Brain-inspired memristors open new pathways to energy-efficient artificial intelligence

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Journal Center

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• Task-oriented perspective on neuromorphic memristors for artificial intelligence computing.
• From material systems and device structures to applications, flexibility, and system integration.
• A critical roadmap toward scalable, manufacturable, and practical neuromorphic hardware.

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Credit: Jianhui Wang, Qingxin Chen, Jinhao Zhang, Jialin Meng*, Tianyu Wang*.

As artificial intelligence continues to advance, conventional computing architectures face growing challenges in energy consumption, data-transfer latency, and hardware scalability. The separation of memory and processing units in traditional von Neumann systems creates a significant bottleneck, particularly for data-intensive AI applications. Neuromorphic computing, inspired by the parallel and energy-efficient information processing of the human brain, offers a promising alternative. In a comprehensive review, researchers from Shandong University, Fudan University, and collaborating institutions examine the development of neuromorphic memristors, highlighting how materials, device architectures, and system integration can be tailored to meet the demands of next-generation artificial intelligence.

Why Neuromorphic Memristors Matter

Biological neurons and synapses process information through electrical signals and dynamically adjustable connections. Neuromorphic memristors mimic these functions by regulating and retaining electrical conductance states, enabling artificial synaptic plasticity and neuron-like behavior. Their compact structures, nonvolatile memory characteristics, and potential for dense integration make them attractive for in-memory computing, where data storage and processing can occur within the same hardware. By reducing data movement between separate memory and processing units, these devices offer opportunities to improve computational efficiency and reduce power consumption.

Innovative Design and Mechanism

The review systematically examines representative memristor platforms, including oxide-based materials, ferroelectric systems, polymers, and two-dimensional materials. It also explores different device architectures and switching mechanisms, such as conductive filament formation, ionic migration, polarization modulation, phase transitions, and charge storage. Importantly, the authors emphasize that device optimization should be guided by the intended computational task rather than conventional switching performance alone. Different platforms offer distinct advantages: ferroelectric oxides provide opportunities for CMOS-compatible integration, polymer systems support flexible electronics, and layered materials enable ion-controlled neuromorphic functions. Reconfigurable devices capable of switching between volatile and nonvolatile operating modes further expand the range of possible computing applications.

Outstanding Performance

Recent demonstrations highlighted in the review illustrate the practical potential of these technologies. A multifunctional memristive synapse achieves approximately two orders of magnitude lower energy consumption than a GPU-based computing solution. Memristor arrays have also enabled epilepsy-related neural signal analysis with 93.46% accuracy and nearly 400-fold higher power efficiency than state-of-the-art CMOS systems. Other examples include artificial neurons operating at voltages as low as 80 mV, flexible three-dimensional memristor arrays, and wearable textile networks capable of combining sensing and neuromorphic processing. Together, these advances demonstrate the potential of memristors for efficient, adaptive, and mechanically flexible intelligent hardware.

Applications and Future Outlook

The review connects neuromorphic memristor technologies with a broad range of AI applications, including medical signal recognition, image reconstruction, artificial vision, intelligent sensing, and gesture-based human–machine interaction. Nevertheless, challenges remain in manufacturing reproducibility, device variability, standardized performance evaluation, scalable fabrication, and system-level integration. The authors highlight the need to coordinate materials engineering, CMOS-compatible architectures, peripheral circuits, and software–hardware co-design. Ultimately, integrating sensing, memory, computing, and interaction into compact hardware platforms could bring energy-efficient neuromorphic intelligence closer to practical applications in wearable electronics, edge AI, and intelligent human–machine interfaces.

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Journal

Nano-Micro Letters

DOI

10.1007/s40820-026-02322-5

Method of Research

News article

Article Title

Analysis and Applications of Neuromorphic Memristors in Artificial Intelligence Computing

 

Matter–antimatter asymmetry still provides no evidence of new physics

The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

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Proton–proton collisions at the LHC produce, among other particles, mesons containing beauty and strange quarks and antiquarks. Differences between matter and antimatter were investigated in their decays into secondary particles.

