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Visualization of the structure of the created quantum knot. Each colorful band represents a set of nearby directions of the quantum field that is knotted. Note that each band is twisted and linked with the others once. Untying the knot requires the bands to separate, which is not possible without breaking them.

Some of the most promising solar cells today use light-harvesting films made from perovskites - a group of materials that share a characteristic molecular structure. However, perovskite-based solar cells use expensive "hole-transporting" materials, whose function is to move the positive charges that are generated when light hits the perovskite film. EPFL scientists have now engineered a considerably cheaper hole-transporting material that costs only a fifth of existing ones while keeping the efficiency of the solar cell above 20%.

Salmonella bacteria under a microscope.

Successful self-assembly is an elaborately choreographed dance, in which the attractive and repulsive forces within molecules, between each molecule and its neighbors, and between molecules and the surface that supports them, have to all be taken into account. To better understand the self-assembly process, researchers at the Technical University of Munich have characterized the contributions of all interaction components, such as covalent bonding and van der Waals interactions between molecules and between molecules and a surface.

Drug-resistant lung cancer cells are in red. Paclitaxel-loaded exosomes (green) swarm the cancer cells and bypass their drug resistance.

Researchers at The Ohio State University have found a way to light up a common cancer drug so they can see where the chemo goes and how long it takes to get there.

Quasars are distant galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centres that spew out powerful jets of particles and radiation. Most quasars shine brightly, but a tiny fraction of these energetic objects are of an unusual type known as Hot DOGs, or Hot, Dust-Obscured Galaxies, including the galaxy WISE J224607.57-052635.0, the most luminous known galaxy in the Universe.

Physicists at The University of Nottingham, working in collaboration with researchers in the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, and Hitachi Europe, have published (2pm US ET Thursday 14 January 2016) new research in the prestigious academic journal Science which shows how the 'magnetic spins' of these antiferromagnets can be controlled to make a completely different form of digital memory.