The cornea—the transparent protective outer layer of the eye critical to helping us see—produces a delicate and limited immune response to fight infections without damaging our vision, according to a new study from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute).

Published today in Cell Reports, the study has shown long-living memory T cells that patrol and fight viral infections are present in the cornea, upending current thought that T cells are not found in healthy corneas—expanding our understanding of the eye’s immune response to infections.

The team used a multiphoton microscope that provides live images of living, intact biological tissues to study cornea cells in mice infected with Herpes Simplex Virus.

Their images revealed long-livin...

Quantum materials emit light as though it were only a positive pulse, rather than a positive-negative oscillation. A laser pulse that sidesteps the inherent symmetry of light waves could manipulate quantum information, potentially bringing us closer to room temperature quantum computing.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Regensburg and the University of Michigan, could also accelerate conventional computing.

Quantum computing has the potential to accelerate solutions to problems ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms trained on real astronomical observations now outperform astronomers in sifting through massive amounts of data to find new exploding stars, identify new types of galaxies and detect the mergers of massive stars, accelerating the rate of new discovery in the world’s oldest science.

But AI, also called machine learning, can reveal something deeper, University of California, Berkeley, astronomers found: Unsuspected connections hidden in the complex mathematics arising from general relativity—...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) created a solar cell with a record 39.5% efficiency under 1-sun global illumination. This is the highest efficiency solar cell of any type, measured using standard 1-sun conditions.

“The new cell is more efficient and has a simpler design that may be useful for a variety of new applications, such as highly area-constrained applications or low-radiation space applications,” said Myles Steiner, a senior scientist in NREL’s High-Efficiency Crystalline Photovoltaics (PV) Group and principal investigator on the project...