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Credit: Source: IFJ PAN

 

The Universe's dominance by ordinary matter is compelling evidence that matter and antimatter are not perfect reflections of each other. However, known differences do not explain the scale of this imbalance, leaving open the possibility that unknown physics is responsible. A new analysis of meson decays, conducted by the LHCb collaboration, has narrowed the scope of the search for such a scenario while paving the way for more precise measurements in the future.

 

 

Over the past decade, scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider have focused their efforts on searching for differences between particles of matter and antimatter produced in proton-proton collisions. The latest and exceptionally thorough analysis of data collected between 2016 and 2018 as part of the LHCb experiment was carried out by a team of physicists from the universities of Warwick, Manchester and Oxford in the UK, TU Dortmund University in Germany, and the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow.

 

The motivation behind this research lies in what is arguably the most astonishing feature of our world: the fact that it... simply exists. Why is this so surprising? Because, in its present form, it should not exist – at least according to our current understanding of physics. Cosmological models suggest that, shortly after the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter must have been produced in the Universe. Yet when a particle meets its antiparticle, both are converted into energy in a process known as annihilation. Meanwhile, our reality is clearly dominated by particles of matter that have escaped annihilation. The worlds of matter and antimatter particles therefore cannot have been – and still are not – perfectly symmetrical.

 

“In many physical processes, simultaneously replacing all particles with their antiparticles and inverting all spatial coordinates leaves the laws governing these phenomena unchanged. This principle is known as charge-parity symmetry, or CP symmetry. We have been searching for processes that violate this symmetry in the decays of particles produced in proton–proton collisions at the LHC, specifically in the decays of mesons containing beauty and strange quarks and antiquarks,” explains Dr. Agnieszka Dziurda (IFJ PAN), an expert in the physics of these decays.

 

The Standard Model, a theoretical framework developed in the 1970s, describes the elementary particles and their interactions. According to this model, matter is made up of elementary particles known as fermions. These include quarks (down, up, strange, charm, beauty and top) and leptons (electrons, muons, tau leptons and their associated neutrinos). In addition, every type of matter particle has a corresponding antiparticle.

 

Each proton–proton collision at the LHC produces a large number of massive, short-lived particles. In earlier studies of CP violation, physicists have observed asymmetries in certain decay processes involving particles and antiparticles. However, these phenomena alone cannot account for the present-day dominance of matter. Now, in a paper published in the renowned journal Physical Review Letters, researchers have presented an analysis of the decays of Bs0 mesons. These mesons decay into lighter particles, and the Standard Model allows scientists to calculate the expected frequency of a given decay process and compare these predictions with experimental data.

 

“Interestingly, we chose to investigate a process in which the Standard Model predicts no asymmetry at all. So why study it at all?” asks Dr. Dziurda. She explains: “Because if an asymmetry were nevertheless observed, it could be a signal that previously unknown physics was at work. We also know that current theoretical predictions for the probabilities of certain beauty-meson decay channels differ significantly from the values obtained experimentally. This discrepancy could, for example, stem from theoretical effects that have not yet been fully accounted for in our calculations. At this stage, however, we cannot rule out the possibility that it points to physics beyond the Standard Model.”

 

Beauty mesons were exceptionally well suited to the search for CP symmetry breaking for another reason. They possess a remarkable property: they oscillate extremely rapidly between states corresponding to matter (a strange quark paired with a beauty antiquark) and antimatter (a beauty quark paired with a strange antiquark). One of the earlier measurements by the LHCb experiment showed that these oscillations can occur several trillion times per second. Thanks to such fast oscillations, the analysis could be carried out without having to determine the initial state of each meson.

 

A particular challenge for researchers was to thoroughly understand and characterise detector asymmetries, that is, differences in the detection of particles and antiparticles arising from the detector itself. This is because positively and negatively charged particles curve in opposite directions as they travel through the detector's magnetic field. Because detection efficiencies vary across the detector, this can affect the numbers of recorded particles and antiparticles. Such effects can produce an apparent asymmetry in the data even when the process being studied occurs with equal probability for particles and antiparticles. To account for these effects, the researchers used extensive calibration samples and computer simulations, and regularly reversed the direction of the detector's magnetic field. Corrections for differences in particle and antiparticle detection efficiencies were also applied when determining the final asymmetry in beauty-meson decays.

