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Who is Elias the lighthouse keeper? AI fiction tells the same old story

Like a hack writer or a friend rehashing their glory days over and over, artificial intelligence tends to tell the same old story. For AI agents instructed to write fiction, that tale usually involves lighthouses and a keeper named Elias, according to new Cornell research.

Nearly 90% of AI-generated fictional stories written by current large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude include at least one of 11 recurring words, including “lighthouse,” “keeper” and the names “Elias,” “Mara” and “Elara,” researchers found when directing LLMs to tell stories. More than half of AI-generated stories featured a lighthouse.

They also found part of the reason for these recurrences may be that many AI developers have trained LLMs on an important dataset created by Cornell researchers.

AI facial health recognition tools help physicians assess age and survival risk to guide personalized treatment

Researchers are using AI tools to analyze simple facial photographs to determine key indicators of a person’s health. Mass General Brigham researchers built FAHR-Face (Foundation Artificial Intelligence for Health Recognition), a large AI foundation model trained on over 40 million face images.

They used the model to develop two complementary tools: FAHR-FaceAge, which estimates a patient’s biological age with greater accuracy compared to prior age estimation algorithms, and FAHR-FaceSurvival, which directly predicts survival outcomes in patients with cancer from a face photograph.

The model development and validation study showed that the deviation between a patient’s FAHR-FaceAge and their chronological age was independently linked to survival. It also demonstrated the robustness of the tools across common photo variations. The study is published in Lancet Digital Health.

Planetary ‘twins’ Uranus and Neptune may have different origin stories

Uranus and Neptune are the least explored planets in the solar system. Only the Voyager 2 spacecraft has flown by them, in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Yet understanding their origin is an important challenge for planetary science: Planets of comparable size account for more than half of the roughly 6,000 exoplanets discovered to date.

To trace the history of these two worlds, scientists seek to determine the composition of their deep layers, which are inaccessible to direct observation due in part to the many successive cloud layers. They must therefore identify tracers that can indirectly reveal their composition. Carbon monoxide (CO) is one such tracer. Produced or present in the deep layers of the atmosphere, it can be transported through multiple cloud layers to altitudes accessible to observation. Its concentration thus provides a window into regions located far below the visible clouds.

New ‘hunter-killer’ chemistry captures and destroys forever chemicals

They can turn up in a nonstick frying pan, a waterproof jacket, a takeout food wrapper or the foam used to fight fires. Known as “forever chemicals,” these substances are ubiquitous in modern society, prized for their extreme durability and versatility. However, their charm comes with a curse: They are so durable they resist degradation, posing threats to human health and the environment.

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, gained early widespread use in products such as Teflon, a coating that resists oil, heat, stains, grease and water. Today, they are everywhere, from paints and adhesives to furniture, carpets, cosmetics, semiconductors and waterproof fabrics. Unfortunately, they are also in our water, soil, food and even us.

Now, researchers at Arizona State University and their international colleagues are attacking the problem in a new way. Rather than filtering these harmful chemicals out of contaminated water, they have developed a technique to destroy them.

Normally forbidden emissions from graphene could expose quantum fluctuations in incoming light

Voltage fluctuations, light fluctuations, temperature fluctuations—any fluctuations are troublesome and thus undesirable. They don’t just cause discomfort; in engineering and medical applications, they affect the accuracy of measurements or introduce errors in controls. Even at the minute level of quantum phenomena, fluctuations are considered undesirable.

But what if some fluctuations can be made useful? A theoretical study from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) shows that structured quantum fluctuations in light can be used to sense and generate useful quantum optical signals.

Kartik Prabhu and professor Gopal Dixit of IIT Bombay’s Physics Department have proposed a new way to detect quantum fluctuations in light using the quantum material graphene as a sensor.

