Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Quantum technologies, which leverage quantum mechanical effects to process information, could outperform their classical counterparts in some complex and advanced tasks. The development and real-world deployment of these technologies partly relies on the ability to transfer information between different types of quantum systems effectively.

A long-standing challenge in the field of quantum technology is converting quantum signals carried by microwave photons (i.e., particles of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range) into optical photons (i.e., visible or near visible light particles). Devices designed to perform this conversion are known as microwave-to-optical transducers.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology recently developed a new microwave-to-optical transducer based on rare-earth ion-doped crystals. Their on-chip transducer, outlined in a paper published in Nature Physics, was implemented using ytterbium-171 ions doped in a YVO4 crystal.

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What makes us care about others? Scientists studying empathy have found that people are more likely to choose to empathize with groups rather than individuals, even though they find empathizing equally difficult and uncomfortable in both cases.

The scientists suggest that the sight of groups of people could offer more contextual information which helps people decide whether to empathize, and therefore increases the chances that they choose to do so.

“People’s willingness to empathize is different depending on who the target is: a single individual or a group of people,” said Dr. Hajdi Moche of Linköping University, Sweden, lead author of an article in Frontiers in Psychology.

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University of Wollongong researchers have experimentally confirmed that changes in hammer strike angle significantly affect the fracture path and form of stone flakes produced by Neanderthals during the Middle Paleolithic.

Published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, the findings contradict a widely cited fracture model that credited rock core geometry and stiffness with flaking patterns and predicted that hammer strike angle would have minimal effect on flake formation. Results suggest a greater degree of cognitive control by early human tool makers than previously recognized.

Middle Paleolithic stone tool technology is defined by deliberate core preparation to produce flakes of predetermined size and shape. First appearing in the between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago, the Levallois method is a hallmark of Neanderthal tool making in this period.

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In the urban parks of Barcelona, Spain, the calls of a tropical parrot fill the air. The bright green monk parakeet, native to South America, has found a new home in European cities. Monk parakeets thrive in huge colonies where they communicate with each other using many distinct sounds—offering scientists a unique window into understanding the interplay of individual social relationships with vocal variety.

For social animals, communication is a key that unlocks the benefits of group living. It’s well known that animals with more complex social lives tend to have more intricate ways of communicating, from the clicks and whistles of dolphins to the calls of primates. While this pattern is found broadly in many species, a new study on wild parrots drills deep into the social and vocal lives of individual birds.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) analyzing the social networks of monk parakeets in Spain have uncovered how an individual’s shape the calls these birds make.

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The blazar BL Lacertae, a supermassive black hole surrounded by a bright disk and jets oriented toward Earth, provided scientists with a unique opportunity to answer a longstanding question: How are X-rays generated in extreme environments like this?

NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) collaborated with radio and to find answers. The results, available on the arXiv preprint server and set to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that interactions between fast-moving electrons and particles of light, called photons, must lead to this X-ray emission.

Scientists had two competing possible explanations for the X-rays, one involving protons and one involving electrons. Each of these mechanisms would have a different signature in the polarization of X-ray light. Polarization is a property of light that describes the average direction of the electromagnetic waves that make up light.

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A new study uncovers how fine-tuning the interactions between two distinct network-forming species within a soft gel enables programmable control over its structure and mechanical properties. The findings reveal a powerful framework for engineering next-generation soft materials with customizable behaviors, inspired by the complexity of biological tissues.

The study, titled “Inter-Species Interactions in Dual, Fibrous Gels Enable Control of Gel Structure and Rheology,” is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study uses simulations to investigate how varying the strength and geometry of interactions between two colloidal species impacts network formation and rheological performance. By controlling separately interspecies stickiness and tendency to bundle, researchers discovered that tuning these inter-species interactions allows over whether the networks that they form remain separate, overlap, or intertwine.

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Exactly 100 years ago, famed Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (yes, the cat guy) postulated his eponymous equation that explains how particles in quantum physics behave. A key component of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s Equation provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time.

“Quantum mechanics, along with Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity are the two pillars of modern physics,” says Utah State University physicist Abhay Katyal. “The challenge is, for more than half a century, scientists have struggled to reconcile these two theories.”

Quantum mechanics, says Katyal, a doctoral student and Howard L. Blood Graduate Fellow in the Department of Physics, describes the behavior of matter and forces at the subatomic level, while explains gravity on a large scale.

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Over time, scar tissue slows or stops implanted bioelectronics. But new interdisciplinary research could help pacemakers, sensors and other implantable devices keep people healthier for longer.

In a paper published in Nature Materials, a group of researchers led by University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Asst. Prof. Sihong Wang has outlined a suite of design strategies for the used in , all aimed at reducing the foreign-body response triggered by implants.

The immune system is primed to detect and respond to foreign objects. In some cases, the immune system might reject lifesaving devices such as pacemakers or drug delivery systems. But in all cases, the immune system will encase the devices in over time, hurting the devices’ ability to help patients.

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University of Toronto Scarborough researchers have harnessed artificial intelligence (AI) and brain activity to shed new light on why we struggle to accurately recognize faces of people from different races.

Across a pair of studies, researchers explored the Other-Race-Effect (ORE), a well-known phenomenon in which people recognize faces of their own race more easily than others. They combined AI and collected through EEG (electroencephalography) to reveal new insights into how we perceive other-race faces, including visual distortions more deeply ingrained in our brain than previously thought.

“What we found was striking—people are so much better at seeing the facial details of people from their own race,” says Adrian Nestor, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and co-author of the studies.

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Future space missions could use quantum technologies to help us understand the physical laws that govern the universe, explore the composition of other planets and their moons, gain insights into unexplained cosmological phenomena, or monitor ice sheet thickness and the amount of water in underground aquifers on Earth.

NASA’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL), a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has performed a series of trailblazing experiments based on the quantum properties of ultracold atoms. The tool used to perform these experiments is called an , and it can precisely measure gravity, magnetic fields, and other forces.

Atom interferometers are currently being used on Earth to study the fundamental nature of gravity and are also being developed to aid aircraft and ship navigation, but use of an atom interferometer in space will enable innovative science capabilities.

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