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This study presents a novel bioscaffold combining recombinant human collagen XVII (rhCOL17) with porphyra-334 (P334) to create a transparent, injectable hydrogel (GCP) for enhanced wound healing. GCP integrates extracellular matrix-like cues with UVA shielding properties, preventing fibroblast senescence and improving repair outcomes. This platform offers significant potential for advanced, protective wound management.

Abstract

Wound healing remains a significant global health challenge, affecting millions annually and imposing substantial economic burdens. Most commercially available biomaterials for wound management primarily address external symptoms, including hemostasis, exudation, scarring, and infection. Advanced biomaterials derived from endogenous molecules aim to better replicate the native wound microenvironment, promoting enhanced repair. Since wounds frequently occur on exposed skin, which is vulnerable to UVA radiation and requires protective yet invisible materials, traditional wound care products often lack these essential features. Inspired by natural UV protection mechanisms, a novel bioscaffold is developed using recombinant human collagen XVII (rhCOL17) crosslinked with porphyra-334 (P334) to improve wound healing under UVA exposure. The resulting rhCOL17-P334 conjugate integrates extracellular matrix (ECM)-like cues with UVA-shielding properties provided by P334. This conjugate is used to construct a transparent, injectable hydrogel combining gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) and rhCOL17-P334 (GCP). GCP significantly inhibits UVA-induced fibroblast senescence and improves wound healing outcomes by targeting integrin α6β4 through rhCOL17. Its transparency facilitates convenient wound monitoring while also addressing the aesthetic requirement for invisibility. By combining UVA shielding with wound repair capabilities, GCP presents a promising platform for advanced wound management.

Nature Materials, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02140-x

A soft plastic replication process akin to the fabrication of compact discs enables the fabrication of achromatic metalenses suitable for the mass production of holographic near-eye displays.

Nature Materials, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02124-x

A tactile visual artificial synapse provides a route for in situ health monitoring. Here the authors report an electrochemical transistor comprising a top gate as a tactile receptor and a light-emitting ion gel layer stacked on a polymeric semiconductor to monitor finger motions and heartbeats.

Nature Materials, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-024-02115-4

Intradermal microneedles for the co-delivery of mRNA and near-infrared fluorescent microparticles are used in combination with deep learning-based image analysis for the simultaneous administration of therapeutics and registry of patient information records into the skin.

Nature Materials, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02121-0

Using a topological inverse design process with finite-difference time-domain simulations, the authors fabricate high-numerical-aperture red, green and blue achromatic metalenses for compact near-eye displays using a scalable roll-to-plate technique.

Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41565-025-01854-y

Nano-groove traps at grain triple junctions significantly affect cation homogeneity in formamidinium–caesium perovskite films. Shallowing these traps improves interfacial properties and enhances solar cell performance.

Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

NOTE unusual date

• Speaker: Urska Matjašec (University of Cambridge)
• Thursday 06 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.
• Series: Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory); organiser: Mateja Jamnik.

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Influence of gravity on atomic interferometers

Atom interferometers employ precise manipulation of the quantum states of ultracold atom ensembles to probe field variations between the “arms” of the interferometer. The phase of the quantum states continually evolves and accumulates while the atoms interact with laser light pulses used as the interferometer optics and while in free-fall propagation between light pulses. Quantum interference of the atomic matter-waves encodes these fluctuations in the population difference of the quantum states of the ensemble. The leading order phase shift arises from the coupling of the atom acceleration to the natural frequency of the atomic states. For this reason atom interferometers have been built to be precise gravimeters and inertial sensors finding use in tests of Newtons’s constant and the Einstein equivalence principle. They may also serve as a test bed for other precise tests of gravity.

The AION and MAGIS collaborations will utilize this quantum technology in a gradiometer configuration to test fundamental physics and search for ultralight dark matter and gravitational waves in the decihertz frequency range (0.1–1 Hz). In this talk I will develop the influence of a semiclassical space and time dependent Newtonian gravitational field on atom interferometers and demonstrate the potential noise sources long-baseline instruments will come up against. I will also discuss future prospects for relativistic and non-classical tests of gravity with these extremely sensitive sensors.

• Speaker: Jeremiah Mitchell, University of Cambridge
• Tuesday 25 February 2025, 11:00-12:00
• Venue: Ryle Seminar Room.
• Series: Cavendish HEP Seminars; organiser: Dr. Aashaq Shah.

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Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

NOTE unusual date

• Speaker: Konstantin Hemker (University of Cambridge)
• Thursday 13 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.
• Series: Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory); organiser: Mateja Jamnik.