X-rays reveal surprisingly long-lived spin waves in copper oxide

Today’s computer technology, based on silicon chips, is slowly reaching its physical limits. Components cannot be miniaturized indefinitely, and clock speeds cannot be increased indefinitely. At the same time, huge AI data centers are being built in many places, and these consume an immense amount of electricity. This is why scientists around the world are searching for novel materials that can replace or complement silicon technology and consume significantly less electricity.

Using a combination of X-ray techniques, a research team at PSI has now been able to break down in detail the rapid interplay among different excitations in such a material—electronic, magnetic and lattice excitations.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists redetermine a key strontium frequency with 50 times better precision for quantum technologies

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has remeasured a key transition frequency of the strontium (Sr) atom for the first time in 88 years, since 1938, using a photonic grating chip. It has established a new absolute frequency value with a measurement uncertainty reduced by more than 50 times. By providing an accurate reference value for next-generation quantum technologies, this achievement is expected to contribute to the precise control and miniaturization of quantum devices, including atomic clocks and neutral-atom quantum computers. The work is published in the journal Metrologia.

Strontium is an atom widely used in precision quantum technologies such as optical lattice clocks and quantum sensors. To use strontium in these technologies, fast-moving atoms must be slowed down and trapped with precisely tuned lasers. This requires knowing the exact resonant frequency of the laser light for the atomic transition.

However, the previous frequency value was obtained in 1938 by comparing the solar spectrum with the arc light of strontium, and its uncertainty was too large for today’s precise laser frequency settings. As a result, researchers have had to observe the atoms’ response directly and adjust the laser frequency as needed, much like turning the dial of an analog radio to tune in to a station.

Physicists prove a long-suspected quantum speed limit for thermalization

Whether we are waiting for a car windshield to defrost in winter or a warm drink to cool down, how long it takes for an object to settle into a stable, even temperature within its environment (thermal equilibrium) depends on numerous factors. These can include surface area, the material properties of an object and airflow.

But when we zoom down to the subatomic scale, such as where qubits operate in a quantum computer, a different set of rules takes over. External conditions still matter, but according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Physics, quantum mechanics sets a fundamental speed limit on how quickly a process can bring different quantum systems into thermal equilibrium.

What makes the finding significant is that this boundary is universal. No matter how much energy is applied or how strongly a system is manipulated, the process cannot be forced to go any faster.

New monolithic ion trap opens quantum simulations to more researchers

Some quantum systems are so complex that even the most powerful supercomputers struggle to simulate their behavior. One solution is quantum simulation: building a controllable quantum system in the lab and tuning it to mimic the one researchers want to understand.

In a trapped-ion simulator, a row of individual charged atoms, or ions, is held in place by electric fields inside a device called an ion trap. Lasers are used to make the ions interact in a manner that simulates the quantum system, and then researchers measure the information encoded in the ions to reveal the system’s properties.

Rice University’s Guido Pagano, along with collaborators at Duke University and Translume Inc., has developed a new kind of trapped-ion simulator, called a monolithic segmented 3D ion trap. This trap allowed the team to study these complex systems using heavy ions like ytterbium.

Hybrid diamond chip strengthens interactions between light and quantum bits

Researchers have developed and demonstrated a new hybrid photonic platform that integrates quantum emitters with photonic devices, providing a way to reliably control the interaction between photons and quantum information carriers. The chip-based platform, which combines gallium phosphide (GaP) with a diamond substrate, could help make quantum networks more practical by providing a way to connect quantum devices over long distances.

Scaling up quantum technology to create communication networks requires connecting quantum memories, or qubits, over long distances. Although fiber-optic networks offer a promising way to do this using optical signals, a key challenge is reliably converting information stored in qubits into optical photons that can travel through the network.

“We show that our hybrid-integrated GaP-on-diamond nanophotonic platform can address this challenge by realizing reliably controlled interactions between photons and a type of qubit called a silicon-vacancy (SiV) center in diamond,” said the paper’s first author, Nicholas S. Yama from the University of Washington. “GaP also has strong nonlinear properties that enable optical frequency conversion, switching and modulation, all of which are needed for networking applications.”