The way molecules arrange themselves into crystals can affect the stability, safety, and effectiveness of medicines and advanced materials. Dr Ivo Rietveld at the University of Rouen Normandy and his collaborators are developing new benchmark data that help scientists to accurately predict the stability of crystal structures of molecules, helping to reduce risks in drug development and enabling the design of better materials.

When they design mechanical systems, engineers first need to understand how they will behave using mathematical modelling tools that can simulate their movements. In recent years, they have increasingly explored the possibilities of ‘compliant’ mechanisms: highly flexible systems which are now being applied across numerous leading fields of technology. However, because their motions are often incredibly complex, engineers have so far found it difficult to recreate their behaviours in the mathematical tools needed to design them. Because they involve complex, nonlinear behaviour, designing compliant mechanisms has posed a long-standing challenge for engineers. While several advanced synthesis methods are now available, they’re often computationally intensive and can’t readily cope with the inevitable uncertainties in a system’s operating variables. In their latest research, Ahmed Alhindi and Dr. Meng-Sang Chew at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, propose a novel approach that directly accounts for uncertainty in the design process. By reformulating widely used equations, their ‘dimensional synthesis’ method offers a streamlined yet powerful way to design compliant mechanisms under real-world, uncertain conditions.

Between 1982 and 2012, the 150-foot solar tower at Mount Wilson Observatory collected a vast archive of observations of the Sun’s surface. In a series of recent studies, Professor Roger Ulrich, together with colleagues Dr. Tham Tran and Dr. John Boyden at UCLA, have revisited these data, running a thorough recalibration of the findings. Their results led them to a crucial discovery: two properties of the Sun’s plasma which were once thought to be separate are actually two faces of the same underlying effect, which plays a fundamental role in shaping the Sun’s magnetic field throughout the solar cycle.