Author: admin

After more than three weeks without a powerful solar flare, the sun has suddenly ramped up its activity, firing off three M-class solar flares in less than 24 hours.

While the sun has been popping off plenty of smaller C-class flares lately, Sunday’s M2.9 eruption at 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 GMT) on Aug. 3 was the first M-class flare since July 12, according to space weather website SolarHam.com’s post on X. The flare marked the end of a 22-day lull in moderate solar flare activity.

Two more followed in rapid succession: an M2 flare at 1:05 a.m. EDT (0505) on Aug. 4 and an M1.4 peaked just 16 minutes later at 1:21 a.m. EDT (0521 GMT). All three eruptions came from sunspot region AR 4168, which rapidly developed a more complex magnetic structure over the weekend.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun’s atmosphere, caused by sudden releases of magnetic energy near sunspots. They’re classified by strength into five categories: A, B, C, M, and X. Each level represents a tenfold increase in energy output. While C-class flares are generally minor, M-class flares are moderate and can sometimes disrupt radio communications. The most intense, X-class flares, have the potential to trigger widespread radio blackouts and even impact satellites and power grids on Earth.

According to Spaceweather.com, both active regions 4168 and 4167 now harbor unstable “delta-class” magnetic fields, an arrangement known to power strong solar eruptions, including potential X-class flares and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

Nanophotonics focuses on controlling how light moves through tiny structures. Usually, these structures have fixed optical properties set during manufacturing. But quantum materials, because of their complex internal behaviors, could allow us to adjust how light behaves in these devices without changing their physical design.

In a leap toward smarter, smaller light-controlling tech, MIT scientists have developed a new nanophotonics platform that bends the rules of modern optics. By manipulating light at the scale of billionths of a meter, they’ve created ultracompact optical devices that are not only tiny and energy-efficient but also flexible, able to switch between different light modes on demand.

This kind of dynamic tunability has long been a missing piece in nanophotonics. Now, thanks to clever engineering and quantum materials, it’s becoming a reality.

This breakthrough brings us closer to a future where light-based devices are not just tiny and mighty, but also smart. Imagine optical components that can reprogram themselves on the fly, adapting to changes in their environment without needing to be rebuilt.

The nanophotonics orchestra presents: Twisting to the light of nanoparticles

That’s the promise of combining quantum materials, which have rich and tunable properties, with the precision of nanophotonics, the science of sculpting light at the nanoscale.

Nanophotonics primarily utilizes materials such as silicon to construct tiny structures that control light. These materials work well but have two significant limits: they don’t bend light very strongly, and once the device is made, its behavior can’t be changed without rebuilding it. Tunability is the secret sauce behind tomorrow’s photonics. It enables devices to adapt in real time, altering their imaging, sensing, light emission, and even learning capabilities, much like neural networks composed of photons.

Chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr) is a quantum material that solves key problems in nanophotonics. It interacts strongly with light thanks to excitons, tiny light-sensitive particles, and responds to magnetic fields, making it easy to control. Its high refractive index lets scientists build ultra-thin optical structures, far slimmer than those made with traditional materials.

MIT researchers showed that by applying a small magnetic field, they could smoothly and reversibly change how light moves through CrSBr, without needing moving parts or temperature changes. This works because CrSBr’s refractive index shifts dramatically under magnetism, far more than in typical materials.

Electronics at the speed of light

CrSBr also creates polaritons, hybrid particles made of light and matter, that unlock new behaviors like stronger light interactions and quantum-level control. Unlike other systems, CrSBr does this naturally, without needing bulky optical cavities.

Even better, CrSBr can be added to existing photonic circuits, making it a practical tool for building smarter, tunable optical devices.

MIT’s results with CrSBr were achieved at very cold temperatures, around 132 kelvins. While that’s below room temperature, the material’s exceptional tunability makes it ideal for advanced applications like quantum simulation and reconfigurable light systems, where cryogenic setups are acceptable. According to researchers, CrSBr is so special that the cold is worth it. Still, the team is looking into similar materials that work at warmer, more practical temperatures.

Journal Reference

1. Demir, A.K., Nessi, L., Vaidya, S. et al. Tunable nanophotonic devices and cavities based on a two-dimensional magnet. Nat. Photon. (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01712-2

A team of Chinese researchers led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed two new genome editing technologies, known collectively as Programmable Chromosome Engineering (PCE) systems.

The study, published online in Cell on August 4, achieves multiple types of precise DNA manipulations ranging from kilobase to megabase scale in higher organisms, especially plants.

Extensive research has demonstrated the immense potential of the site-specific recombinase Cre-Lox system for precise chromosomal manipulation. However, its broader application has been hindered by three critical limitations: (1) reversible recombination reactions-stemming from the inherent symmetry of Lox sites-can negate desired edits; (2) the tetrameric nature of Cre recombinase complicates engineering efforts, hindering activity optimization; and (3) residual Lox sites after recombination may compromise editing precision.

The research team addressed each of these challenges and developed novel methods to advance the state of this technology. First, they built a high-throughput platform for rapid recombination site modification and proposed an asymmetric Lox site design. This led to the development of novel Lox variants that reduce reversible recombination activity by over 10-fold (approaching the background level of negative controls) while retaining high-efficiency forward recombination.

They then leveraged their recently developed AiCE (AI-informed Constraints for protein Engineering), model-a protein-directed evolution system integrating general inverse folding models with structural and evolutionary constraints-to develop AiCErec, a recombinase engineering method. This approach enabled precise optimization of Cre’s multimerization interface, yielding an engineered variant with a recombination efficiency 3.5 times that of wild-type Cre.

Lastly, they designed and refined a scarless editing strategy for recombinases. By harnessing the high editing efficiency of prime editors, they developed Re-pegRNA, a method that uses specifically designed pegRNAs to perform re-prime editing on residual Lox sites, precisely replacing them with the original genomic sequence, thereby ensuring seamless genome modifications.

The integration of these three innovations led to the creation of two programmable platforms, PCE and RePCE. These platforms allow flexible programming of insertion positions and orientations for different Lox sites, enabling precise, scarless manipulation of DNA fragments ranging from kilobase to megabase scale in both plant and animal cells. Key achievements include: targeted integration of large DNA fragments up to 18.8 kb, complete replacement of 5-kb DNA sequences, chromosomal inversions spanning 12 Mb, chromosomal deletions of 4 Mb, and whole-chromosome translocations.

As a proof of concept, the researchers used this technology to create herbicide-resistant rice germplasm with a 315-kb precise inversion, showcasing its transformative potential for genetic engineering and crop improvement.

This pioneering work not only overcomes the historical limitations of the Cre-Lox system but also opens new avenues for precise genome engineering in a variety of organisms.