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This wok provides an overview of progress made toward a transformation of the culture and curriculum of the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering (MANE) Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to better equip our students to solve the challenging problems of our world. This work is an adaption and extension of a proven integrated engineering education model from Colorado State University’s NSF IUSE/PFE RED program, scaling up to a large department with four degree programs in a way that is sustainable. Motivated by longstanding challenges in traditional siloed engineering education—such as students’ challenges with connecting fundamental concepts across disciplines, applying abstract knowledge to real-world problems, and understanding professional pathways early in the curriculum—the project is addressing critical needs identified in the National Academy of Engineering’s Educating the Engineer of 2020 report and supported by extensive literature on STEM integration and organizational change. The work leverages evidence-based strategies grounded in engineering education research. The project focuses on enhancing engineering education through six key activities: developing modules to support the application of foundational knowledge, implementing knowledge integration (KI) activities linking discipline-specific courses, embedding vertically integrated projects (VIPs) into the curriculum, fostering student professional formation via Engineers-In-Residence (EIR), supporting faculty teaching development, and continuous programmatic assessment. These elements are designed to foster deeper interdisciplinary understanding, enhance hands-on learning, and improve professional identity formation for undergraduate students in MANE. New curriculum activities have included the successful creation and piloting of foundation modules that refreshed essential math and physics concepts with positive student feedback; effective KI activities in aerospace engineering and control systems that connected courses with related content; and implementation of a VIP centered on Luminescent Solar Concentrators across multiple courses to promote cumulative learning and systems-level understanding. Other supporting activities include initial but promising EIR engagement in career-related support for students; faculty development workshops that encouraged evidence-based teaching practices; and ongoing assessment revealing areas for improvement such as increasing examples in modules, better framing of assignments, and enhanced coordination among courses. Overall, the project is stimulating more collaborative teaching and is demonstrating the feasibility and value in integrating interdisciplinary learning experiences into a large, multi-program department, to better prepare engineering students for complex professional challenges. 

Numerous engineering concepts are based on foundational math and science topics and methods. Being well-versed with such fundamentals not only places students in a better position to learn new material but also allows them to readily adapt this knowledge to solve engineering problems. However, instructors frequently report that students do not recall these fundamental ideas or recognize when to apply them in later courses. As a part of a Revolutionizing Engineering Departments grant, we developed just-in-time “foundation modules” to bridge this gap between the fundamentals and more advanced engineering concepts in mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering (MANE) disciplines. Several course instructors were interviewed to corroborate the need for such materials and to identify the fundamental topics in their courses to target with these modules. Fifteen static foundation modules have been prepared on the identified topics and piloted in three courses that are common to all MANE disciplines. Results from a preliminary survey indicated that students found the foundation modules helpful in preparing them with the required fundamentals. 

Levitated ferromagnets act as ultraprecise magnetometers, which can exhibit high quality factors due to their excellent isolation from the environment. These instruments can be utilized in searches for ultralight dark matter candidates, such as axionlike dark matter or dark-photon dark matter. In addition to being sensitive to an axion-photon coupling or kinetic mixing, which produce physical magnetic fields, ferromagnets are also sensitive to the effective magnetic field (or “axion wind”) produced by an axion-electron coupling. While the dynamics of a levitated ferromagnet in response to a dc magnetic field have been well studied, all of these couplings would produce ac fields. In this work, we study the response of a ferromagnet to an applied ac magnetic field and use these results to project their sensitivity to axion and dark-photon dark matter. We pay special attention to the direction of motion induced by an applied ac field, in particular, whether it precesses around the applied field (similar to an electron spin) or librates in the plane of the field (similar to a compass needle). We show that existing levitated ferromagnet setups can already have comparable sensitivity to an axion-electron coupling as comagnetometer or torsion balance experiments. In addition, future setups can become sensitive probes of axion-electron coupling, dark-photon kinetic mixing, and axion-photon coupling, for ultralight dark matter masses < 5feV. 

