Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2026

Musical Intermentality


Starting off here with an article that might not be about music proper, but it is about sounds and perception. Some people are hyperperceptive, some dull as a rock - anesthetic you could call it. Everyone else just thinks their house is haunted. 

You can't hear it, yet this sound may explain paranormal experiences
Apr 2026, phys.org

Infrasound is very low-frequency sound, below 20 Hertz (Hz), which humans typically can't hear. It can come from natural sources like storms, or from anthropogenic sources like traffic.

The scientists recruited 36 participants and invited them to sit alone in a room while either calming or unsettling music was played. For half the participants, hidden subwoofers played infrasound at 18 Hz. After listening, they were asked to report their feelings, their emotional rating of the music, and whether they thought the infrasound was present. They also gave saliva samples before and after listening.

The scientists found that participants' salivary cortisol levels were higher if they had been listening to infrasound. These participants also reported feeling more irritable and less interested, and thinking the music was sadder. But they couldn't tell they were listening to infrasound.

via MacEwan University: Infrasound Exposure is Linked to Aversive Responding, Negative Appraisal, and Elevated Salivary Cortisol in Humans, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2026). DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2026.1729876

Image credit: Photographer Christopher Payne - Jelly Belly Fairfield CA - 2021


Popular song lyrics have become more negative since 1973, analysis reveals
Dec 2025, phys.org

Researchers analyzed the lyrics of the top 100 most popular English-language songs in the United States each week between 1973 and 2023 (20,186 songs), according to the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The authors found that, in general, the lyrics of popular songs have become simpler and more negative over time and contain more stress-related words.

However, they also found that the popularity of songs with more complex lyrics began to increase from 2016 onward and suggest that further research is needed to investigate the reasons for this.

When assessing potential factors influencing changes in listener lyric preferences, the authors did not identify associations with changes in median household income since 1973, but did identify some associations with major stressful events — such as the September 11, 2001, attacks and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These events were associated with lyrics becoming more complex and positive and containing fewer stress-related words, or with no significant changes in lyrics. The authors suggest that this could be due to more positive and complex music being used as a form of escapism during stressful periods.

via University of Vienna: Maurício Martins, Societal crises disrupt long-term increases in stress, negativity, and simplicity in US Billboard song lyrics from 1973 to 2023, Scientific Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-28327-5.


Why some tunes stick: Mathematical symmetry helps explain catchy melodies
Feb 2026, phys.org

They simplified melodies into their essential note groups and examined how common musical changes affect 2 kinds structure - tonal and positional structure. These changes include transposition, which shifts a melody up or down; inversion, which flips it; retrograde, which reverses it; and translation, which moves it through time.

Their analysis revealed symmetrical relationships in many melodies that help explain why certain musical phrases feel cohesive and complete.

via University of Waterloo: Olga Ibragimova et al, Algebraic Applications in Investigation of Musical Symmetry, Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics (2025). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-84869-8_5


From virtue to vice: How the morality of popular music lyrics has changed since the 1960s
Jun 2026, phys.org

The study examined two large popular music data sets spanning more than 60 years, making it the first study to chart moral content in song lyrics at this scale: more than 377,000 English-language songs covering 1960 to 2010 were filtered from the WASABI data set and complemented with 5,500 songs that made Billboard's year-end charts between 1960 and 2023.

Their analysis revealed a rise in expressions associated with moral vices such as harm, cheating, subversion and degradation, alongside increasing levels of negative sentiment, anger and disgust. At the same time, expressions linked to moral virtues such as care and decency became less prominent.

via Queen Mary University of London Center for Digital Music: Vjosa Preniqi et al, Evolution of moral expression in song lyrics, Scientific Reports (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-53778-9


Pop song lyrics grew more self-focused in the US and Germany over 50 years, research reveals
Jun 2026, phys.org

Researchers have examined the possibility that global society may be becoming more self-centric by measuring how often different pronouns appear in cultural products such as books, movie scripts and lyrics. Compared with first-person plural pronouns, such as "we" and "us," a higher proportion of first-person singular pronouns, such as "I" and "me," can indicate greater self-focus.

