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Cloud-tested quantum noise model predicts superconducting qubit errors with sevenfold better accuracy

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have developed a practical, comprehensive noise-modeling framework for a popular class of superconducting quantum processors. Their work, published in the journal PRX Quantum, offers a sevenfold improvement in predictive accuracy over existing approaches.

Quantum bits, or qubits, are intrinsically prone to noise—interference arising from environmental factors such as electrical and magnetic fields or temperature fluctuations—as a result of the extreme sensitivity that makes them so valuable for computing. Developing accurate noise models is key to creating the robust quantum algorithms and resilient error-correction protocols required to build truly fault-tolerant quantum computers.

“To really advance the field, we need models that can predict a wide range of behavior while utilizing a small number of parameters, rather than theoretical models that try to account for all of the fundamental physics at play in quantum interactions,” said project lead Gregory Quiroz, a senior physicist at APL and an associate research professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “The novelty of our approach lies in a unified and experimentally validated framework that connects multiple noise mechanisms and yields a coherent predictive methodology.”

Aerosols may warm or cool the climate depending on timing, new study finds

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem challenges a long-held assumption in climate science by showing that aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere—can either warm or cool the climate, depending on the time scale considered.

Led by Prof. Guy Dagan of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences, the research reveals that aerosol-cloud interactions can produce opposite climate effects in the short and long term. The findings, published in Nature Communications, offer a new explanation for why aerosols remain one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate projections.

Aerosols come from a variety of natural and human-made sources, including air pollution, wildfires, sea spray and dust. Scientists have long known that these particles influence how clouds form and how much heat Earth retains, but accurately estimating their overall impact on climate has proved difficult.

Satellites reveal cities’ ‘urban pulse,’ tracking neighborhood growth in near real time

For over a century, doctors have used electrocardiograms (EKGs) to render the invisible electrical activity of the human heart visible, using the pulse to diagnose disease before it becomes fatal. Now, scientists have invented a way to do the exact same thing for the places where most of humanity lives: cities.

In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers introduced the concept of the “Urban Pulse.” By using dense, high-frequency satellite imagery, the team successfully tracked the dynamic, real-time metabolic activity of urban environments, effectively measuring the heartbeat of a city.

Zhe Zhu, director of the Global Environmental Remote Sensing (GERS) Laboratory and associate professor of natural resources and the environment in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), was the first author. He worked in close collaboration with senior author Karen C. Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment, alongside Michail Fragkias of Boise State University and a multi-institutional team of researchers.

Black hole feeding bursts may explain JWST’s Little Red Dots in early universe

A new theoretical study may have cracked one of the most puzzling discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Little Red Dots, spotted across the early universe. The paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 29, argues that these objects could be black holes caught in rare, violent bursts of feeding at a rate exceeding theoretical limits.

Since JWST began its survey of the deep universe, astronomers have been puzzled by a class of tiny, faint objects appearing in the early universe in far greater numbers than expected. They have a distinctive V-shaped spectrum—bright in both ultraviolet and optical light, but with a dip in between—along with broad emission lines hinting at active black holes. They also show an absence of X-ray, radio and infrared emission.

They don’t look like ordinary galaxies, and they don’t completely look like quasars, either. What they are has been an open question. Some researchers argue that Little Red Dots may need some outside-the-box physics to explain their origin and nature.

Chemists unlock first total synthesis of rare plant alkaloid tied to anticancer activity

Plants are undeniably one of nature’s most promising sources of new medicines, with monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) being a great example. Some intricate compounds are built from multiple-linked chemical units that form highly complex three-dimensional structures. Because of their size and shape, scientists believe such oligomeric MIAs may be able to interfere with specific protein–protein interactions inside cells—a biological target that conventional small-molecule drugs often struggle to reach.

This unusual capability could make MIAs uniquely suited to combat various diseases. Such is the case for bisleuconothine A, an MIA isolated from plant bark in 2010 that has shown strong activity against breast cancer and lung cancer.

Despite their therapeutic potential, these compounds are extremely difficult to produce synthetically in the laboratory. Their structures contain multiple interconnected rings and several precisely arranged stereocenters, meaning their atoms must be assembled in the correct three-dimensional orientation to preserve their biological activity. Because of this, drug development research involving oligomeric MIAs remains limited.

Ancient hominins selected basalt sources for specific tools nearly 800,000 years ago, study reveals

A new study finds that ancient hominins nearly 800,000 years ago deliberately selected specific basalt sources for different stages of tool production rather than simply using whatever stone was available nearby. By tracing the geochemical “fingerprints” of stone tools to both exposed and now-buried basalt flows, the researchers demonstrated that these hominins possessed detailed environmental knowledge, advanced planning abilities, and long-term technological traditions that were maintained and repeated across generations.