Novel interactions beyond the four known fundamental forces in nature (electromagnetic, gravitational, strong, and weak interactions) may arise due to “new physics” beyond the standard model, manifesting as a “fifth force.” This review focuses on spin-dependent fifth forces mediated by exotic bosons such as spin-0 axions and axionlike particles and spin-1 Z' bosons, dark photons, and paraphotons. Many of these exotic bosons are candidates to explain the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and their interactions may violate fundamental symmetries. Spin-dependent interactions between fermions mediated by the exchange of exotic bosons have been investigated in a variety of experiments, particularly at the low-energy frontier. Experimental methods and tools used to search for exotic spin-dependent interactions, such as atomic comagnetometers, torsion balances, nitrogen vacancy spin sensors, and precision atomic and molecular spectroscopy, are described. A complete set of interaction potentials, derived based on quantum field theory with minimal assumptions and characterized in terms of reduced coupling constants, are presented. A summary of existing experimental and observational constraints on exotic spin-dependent interactions is given, in the process illustrating the current research landscape and promising directions of further research. 

Abstract After the preparation of 2D electronic flat band (EFB) in van der Waals (vdW) superlattices, recent measurements suggest the existence of 1D electronic flat bands (1D‐EFBs) in twisted vdW bilayers. However, the realization of 1D‐EFBs is experimentally elusive in untwisted 2D layers, which is desired considering their fabrication and scalability. Herein, the discovery of 1D‐EFBs is reported in an untwisted in situ‐grown two atomic‐layer Bi(110) superlattice self‐aligned on an SnSe(001) substrate using scanning probe microscopy measurements and density functional theory calculations. While the Bi–Bi dimers of Bi zigzag (ZZ) chains are buckled, the epitaxial lattice mismatch between the Bi and SnSe layers induces two 1D buckling reversal regions (BRRs) extending along theZZdirection in each Bi(110)‐11 × 11 supercell. A series of 1D‐EFBs arises spatially following BRRs that isolate electronic states along the armchair (AC) direction and localize electrons in 1D extended states alongZZdue to quantum interference at a topological node. This work provides a generalized strategy for engineering 1D‐EFBs in utilizing lattice mismatch between untwisted rectangular vdW layers. 

Arabidopsis RESISTANCE TO POWDERY MILDEW 8.2 (RPW8.2) is specifically induced by the powdery mildew (PM) fungus (Golovinomyces cichoracearum) in the infected epidermal cells to activate immunity. However, the mechanism of RPW8.2-induction is not well understood. Here, we identify a G. cichoracearum effector that interacts with RPW8.2, named Gc-RPW8.2 interacting protein 1 (GcR8IP1), by a yeast two-hybrid screen of an Arabidopsis cDNA library. GcR8IP1 physically associated with RPW8.2 with its RING finger domain that is essential and sufficient for the association. GcR8IP1 was secreted and translocated into the nucleus of host cell infected with PM. Association of GcR8IP1 with RPW8.2 led to an increase of RPW8.2 in the nucleus. In turn, the nucleus-localised RPW8.2 promoted the activity of the RPW8.2 promoter, resulting in transcriptional self-amplification of RPW8.2 to boost immunity at infection sites. Additionally, ectopic expression or host-induced gene silencing of GcR8IP1 supported its role as a virulence factor in PM. Altogether, our results reveal a mechanism of RPW8.2-dependent defense strengthening via altered partitioning of RPW8.2 and transcriptional self-amplification triggered by a PM fungal effector, which exemplifies an atypical form of effector-triggered immunity. 

Porphyry ore deposits, Earth’s most important resources of copper, molybdenum, and rhenium, are strongly associated with felsic magmas showing signs of high-pressure differentiation and are usually found in places with thickened crust (>45 kilometers). This pattern is well-known, but unexplained, and remains an outstanding problem in our understanding of porphyry ore deposit formation. We approach this problem by investigating the oxidation state of magmatic sulfur, which controls the behavior of ore-forming metals during magma differentiation and magmatic-hydrothermal transition. We use sulfur in apatite to reconstruct the sulfur oxidation state in the Gangdese batholith, southern Tibet. We find that magma sulfate content increased abruptly after India-Eurasia collision. Apatite sulfur content and the calculated magma S 6+ /ΣS ratio correlate with whole-rock dysprosium/ytterbium ratio, suggesting that residual garnet, favored in thickened crust, exerts a first-order control on sulfur oxidation in magmatic orogens. Our findings link sulfur oxidation to internal petrogenic processes and imply an intrinsic relationship of magma oxidation with synmagmatic crustal thickening.