Using ideas borrowed from topological photonics, researchers in Singapore, France and the US have designed a compact antenna capable of handling information-rich terahertz (THz) signals. Reporting their results in Nature Photonics, the team, led by Ranjan Singh at the University of Notre Dame, say that with further refinements, the design could help underpin future sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, allowing data to be shared at unprecedented speeds.

Why 6G needs terahertz antennas
In the not-too-distant future, 6G networks are expected to enable data rates of around one terabit per second—the same as transferring roughly half the storage of a mid-range smartphone in a single second...

Amino acids, the building blocks necessary for life, were previously found in samples of 4.6-billion-year-old rocks from an asteroid called Bennu, delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. How those amino acids—the molecules that create proteins and peptides in DNA—formed in space was a mystery, but new research led by Penn State scientists shows they could have originated in an icy-cold, radioactive environment at the dawn of Earth’s solar system.

According to the researchers, who published new findings in the Proceedings of th...

This local biotech says it has found a way to trick cancer cells into destroying themselves with its molecular glue. Now it’s putting that claim to the test. After attracting global attention from researchers and billions of dollars from Big Pharma, Neomorph announced that it has begun its first clinical trial. The molecular glue aims to treat a form of kidney cancer.

The first trial will dose one patient with the molecular glue, NEO-811, to treat clear cell renal cell carcinoma, the most common kind of kidney cancer.

In San Diego County, roughly 500 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer each year—that’s more than one new case every day, according to the California Cancer Registry...

Will artificial intelligence ever be able to reason, learn, and solve problems at levels comparable to humans? Experts at the University of California San Diego believe the answer is yes—and that such artificial general intelligence has already arrived. This debate is tackled by four faculty members spanning humanities, social sciences, and data science in a recently published Comment invited by Nature.

Computer scientist Alan Turing first posed this question in his landmark 1950 paper, though he didn’t use the term artificial general intelligence (AGI). His “imitation game,” now known as the Turing Test, asked whether a machine could pass as human in text-based conversation with humans. Seventy-five years later, that future is here.

Over the p...