(Shouldn't be a surprise to those familiar w the Hofstede's cultural dimensions model)

They found that self-focused language rose significantly between 1970 and 2019 in the U.S. and Germany—two more individualistic countries. Meanwhile, the use of self-focused language was relatively stable over time in the two more collectivist countries, Japan and Hong Kong.

via United Arab Emirates University and U of Aberdeen Scotland: Golubickis M, et al. Are societies becoming more self-centric? Evidence from five decades of popular music spanning three continents, PLOS One (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0349765

*We are not a fan of academic collaborations with the UAE, because they're buying themselves a culture instead of growing it the old fashioned way, and we are old fashioned. 

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Saturday, July 11, 2026

Neologistic Supremacy


Holographic light engine boosts tissue-like 3D printing efficiency by 70 times
May 2026, phys.org

Holographic Light Engines - 150-mW laser diode for tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing system to solidify entire millimeter-scale objects within seconds, and centimeter-scale objects within minutes

via EPFL's Laboratory of Applied Photonic Devices: Maria Isabel Álvarez-Castaño et al, High-efficiency multi-scale holographic volumetric 3D printing with a phase light modulator, Light: Science & Applications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41377-026-02331-4



Laser-powered engines may soon support 'intelligent' 6G networks
May 2026, phys.org

Light Engines, aka Photonic Engine - lasers that can transfer large amounts of data over long distances by emitting high-quality white light

via University of Technology in Guangzhou: Tailoring quasi-transparent ceramic as a laser-driven photonic engine for kilometer-level white light communication, Matter (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2026.102822.


New kind of dark tourism emerging in online 'Backrooms,' study shows
May 2026, phys.org

Para-Terrestrial Dark Tourism - encounters with environments that feel place-like yet sit beyond conventional geography because they exist entirely online. ...

This comes at the time of the release of the movie Backrooms, about these kinds of spaces. ... I'm lost actually. The paper is like 3 paragraphs long, and although they use the word Žižekian, which is cool, what's written is almost complete gobbledegook. I still, by the end of the paper, have no idea what they're talking about, even the original rationale of the paper...like how much can we talk about a default page on mario paint and what it means to the cultural zeitgeist? They made a whole movie about it so I guess it's important. Right, because movies are still important. Wrong, the whole world is one big advertisement to manipulate us into buying The Way. And if you want to learn more about how the international academic community is co-opted by fake publishing houses, please learn more here: DEF CON 26 - Svea, Suggy, Till - Inside the Fake Science Factory - 2018 [link] ; OmniScript [wiki link] 

via Lancaster University Management School: Sophie James et al, When dark tourism goes para-terrestrial: Online legend-tripping and touring the void, Annals of Tourism Research (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2026.104172


Unlocking soft robotics control with AI's cousin: Reservoir computing
May 2026, phys.org

Soft Robotics - made with a combination of soft materials and novel controls, soft robotics have a greater range of motion and more fluidity and flexibility than traditional rigid robotics.

Neural Reservoir - researchers input data about the movement of virtual soft robots, set parameters for what they expected to happen, ran virtual trials, and then analyzed the results. ... they created virtual models of different variations of movement and tested how they behaved. When they fed those results back into the system, a new model for the behavior of a soft robotic arm began to emerge—along with a new approach to the most effective way to control the arm.

via Virginia Tech: Noel Naughton et al, Neural reservoir control of a bio-hybrid soft arm, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2522094123


Introducing Weather Jiu-Jitsu, a new approach to avert catastrophic weather events
Jun 2026, phys.org

Weather Jiu-Jitsu - small adjustments that carefully leverage the atmosphere's sensitivity to disturbance could avert the worst effects of weather disasters ... Their modeling suggested that small, carefully timed cloud-seeding operations applied days before the peak of an extreme weather event could have shifted the track of 2012's Hurricane Sandy by about 300 miles (480 kilometers) to miss New York City, raised the low temperature of the 2021 Texas freeze by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit and reduced the amount of precipitation carried by a 2022 atmospheric river that caused flooding in California by about 5%.

via Arizone State: Huang Q, et al. Weather Jiu-Jitsu: Prospects for atmospheric nudging to defuse the impact of catastrophic weather extremes. PLOS Water (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pwat.0000562

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Sunday, June 21, 2026

The Semantic Philanthropist


Maybe there's just a hell of a lot of new words blasting out of the science cannon these days, this seems like a lot.

