A topological description of ‘knittability’ can be used to design yarn patterns that are resistant to unravelling.

In the natural world, an animal can blend strategies so it can advance towards several goals at the same time. An engineering approach called control theory was used to infer people’s goals while they played a simple video game, and showed how three brain regions work together to implement goal blending.

Electrical stimulation of the human brain is a promising strategy for slowing cognitive decline. The discovery of cell-type-specific gene programs that are induced in tandem with the activity of networks of neurons in the temporal cortex when it is stimulated could inform the development of therapeutic approaches using stimulation.

A photonic time crystal is an optical system of which properties such as its refractive index are modulated strongly and rapidly over time. One has now been obtained all-optically by delivering an intense terahertz light wave onto a material with a specialized microstructure that hosts collective waves of electrons known as plasmons.