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Disinformation is the scourge of the information age, causing both science denial (climate denial, anti-vaxx, etc.) as well as the more recent ‘reality’ denial (Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen, Q-Anon conspiracies, etc.). People do not wake up one day wondering whether there are tracking microchips in the Covid vaccines or a Jewish space laser causing the California wildfires. They are led to those ridiculous, false beliefs through strategic lies, told by those who created them, in service of their own economic, ideological, or political interests. The problem, however, is that once disinformation is in the information stream, it does not just tempt someone to believe a falsehood, but also polarizes them around a factual issue, which undermines trust and poisons the path by which they might revise past beliefs and embrace future true ones.

How to address this? Engaging with deniers is one path. In a recent study in Nature Human Behavior Cornelia Betsch and Phillip Schmid provide the first empirical evidence that science deniers can sometimes be led to give up their false beliefs. Most intriguing, one of the methods for doing this has nothing to do with the content of the belief itself, but focuses instead on the path of reasoning that led them to it. ‘Technique rebuttal’ thus provides a ray of hope for philosophers and other non-scientists to address science (and reality) denial, even if they are not content experts on the topic of denial. But there is a hitch. This method doesn’t always work… and it is slow.

What might work better? In my talk I will explore a few ideas from my most recent book On Disinformation (MIT Press, 2023), in which I claim that the pinch point on the disinformation highway from creation to amplification to belief is to clamp down on the spread of disinformation.

• Speaker: Lee McIntyre (Boston University)
• Thursday 01 May 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Dr. Rosanna Dent.

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In-context learning is an emergent capability of large language models (LLMs) trained via next-token prediction. It refers to the LLMs’ ability to learn new tasks and associations (rules, patterns, functions, etc), without changes in their weights, based on (often few) examples provided in their active context window. We will mention some examples of in-context learning of both natural language and numerical tasks by LLMs, and quickly review work on their mechanistic interpretability. In particular, we will present a study linking ICL capabilities of transformer LLMs to the emergence of so-called induction heads during their (pre)training. We will then present a paper which reveals striking parallels between induction heads in LLMs and the Contextual Maintenance and Retrieval (CMR) model of human episodic memory. Both exhibit similar behavioural patterns (temporal contiguity and forward asymmetry), converge on nearly identical parameter values, and use functionally equivalent computational mechanisms. This convergence between artificial and biological systems offers valuable insights into both LLM interpretability and the computational principles underlying sequential memory processing in humans.

Papers: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2021/framework/index.html https://transformer-circuits.pub/2022/in-context-learning-and-induction-heads/index.html https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2024/file/0ba385c3ea3bb417ac6d6a33e24411bc-Paper-Conference.pdf

• Speaker: Yashar Ahmadian; Nandini Shiralkar
• Tuesday 15 April 2025, 15:00-16:30
• Venue: CBL Seminar Room, Engineering Department, 4th floor Baker building.
• Series: Computational Neuroscience; organiser: .

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Investigation of charge carrier dynamics in graphene/ MoS2 heterostructures under photoexcitation, revealing associated intraband THz responses. The study highlights charge transfer mechanisms and carrier lifetimes, advancing the understanding of light-matter interactions in 2D materials for optoelectronic applications.

The engineering of terahertz phonons is challenging due to difficulties in achieving sub-nanometer material precision and in facilitating efficient phonon coupling at terahertz frequencies region. The effective generation, detection, and manipulation of terahertz phonons via the integration of atomically thin layers in van der Waals heterostructures can enable new designs for next-generation optoelectronic quantum devices, offering new avenues for thermal engineering in the terahertz regime. Here, optical pump terahertz probe and terahertz time-domain experiments are used to reveal the behavior of charge carrier transfer in real time at heterostructure interfaces of single-layer graphene and monolayer MoS2 upon photoexcitation and plausible mechanism has been put forward. Moreover, a temperature-dependent terahertz response of GM heterostructure along with experimental observation is explored in detail with considered appropriate theoretical models. These insights can prove valuable for designing the next generation of optoelectronic applications with stacked 2D heterostructures within the terahertz bandwidth.