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Kekule Spirals in Twisted Graphene

One of the major challenges in the study of magic angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) has been the understanding the insulating states that arise as a result of inter-electron interaction. A combination of recent theoretical [1,2,3,4] and experimental [5,6] work has now established the presence of a new type of order which we call “Incommensurate Kekule Spiral” (IKS) order. This order spontaneously breaks both the valley-charge conservation and moiré translation symmetries, but preserves a modified translation symmetry which simultaneously shifts the spatial coordinates and rotates the U(1) angle which characterizes the spontaneous inter-valley coherence. This type of order appears ubiquitous in the presence of miniscule amounts of strain at temperatures above the superconducting transitions. In this talk I will give an introduction to the physics of MATBG emphasizing the strong coupling approximations. I will then turn to the Hartree-Fock calculations we used to predict the IKS order and I will explain the physics that drives the system towards this ground state. I will also briefly discuss the experiments that have observed this phase, the competing phases that are observed in ultra-small strain samples, as well as the closely related physics of magic angle trilayer graphene.

[1] Yves H. Kwan, Glenn Wagner, Tomohiro Soejima, Michael P. Zaletel, Steven H. Simon, Siddharth A. Parameswaran, Nick Bultinck, Phys. Rev. X 11 , 041063 (2021) [2] Glenn Wagner, Yves H. Kwan, Nick Bultinck, Steven H. Simon, S. A. Parameswaran, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 156401 (2022) [3] Yves H. Kwan, Glenn Wagner, Nick Bultinck, Steven H. Simon, Erez Berg, S. A. Parameswaran, Phys. Rev. B 110 , 085160 (2024). [4] Tianle Wang, Daniel E. Parker, Tomohiro Soejima, Johannes Hauschild, Sajant Anand, Nick Bultinck, and Michael P. Zaletel, Phys. Rev. B 108 , 235128 (2023). [5] Kevin P. Nuckolls et al, Nature 620, 525-532 (2023). [6] Hyunjin Kim, et al, Nature 623, 942-948 (2023).

• Speaker: Steve Simon, Oxford
• Thursday 27 February 2025, 14:00-15:30
• Venue: TCM Seminar Room.
• Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Gaurav.

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Distinct Elements in Streams and the Klee's Measure Problem

The distinct elements problem in streaming algorithms refers to estimating the number of unique elements in a data stream while using limited memory. A generalization of this problem is Klee’s Measure Problem, where the goal is to estimate the size of the union of sets when the sets arrive in a data stream, all while using limited memory and having restricted access to the sets.

While the distinct elements problem is well-studied in streaming algorithms, with tight bounds already established, Klee’s Measure Problem has remained a major open problem in the field for many years.

We will present the first-ever efficient streaming algorithm (from PODS ‘21) for Klee’s Measure Problem. This algorithm also provides a remarkably simple streaming solution for the distinct elements estimation problem, which even caught the attention of Donald E. Knuth (https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cvm-note.pdf).

This talk is based on joint works with N. V. Vinodchandran and Kuldeep S. Meel across multiple articles, notable the following:

Estimating the Size of Union of Sets in Streaming Models. PODS 2021 Estimation of the Size of Union of Delphic Sets: Achieving Independence from Stream Size. PODS 2022 Distinct Elements in Streams: An Algorithm for the (Text) Book. ESA 2022 Improved Streaming Algorithm for the Klee’s Measure Problem and Generalizations. (jointly with Mridul Nandi, Arijit Ghosh and Soumit Pal) APPROX 2024

• Speaker: Sourav Chakraborty (ISI)
• Tuesday 18 March 2025, 14:00-15:00
• Venue: Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, Room SS03.
• Series: Algorithms and Complexity Seminar; organiser: Tom Gur.

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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE05369A, PaperChaohe Xu, Tongtong Deng, Chen Li, Guanjije Lu, Zongyang Li, Ronghua Wang
Sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) are considered as the ideal candidates for the next-generation large-scale energy storage batteries. However, achieving all-climate SMBs operating at a wide temperature remains a huge challenge because...
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MediaTek: Towards Efficient Prediction of Communication Channels Using AI

Abstract: AI has demonstrated unprecedented performance in various application domains, including robotics, image processing, and language processing. We aim to showcase its application to modern communication systems. Specifically, we employ a transformer-based foundation model and multimodal time series representing communication system data to solve various downstream tasks. We develop methodologies to address challenges such as tokenization, positional embedding, multimodality, features of varying sizes, and normalization. Our results show comparable performance with benchmarks on all tasks, including CSI feedback, Doppler spectrum, and delay spread estimates.

Speakers:

Speaker 1:

Sattar Vakili is a Principal AI Research manager at MediaTek Research, the research arm of MediaTek — a globally renowned semiconductor company. He specializes in problems involving sequential decision-making in uncertain environments, with a focus on optimization, reinforcement learning, kernel-based modeling, and neural networks. Before joining MediaTek Research, Sattar worked at Second mind, a research lab in Cambridge, led by Professor Carl Rasmussen, Cambridge University. There, he gained expertise in kernel-based and Gaussian process models. Prior to that, he was a postdoc at Princeton University. Sattar earned his PhD at Cornell University in 2017 with a dissertation on sequential methods for learning and optimization.

