Can quantum computers be used to improve human health? ⚛️🧪
Seems like a huge leap, but researchers are making inroads: algorithms that simulate light-sensitive drugs and map differences in genomes are being trialled on small quantum systems.
My latest in @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
China's gov wants its AI scientists to avoid relying on Western tech & collaborations, which could be behind CAST's decision to still boycott NeurIPS despite its u-turn over sanctions.
Might we see China start up its own NeurIPS-level conference? 🤖🧪
More here:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
We made a short vid about the world's first antimatter delivery. Just 92 antiprotons but an epic achievement! ⚛️🧪
How do you transport something that annihilates whenever it touches matter? Find out here: www.youtube.com/shorts/O4_XU...
@cern.bsky.social @nature.com
Let me know your email address (or you can find me here: www.nature.com/nature/editors ) and I'll drop you a line! Thanks
@davidbflower.bsky.social Hi David, I'd be keen to get some thoughts from you for a quick news story. Please DM me back if you are interested! Thanks
They made it home — as far as they can tell, all 92!
A great question! I'm afraid I don't know the answer, but I guess this might be one of the things they're going to have to wrestle with once they're on public roads. For now they stuck to the CERN grounds
Many more! This was 92 antiprotons. For a past story I calculated that 1 billion antiprotons annihilating equates to the energy of a pencil, dropped form table height, hitting the floor.
Still there are no regulations for taking antimatter on public roads, so there will certainly be some paperwork!
Antimatter delivery anyone?
I first wrote about plans to transport this wildly volatile stuff (looking at another @cern.bsky.social expt) in 2018
They've finally done it! Amazing ⚛️🧪
This tiny sample of 92 antiprotons is a huge world first
My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This squinty eye is telling you to go watch my first tiktok 🧪⚛️
It's on making the fattest ever Schrödinger's 🐈⬛ (& made with the fab Maren Hunsberger). More bitesized physics to come!
www.tiktok.com/@nature/vide...
Hard to believe that static electricity is still a big mystery — Is it the electrons, ions or bits of material that transfer the charge? Why do some materials charge positively & others negatively? What happens when 2 samples of the same material come into contact? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Big news: @nature.com has finally launched its TikTok page!
Check out my colleagues Maren Hunsberger with a deep dive on artificial lungs and @shamini.bsky.social talking about an acoustic robot so small it could swim around inside your body.
Follow us for much more content to come 🫶
Supernovae are bright. This one is EXTRA bright. Why?!
It's hard to study what's behind these super-bright cosmic explosions, but a wobble in the signal from this one gave it away🧪🔭
Here's the story from me with funky 90s graphics from the fab @danjfox.bsky.social
With🙏to @drjrfarah.bsky.social
Don't worry, Nature covered that too in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The point is that despite knowing this, most models STILL don't have adequate safeguards to stop this being exploited to produce junk science (although some do)
This was a very quick test (and also using AI!) but it demonstrates just how easy it still is to get models to help you to do bad things -- in this case, to clog up the scientific literature.
While many LLMs refused requests at first, they were often worn down 🤖🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Hard drives fail after a few years -- ever thought about writing your data into glass instead?
Microsoft has developed a ready-to-deploy system which, while pricey to read and write, could save data for millennia, with minimal storage costs 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The system simply cannot handle the current volume.
And as one researcher told me, if the issue is not addressed, “trust in scientific research, particularly within computer science, faces a substantial risk of erosion"
My latest @nature.com story on what computer science can do about the deluge of AI-generated/assisted papers.
Charge to submit? Use AI to review? Have AI-only outlets? Switch to a journal, rather than conference model? Reprimand repeat offenders? 🧪
More ideas?
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
...while wider Choose Europe schemes are attracting researchers (with @maxkozlov.bsky.social 👏)
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
BUT sources said this often means success rates get further squeezed. And measures need to be bigger (billions of euros, thousands of scientists) to really move the needle.
I've written two @nature.com stories this week looking at whether EU efforts to lure US scientists are working 🧪
They are: the number of US applicants wanting to take up ERC grants has doubled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Silicon Valley has gone wild for Moltbook, the social network for AI agents. What can scientists learn from studying it?
Great @nature.com story from Mohana Basu 🧪🤖
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
4/4 As for Pan, he says they'll soon launch a geostationary 🛰️ that will enable Q comms over 10,000km & host a wildly good optical clock (with a 'tick' fluctuating only at the 10^-19 level, more than 100x better than the ACES clock on the ISS!)
The era of quantum physics in space is well under way!
3/4 The skies are now far from empty. Last year China launched a light quantum microsat & is planning a whole constellation www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Other quantum 🛰️ are set to fly. A UK-Singapore collab launched SpeQtre in Nov & both ESA and the Canadian Space Agency have missions in the works
2/4 Micius' fall was expected and controlled, its architect Jianwei Pan told me.
As well as allow secure communication across continents using QKD, in its extended life, researchers used the 🛰️ to test models of gravity-induced entanglement and to synchronise time from space.
1/4 RIP Micius 🛰️
The world's first quantum satellite crashed into the Pacific last week (to the west of Ecuador) after an almost 10-year mission
Also known as Mozi (& QUESS) it was famously the first to teleport a photon to space (or at least its quantum state)
🧪⚛️
www.nature.com/articles/nat...
It's hard to do at a distance: ultrasound is very readily absorbed by the skull, so this technique requires an implant just beneath it (or to operate through a cranial window). We v briefly touch on ethical issues in the piece.
The story is available if you register with Nature (no fee required)
OpenAI is among those investing a whopping $252 million into a start up called Merge Labs. They want to use ultrasound -- rather than electrode implants -- to read out and interact with the brain.
What are its chances of success? My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪
We're back with a new vid!
First protein, now exercise. How much do you need to reap the health benefits?
The good news is, probably not as much as you think... 🧪
"Another remarkable case is a 106-year-old woman who took up swimming at age 70 & won her first competition three decades later. Longevity runs in the family: she has two younger sisters over 100 & a 110-year-old aunt."
Great story from @marilenharo.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.