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Vicky Metzis
• Friday 27 June 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Tony Southall
• Friday 20 June 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Lakshmi Balasubramaniam
• Friday 16 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Michael Sixt
• Friday 02 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Jitesh Neupane
• Friday 25 April 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Sarah Bray
• Friday 23 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
• Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Bonnie Bassler, Princeton University
• Monday 13 October 2025, 11:00-12:00
• Venue: In person in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre (CB2 0QH) and via Zoom link https://mrc-lmb-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99006584805?pwd=yFgF0P1zMvOJEKkOES4eNPpntaUodk.1.
• Series: MRC LMB Seminar Series; organiser: Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator.

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A novel approach is introduced that leverages polymer phase transitions to modulate brush behavior. The oleophilic bottle brush system exhibits two distinct melting transitions—bulk and surface—enabling a two-stage swelling and wetting transition. These transitions can be controlled globally, or locally with a focused laser beam, offering a new strategy for designing adaptive surfaces based on intrinsic polymer properties.

Functional polymer brush coatings have great potential for various industrial applications thanks to their ability to adapt to environmental stimuli, providing tunable surface properties. While existing approaches rely on polymer-solvent interactions and their response to external stimuli, changes in the intrinsic physical properties of the polymer also play a critical role in modulating brush behavior. In this context, the melting transition of a semicrystalline oleophilic poly-octadecylmethacrylate (P18MA) brush coating is shown to drive a swelling and wetting transition upon exposure to various liquid alkanes. The top surface of this polymer displays a somewhat higher melting temperature than the bulk, enabling separate control of the bulk-driven swelling and surface-driven wetting transitions. Laser-induced heating enables reversible on-demand activation of both transitions with micrometer lateral resolution. These findings suggest a new concept of polymer brush-based functional surfaces that allow for controlled fluid transport via separately switchable surface barriers and bulk transport layers based on a suitable choice of polymer-polymer and polymer-solvent interactions.

Entropy has its origins in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It was explored with mathematical rigour in Shannon’s work on the foundations of information theory, and quickly found striking applications to ergodic theory in work of Kolmogorov and Sinai. Many variants and other applications have appeared in pure mathematics since, connecting probability, combinatorics, dynamics and other areas.

I will survey a few recent developments in this story, with an emphasis on some of the basic ideas that they have in common. I will focus mostly on (i) Lewis Bowen’s “sofic entropy”, which helps us to study the dynamics of “large” groups such as free groups, and (ii) a cousin of sofic entropy in the world of unitary representations, which leads to new large deviations principles for tuples of random matrices.

A wine reception in the Central Core will follow the lecture.

• Speaker: Tim Austin (Warwick)
• Thursday 01 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: MR2, CMS.
• Series: Mordell Lectures; organiser: HoD Secretary, DPMMS.

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This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 17 July 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)

Speaker: Dr John James, Associate Professor, Immunology, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick

Title: TBC

Host: Mathilde Colombe and Tim Halim, CRUK Cambridge

Refreshments will be available following the seminar.

• Speaker: Dr John James, Immunology, Warwick Medical School. Warwick Medical School
• Thursday 17 July 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
• Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.

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A customizable and scalable approach to fabricate flexible 3D kirigami microelectrode arrays (MEAs) featuring up to 128 shanks, including surface and penetrating electrodes designed to interact with the 3D space of neural tissue, is presented. The 3D kirigami MEAs are successfully deployed in several neural applications, both in vitro and in vivo, and identified spatially dependent electrophysiological activity patterns.

3D microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are gaining popularity as brain–machine interfaces and platforms for studying electrophysiological activity. Interactions with neural tissue depend on the electrochemical, mechanical, and spatial features of the recording platform. While planar or protruding 2D MEAs are limited in their ability to capture neural activity across layers, existing 3D platforms still require advancements in manufacturing scalability, spatial resolution, and tissue integration. In this work, a customizable, scalable, and straightforward approach to fabricate flexible 3D kirigami MEAs containing both surface and penetrating electrodes, designed to interact with the 3D space of neural tissue, is presented. These novel probes feature up to 512 electrodes distributed across 128 shanks in a single flexible device, with shank heights reaching up to 1 mm. The 3D kirigami MEAs are successfully deployed in several neural applications, both in vitro and in vivo, and identified spatially dependent electrophysiological activity patterns. Flexible 3D kirigami MEAs are therefore a powerful tool for large-scale electrical sampling of complex neural tissues while improving tissue integration and offering enhanced capabilities for analyzing neural disorders and disease models where high spatial resolution is required.

A charge-coupled phototransistor is presented that uses dual photosensitive capacitors to provide gate voltage to a single transistor channel, enabling simultaneous capture of dynamic and static information, surpassing existing DAVIS technology. This charge-coupled phototransistor paves the way for the development of high-performance, low-power, and highly integrated machine vision technology.