100 years of menus show how food can be used as a diplomatic tool to make and break political alliances
Nov 2025, phys.org

Gastronationalism - using food to create specific psychological effects and convey symbolic messages, to facilitate diplomatic negotiations, cultural exchange, and political messaging

via Basque Culinary Center: Power for dinner. Culinary diplomacy and geopolitical aspects in Portuguese diplomatic tables (1910-2023), Frontiers in Political Science (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1669350


Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples
Dec 2025, NASA

Space Gum - polymer-like material rich in nitrogen and oxygen and never seen before in space rocks; could have helped set the stage on Earth for the ingredients of life to emerge; the same kinds of chemical groups that occur in polyurethane on Earth, making this material from Bennu something akin to a ‘space plastic.’

via NASA and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx: Furukawa, Y., Sunami, S., Takano, Y. et al. Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu. Nat. Geosci. 19, 19–24 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01838-6


Pleasant-sounding words are easier to remember, pseudoword experiment shows
Dec 2025, phys.org

Artificial Pseudowords - non-words with no meaning (e.g., clisious, smanious, drikious); used in a scientific study about whether words have aesthetic qualities or not

via University of Vienna: Theresa Matzinger et al, Phonemic composition influences words' aesthetic appeal and memorability, PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0336597


The hexatic phase: Ultra-thin 2D materials in a state between solid and liquid observed for the first time
Dec 2025, phys.org

Hexatic Phase - When a material becomes so thin that it is practically two-dimensional, the rules of melting change dramatically. Between the solid and liquid phases, a new, exotic intermediate phase of matter can arise, known as the "hexatic phase." Ultra-thin, two-dimensional materials enabled researchers to directly observe atomic-scale melting processes. Surprisingly, the observations contradict previous predictions.

via University of Vienna: Thuy An Bui et al, Hexatic phase in covalent two-dimensional silver iodide, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adv7915.


Urban birds' beak shape rapidly changed during COVID-19 lockdowns, suggesting human-driven transformations
Dec 2025, phys.org

Anthropause - The period of global slowdown caused by COVID-19 lockdowns; it gave scientists a rare chance to see how animals physically changed when human activity suddenly decreased. (This isn't exactly new but I'm making sure you have it on your list)

via UCLA: Eleanor S. Diamant et al, Rapid morphological change in an urban bird due to COVID-19 restrictions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2520996122


Feral AI gossip with the potential to spread damage and shame will become more frequent, researchers warn
Dec 2025, phys.org

Feral AI Gossip AKA Bot-to-Bot Gossip - After publishing an article about how emotionally manipulative chatbots can be, the New York Times reporter Kevin Roose found out chatbots were describing his writing as sensational and accusing him of poor journalistic ethics and being unscrupulous. Other AI bots have falsely detailed people's involvement in bribery, embezzlement, and sexual harassment. These gossipy AI-generated outputs cause real-world harms - reputational damage, shame, and social unrest. It's particularly dangerous, because it operates unconstrained by the social norms that moderate human gossip. (In the actual article, they define "feral" as being unconstrained by the communicative norms and evaluative standards of human-to-human gossip.)

via University of Exeter: Joel Krueger et al, AI gossip, Ethics and Information Technology (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s10676-025-09871-0 [personal note these authors use the word bullshit a little to informally for an academic paper, "these bullshit generators" 


First breathing 'lung-on-chip' developed using genetically identical cells
Dec 2025, phys.org

Lung on a Chip - Shit is moving fast; not only is it a lung on a chip, it's a breathing lung on a chip.

via The Francis Crick Institute: Chak Hon Luk et al, Autologous human iPSC-derived Alveolus-on-Chip reveals early pathological events of M. tuberculosis infection, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea9874.


