OpenAI says GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model broke out of a secure test, exploited a zero-day, and breached Hugging Face to cheat on a cyber evaluation.
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Immune cell lncRNAs reprogram the tumor microenvironment
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate the tumor microenvironment (TME), yet their cell-intrinsic roles within immune populations of the TME remain underappreciated. In this review, we shift focus from the cancer cell to the immune compartment, systematically reviewing how immune cell-intrinsic lncRNAs govern CD8+ T cell exhaustion, CD4+ T cell polarization, NK cell cytotoxicity, dendritic cell antigen presentation, and macrophage inflammatory programming. We highlight lncRNAs that function as molecular switches—tipping immune cells between antitumor effector and immunosuppressive states—and examine how exosomal lncRNAs extend these regulatory circuits across cellular boundaries within the TME.
Ultimate Limit of The Human Lifespan May Be Identified, Study Suggests
When the iconic rock band Queen asked, “Who wants to live forever?” the question was rhetorical, but for many people, the answer was “Yes”
Well, a new study suggests immortal life may be scientifically impossible, even if we somehow found the perfect anti-aging medicine.
If scientists managed to overcome every other aspect of aging, humans still couldn’t live forever, the new research shows. Random DNA mutations would continue accumulating in our cells until the body could no longer function.
The First Room-Temperature Quantum Material of Its Kind Is Spun From Atoms of Gold
Materials in a quantum state come with exotic properties that bend the laws of physics and offer huge potential to scientists – but they’re usually also incredibly delicate, and require ultra-low temperatures to exist and function.
That presents a problem when it comes to making the most of these materials and their characteristics: they need to move out of large lab refrigerators.
We’re now another step towards that being possible.
A Map to a Long-Sought Quantum Simulator
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes information scrambling in black holes and an unusual metallic phase in high-temperature superconductors. Despite those and other far-reaching applications, realizing the model in the lab has been extremely challenging because the particle interactions required are intricate and long-ranged. Now Charles Creffield at the Complutense University of Madrid and his colleagues have detailed how this model could be simulated in existing cold-atom setups [1]. Their strategy provides a practical path to exploring quantum phenomena that are currently confined to theory.
Rather than engineer the requisite particle interactions from the outset, the team started with a much simpler setup emulating the Hubbard model, which is used to understand how electrons moving in a lattice give rise to superconductivity and other phenomena. Ultracold atoms are placed in a one-dimensional optical lattice, where they hop between lattice sites and mutually repel each other when occupying the same site. The lattice is then periodically shaken to make the rate of hopping oscillate in time. This modulation suppresses the atoms’ ordinary motion and generates effective interactions between all the atoms at once, closely resembling the particle behavior of the SYK model.
Using detailed numerical simulations, the researchers went on to show that their Hubbard-based system reproduces several key features of the SYK model, including its characteristic chaotic dynamics and fast spreading of quantum information. The team emphasizes that its approach could be enacted straightforwardly using currently available cold-atom technologies. Such an implementation would offer a controlled, versatile platform for simulating the SYK model and possibly for probing the uncertain physics of quantum chaos and quantum gravity.
Aligned graphite particles unlock stable levitation above magnets, study finds
A diamagnetic substance is slightly repelled by magnetic fields. With a strong enough magnet, the diamagnetic force can override gravity, and the substance will float in the air. Graphite, the main component of pencil lead, is considered one of the best substances for such real-world levitation, and its potential application in sensing weak external perturbations is drawing growing interest.
Until recently, graphite’s electrical conductivity posed an obstacle because electric currents suppress this levitation. Previous research found that a glass coating efficiently blocks the current but also causes the particles to point in all directions, weakening the lifting force.
A team of researchers at Kyoto University happened to be developing a possible solution: making single-crystal equivalents of various substances from fine powders by aligning microcrystals in a uniform direction. Though the scientists specialize in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, once they came across the graphite levitation issue, they realized they could make a substantial contribution to solving this conundrum.
New technique enables LIGO to peer farther into the distant universe
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new way to help gravitational-wave observatories see farther into the universe by solving one of their biggest challenges: tiny heat-induced distortions in the massive mirrors at the heart of the detectors.
The technique, described in a paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, uses thermal imaging to reveal microscopic distortions caused by powerful lasers. By measuring those distortions more precisely, observatories such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) could improve their sensitivity and detect weaker, more distant gravitational-wave events.
The goal for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors is to achieve about 10 times the sensitivity of today’s instruments,” said Jonathan Richardson, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside who led the study. “One of the key obstacles to achieving that is reducing the fundamental quantum-mechanical noise that limits the precision of the measurements.”
Black hole jet may be stirring gas cloud containing early ‘red potato’ galaxy
A black hole may be stirring a “pot” of gas containing a neighboring galaxy in the early universe, according to a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics that used observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The galaxy slowly being “cooked” is named MQN01 J004131.9–493704, but astronomers have nicknamed it the “red potato” because of its appearance in images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
The red potato galaxy is located about 11.7 billion light-years from Earth at an intersection where gigantic web-like structures of galaxies and gas meet. Astronomers targeted this area with Webb because they knew it contained one of the heaviest concentrations of galaxies and growing supermassive black holes yet identified in the early universe.
Soft exosuit shows motor-free path to wearable walking assistance
Researchers in China have unveiled a new robotic exosuit driven entirely by soft artificial muscles instead of traditional motors. This technology could make it easier for older adults, injured patients or factory workers to walk with much less effort. Current exosuits that aid walking use heavy motors, gearboxes and noisy air-pressure pumps that restrict a person’s natural movement.
Soft muscles, on the other hand, are made of thin, flexible rubber fibers that behave more like human muscles and are considerably lighter, making it easier for people to move.
Details of the work are in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.
Jellyfish nebula may be the scene of two stars going supernova
The star that formed the Jellyfish nebula may have had a partner star that exploded 100,000 years earlier, according to international researchers, who say that this may be the first known discovery of a binary star system in which both stars have gone supernova.
The Jellyfish nebula, known as IC 443, is the remnant of a star exploding in a supernova and leaving behind an expanding cloud of debris. IC 443 is located in the Gemini constellation, approximately 6,000 light-years from Earth, and researchers have now discovered that it occupies the same physical environment as another supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.
Supernova remnants are expanding clouds of debris left behind after supernovae (stellar explosions). While hundreds of such remnants are known in our galaxy, identifying relationships between them is difficult, particularly in crowded regions of the Milky Way. IC 443, a remnant in the constellation Gemini approximately 6,000 light-years from Earth, sits close to other astronomical structures and within a complex cloud of gas and dust, making its surrounding region difficult to study.