Emerging machine vision applications require efficient detection of both dynamic events and static grayscale information within visual scenes. Current dynamic vision and active pixel sensors (DAVIS) technology integrates event-driven vision sensors and active pixel sensors within single pixels. However, the complex multi-component pixel architecture, typically requiring 15–50 transistors, limits integration density, increases power consumption, and complicates clock synchronization. Here, a charge-coupled phototransistor is presented that uses dual photosensitive capacitors to provide gate voltage to a single transistor channel, enabling simultaneous capture of dynamic and static information, surpassing existing DAVIS technology. Under illumination, both top and bottom gates generate photogenerated electrons through a charge-coupling effect; electrons in the top gate are blocked by a thick dielectric layer, producing a stable current change for static grayscale detection, while electrons in the bottom gate tunnel through a thin dielectric layer, creating transient current spikes for dynamic event detection. This device demonstrates a dynamic range of 120 dB and a response time of 15 µs, comparable to traditional DAVIS pixels, while significantly reducing power consumption to 10 pW and overcoming clock synchronization issues. This charge-coupled phototransistor paves the way for the development of high-performance, low-power, and highly integrated machine vision technology.

Oral artificial mitochondrial nanorobots (AMNs) can treat ischemic heart disease by delivering ATP to damaged cardiomyocytes, modulating oxidative stress, and restoring cell viability. It improves energy metabolism and mitochondrial structure and reduces inflammation at the genetic level, providing a universal and innovative approach to repair therapies for mitochondrial damage-related diseases.

Delivering energy in vivo is essential for treating mitochondrial damage-related diseases. Current methods, including natural mitochondrial transplantation and artificial energy delivery systems, lack non-destructive, external energy-free, and clinically viable potential solutions. Here, artificial mitochondrial nanorobots (AMNs) carrying high-energy phosphate bonds rebuild the in vivo energy supply system to provide energy. Using ischemic heart disease (IHD) as an energy-deficient disease model and the oral route, which has high patient compliance and facilitates long-term administration, to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of AMNs. AMNs remain stable in the gastrointestinal tract, cross the intestinal barrier via a barrier-crossing unit, and target damaged heart tissue and cardiomyocytes using a motion unit chemotactically. Intracellularly, their energy-generating unit provides high-energy phosphate bonds for ATP synthesis (duration 12 h), while synergistically reducing inflammation and restoring cell viability. At the same frequency of administration, oral AMNs (50 mg kg−1) match intravenous AMNs (10 mg kg−1) in therapeutic efficacy, offering a convenient approach to improving cardiac function. Transcriptomics confirm that 200 µg AMNs emulate 5 × 10⁶ natural mitochondria, restoring energy metabolism and structural function in damaged hearts at the genetic level. This innovative design opens a new pathway for the construction of artificial energy delivery systems in vivo.

Paracrystalline diamond, a new-type sp 3-bonded non-crystalline carbon, is synthesized at 16 GPa (vs. 30 GPa in previous reports) via uniaxial stress-induced collapse of C60 at lower pressures. By integrating experimental and computational insights, this work opens avenues for designing novel materials through controlled stress environments under pressure and offers a strategy for low-cost high-pressure material production.

Synthesizing fully sp 3-bonded non-crystalline carbon remains a long-standing challenge due to the intrinsic instability of the sp 3 bond at ambient pressure. Recently, paracrystalline diamond, a new-form sp 3-bonded non-crystalline carbon consisting of sub-nanometer-sized paracrystallites, has been synthesized from face-centered cubic C60 at 30 GPa, which has attracted attention due to its unique structural features and excellent physical properties. However, the ultrahigh synthesis pressure of paracrystalline diamond poses an obstacle to its large-scale production and applications. In this study, paracrystalline diamond is synthesized at an exceptionally low pressure (16 GPa) via inducing uniaxiality at high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, thereby breaking through the temperature-pressure phase diagram of C60. By combining structural characteristics and advanced molecular dynamics simulation, the remarkable reduction of synthesis pressure is attributed to the fact that the symmetry of the C60 cage is broken due to the uniaxiality, which further allows the C60 cage to collapse at much lower pressures. This work reveals the critical role of uniaxiality in the reduced-pressure synthesis of paracrystalline diamond, which may provide a potent methodological strategy for the development of novel low-cost high-pressure materials.