How a miniature womb on a chip can help women struggling to conceive
Jan 2026, phys.org

Womb on a Chip - you heard it boys; AKA "endometrioids" (via "organ-oids"), human uterine cells embedded into layers of a special gel, then placed in a microfluidic chip that circulates nutrients and mimics the complex environment of the human uterus

via Chinese Academy of Sciences: Qian Li et al, A 3D in vitro model for studying human implantation and implantation failure, Cell (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.10.026


How AI is distorting online research, from polls to public policy
Feb 2026, phys.org

Paradata - typing speed, keystrokes and copy–paste behavior; can be analyzed as response patterns and behavioral patterns to identify non-human poll-response aka poll fraud, and which compromises much scientific data, like for example where some researchers hire Mechanical Turkers to complete a survey, but because Mechanical Turk was bought by Amazon, and they don't give a shit about either their products or their users, they let it go to shit and be overtaken by robots, Moldovan-bankrolled robots, or whatever. Bottom line is we can't tell the difference anymore and "all the data is contaminated"

via IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and University of Cambridge: Folco Panizza et al, How to deal with the survey-taking AI agents that threaten to upend social science, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-026-00386-2


Space mining without heavy machines? Microbes harvest metals from meteorites aboard space station
Feb 2026, phys.org

Biomining - Microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi can harvest crucial minerals from rocks and could provide a sustainable alternative to transporting much-needed resources from Earth; an experiment conducted aboard the International Space Station found "biomining" fungi particularly adept at extracting palladium from a meteorite in microgravity

via Cornell and University of Edinburgh: Rosa Santomartino et al, Microbial biomining from asteroidal material onboard the international space station, npj Microgravity (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41526-026-00567-3


Increase of AI bots on the Internet sparks arms race
Feb 2026, Ars Technica

GEO - generative engine optimization (the new SEO)


Light-guided 'optovolution' evolves proteins that switch states on schedule
Mar 2026, phys.org

Optovolution - uses light to guide the evolution of proteins with dynamic, multi‑state, and computational functions - making yes-or-no decisions based on specific rules

via EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Laboratory of the Physics of Biological Systems: Light-directed evolution of dynamic, multi-state, and computational protein functionalities., Cell (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.02.002


Forest soil on doormats rebalances urban homes' indoor microbiome, study suggests
Mar 2026, phys.org

FaRMI Farm-home Resembling Microbiota Index - previously associated with lower asthma risk, and bacterial diversity increased, and the proportion of human-associated bacteria decreased.

via University of Eastern Finland: Martin Täubel et al, Environmental microbiota transfer from forest soil into urban homes: a proof-of-principle study, Microbiome (2026). DOI: 10.1186/s40168-026-02352-6


Lab-grown pineal gland organoids produce melatonin, offering a new sleep model
Apr 2026, phys.org

Assembloid - two or more types of organoids linked together, via the new Pineal organoids you see floating around these days

via Yale University: Ferdi Ridvan Kiral et al, Generation of human pineal gland organoids with melatonin production for disease modeling, Cell Stem Cell (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2025.12.004


Post Script:
What do we call fingerprints for robots? Like "these words have 'robot' written all over them"?
The telltale words that could identify generative AI text
Jan 2026, Ars Technica

Researchers were inspired by the way we can measure excess deaths from COVID, in this case measuring excess words that shouldn't be there. Here's a few from the list:
  • delves
  • showcasing 
  • underscores
(They don't mention it here, but I heard "nestled" is found in prpoperty listings.)

The rest are overwhelmingly “style words” like verbs, adjectives, and adverbs:
  • across
  • additionally
  • comprehensive
  • crucial
  • enhancing
  • exhibited
  • insights
  • notably
  • particularly
  • within

via University of Tubingen and Northwestern University; preprint: Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary. Dmitry Kobak. [Submitted on 11 Jun 2024 (v1), last revised 3 Jul 2025 (this version, v5)] https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.07016

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Words That Are Changing the World


Things don't really exist until they have a name. 


