Category: 7. Science

The life science group Sartorius launches the new iQue^® 5 High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Cytometer, transforming workflows with next-level flexibility and comprehensive analysis at unbeatable speeds. Building on core iQue^® strengths as the market leading solution for HTS applications, the iQue^® 5 expands experimental range with up to 27 channels (25 color options) and flexible workflows in 96- and 384-well formats.

“For scientists driving the next breakthrough in antibody or cell therapy, speed is crucial, and no instrument can rival the speed of the iQue^® HTS Platform,” says Jonah Riddell, Product Manager of iQue^® HTS Systems at Sartorius. “With iQue^® 5 we’re delivering the most powerful screening capabilities for modern applications, complete with enhanced software, individual gain setting, and simplified extended operation so scientists can go even further, even faster.”

Re-designed to eliminate workflow complexity, this next-generation instrument uses advanced software to support continuous runtimes of up to 24 hours, without manual intervention. During experiments, a new automated clog detection system works to dramatically reduce downtime, while the integrated Forecyt^® software simplifies the entire process with pre-defined templates and enhanced analytics tools designed for complex datasets.

“In traditional flow cytometry, clogs can take over an hour to resolve, significantly impacting lab productivity,” notes Riddell.

The iQue^® 5 addresses the clog issue through several innovations. Firstly, its improved fluidics reduce the overall risk of clogs. Secondly, automatic detection alerts the user and pauses the experiment when necessary. For added peace of mind, an indicator light provides a visual confirmation that everything is flowing smoothly.”

Jonah Riddell, Product Manager of iQue^® HTS Systems at Sartorius

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique for rapidly analyzing the physical and chemical characteristics of cells in applications such as immunophenotyping, functional assays, and cytokine profiling. For over 20 years, the iQue^® HTS Platform has occupied a unique position as the purpose-built cytometry solution for high-throughput screening—valued for its quality and ease of use. With the introduction of iQue® 5, Sartorius continues to empower scientists with cutting-edge tools that accelerate discovery.

The July full moon put on a magnificent show on July 10, rising low over the southern horizon to the delight of stargazers and astrophotographers worldwide. Read on for a roundup of the best photos of the lunar show.

July’s full moon is known as the ‘Buck Moon’, in reference to the male deer — called bucks in the U.S. — that begin to grow out their antlers around this time of year. Eagle-eyed observers may have noticed this month’s full moon riding unusually low on the horizon. This is a result of the Buck Moon’s proximity to the summer solstice — a time when the sun is at its highest in the daytime sky and the moon travels a correspondingly low path through the night.

On her first dedicated scientific voyage to Antarctica in March, the Australian icebreaker RSV Nuyina found the area sea-ice free. Scientists were able to reach places never sampled before.

Over the past four summers, Antarctic sea ice extent has hit new lows.

I’m part of a large group of scientists who set out to explore the consequences of summer sea ice loss after the record lows of 2022 and 2023. Together we rounded up the latest publications, then gathered new evidence using satellites, computer modelling, and robotic ocean sampling devices. Today we can finally reveal what we found.

It’s bad news on many levels, because Antarctic sea ice is vital for the world’s climate and ecosystems. But we need to get a grip on what’s happening – and use this concerning data to prompt faster action on climate change.

What we did, what we found

Our team used a huge range of approaches to study the consequences of sea ice loss. We used satellites to understand sea ice loss over summer, measuring everything from ice thickness and extent to the length of time each year when sea ice is absent.

Satellite data was also used to calculate how much of the Antarctic coast was exposed to open ocean waves. We were then able to quantify the relationship between sea ice loss and iceberg calving. Data from free-drifting ocean robots was used to understand how sea ice loss affects the tiny plants that support the marine food web.

Voyage reports from international colleagues came in handy when studying how sea ice loss affected Antarctic resupply missions. We also used computer models to simulate the impact of dramatic summer sea ice loss on the ocean.

In summary, our extensive research reveals four key consequences of summer sea ice loss in Antarctica.

1. Ocean warming is compounding: Bright white sea ice reflects about 90% of the incoming energy from sunlight, while the darker ocean absorbs about 90%. So if there’s less summer sea ice, the ocean absorbs much more heat.

This means the ocean surface warms more in an extreme low sea ice year, such as 2016 – when everything changed.

Until recently, the Southern Ocean would reset over winter. If there was a summer with low sea ice cover, the ocean would warm a bit. But over winter, the extra heat would shift into the atmosphere.

That’s not working anymore. We know this from measuring sea surface temperatures, but we have also confirmed this relationship using computer models.