Speaker 2:

Masoud Attarifar is a senior wireless software engineer at MediaTek. His expertise lies in wireless communication, communication theory, and signal processing. Prior to joining MediaTek, he was a postdoctoral researcher at UPF University under the supervision of Professor Angel Lozano. Masoud earned his PhD from Tehran University in 2019 with a dissertation on cell-free massive MIMO networks.

Some catering will be provided

• Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
• Monday 10 March 2025, 13:05-13:55
• Venue: FW26, William Gates Building.
• Series: Technical Talks - Department of Computer Science and Technology ; organiser: Ben Karniely.

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TBC

TBC

• Speaker: Baoyu Zhang, University of Birmingham
• Wednesday 12 March 2025, 16:30-17:30
• Venue: MR12.
• Series: Algebra and Representation Theory Seminar; organiser: Adam Jones.

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César Milstein Lecture: Title TBC

Abstract not available

• Speaker: David Pellman - Dana-Faber Cancer Institute, Harvard University
• Thursday 24 April 2025, 10:00-11:00
• Venue: In person in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre (CB2 0QH) and via Zoom link https://mrc-lmb-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97042445746?pwd=rjwSiStXxjdk1Q2tPOdRnqr8aM3qwn.1.
• Series: MRC LMB Seminar Series; organiser: Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator.

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Max Perutz Lecture: Title TBC

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Reinhard Lührmann, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
• Monday 24 March 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/91444589642?pwd=jnwAAhDSdpwbVU89ouG9RenIhuXRDL.1.
• Series: MRC LMB Seminar Series; organiser: Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator.

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Revisiting strain-gradient theory in the light of two-scale expansions

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Manon Thbaut, Ecole polytechnique
• Friday 09 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
• Venue: Oatley 1 Meeting Room, Department of Engineering.
• Series: Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series; organiser: div-c.

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Ethnography in Emergencies: Working with Women after the Sinjar Genocide

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Dr. Richard Latham Lechowick, Research Associate & Teaching Fellow, Global History Lab (CRASSH)
• Tuesday 06 May 2025, 13:10-14:00
• Venue: Richard King room, Darwin College.
• Series: Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars; organiser: Dr Amelia Hassoun.

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A 1D metawire composed of twisted copper wires is designed and realized. This metamaterial exhibits pronounced effects of nonlocal electric conduction according to Ohm's law. The current at one location not only depends on the electric field at that location but also on other locations. As a result, the resistance of the metawire oscillates as a function of its length.

Abstract

Ohm's law of electric conduction is local in the sense that the current density at one position only depends on the electric field at that same position. For a nonlocal medium, the current density at one position depends on the electric field at other positions within the medium as well. As a result of Ohm's law, doubling the length of a wire doubles its resistance. Here, electrically conducting nonlocal architectures are discussed theoretically and experimentally for which changing the length of the metawire rather leads to a complex oscillatory behavior versus wire length. This oscillatory behavior is connected to local currents inside of the metawire flowing in the opposite direction than the externally applied field. The theoretical and experimental results for electric conduction can directly be transferred to thermal conduction or particle diffusion and may enable remote sensing applications.

To advance the exploration of mechanisms underlying natural ion channels, this research presents a novel butterfly-shaped bionic K+ transmembrane channel GnC7 (n = 3, 4) with record-breaking K+/Na+ selectivity. The unique mobile channels constructed from poly (propylene imine) dendritic polymers and benzo-21-crown-7-ethers exhibit dual mechanical and pH responsiveness in liposomes/cells. Drastic G4C7-induced intracellular K+ efflux effectively activates mitochondrial- and ER-associated apoptosis.

Abstract

To advance the exploration of mechanisms underlying natural multi-gated ion channels, a novel butterfly-shaped biomimetic K+ channel GnC7 (n = 3, 4) is developed with dual mechanical and pH responsiveness, exhibiting unprecedented K+/Na+ selectivity (G3C7: 34.4; G4C7: 41.3). These channels constructed from poly(propylene imine) dendrimer and benzo-21-crown-7-ethers achieve high K+ transport activity (EC50: 0.72 µm for G3C7; 0.9 µm for G4C7) due to their arc-like mechanical rotation. The dynamic mode relies on butterfly-shaped topology derived from the highly symmetrical core and multiple intramolecular hydrogen bonds. GnC7 can sense mechanical stimulus applied to liposomes/cells and then adapt the K+ transport rate accordingly. Furthermore, reversible ON/OFF switching of K+ transport is realized through the pH-controllable host-guest complexation. G4C7-induced ultrafast cellular K+ efflux (70% within only 9 min) efficiently triggers mitochondrial-dependent apoptosis of cancer cells by provoking endoplasmic reticulum stress accompanied by drastic Ca2+ sparks. This work embodies a multi-dimensional regulation of channel functions; it will provide insights into the dynamic behaviors of biological analogs and promote the innovative design of artificial ion channels and therapeutic agents.