Liquid robot can transform, separate and fuse like living cells
Mar 2025, phys.org

Liquid robots - "A particle-armored liquid robot, encased in unusually dense hydrophobic particles" (Who knew the T-1000 made of pfas) But wait, there's more! "Building upon our current findings, we are now working on technologies that will allow the liquid robot to change shape freely using sound waves or electric fields."

via Seoul National University and Gachon University: Hyobin Jeon et al, Particle-armored liquid robots, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adt5888.

Image note: All this images come from the Nikon Small World Competition, 2025. It's a great competition, it's been happening for decades, and produces some of the world's most interesting imagery; these are only a tiny sample of all the winners. 


Intercrystals' pave the way for greener electronics and quantum technologies
May 2025, phys.org

Intercrystals - two ultrathin layers of graphene stacked, then twisted them slightly atop a layer of hexagonal boron nitride, to form moiré patterns. With intercrystals, materials can be engineered to access new phases of matter by exploiting geometric frustration at the smallest scale. ... exploiting geometric frustration

via Rutgers University Department of Physics and Astronomy: Xinyuan Lai et al, Moiré periodic and quasiperiodic crystals in heterostructures of twisted bilayer graphene on hexagonal boron nitride, Nature Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-025-02222-w


Whole-body teleoperation system allows robots to perform coordinated tasks with human-like dexterity
May 2025, phys.org

TWIST - teleoperated whole-body imitation system (teledildonics did it first but I'll allow)

via Stanford University and Simon Fraser University: Yanjie Ze et al, TWIST: Teleoperated Whole-Body Imitation System, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2505.02833


Organoids containing blood vessels have been grown, holding promise for research and treatment
Jun 2025, phys.org

Vascularized Organoids - Beyond about 3 millimeters in diameter, an organoid can no longer sustain itself by absorbing resources directly from its environment. "When you grow organoids to a certain size, they start to die inside because they can't get oxygen and nutrients to the center" (btw "For over a decade, scientists have been growing organoids")

via Stanford University Medical Center: Oscar J. Abilez et al, Gastruloids enable modeling of the earliest stages of human cardiac and hepatic vascularization, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adu9375.


Cells assembled into Anthrobots become biologically younger than the original cells they were made from
Jun 2025, phys.org

Anthrobots - tiny multicellular organisms grown from a single human tracheal cell and assembled into new forms - spherical, oblong, covered with cilia on all or part of their surfaces, capable of swimming and repairing "wounds" in plated neurons.

via Tufts University: Gizem Gumuskaya et al, The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots, Advanced Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202409330

Patterns of patterns: Exploring supermoiré engineering
Jul 2025, phys.org

Supermoiré patterns - moiré of moiré, or more moiré

via Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Yonglong Xie et al, Strong interactions and isospin symmetry breaking in a supermoiré lattice, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adl2544


Robots now grow and repair themselves by consuming parts from other machines
Jul 2025, phys.org

Robot Metabolism - (Words you did not expect to hear right next to each other) enables machines to absorb and reuse parts from other robots or their surroundings.

"True autonomy means robots must not only think for themselves but also physically sustain themselves. We can't rely on humans to maintain these machines. Robots must ultimately learn to take care of themselves."

via Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science and Creative Machines Lab: Philippe Wyder, Robot Metabolism: Towards machines that can grow by consuming other machines, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6897.


Quantum internet moves closer as researchers teleport light-based information
Jul 2025, phys.org

Telecom Photons - or telecom-wavelength photonic qubit - a quantum bit encoded in light at the same wavelengths supporting current communications

via Nanjing University: Yu-Yang An et al, Quantum Teleportation from Telecom Photons to Erbium-Ion Ensembles, Physical Review Letters (2025). DOI: 10.1103/3wh8-2gh1.