 

“We had to make sure that any asymmetry observed in the data, however small, was not caused by the detector itself. This was a crucial aspect of the entire analysis because, given the precision of our measurement, detector-related effects could have been of the same magnitude as the asymmetry we were looking for,” says Dr. Dziurda.

 

The data from the LHCb experiment analysed in this study revealed a difference of approximately one to two cases per thousand decays. However, since the measurement uncertainty was larger than the observed effect, the result is consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model. Although the finding does not solve the mystery of the missing antimatter or rule out the existence of new physics, it narrows down the range of possibilities in which new phenomena might be hiding. In the decays studied, any unknown process that would cause an asymmetry greater than about 2% would almost certainly have been detected.

 

Future research, using the larger datasets already collected with the upgraded LHCb detector, will allow scientists to investigate even more subtle effects in the discussed meson decays. Should a new source of CP violation be hidden therein, the analysis presented here provides physicists with a clearer understanding of where – and precisely how – the search should be conducted.

 

The Polish contribution to the research was funded by a grant awarded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

 

 

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important establishments of the Institute is the Bronowice Cyclotron Centre (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: “Matter-Energy-Future”, which in 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

 

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

 

“First Measurement of the Decay-Time-Integrated CP Asymmetry in Bs0→Ds–π+ Decays”

LHCb Collaboration

Physical Review Letters 2026, 137, 081802

DOI: 10.1103/ljtv-y278

 

 

LINKS:

 

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

 

IMAGES:

 

IFJ261112b_fot01s.jpg                                  

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2026/11/12/IFJ261112b_fot01.jpg

Proton–proton collisions at the LHC produce, among other particles, mesons containing beauty and strange quarks and antiquarks. Differences between matter and antimatter were investigated in their decays into secondary particles. (Source: IFJ PAN)

 

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Journal

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/ljtv-y278

Article Title

First Measurement of the Decay-Time-Integrated CP Asymmetry in Bs0→Ds–π+ Decays

Environmental steroid hormones in aquatic ecosystems: biogeochemical processes, mixture risks, and sustainable management

A new review maps how steroid hormones move, transform and persist in water — and why removing parent compounds alone may not remove the risk

Innovation Press

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Steroid hormones enter and persist in waters via wastewater, manure runoff, and airborne particles.

Conjugated forms and transformation products can be missed, while mixtures can amplify pollution risks.

These pollutants can disrupt reproduction in aquatic life and may pose broader risks to human health.

Monitoring, source control, and nature-based treatment provide a sustainable path forward.

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Credit: Yang H., Feng Q., Tang Y., et al. (2026). Environmental steroid hormones in aquatic systems: Biogeochemical dynamics, mixture risks, and sustainable mitigation. The Innovation Water 1:100015. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.tiw.2026.100015

Every day, wastewater treatment plants, livestock farms and manure-fertilized fields release steroid hormones into rivers, lakes and coastal seas. The amounts are tiny — often measured in nanograms per liter — but for fish and other aquatic species, tiny is enough. Decades of research have linked these compounds to shifted sex ratios, impaired reproduction and population decline in fish. A new review in The Innovation Water argues that the usual way of tracking them — measuring a handful of parent compounds before and after treatment — understates both exposure and risk.

The review, led by Hang Yang and Yi Zhang of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with Lei Wang of Shenzhen Polytechnic University, walks through the full life cycle of environmental steroid hormones: where they come from, where they go, what they do, and what can be done about them.

One central finding concerns what standard monitoring misses. Steroid hormones rarely travel as free, parent compounds alone. Conjugated forms excreted in urine can be deconjugated by microbes in the environment, regenerating active hormones; transformation products can retain or even gain biological activity. In some secondary wastewater effluents, the review notes, conjugated and halogenated estrogens together can account for 60–70% of the total molar load of steroid estrogens — fractions invisible to targeted assays focused on parent compounds.