What’s happening instead is when summer sea ice is very low, as in 2016, it triggers ocean warming that persists. It takes about three years for the system to fully recover. But recovery is becoming less and less likely, given warming is building from year to year.

2. More icebergs are forming: Sea ice protects Antarctica’s coast from ocean waves.

On average, about a third of the continent’s coastline is exposed over summer. But this is changing. In 2022 and 2023, more than half of the Antarctic coast was exposed.

Our research shows more icebergs break away from Antarctic ice sheets in years with less sea ice. During an average summer, about 100 icebergs break away. Summers with low sea ice produce about twice as many icebergs.

3. Wildlife squeezed off the ice: Many species of seals and penguins rely on sea ice, especially for breeding and moulting.

Entire colonies of emperor penguins experienced “catastrophic breeding failure” in 2022, when sea ice melted before chicks were ready to go to sea.

After giving birth, crabeater seals need large, stable sea ice platforms for 2–3 weeks until their pups are weaned. The ice provides shelter and protection from predators. Less summer sea-ice cover makes large platforms harder to find.

Many seal and penguin species also take refuge on the sea ice when moulting. These species must avoid the icy water while their new feathers or fur grows, or risk dying of hypothermia.

Adelie penguins undergo a yearly moult in which all of their feathers are replaced. These three penguins are nearly finished moulting and will soon be able to leave this ice flow that has sheltered them. David Green

4. Logistical challenges at the end of the world: Low summer sea ice makes it harder for people working in Antarctica. Shrinking summer sea ice will narrow the time window during which Antarctic bases can be resupplied over the ice. These bases may soon need to be resupplied from different locations, or using more difficult methods such as small boats.

No longer safe

Anarctic sea ice began to change rapidly in 2015 and 2016. Since then it has remained well below the long-term average.

The dataset we use relies on measurements from US Department of Defence satellites. Late last month, the department announced it would no longer provide this data to the scientific community. While this has since been delayed to July 31, significant uncertainty remains.

One of the biggest challenges in climate science is gathering and maintaining consistent long-term datasets. Without these, we don’t accurately know how much our climate is changing. Observing the entire earth is hard enough when we all work together. It’s going to be almost impossible if we don’t share our data.

Recent low sea-ice summers present a scientific challenge. The system is currently changing faster than our scientific community can study it.

But vanishing sea ice also presents a challenge to society. The only way to prevent even more drastic changes in the future is to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and reach net zero emissions.

Edward Doddridge is senior research associate in physical oceanography, University of Tasmania. This article is republished from The Conversation.

Published – July 11, 2025 03:33 pm IST

The current generation of Mars rovers began their adventures – finding strange rocks and potentially getting caught up in the center of electrified dust devils, among other important planetary research – in 2012 and 2021. But before that, there was Sojourner – the first rover to explore another planet in 1997 – and the Opportunity and Spirit rovers, which both touched down in January 2004.

Opportunity and Spirit landed on opposite sides of the planet, in areas that scientists suspected may have once held water in the ancient past. The rovers were tasked with searching for a variety of rocks, as well as investigating potential water in the Red Planet’s past, and Opportunity finding the first evidence that Mars could have once potentially sustained microbial life.

Both rovers far exceeded their expected operational lifespan of 90 sols (Martian days). Spirit continued to send back science data for six years, two months, and 19 days, while Opportunity kept chugging on still. But then, almost 15 years later, a planet-wide storm finally ended the rover. At this point it had exceeded its planned lifespan by 55 times, and had traveled more than 45 kilometers (28 miles), the first rover ever to complete a marathon on another planet.

When the storm hit, enveloping the planet, Opportunity went into hibernation. NASA attempted to contact the rover for over half a year, before finally calling time of death in February 2019.

“One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA’s Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA’s return to the Red Planet,” NASA said at the time.

“The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made their last attempt to revive Opportunity Tuesday, to no avail. The solar-powered rover’s final communication was received June 10.”

Shortly after the announcement, several news outlets reported that the rover’s final communication was the words “my battery is low and it’s getting dark”. But of course, this would be a baffling message to receive from the rover, which does not communicate in words. In fact, as Snopes points out, that was a rough translation by science journalist Jacob Margolis, who was summarizing what two NASA engineers on the mission told him.

“It also told us the skies were incredibly dark, to the point where no sunlight gets through. It’s night time during the day,” project manager John Callas told Margolis of the final message.

“We were hopeful that the rover could ride it out. That the rover would hunker down, and then when the storm cleared, the rover would charge back up. That didn’t happen. At least it didn’t tell us that it happened. So, we don’t know.”