A cellular cell micro-vortex air filter constructed by 3D honeycomb-like structured nano-networks is created by a unique electro-netting-assembly technique. Due to the micro-vortex cascade filtration mode of cellular cells, 3D porous cell walls (average pore size ≈410 nm) consisting of nano-scaled fibers (diameter 45 nm), enhanced air slip effect, our filters achieve high-efficiency and low-resistance PM0.3 removal, desirable dust holding capacity and remarkable biodegradibility.

Particulate matter (PM) pollution has posed a serious threat to public health, especially with the outbreak of respiratory infections. However, most existing fiber filters face an inevitable trade-off between removal efficiency and air resistance, due to their thick fibers and uncontrolled flat stacking structure. Herein, a unique high-performance integrated micro-vortex filter is created using honeycomb-like structured cellular nanofibrous networks via the innovative electro-netting-assembly nanotechnique for air filtration. Manipulation of the ejection, deformation, and self-assembly of the charged droplets from the Taylor cone enables the one-step construction of 3D cellular cells with 2D nano architectured networks consisted of 1D nanowires with a diameter of ≈45 nm on a large-scale. The resultant micro-vortex air filter, functioned as an integrated filter system, achieved a remarkable air slip effect and striking micro-vortex cascade filtration mode, showing >99.97% PM0.3 removal, ≈0.12% atmosphere pressure of air resistance, 27 g m−2 dust holding, along with robust mechanical stability. This work may provide a promising avenue for the design and development of novel separation and purification materials.

The different designs between the strategies used for solid polymer electrolyte (SPE)-based lithium–sulfur batteries (LSBs) and those from SPE based Li batteries and liquid electrolyte (LE)-based LSBs caused by the unique interactions of SPEs with S cathodes are successively reviewed. Subsequently, several challenges that need to be urgently addressed and the future prospects of SPE-containing LSBs are discussed.

Nonflammable and flexible solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) are widely studied to improve the safety of lithium–sulfur batteries (LSBs). Studies on SPE-based LSBs primarily focus on addressing issues stemming from poor SPE properties, Li dendrites, and “shuttle effect” of polysulfides. Currently, strategies from SPE-based lithium batteries (without sulfur cathodes) and liquid electrolyte (LE)-based LSBs (without SPEs) are the most commonly employed approaches to tackle above issues. These strategies are designed without taking into account the problems caused by the coexistence of SPEs and sulfur cathodes, resulting in SPE-based LSBs exhibiting significantly inferior performance than liquid-electrolyte-based LSBs. Therefore, the strategies for SPE-based LSBs necessitate different designs. However, no reviews have focused on the aforementioned differences and analyzing their corresponding causes thus far, which is unfavorable for the development of this field. Herein, the emerging advances in SPE-based LSBs are comprehensively reviewed. In particular, for the first time, the different designs and their corresponding causes are comprehensively discussed. These causes include the high adsorption strength of SPEs with polysulfides, corrosion of polysulfides to barrier layers, deterioration of the ionic conductivity of SPEs, and defective interfaces between cathodes and SPEs. Finally, several pressing challenges and future prospects for the field are discussed.

An innovative interfacial engineering strategy has been proposed to construct and modulate polar topological domains within ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals. These ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, featuring diverse and adjustable polar topological structures including vortex, centrifugal vortex, and center-divergent domains, hold significant potential for applications in the field of topological photonics.

Polar topological domains, distinguished by their inherent topological protection and diverse optoelectronic functionalities, have recently attracted significant interest across scientific disciplines. However, the realization of these structures in inorganic materials is often impeded by crystal symmetry constraints. In this context, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, characterized by spontaneous polarization and flexible polarization orientation, provide an exceptional platform for the development of polar topological domains. Despite their potential, a considerable challenge lies in identifying a straightforward yet versatile approach for engineering polar topological domains within liquid crystals. Here, this study presents an interfacial engineering strategy that effectively stabilizes a range of polar topological domains in ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, including vortex, centrifugal vortex, and center-divergent configurations, by synergistically modulating the surface tension and interfacial tension. Utilizing a combination of experimental characterization and simulation, the role of anchoring energy is systematically investigated in the molecular alignment of liquid crystals and facilitates transitions between diverse topological structures. This research not only extends the horizons for constructing and manipulating polar topological domains but also enhances their prospective applications in topological photonics.