Real waters also carry mixtures: natural hormones, synthetic analogues, transformation products and other co-contaminants such as microplastics and antibiotics. Mixture effects may be additive, synergistic or antagonistic, yet risk assessment frequently evaluates compounds one at a time. Evidence of harm is strongest for aquatic life — vitellogenin induction, skewed sex ratios, reduced fecundity — while direct epidemiological evidence linking environmental exposure to human health outcomes remains limited, a boundary the authors state explicitly.

On the treatment side, the review's message is equally cautious. Conventional processes lower parent-compound concentrations but vary with compound, process conditions and season. Sorption and membrane separation may simply relocate pollutants to sludge or concentrate streams; advanced oxidation can destroy parent structures without achieving full mineralization, leaving active transformation products. The authors argue that removal rates for parent compounds should not be compared across technologies without context, and that treatment should be judged by whether transformation products, residual endocrine activity and overall toxicity decline together.

Their proposed path forward is organized under a One Health framework: expand monitoring to wastewater, manure, agricultural runoff, receiving waters, sediments and indicator organisms; bring mixture effects into risk assessment; control sources from pharmaceutical use and disposal to livestock operations; and combine engineered treatment with nature-based solutions such as constructed wetlands and microalgae systems. Whether any of it works, the review concludes, should be verified by measurable, simultaneous declines in exposure, residual endocrine activity and toxicity — not by parent-compound removal rates alone.

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Yang H., Feng Q., Tang Y., et al. (2026). Environmental steroid hormones in aquatic systems: Biogeochemical dynamics, mixture risks, and sustainable mitigation. The Innovation Water 1:100015. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.tiw.2026.100015

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DOI

10.59717/j.tiw.2026.100015

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Environmental steroid hormones in aquatic systems: Biogeochemical dynamics, mixture risks, and sustainable mitigation

 

Archaeologists shed new light on wealth and status among Europe's early herders

A new study by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute indicates that early herding communities in Central Europe only gradually developed social inequality – it was not imported by the steppe migrants

University of Copenhagen

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Artistic reconstruction of the young girl with the copper neck ring (and hair spirals) in grave 41 at Čachovice. Red ochre face paint inspired by decorations on the pottery in her grave.

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Credit: Oil pastel by Solveig Chaudesaigues-Clausen

How unequal were prehistoric societies? And how can archaeologists measure wealth in cultures that left behind no written records, no tax registers and no census data?

A researcher from the University of Copenhagen has developed a multi-proxy method called QuantWealth that uses archaeological evidence from graves to reconstruct social status, wealth display, and inequality thousands of years ago.

In a new study published in Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, the method was applied to almost 300 4-5,000-year-old graves in present-day Bohemia. The researchers compared the analyses of the graves with genetic ancestry and Y-chromosome patterns of the skeletal remains to track paternal lineages, including pathologies, age, and gender to give unprecedented detail to the story of the so-called Corded Ware culture.

The researchers found that social inequality emerged gradually in Bohemia over several centuries following migrations from the steppe. These migrations spread early Indo-European dialects across Europe, but, at least in Bohemia, inequality was not deeply entrenched:

"Archaeologists have long debated whether steppe populations migrating across Europe from Ukraine brought with them a highly unequal social system and patriarchy. Our results suggest a much more dynamic picture, where social differences developed gradually. Achieving status through life-actions appears to have been more important than through inheritance, at least during the first 400 years", says University of Copenhagen archaeologist Mikkel Nørtoft, main author of the study, who developed the QuantWealth method in his PhD thesis.

A society in transition
Mikkel Nørtoft and his colleague Adam B. Rohrlach analysed 296 burials from the Corded Ware culture in Bohemia dating between approximately 2,900 and 2,300 BCE.

“Following a few harsh years of “dark sun” clouded by a devastating volcanic eruption 2,900 BCE, the earliest herder communities, settling in Bohemia around 2,900-2,700 BCE, seem to have focused mostly on building social cohesion across this new network of migrants in Central Europe. In Bohemia, they did this through shared burial rituals, and building earthen mounds, but with few grave goods”, Mikkel Nørtoft explains.

Wealth differences were small, mostly age-related, and power seems to have been distributed across multiple steppe-derived lineages, with little gender inequality.