Scientists grow novel 'whole-brain' organoid
Jul 2025, phys.org

Multi-region Brain Organoid - aka rudimentary whole-brain organoid, with characteristics resembling a brain in a 40-day-old human fetus. Fuck off.

via Johns Hopkins University: Anannya Kshirsagar et al, Multi‐Region Brain Organoids Integrating Cerebral, Mid‐Hindbrain, and Endothelial Systems, Advanced Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202503768


Scientists program cells to create biological qubit in multidisciplinary research
Aug 2025, phys.org

Biological Qubit - a protein-based qubit; "Rather than taking a conventional quantum sensor and trying to camouflage it to enter a biological system, we wanted to explore the idea of using a biological system itself and developing it into a qubit"

via University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering: Jacob S. Feder et al, A fluorescent-protein spin qubit, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09417-w


'Solastalgia' might help explain effects of climate change on mental health
Aug 2025, phys.org

Solastalgia - blend of the words "solace" and "nostalgia"; first coined in 2003 to refer to the lack of solace and feelings of pain or sickness caused by changes in a person's immediate or surrounding environment, and now found to be associated with depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. (Out of an initial 80 studies between 2003 and 2024, 5 quantitative and 14 qualitative studies from Australia, Germany, Peru and the U.S., totaling 5,000+ participants were considered.) Also considered one of several eco-emotions, such as eco-anxiety, eco-grief, or eco-shame, or eco-guilt 

via University of Zurich Institute of Psychology: Vela Sandquist A, Biele L, Ehlert U, Fischer S. Is solastalgia associated with mental health problems? A scoping review. BMJ Mental Health. 2025;28:e301639. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjment-2025-301639


'Meschers' tool visualizes and edits 'physically impossible' objects
Aug 2025, phys.org

Mescher - a physically impossible object, like M.C. Escher. AKA Penrose Triangle, Escher-esque structures, geodesics (Their "Meschers" tool converts images and 3D models into 2.5-dimensional structures, and helps users relight, smooth out, and study unique geometries while preserving their optical illusion.)

via MIT CSAIL Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: Ana Dodik et al, Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects, ACM Transactions on Graphics (2025). DOI: 10.1145/3731422. 


Searching for Artificial Memory Systems in ancient humans with spatial statistics
Aug 2025, phys.org

Paleolithic Artificial Memory System - like tally marks on bone - devices that record, store, transmit, and retrieve coded information beyond the brain, via external representations. AMS can be anything from the notches on a gunslinger's pistol, tracking past success, to the symbols on and data encoded within the Voyager spacecraft's golden record ... Documented functions include a North American lunar-cycle calendar, Australian message sticks, medieval English tally sticks for expenditures and taxes, a Tibetan tally stick for wheat and millet deliveries, and Angolan tally sticks for days traveled.

via Université de Bordeaux: Lloyd Austin Courtenay et al, Identifying potential palaeolithic artificial memory systems via Spatial statistics: Implications for the origin of quantification, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s12520-025-02286-4


Discarded particles dubbed 'neglectons' may unlock universal quantum computing
Aug 2025, phys.org

Neglectons - a name that reflects both their overlooked status and their newfound importance; by adding a single new type of anyon to topological quantum computation, the team shows that Ising anyons can be made universal, capable of performing any quantum computation through braiding alone.

via University of Southern California: Universal quantum computation using Ising anyons from a non-semisimple topological quantum field theory, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61342-8


The Hofstadter butterfly: Twisted bilayer graphene reveals two distinct strongly interacting topological phases
Sep 2025, phys.org

MATBG - Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene; it's had so many names in the past ten years; this is the final and fully-formed acronym; wasted opportunity not to add "sandwich" at the end, as this has been part of the name-zoo all along. (Note that The Hofstadter Butterfly, which is by far a better name, is for the way the phases interact, not the MATBG that makes it happen)

via University of Washington and Florida State University: Minhao He et al, Strongly interacting Hofstadter states in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, Nature Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-02997-4.