A new study published in Scientific Reports provides new insights into the technological behavior and raw material procurement strategies of early Middle Pleistocene hominins at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (GBY). The study uses geochemical analyses of basalt artifacts and nearby basalt sources to trace where the raw material used for tool production came from and to reconstruct how early hominins selected stone within a landscape that has changed dramatically over time. The research was carried out by Dr. Tzahi Golan and Dr. Yoav Ben Dor of the Geological Survey of Israel, and Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

GBY, dated to about 780,000 years ago, preserves repeated occupations of Acheulian hominins along the shores of paleo-Lake Hula. Excavations directed by Prof. Goren-Inbar revealed a rich archaeological record, including stone tools made of flint, limestone and basalt, as well as evidence of fire use, plant exploitation, animal processing and fish consumption.

Hidden geometry explains why kernel methods separate complex data so well

Are two sets of data genuinely different, or is it because of randomness? This question, known as the two-sample testing problem, becomes notoriously difficult in modern datasets, because they are often high-dimensional, complex, and differences between them can take countless subtle forms.

“Simply put, we don’t know what differences to look for, the possibilities are bewildering,” says Professor Victor Panaretos at EPFL’s Institute of Mathematics.

To solve the problem, mathematicians have developed the so-called “kernel methods,” which have emerged as powerful solutions, widely used in fields such as genomics, finance, and artificial intelligence.

New cryogenic silicon carbide hardware addresses quantum computing bottleneck

Researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Centre for Advanced Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits (CASIC) have achieved a major breakthrough in cryogenic electronics. The team has developed a programmable neuromorphic hardware platform that operates near absolute zero, providing a potential solution for scaling up quantum computers and enabling deep-space exploration. The discovery was published in Nature Communications in an article titled “Cryogenic neuromorphic circuits using gate-controlled negative differential resistance in silicon carbide.”

Led by Professor Yuhao Zhang and Ph.D. student Xin Yang, the team discovered an innovative way to generate and control negative differential resistance (NDR) in industry-standard silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs. For the first time, they demonstrated that a single transistor can mimic the energy-efficient “spiking” behavior of biological neurons at temperatures as low as 10 mK.

Modern quantum computers rely on complex electronics to control qubits, which are extremely sensitive and must be maintained at millikelvin temperatures. Current silicon-based controllers generate excessive heat and consume high levels of power, forcing them to be placed far from the qubits. This separation creates a wiring bottleneck that limits the scalability and performance of quantum systems.

Physicists create new family of Schrödinger-cat states

Quantum mechanics, unlike classical physics, allows objects to exist in more than one state at the same time. This idea is often illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, imagined as being both alive and dead until it is observed. In the laboratory, physicists can create less dramatic but very real versions of this effect by placing atoms, light or motion into two distinct quantum states at once. Creating and controlling these superpositions is essential for applications ranging from quantum computing to precision timekeeping.

A simple example is a quantum bit, or qubit, in a superposition of both 0 and 1. But quantum systems are not limited to just two states. In a quantum harmonic oscillator, which can occupy many different energy levels, there is a much richer set of possibilities. Quantum harmonic oscillators describe many physical systems, including light, vibrations and the motion of trapped particles, and have been used to create a wide variety of quantum superpositions. One well-known example is a “cat state,” in which an oscillator is placed in a superposition of two wave packets displaced in opposite directions. These wave packets, known as coherent states, resemble classical motion as closely as quantum mechanics allows.

Researchers at the University of Oxford have now demonstrated a new family of quantum superpositions. Instead of building catlike states from coherent-state wave packets, they developed a method for creating superpositions from a broad range of components that are themselves highly nonclassical. In examples such as squeezed-state superpositions, quantum uncertainty is redistributed differently in each part of the state. The research is published in the journal Physical Review X.

Nickelate superconductors share a common electronic fingerprint

Superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with zero electrical resistance at specific temperature ranges, have proved very promising for the development of quantum computers and other cutting-edge technologies. While most of these materials become superconducting at very low temperatures, others exhibit superconductivity at higher temperatures.

Two types of materials that are known to be high-temperature semiconductors are cuprates (i.e., compounds containing negatively charged copper ions) and nickelates (i.e., compounds that contain negatively charged nickel-oxygen ions). While cuprates have been known to be superconductors for decades, nickelates were only recently found to exhibit superconductivity at unusually high temperatures.

Researchers at University of British Columbia (UBC), Argonne National Laboratory, and the Canadian Light Source (CLS), carried out a study aimed at better understanding how the electronic structure of nickelates contributes to their superconductivity.

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