Researchers from the University of Ljubljana and the Jožef Stefan Institute, Simon Čopar and Uroš Tkalec, in collaboration with researchers from American universities, reported on the spin ordering of topological defects in a confined nematic liquid crystal that forms under a thin layer of water. Shear forces at the boundary between the liquid crystal and water cause the elastic dipoles to align in the direction of the surface movements and thus store information about external stimuli. This results in ordered domain structures in the nematic, similar to those found in systems with polar order, such as ferromagnets, active matter and metamaterials. This is the first application of a conventional liquid crystal in which the director field is controlled by mechanical motion at an open interface and the defect configurations are read using polarization microscopy. The research, which promises new possibilities for the detection of dynamics in microfluidic environments, was published in Nature Physics.