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Tool reveals how your dinner affects risk of 30,875 species land-dwelling animals going extinct

University of Cambridge researchers have developed a new way to measure the impact of our food production on other species’ survival around the world.

It reveals that between 700 and 1,100 species of vertebrate are likely to go extinct in the next 100 years, if global land-use for agriculture does not change. This figure does not account for future population growth, and is probably a huge underestimate.

By considering the productivity of any piece of land, the team can figure out the “per kilogram impact” of each commodity per year on biodiversity.

New electrical signature of Parkinson’s disease identified

What happens in the brain when a person experiences the characteristic movement symptoms of Parkinson’s disease? Researchers around the world are seeking answers through various approaches. One of these builds on a treatment already established in clinical care: deep brain stimulation. In this therapy, stimulating electrodes are implanted in patients’ brains to alleviate symptoms using electrical impulses. The same electrodes also enable unique electrical measurements from areas otherwise inaccessible in humans. These data can help uncover the neural mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease and inspire new therapeutic strategies.

In close collaboration with leading European centers—including Charité Berlin, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, University College London, and the University of Oxford—the Max Planck team has now taken an important step forward. For their study, now published in eBioMedicine, the researchers focused on so-called “beta waves,” which oscillate ca. 20 times per second and whose strength is thought to correlate with the severity of movement symptoms.

However, when reviewing the literature, the team encountered considerable heterogeneity in the results. “We wondered why earlier studies from different centers had produced such mixed results,” says Vadim Nikulin of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. “Did the patient groups differ, the recording equipment, or the analysis methods?”

Psychology study suggests chimpanzees might be rational thinkers

Chimpanzees may have more in common with human thinkers than previously thought. A new study published in Science by an international team of researchers provides evidence that chimpanzees can rationally revise their beliefs when presented with new information.

The study, titled “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs,” was conducted by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf. Their findings showed that chimpanzees—like humans—can change their minds based on the strength of available evidence, a key feature of rational thought.

Working at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, the researchers presented with two boxes, one containing food. Initially, the animals received a clue suggesting which box held the reward. Later, they were given stronger evidence pointing to the other box. The chimps frequently switched their choices in response to the new clues.

Computationally accelerated organic synthesis: Optimal ligand prediction for generating reactive alkyl ketone radicals

Because ketones are widespread in organic molecules, chemists are eager to develop new reactions that use them to form chemical bonds. One challenging reaction is the one-electron reduction of ketones to generate ketyl radicals.

Ketyl radicals are reactive intermediates used in natural product synthesis and pharmaceutical chemistry; however, most methodologies are optimized for aryl while simple alkyl ketones remain challenging for chemists. Alkyl ketones are considerably more abundant but intrinsically more difficult to reduce than aryl ketones.

To this end, a team of specialized organic chemists and computational chemists from WPI-ICReDD at Hokkaido University has developed a new catalytic method for generating alkyl ketyl radicals.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy caused by more than just head trauma, study finds

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—most often found in athletes playing contact sports—is known to share similarities with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), namely the buildup of a protein called tau in the brain.

New research published in Science finds even more commonalities between the two at the genetic level, showing CTE (like AD) is linked to damage to the genome and not just caused by repeated head impact (RHI).

The research team, a collaboration between Boston Children’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham, and Boston University, used single-cell genomic sequencing to identify somatic genetic mutations (changes in DNA that occur after conception and are not hereditary).

Scientists create new type of semiconductor that holds superconducting promise

Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However, achieving superconductivity in semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium has proved challenging due to difficulty in maintaining an optimal atomic structure with the desired conduction behavior.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, an international team of scientists reports producing a form of that is superconducting—able to conduct electricity with , which allows currents to flow indefinitely without , resulting in greater operational speed that requires less energy.

“Establishing superconductivity in germanium, which is already widely used in computer chips and , can potentially revolutionize scores of consumer products and industrial technologies,” says New York University physicist Javad Shabani, director of NYU’s Center of Quantum Information Physics and the university’s newly established Quantum Institute, one of the paper’s authors.

‘Singing’ electrons synchronize in Kagome crystals, revealing geometry-driven quantum coherence

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg have discovered a striking new form of quantum behavior. In star-shaped Kagome crystals—named after a traditional Japanese bamboo-basket woven pattern—electrons that usually act like a noisy crowd suddenly synchronize, forming a collective “song” that evolves with the crystal’s shape. The study, published in Nature, reveals that geometry itself can tune quantum coherence, opening new possibilities to develop materials where form defines function.

Quantum coherence—the ability of particles to move in synchrony like overlapping waves—is usually limited to exotic states such as superconductivity, where pair up and flow coherently. In ordinary metals, collisions quickly destroy such coherence.

But in the Kagome metal CsV₃Sb₅, after sculpting tiny crystalline pillars just a few micrometers across and applying magnetic fields, the MPSD team observed Aharonov–Bohm-like oscillations in electrical resistance. Thus showing that electrons were interfering collectively, remaining coherent far beyond what single-particle physics would allow.

A new dimension for spin qubits in diamond

The path toward realizing practical quantum technologies begins with understanding the fundamental physics that govern quantum behavior—and how those phenomena can be harnessed in real materials.

In the lab of Ania Jayich, Bruker Endowed Chair in Science and Engineering, Elings Chair in Quantum Science, and co-director of UC Santa Barbara’s National Science Foundation Quantum Foundry, that material of choice is laboratory-grown diamond.

Working at the intersection of materials science and quantum physics, Jayich and her team explore how engineered defects in diamond—known as spin qubits—can be used for quantum sensing. Among the lab’s standout researchers, Lillian Hughes, who recently earned her Ph.D. and will soon begin postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology, has achieved a major advance in this effort.

Spectral shaper sculpts 10,000 laser comb lines for exoplanet detection and beyond

Researchers have developed a new technology that can shape the spectrum of light emitted from a laser frequency comb across the visible and near-infrared wavelengths with more precision than previously possible. This advance could provide an important new tool in the hunt for Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

When searching for exoplanets, astronomers use high-precision spectroscopy to detect tiny shifts in starlight that reveal a star’s subtle “wobble” due to an orbiting planet. But for Earth-sized planets, these wavelength changes are smaller than the spectrograph’s natural instabilities, so laser frequency combs—lasers that emit thousands of evenly spaced —are needed to provide a reference, acting like precise wavelength rulers.

“For astronomers, the big prize would be to find a planet with a mass similar to Earth and orbiting a star similar to our sun,” said research team leader Derryck T. Reid, from Heriot-Watt University in the U.K. “Our spectral shaper can make the lines on a more uniform, which allows the spectrograph to detect smaller stellar motions, such as those from Earth-like planets, that would otherwise be hidden in the noise.”

Research confirms Meissner effect in high-pressure nickelate superconductor

A research team led by Prof. Liu Xiaodi from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with researchers from Jilin University and Sun Yat-sen University, has achieved simultaneous detection of zero electrical resistance and the Meissner effect in lanthanum nickelate (La3Ni2O7−δ) single crystals under high pressure.

The researchers combined diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center quantum sensing with electronic transport measurements to provide unambiguous evidence of high-temperature superconductivity in this nickelate system. The results are published in Physical Review Letters.

Superconductivity in La3Ni2O7−δ was first reported in 2023 through transport measurements, which revealed zero resistance around 80 K. However, confirming superconductivity requires detecting diamagnetism, or the expulsion of magnetic fields—the Meissner effect—which had remained elusive due to associated with high-pressure environments and small superconducting volume fractions.

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