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Scientists Just Cured Paranoia with Ultrasound

Scientists at NYU Langone aimed focused ultrasound at a structure deep in the brain, and a single ten-minute session made delusions measurably less intense for at least a week in ten patients with schizophrenia. Source Article: Qi et al. (2026), npj Acoustics 2:39: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44384-026-00076-3 My Patreon:🚀 http://patreon.com/DrBenMiles My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbenmiles My TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drbenmiles My Newsletter: https://drbenmiles.substack.com/ My Merch: https://www.rockstarscientist.org/ 🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/drbenmiles MY GEAR 📷 Sony A7III https://amzn.to/3OWrmGd 🔎 Sigma 402,965 16 mm F1.4 https://amzn.to/49BNJdq 🎤 Shure SM7B https://amzn.to/4sF3ngx 🎤 Zoom H4n Pro https://amzn.to/3OXsklB 🎤 Sennheiser AVX https://amzn.to/4geWnBi

Fingernail-sized chip untangles mixed light into clean beams

Stanford engineers and colleagues designed a chip that can take a muddled mixture of light from multiple lasers and output clean beams of light. It’s the first time researchers have demonstrated a device that can take in mixed, or partially coherent, light and sort its photons into a clear set of separate beams.

The finding, published in Nature Photonics, grounds long-theorized physics while unlocking a unique way of observing the world around us, with potential uses in microscopy, astronomy and more fields.

“We’re experimentally demonstrating stuff that was thought of originally in the 1980s for the first time,” said co-lead author Annie Kroo, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering. “This work has a huge bearing on a whole bunch of different applications because it allows us to think about things in a totally new way.”

A single measurement makes quantum bits more reliable

Researchers at the University of Regensburg and their international partners have found a way to significantly reduce errors in quantum bits. In an experiment, they demonstrated that a single additional measurement before a series of quantum operations can cut the error rate by more than half. The results have been published in Applied Physics Reviews.

Quantum computers are widely regarded as a promising technology for solving problems beyond the reach of today’s computers. One of their main challenges, however, is that their fundamental building blocks, known as quantum bits, are extremely sensitive to disturbances.

A quantum bit, usually shortened to qubit, is the basic unit of information in a quantum computer and plays a role similar to that of a bit in a conventional computer. While classical bits store information as either 0 or 1, qubits are realized by physical systems governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. In this study, the qubit consisted of a tiny superconducting electrical circuit on a chip that was controlled using microwave signals.

How to identify mirror life biohazards w/ light 🔆

What if we could detect a fundamentally different form of life simply by examining how it interacts with light?

Scientists are exploring ways to identify potential mirror life—hypothetical organisms built from molecular structures that are mirror images of those found in all known life on Earth. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/10/260921…ontingency.

Because conventional biological detection methods may not reliably recognize these unfamiliar molecular architectures, researchers propose a new approach using circularly polarized luminescence (CPL).

The idea is to use fluorescent probes that bind to different cellular structures and produce distinctive optical signatures. By measuring how these signals interact with left-and right-circularly polarized light, scientists may be able to distinguish conventional biological structures from their mirror-image counterparts.

Using multiple probes could improve detection reliability and reduce false positives. Advances in specialized spectroscopy and optical microscopy may eventually make this approach suitable for portable screening systems.

Although mirror life remains hypothetical, the possibility raises important questions for synthetic biology and global biosecurity.

An intriguing application of photonics: using the physics of light to help detect a form of life that could challenge our understanding of biology.

#mirrorlife #biosecurity #Chirality #photonics #SyntheticBiology.

Continue reading “How to identify mirror life biohazards w/ light 🔆” | >

AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all

The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight. LLMs can already write code, generate synthetic data for training, and optimize the computer chips they run on. Forecasts of explosive AI progress predict that what researchers call recursive self-improvement is on the horizon.

But a new study suggests that it might take a while for us to get there. The researchers behind it found that AI agents are not yet capable of conducting open-ended AI research—free-form investigations that have no clear-cut answers and require judgment and taste, which may be integral to building self-improving AI.