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It is a common experience that, when you share memories with a friend, you can recount some events in much more detail than others, while other times, you mix up memories. But why do our memories change? It is all about the spatial context, says clinical psychologist Vanessa van Ast. When successive experiences take place in the same environment, they become more deeply imprinted in our memory.

Patent pending for combination of scintillation and upconversion luminescence Researchers Dr Yansong Feng and Prof. Hong Zhang at the Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have designed and synthesized novel multi-layered, multi-functional nanoparticles that enable a combination of radiotherapy and photodynamic therapy for deep cancer tissue.

Not being able to recognise a well-known melody without the lyrics, not hearing whether someone is singing out of tune and not being able to produce a rhythm; for some people musicality is not their strongest point. For a small section of the population, this inability goes very far: they suffer from the disorder congenital amusia.

Banks monitor huge quantities of financial transactions on a daily basis, with the aim to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Political scientist Esmé Bosma studied the ways in which banks experiment with digital technologies and how they implement counter-terrorist financing regulations.

Understanding roughness and friction at the nanoscale 9 February 2022 The amount of friction between surfaces generally depends on their roughness, but at the nanoscale 'rough' surfaces experience less friction than smoother surfaces. With a unique experimental setup, researchers at ARCNL and the University of Amsterdam were able to image surface roughness with nanoscale accuracy and relate these measurements to friction experiments that confirm this counter-intuitive fact, which is caused by capillary effects.

The Winter Olympics in Beijing are under way. Dutch athletes are hoping to win many medals, especially in skating events. To improve the performance of the athletes, big ice resurfacers smoothen the ice rink in between races. The question is: is that really necessary? To some extent it's not: scientists from the Institute of Physics at the University of Amsterdam have shown that ice, when left alone for long enough, can heal itself.

Supersymmetry is symmetry of nature that is often hypothesized to exist among elementary particles. In a new paper that appeared in Physical Review Letters this week, physicists from the University of Amsterdam and QuSoft propose a setup where supersymmetry can also be observed between lumps of energy in a material - so-called kinks and skinks.

Network approaches are undergoing a revolutionary advance in the field of psychology. Whereas explanations for cognitive development and mental problems have long been sought in the brain, the focus now increasingly lies on the interaction between observable factors. In the case of depression, for example, we no longer look for a single cause but consider the interplay of symptoms such as insomnia, depressed mood and concentration problems.

And who suffers the most from bad leadership? ABS researchers Sofija Pajic, Claudia Buengeler, and Deanne den Hartog (Leadership and Management section) explore the relationship between leadership, wellbeing, and socioeconomic status. The study was conducted with co-author Diana Boer (Institute of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau).

Physicists from the University of Amsterdam have proposed a new architecture for a scalable quantum computer. Making use of the collective motion of the constituent particles, they were able to construct new building blocks for quantum computing that pose fewer technical difficulties than current state-of-the art methods.

In order to comprehend the workings of the human brain, researchers need to look beyond established ways of doing things, accept that an understanding of something so complex cannot be reached through small-scale experiments looking at individual outcomes in isolation, and embrace the possibilities artificial intelligence and machine learning can offer.

As artificial intelligence continues to seep slowly into medical practices around the world, how can we bridge the gap between the systems being developed by research and industry, and the clinics, where take-up is not yet widespread? A team of University of Amsterdam researchers looking at the use of AI in ophthalmology believes the key lies in the trustworthiness of the AI, as well as in involving all relevant stakeholders at every stage of the production process.

Streamlined control of material deformation 12 January 2022 In a new publication , a team of physicists from Amsterdam, Leiden and Atlanta show how to 'puppeteer' lab-designed metamaterials. By only touching these materials from the outside, they are able to predict and perform precise deformations of the whole material.

First review study of the social effects of emotions Scientists have sought for thousands of years to answer questions about the nature and purpose of emotions. Psychologists Gerben van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and Stéphane Côté (University of Toronto) have now released the most comprehensive review article on the social effects of emotions to date.

Nine promising young UvA researchers have received Veni grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Getting old is usually seen as unappealing, but ageing in fact has some positive effects. One of the advantages of getting old is feeling better. Older people generally experience more positive and less negative emotions than younger people. In a new study published in Psychological Science, Rui Sun and Disa Sauter from the University of Amsterdam tested whether this advantage of older people would also hold during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The climate lawsuits against the Dutch State by Urgenda and against Shell by Milieudefensie are powerful examples of how non-profit organisations can force changes to climate policy. The visibility of these lawsuits in the public debate also influences the opinions of many citizens. It's no longer the question who is responsible for the consequences of climate change: this is now a legally established fact.

The quantum world and our everyday world are very different places. In a publication that appeared as the "Editor's Suggestion" in Physical Review A this week, UvA physicists Jasper van Wezel and Lotte Mertens and their colleagues investigate how the act of measuring a quantum particle transforms it into an everyday object.

An international team of researchers including Prof. Bob van der Zwaan of the University of Amsterdam and TNO has explored the physical and macroeconomic impacts associated with climate mitigation pathways with different levels of temperature overshoot. The results, that have just been published , underpin the need to include climate risk analysis in developing mitigation pathways.

What does it mean when we say that something is extremely cold? A physicist's answer would be: this means that atoms and molecules barely move. For several decades now, physicists have been developing techniques to create such ultracold states of matter, using lasers to bring gases into the regime where quantum mechanics reigns.