Increased competition and inequality
Over time, circa 2,700-2,500 BCE, however, funerary competition in Bohemia intensified after a new lineage appeared. The researchers found increasing concentrations of prestige items, meat offerings, expanding exchange networks, and growing gender inequality. Adult men in particular became associated with more richly furnished graves, and younger adults became most frequent in the graves, but without clearly increasing signs of violence in skeletal trauma.

“In the final phase, roughly 2,500-2,300 BCE, we see a few rich displays of family wealth through children, and the previously new lineage now dominated the burial record. So maybe the new lineage had gained the most followers and power through the competitive burial parties, and their descendants were now competing among themselves”, Mikkel Nørtoft points out and adds:

“The few rich child graves and this prevailing lineage could indicate more inherited wealth and emerging traits of persistent inequality. Ethnographic parallels could also support the idea that parents adorned their children with ornaments to increase their social value in future marriage exchange. Brides often moved into the husband’s household in Corded Ware societies, and bridewealth or dowry is preserved in early Indo-European vocabulary, and historically common in Indo-European societies.”

This could be exemplified in one particularly rich female child grave in this late phase from the site Čachovice, the richest among all Bohemian graves in the study. This grave also included an extremely rare copper neck ring, a widespread upper-class symbol (known as “torcs”) in the later European Bronze and Iron Ages.

According to the researchers, these developments suggest growing social competition and the possible emergence of more durable forms of inequality among late Corded Ware communities.

Whether this development shows the first small steps to long-standing family dynasties documented later in the Bronze Age will require more data on both the Corded Ware Culture and the related Bell Beaker Culture who replaced them in Central Europe.

“We now have a correlation between changing Y-haplogroup lineages and unequal burial wealth display in one region, but we need more DNA data to confirm this at the family level, and elsewhere”, explains Nørtoft. The study also shows how combining DNA, archaeology, and language can enrich narratives about social changes in the past.

The study “Cooperation and Competition: Changes in Wealth, Power, and Patrilines in the Czech Corded Ware Culture” has been published in Journal of Neolithic Archaeology.
 

Contact
Archaeologist postdoc Mikkel Nørtoft
University of Copenhagen and National Museum of Denmark
Email: mnoertoft@palaeome.org

Geneticist postdoc Adam B. Rohrlach
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
E-mail: adam.rohrlach@adelaide.edu.au

The research was funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and the European Research Council.

 

About QuantWealth
The QuantWealth method addresses a longstanding challenge in archaeology: how do researchers compare wealth and status across large numbers of prehistoric burials.

Instead of simply counting grave goods, which has been the preferred method, QuantWealth combines multiple indicators associated with social investment and prestige. These include the number and exclusivity of grave goods, the labour required to produce them, access to long-distance exchange networks, evidence of feasting and the effort invested in constructing graves.

Together, these factors allow researchers to estimate how wealth and status were expressed within ancient communities.

The researchers then combine these archaeological indicators with advanced statistical analyses to map patterns of wealth and social differentiation through time.

The Corded Ware Culture
The Corded Ware Culture was one of the most widespread archaeological cultures of prehistoric Europe, spanning large parts of northern, central and eastern Europe between approximately 2900 and 2300 BCE. It is named after the distinctive pottery decorated with impressions made by twisted cords.

Corded Ware communities practiced a mixed economy based on animal husbandry, farming, and are associated with the spread of people carrying ancestry from the East European steppe and the spread of Indo-European languages across Eurasia.

Individual burials with characteristic grave goods, such as “battle-axes” in male graves, cord-decorated beakers and amphoras, and dogtooth ornaments in female graves, are a hallmark of the culture.

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DOI

10.12766/jna.2026.7

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

Cooperation and Competition: Changes in Wealth, Power, and Patrilines in the Czech Corded Ware Culture

Article Publication Date

10-Nov-2026

Early radiocarbon dates (range midpoints) for the Corded Ware culture incl. potential “proto-Corded Ware” in Southern Poland, data from Bourgeois et al. 2025, adapted and edited by Mikkel Nørtoft.

Credit

Illustration: Mikkel Nørtoft