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Is the inside of a plant cell more like a liquid or a solid? While this may sound like an odd question, research carried out at the University of Amsterdam demonstrates it can be either, depending on how much light you shine on it. Chloroplasts within plant cells constitute an active form of matter that undergoes dramatic phase transitions.

Many surfaces get slippery when wet. Some surfaces have the opposite behaviour: they get less slippery. UvA researchers have now shed light on why this is the case. Hydrogen bonds between the surface and the water turn out to play an important role. The research, carried out by PhD candidate Liang Peng in collaboration with five physicists and chemists from UvA, ARCNL and the German Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, was published in Physical Review Letters this week.

Researchers at the University of Twente have developed a revolutionary programmable integrated microwave photonic filter with a record-breaking dynamic range. This represents a major breakthrough in the integration of functionality and performance in radio frequency photonic signal processors. David Marpaung, one of the authors of the study says: "Our work breaks the conventional and fragmented approach of integration, functionality and performance that currently prevents the adoption of these photonic systems in real applications.

Youri van Hees defended his PhD thesis at the department of Applied Physics on December 7th. Due to the ever-increasing growth of our data consumption, researchers are looking for faster, more efficient, and more energy-conscious data storage techniques.

Physicists from the Gröblacher lab at TU Delft have built a device that can link different quantum devices and qubits to each other. This device, a silicon chip with vibrations traveling through it, functions as a network between quantum devices. This marks the first time that scientists are able to store as many qubits as they'd like within a very compact area on this type of chip.

Publication in Nature demonstrates promising method towards building the foundation for a future quantum computer. Scientists from QuTech and Eindhoven University of Technology have taken a next step in qubit research. Qubits are one of the building blocks of a future quantum computer. The researchers - including Sasa Gazibegovic, Ghada Badawy and Erik Bakkers from TU/e - have published their results in Nature on 23 November 2022.

How the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute develops novel information and communication systems. The future of our information-based society will be built on hybrid technologies, EHCI researchers Diana Leitao and Chigo Okonkwo are convinced. And that is why both scientists, though firmly rooted in their respective disciplines of physics and electrical engineering, are strong advocates for seeking synergies between people with different research backgrounds.

Manipulating elusive waves like light, sound or electrons, in periodic structures or crystals, has something mysterious. In the leading physics journal Physical Review Letters, published by the American Physical Society, a team of researchers from the University of Twente now describes how any kind of wave, whether quantum or classical, is confined in any kind of crystal.

Pour coffee into a mug and you might notice that the liquid cascading from the jug resembles droplets linked in a chain. Such oscillating "waterfalls" crop up frequently in our daily lives, but their origin is still not fully understood. In a publication that appeared in Physical Review Fluids this week, UvA-IoP physicist Antoine Deblais and coworkers shed light on these chains of liquid.

Scientists at the University of Twente have developed a new technique to effectively trap soundwaves and light, using multilayer silicon nitride waveguides. The research project successfully proved that manipulating light with sound in large-scale circuits is viable and compatible with current production methods Expanding the photonic toolbox In recent decades, chips and electronic devices have become exponentially smaller and faster.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have spotted signs of a 'hot spot' orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The finding helps us better understand the enigmatic and dynamic environment of our supermassive black hole. The research was led by Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

PhD candidate uses tools from quantum mechanics to help computers interpret ambiguous language. Words or sentences can often have multiple meanings. This is a concept that is hard to grasp for regular computers. PhD candidate Adriana Duarte Correia used quantum algorithms to make computers understand that a sentence like 'Look at the dog with one eye' can mean two different things at the same time.

For building quantum computers, making use of both electronics and photonics - technology that works with light - on one and the same chip, is promising. Thanks to silicon technology that we know well from today's electronic devices, quantum devices could be better protected from influences from the outside world.

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery will help us understand ageing and disease.

This summer, The NWO Domain Board Science approved 21 grant applications in the Open Competition Domain Science-XL programme (ENW-XL).

Researchers from TU Delft have constructed the smallest flow-driven motors in the world. Inspired by iconic Dutch windmills and biological motor proteins, they created a self-configuring flow-driven rotor from DNA that converts energy from an electrical or salt gradient into useful mechanical work. The results open new perspectives for engineering active robotics at the nanoscale.

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)- an international observatory co-operated by the US National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)- have for the first time recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion caused by the merger of a neutron star with another star.

In a recent article in the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP), the LHCb collaboration reports the application of Quantum Machine Learning for identifying properties of so-called jets: streams of particles that result from particle collisions. It is the first paper to describe the application of quantum computing to the identification of jets originating from beauty quarks or anti-quarks, a type of particle of particular interest to the LHCb experiment.

Physicists observed a strange new type of behaviour in a magnetic material when it's heated up. The magnetic spins 'freeze' into a static pattern when the temperature rises, a phenomenon that normally occurs when the temperature decreases. They publish their findings in Nature Physics on July 4th. The researchers discovered the phenomenon in the material neodymium, an element that they described several years ago as a 'self-induced spin glass'.

TU Delft scientists provide insight into the limitations of super-resolution microscopy and offer a new calculation method to determine maximum resolution. The major precision improvements previously claimed by fellow-researchers are nuanced by their publication. The technology is important for studying processes in the living cell, discovering the origin of diseases and developing new medicines.