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Single molecules could provide the building blocks for future quantum networks

Quantum computers rely on qubits as their units of information. To connect them into a larger network across long distances, they need to transmit quantum information using light.

Scientists are developing ways to do this using tiny defects in diamond crystals and other semiconductor materials that can act as qubits. However, there is a major problem. Unwanted defects and trapped electrical charges can cause fluctuations that change the frequency of light emitted by the qubits, making it harder to establish reliable quantum connections.

In new research published in the journal Nature, scientists have demonstrated a promising way to get around this instability problem by using a custom-designed molecular system that contains a stable qubit.

Gut immune cells sustain pain even without inflammation through newly identified signaling pathway

People with inflammatory bowel conditions such as ulcerative colitis often suffer from severe, long-lasting gut pain that lingers even after signs of inflammation are gone. Such abdominal pain can significantly affect one’s quality of life, but unfortunately there are few treatment options. Uncertainty about the underlying mechanisms that drive this type of pain is responsible for the lack of effective treatments.

To clarify these mechanisms, researchers investigated how chronic gut pain is triggered and sustained in conditions like ulcerative colitis, focusing on the behavior of immune cells. They wanted to see if immune cells could directly feel physical pressure and trigger pain via nerve sensitization.

With the help of genetically engineered mice with ulcerative colitis-like inflammation, the researchers examined whether gut-wall immune cells called tissue-resident CX3CR1⁺ macrophages carry the mechanosensitive channel Piezo1. They then traced how tissue stiffness sets off a molecular chain reaction through this channel and the role it plays in pain pathways.

Tracing the online networks behind AI-generated nude images

As Domestic Violence Awareness Month comes to a close this week, one University of Florida researcher is examining the roots of nudification apps, online platforms that use AI to turn images of clothed people—easily and convincingly—into nude images.

“There’s a strong link between nonconsensual intimate imagery and domestic violence,” said Kevin R. B. Butler.

There have been legislative and legal responses to the creation and distribution of these images, which are more correctly known as synthetic nonconsensual intimate imagery, or SNCII. In the United States, the TAKE IT DOWN Act was passed in 2025, criminalizing the creation and distribution of such imagery and making it easier to remove once posted.

We Are Slowly Evolving into Celestial Beings

Explore the evolution of humanity as we move away from supernatural beliefs, drawing on concepts like Evolutionary Humanism and the ideas of Transhumans and Posthumans. I invite you to read these insights on how evolutionary and ideological shifts together shape our identity as a species.

How do we grow up as a species and jettison supernatural beliefs, with reference to Evolutionary Humanism, Transhumans, Posthumans et al?

Chris Hables Gray on Pandemics, Cyborgs, Politics and Trump

2013, Chris Hables Gray sat down with me and described, in uncomfortably specific terms, the kind of global pandemic the world would be living through seven years later. Almost nobody paid attention. It’s still one of the most undervalued conversations in my entire archive.

So in October 2020, with the virus raging and the US election weeks away, I brought him back.

Two hours. Pandemics and cyborgs. Surveillance capitalism, including where he lands in the Cory Doctorow vs. Shoshana Zuboff debate. Existential risk, the singularity, and the gap between #ArtificialIntelligence and what he calls artificial stupidity.

Then we got to populism, democracy, and Trump. Listening back six years later, with Trump back in the White House, some of it lands very differently than it did then. I’ll let you judge which parts.

Chris is hard to put in a box: anarchist-feminist activist, union organizer, UC Santa Cruz and NYU lecturer, editor of The Cyborg Handbook and Modified: Living as a Cyborg (a book I was glad to contribute to). He calls himself a pessimist of the intellect and an optimist of the will. That combination is rare in #futurism, and it’s exactly why both the #transhumanism crowd and the #BigTech skeptics should hear him out.

His parting line has stayed with me ever since: make the news you want to see.

Continue reading “Chris Hables Gray on Pandemics, Cyborgs, Politics and Trump” | >

AI, Agriculture, Livestock, And The Enduring Value Of The Human Touch

Artificial intelligence is transforming agriculture and the livestock industry through precision farming, predictive analytics, and automated systems. Ultimately, successful agricultural strategies rely on combining technological efficiency with essential human oversight and accountability.

Feynman’s Messenger Lectures

Bill Gates paid for the rights to seven #physics lectures recorded in 1964 so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could watch them for free. More than half a century later, they remain remarkably underappreciated.

The lecturer was Richard Feynman.

In November 1964, #richardfeynman delivered Cornell University’s Messenger Lectures, originally planned as a six-part series for a general audience. He eventually added a seventh lecture. The series was titled * The Character of Physical Law*, and the BBC filmed it.

A year later, Feynman would receive the #NobelPrize in Physics.

For years, the films circulated among universities before gradually disappearing from public circulation in the 1980s.

Bill Gates had watched the lectures while studying at Harvard. He later said he had fallen in love with them, even suggesting that if he had encountered Feynman’s teaching earlier, he might have pursued physics instead of building a software company.

Continue reading “Feynman’s Messenger Lectures” | >

Artificial skin helps robots grasp pencil lead and pull away from needles

Researchers have covered robotic fingers with a new artificial skin that allows the hand to grasp fragile pencil lead and pull away from a needle before it punctures the covering. Both actions depend on more than sensitive sensors. The robot must also receive and interpret their signals quickly enough to respond.

Adding thousands of sensing points makes that harder, because more detailed touch information also means more data to read, transmit and process.

Researchers at Southern University of Science and Technology in China and collaborating institutions tackled that bottleneck with a system inspired by the human sensory nervous system. Described in Nature Machine Intelligence, it reads more than 10,000 sensing elements 100 times a second and processes the information in stages.

Vision-language AI agent could help radiologists interpret ultrasounds faster and more accurately

When a patient arrives in the emergency department with severe abdominal pain, every minute counts. Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine are investigating ways to streamline the work of radiologists and make it more efficient. They also aim to quickly identify patients who may need urgent surgery and speed up the path to treatment.

The scientists have uncovered a new way to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret right upper quadrant (RUQ) ultrasounds, which visualize organs in the right upper side of the abdomen such as the liver, the gallbladder, the right kidney and part of the pancreas.

In a recent study in Nature Communications, researchers created a vision-language AI agent, which blends visual ultrasound data with written clinical data from the lab, that can accurately read RUQ ultrasounds, diagnose common health conditions affecting these organs and suggest logical next steps.