The final message actually came in the form of an equally haunting image.

“Taken on June 10, 2018 (the 5,111th Martian day, or sol, of the mission) this ‘noisy,’ incomplete image was the last data NASA’s Opportunity rover sent back from Perseverance Valley on Mars,” NASA explains of the image.

“Opportunity took this image with the left eye of the Pancam, with its solar filter pointed at the Sun. But since the dust storm blotted out the Sun, the image is dark. The white speckles are noise from the camera. All Pancam images have noise in them, but the darkness makes it more apparent. The transmission stopped before the full image was transmitted, leaving the bottom of the image incomplete, represented here as black pixels.”

And with that, Opportunity rested. It did a good job.

A groundbreaking quantum study from Stevens Institute of Technology has created a formula that precisely quantifies the “wave-ness” and “particle-ness” of quantum objects, enabling innovative quantum imaging with undetected photons

For a century, quantum mechanics has unveiled a universe stranger than fiction, where particles can simultaneously behave as waves and alter their state simply by being observed. Now, a groundbreaking study from Stevens Institute of Technology has not only deepened our understanding of this fundamental concept – wave-particle duality – but has also leveraged it to power a novel imaging technique.

This peer-reviewed research, published in Physical Review Research, introduces a precise mathematical framework that quantifies the intricate relationship between a quantum object’s “wave-ness” and “particle-ness,” opening new avenues for quantum information and computing.

Quantifying the elusive dance of wave and particle

The concept of wave-particle duality is a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, describing how subatomic entities exhibit characteristics of both waves (like interference patterns) and particles (like a defined position or path). For decades, researchers have strived to quantify these dual behaviours.

Previous models expressed this relationship as an inequality, suggesting that the sum of an object’s wave-like and particle-like behaviours was less than or equal to one. While insightful, this formulation had a critical flaw: it could permit scenarios where both wave-like and particle-like behaviours simultaneously increased, contradicting their inherently exclusive nature.

Dr. Xiaofeng Qian, Assistant Professor of Physics at Stevens and lead author of the paper, explains, “Researchers have been working to quantify wave-particle duality for half a century, but this is the first complete framework to fully quantify wave-like and particle-like behaviors with optimum quantitative measures that are relevant at the quantum level.”

The Stevens team’s breakthrough lies in introducing a crucial new variable: the coherence of the quantum object. “Coherence is a tricky concept, but it’s essentially a hidden description of the potential for wave-like interference,” Qian clarifies. By incorporating and compensating for coherence alongside conventional measures of wave-ness and particle-ness, the researchers discovered a precise, closed mathematical relationship. “When we quantify and compensate for coherence… we find they add up to exactly one,” states Qian.

This elegant formula allows for the calculation of both wave-ness and particle-ness with unprecedented precision, moving beyond mere inequalities to exact values. Graphically, this relationship can be beautifully depicted as a perfect quarter-circle for a perfectly coherent system, transforming into a flatter ellipse as coherence diminishes.

From theory to application: Powering quantum imaging

Beyond its profound implications for foundational physics, this new understanding of wave-particle duality has significant practical applications, particularly in quantum information and quantum computing. To demonstrate this, Qian’s team applied their theory to a technique known as quantum imaging with undetected photons (QIUP).

In QIUP, an object is scanned using one photon from an entangled pair. If this “scanning” photon passes unimpeded through an aperture, its coherence remains high. However, if it collides with the aperture’s walls, its coherence sharply decreases. By then measuring the wave-ness and particle-ness of its entangled partner-photon, Qian’s team could deduce the coherence of the scanning photon and, in turn, map the shape of the aperture. “This shows that the wave-ness and particle-ness of a quantum object can be used as a resource in quantum imaging, and potentially many other quantum information or computational tasks,” Qian affirms.

Remarkably, the team found that imaging remained possible even when external factors like temperature or vibrations degraded the overall coherence within the quantum system. Since such factors equally affect both high and low coherence situations, the crucial difference in coherence between the two scenarios remains detectable. “The ellipse gets squeezed, but we’re still able to extract the information of the object we need,” Qian explains, highlighting the robustness of their approach.

While this study represents a significant leap forward, further research is needed, particularly to explore how wave-particle duality manifests in more complex multipath quantum scenarios. As Qian concludes, “The mathematics make it look simple, but we’re a long way from exhausting the weirdness of quantum mechanics. There are still plenty of frontiers left for us to explore.”

This pioneering work by the Stevens team not only enriches our fundamental understanding of the quantum world but also lays the groundwork for transformative advancements in quantum technologies.