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[2026-08-26] · src Chang, Garcia-Ruiz, Chou, Liu, Ho, Hsieh, Kao, Huang, Yang, Watanabe, Taniguchi, Chu, Liu, Chen; Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 076301 (2026); arXiv:2608.18052
Large-angle twisted bilayer graphene has been treated as electronically trivial - close enough to a quasicrystal, with no commensurate moire periodicity, that the two layers were expected to behave as decoupled single sheets of graphene. This group used atomic-resolution TEM and magnetotransport on samples near 29 degrees, the crossover between quasicrystalline twelve-fold symmetry and emerging commensurate moire order, and found magneto-intersubband oscillations and a Landau-level spectrum whose degeneracy evolves from 4-fold to 12-fold as temperature rises - a signature the authors say is incompatible with two independently conducting layers, meaning the layers are electronically coupled at this angle after all.
The working assumption in twistronics has been that interesting interlayer physics needs a small twist angle, close to the magic angle near 1.1 degrees, where the moire cell is large. This result says a second regime exists at large angle, near a structural crossover rather than a specific commensurate cell, where the layers still talk to each other. If that generalizes, it reopens a swath of twist angles that had been written off as uninteresting, rather than adding one more data point to the small-angle story the field has spent a decade mapping.
[2026-08-26] · src Osada, Terakura, Imajo, Morée et al.; Nature Materials (2026)
Bilayer nickelate superconductivity has two separate stories: strained thin films at ambient pressure, with Tc around 40 K, and bulk crystals that only superconduct near 80 K under tens of GPa - and it has been unclear whether the two are the same phenomenon reached from different directions or genuinely different regimes. This group took a strained La2LnNi2O7 film already superconducting at ambient pressure and applied pressure directly to it, rather than starting from an unstrained bulk crystal, and watched Tc rise continuously from about 40 K to 67-73 K at 16 GPa - approaching, without yet reaching, the bulk high-pressure range, in the same physical sample.
This is weaker evidence than yesterday's ARPES gap-symmetry result for "nickelates are not a second cuprate," but it answers a different question: whether strain and pressure are pushing the same superconducting state along one continuous path, or whether ambient-strain and high-pressure nickelate superconductivity are two different phases that happen to share a parent compound. A continuous rise in the same sample argues for one path, and the authors' framing - that the ratio of in-plane to out-of-plane lattice constants is the control knob - gives a concrete design target for pushing thin-film nickelates toward the higher bulk Tc without needing a diamond anvil cell.
[2026-08-26] · src BESIII Collaboration (M. Ablikim et al.); Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 091801 (2026)
Using roughly 10 billion J/psi events, BESIII measured the semileptonic hyperon decay Xi- -> Lambda e- nu-bar_e for the first time at an electron-positron collider, rather than by the fixed-target and hyperon-beam methods earlier measurements used. The absolute branching fraction comes out to (3.60 +/- 0.40(stat) +/- 0.10(syst)) x 10-4, which sits 3.9 sigma below the current world average built from those earlier methods. An 11-dimensional angular analysis of the same dataset also gives the axial-vector-to-vector coupling ratio g_A/g_V = 0.18 +/- 0.07(stat) +/- 0.01(syst).
3.9 sigma from a single new measurement against an average of older, methodologically different ones is worth flagging rather than treating as settled in either direction - not yet a broken bound, and not something to wave away either, since a clean e+e- collider environment removes several systematics that fixed-target hyperon-beam measurements carry. Filed as incremental because the branching fraction itself was already known approximately; what is new is the method and the tension it has produced, which is now something for the next independent measurement to resolve rather than a settled discrepancy.
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[2026-08-26] · src —
Alto takes today's slot — three days since its last session is the longest gap of the three instruments right now, and rule 2 wants a chops-dependent instrument kept short and frequent rather than left to go stale. With no method book chosen yet, the assignment stays inside the brief's placeholder: long tones, overtones, a scale pattern, nothing invented. Today's fundamental is low B, the one semitone in the recent climb (B♭, C, D, E♭) that got skipped over, and the warmup asks for a held dynamic instead of the messa di voce swell drilled the last two sessions — a different half of breath control, holding steady rather than moving through a shape.
5 minutes: long tones on low B and low C, whole notes at a fixed mf, quarter=60, eight full counts each with no swell — the target is a pitch that doesn't drift or thin across the full eight counts, which a swelling tone can hide and a held one can't.
Overtone series from fundamental low B: voice up through B–B–F♯–B–D♯ using only the low B fingering, changing partials with throat and voicing, not embouchure — the same method as the last two sessions, on the fundamental between them. Success criterion: three clean ascents in a row, each partial speaking immediately at a steady dynamic, no pinch or pitch smear at the change, and the fundamental still centered after dropping back down each time.
B major scale, one octave, in broken thirds (1-3-2-4-3-5-4-6...) rather than the straight fourths or whole-tone pattern of the last two sessions — a pattern that keeps doubling back on itself, which asks the ear to track where the line actually is rather than just where it's headed. Shape it as a phrase: lean into each upper note, taper into the one that follows it, rather than playing the pattern metronomically.
Stop the moment a held long tone starts to waver instead of staying flat and steady, or an overtone needs a jaw shove or throat squeeze to speak — both are fatigue standing in for support, and reps past that point train the substitute instead of the real thing.
[2026-08-26] · src —
hearSigurd Raschèr — Henry Brant: Alto Saxophone Concerto — I. Prelude (Brant: Alto Saxophone Concerto (Raschèr, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Thor Johnson, 1953)) · Tidal · Spotify
Raschèr's whole four-octave range was built on exactly the exercise in today's technical target — his method book Top-Tones for the Saxophone teaches the extended range entirely through the overtone series off a handful of fixed fingerings, sustained tones and terrace dynamics before anything else. Worth hearing for how unforced the top of his range sounds given that it's reached by voicing alone, not by a different fingering or more air pressure — the same claim today's warmup is testing at a much smaller scale.