Newly identified brain circuits may point to more effective pain therapies. An international team of scientists has identified the neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain in mice. The findings, which could inform development of safer methods to treat pain, were published in Science. The study was led by researchers at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR); the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei; and Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China. NIDCR is part of the National Institutes of Health.

“We need more effective methods of managing acute and chronic pain, and that starts...

The moon sustained twice as many impacts as can be seen on its surface, scientists find. Researchers find that, early in its history, the moon was highly porous, which was likely a result of early, massive impacts that shattered much of the crust. They reached their conclusions with simulations and data from NASA’s GRAIL mission.

Around 4.4 billion years ago, the early solar system resembled a game of space rock dodgeball, as massive asteroids and comets, and, later, smaller rocks and galactic debris pummeled the moon and other infant terrestrial bodies. This period ended around 3.8 billion years ago...

Researchers from LMU and Saarland University have entangled two quantum memories over a 33-kilometer-long fiber optic connection – a record and an important step toward the quantum internet.

A network in which data transmission is perfectly secure against hacking? If physicists have their way, this will one day become a reality with the help of the quantum mechanical phenomenon known as entanglement. For entangled particles, the rule is: If you measure the state of one of the particles, then you automatically know the state of the other. It makes no difference how far away the entangled particles are from each other. This is an ideal state of affairs for transmitting information over long distances in a way that renders eavesdropping impossible.

A team led by physic...

Lightweight and flexible perovskites are highly promising materials for the fabrication of photovoltaics. So far, however, their highest reported efficiencies have been around 20%, which is considerably lower than those of rigid perovskites (25.7%).

Researchers at Nanjing University, Jilin University, Shanghai Tech University, and East China Normal University have recently introduced a new strategy to develop more efficient solar cells based on flexible perovskites. This strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the use of two hole-selective molecules based on carbazole cores and phosphonic acid anchoring groups to bridge the perovskite with a low temperature-processed NiO nanocrystal film.

“We believe that lightweight flexible perovskite solar cells ar...