treatment for this illness? Does my loved one love me back? When will this pandemic end? Through materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries alongside other collections in Oxford, the exhibition demonstrates just how universally human it is to seek answers to difficult questions.

Highlights of the exhibition include: oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250-1050 BCE); an Egyptian celestial globe dating to around 1318; a 16th-century armillary sphere from Flanders, once used by astrologers to place the planets in the sky in relation to the Zodiac; a nineteenth-century illuminated Javanese almanac; and the autobiography of astrologer Joan Quigley, who worked with Nancy and Ronald Reagan in the White House for seven years. The casebooks of astrologer-physicians in 16th- and 17th-century England also offer rare insights into the questions asked by clients across the social spectrum, about their health, personal lives, and business ventures, and in some cases the actions taken by them in response.

The exhibition also explores divination which involves the interpretation of patterns or clues in natural things, with the idea that natural bodies contain hidden clues that can be decrypted. Some diviners inspect the entrails of sacrificed animals (known as ‘extispicy’), as evidenced by an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet describing the observation of patterns in the guts of birds. Others use human bodies, with palm readers interpreting characters and fortunes etched in their clients’ hands. A sketch of Oscar Wilde’s palms – which his palm reader believed indicated “a great love of detail…extraordinary brain power and profound scholarship” – shows the revival of palmistry’s popularity in 19th century Britain.

The exhibition will also feature a case study of spider divination practised by the Mambila people of Cameroon and Nigeria, which is the research specialism of curator Professor David Zeitlyn, himself a Ŋgam dù diviner. This process uses burrowing spiders or land crabs to arrange marked leaf cards into a pattern, which is read by the diviner. The display will demonstrate the methods involved in this process and the way in which its results are interpreted by the card readers. African basket divination has also been observed through anthropological research, where diviners receive answers to their questions in the form of the configurations of thirty plus items after they have been tossed in the basket.

Dr Michelle Aroney and Professor David Zeitlyn, co-curators of the exhibition, say:

Every day we confront the limits of our own knowledge when it comes to the enigmas of the past and present and the uncertainties of the future. Across history and around the world, humans have used various techniques that promise to unveil the concealed, disclosing insights that offer answers to private or shared dilemmas and help to make decisions. Whether a diviner uses spiders or tarot cards, what matters is whether the answers they offer are meaningful and helpful to their clients. What is fun or entertainment for one person is deadly serious for another.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s [a nickname? Bodleian Libraries were founded by Sir Thomas Bodley] Librarian, said:

People have tried to find ways of predicting the future for as long as we have had recorded history. This exhibition examines and illustrates how across time and culture, people manage the uncertainty of everyday life in their own way. We hope that through the extraordinary exhibits, and the scholarship that brings them together, visitors to the show will appreciate the long history of people seeking answers to life’s biggest questions, and how people have approached it in their own unique way.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the book Divinations, Oracles & Omens, edited by Michelle Aroney and David Zeitlyn, which will be published by Bodleian Library Publishing on 5 December 2024.

Courtesy: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

I’m not sure why the preceding image is used to illustrate the exhibition webpage but I find it quite interesting. Should you be in Oxford, UK and lucky enough to visit the exhibition, there are a few more details on the Oracles, Omens and Answers event webpage, Note: There are 26 Bodleian Libraries at Oxford and the exhibition is being held in the Weston Library,

EXHIBITION

Oracles, Omens and Answers

6 December 2024 – 27 April 2025

ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library

Free admission, no ticket required

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Note: This exhibition includes a large continuous projection of spider divination practice, including images of the spiders in action.

Exhibition tours

Oracles, Omens and Answers exhibition tours are available on selected Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1–1.45pm and are open to all.

These free gallery tours are led by our dedicated volunteer team and places are limited. Check available dates and book your tickets.

You do not need to book a tour to visit the exhibition. Please meet by the entrance doors to the exhibition at the rear of Blackwell Hall.

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Happy 2025! And, once again, thank you.