One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants
Sep 2025, Nature

Xenoparous - give birth to other species 

via ISEM, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD: Juvé, Y., Lutrat, C., Ha, A. et al. One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants. Nature 646, 372–377 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09425-w


Golden nano sandwich makes nanoparticles visible
Sep 2025, phys.org

Golden Nano Sandwich - "whisper" nano cavity between gold film and gold nanoparticle

via University of Twente: Mohammad Reza Aghdaee et al, Optical detection of single sub-15 nm objects using elastic scattering strong coupling, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63380-8


Tomorrow's quantum computers could use sound, not light
Sep 2025, phys.org

Phonons - tiny mechanical vibrations that would be considered sound on a larger scale; they can send phonon-based data through a quantum computer free from the randomness that, by nature, will always hinder platforms based on photons.

via University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering: Acoustic phonon phase gates with number-resolving phonon detection, Nature Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-03027-z.


We need a solar sail probe to detect space tornadoes earlier, researchers say
Oct 2025, phys.org

Space Tornadoes - that's all.

via University of Michigan: High-resolution simulation of CME-CIR interactions: small- to mesoscale solar wind structure formation observable by the SWIFT constellation The Astrophysical Journal (2025). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/adf855


First trial of therapy chatbot suggests AI can provide 'gold-standard' mental-health care
Mar 2025, phys.org

Therabot - it's a therapy bot for mental health

via Dartmouth: A Clinical Trial on a Generative AI Chatbot for Mental Health Treatment, NEJM AI (2025). DOI: 10.1056/AIoa2400802

'Thirstwaves' are growing more common across the United States
Apr 2025, phys.org

Thirstwave - period of extremely high evaporative demand like its cousin the heat wave; to be called a thirstwave, the short crop evapotranspiration must be above the 90th percentile for at least 3 days. 

via Department of Soil and Water Systems at University of Idaho-Boise: M. S. Kukal et al, Thirstwaves: Prolonged Periods of Agricultural Exposure to Extreme Atmospheric Evaporative Demand for Water, Earth's Future (2025). DOI: 10.1029/2024EF004870


Industrial waste is turning to rock in just decades, research reveals
Apr 2025, phys.org

Rapid Anthropoclastic Rock Cycle

via University of Glasgow: Amanda Owen et al, Evidence for a rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle, Geology (2025). DOI: 10.1130/G52895.1


'Metabots' shapeshift from flat sheets into hundreds of structures
Oct 2025, phys.org

Metabot - "We start out with simple polymer sheets that have holes in them, but by applying thin films to the surface of the polymer we're able to incorporate materials that respond to electricity or magnetic fields" ... "By connecting multiple sheets, we create structures that lie flat initially, but can then bend and fold themselves into a wide variety of stable configurations" (and I saw it here first) 
 
via North Carolina State University: Caizhi Zhou et al, Multistable thin-shell metastructures for multiresponsive reconfigurable metabots, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx4359


Topological polycrystal: A new approach to configurable, multiband topological photonic circuitry
May 2025, phys.org

Topological Polycrystal - with a name like that, we don't need definitions.

via Department of Physics at the Institute of Advanced Study at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: Tianyue Li et al, Configurable Topological Photonic Polycrystal Based on a Synthetic Hybrid Dimension, National Science Review (2025). DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwaf107

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Monday, April 7, 2025

Words on File


First we have to recognize these behemoths of science with great names, the TESSERACT and the Stellarator:

TESSERACT is a dark matter detector - Transition-Edge Sensors with Sub-EV Resolution And Cryogenic Targets

The Stellarator is a fusion reactor, but it's not a proper name, it's a type of reactor.


How 'Conan the Bacterium' combines simple metabolites to withstand extreme radiation
Dec 2024, phys.org

Conan the Bacterium - dubbed for its extraordinary ability to tolerate the harshest of conditions, Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand radiation doses thousands of times higher than what would kill a human—and every other organism for that matter.

via Northwestern University and the Uniformed Services University: Brian M. Hoffman et al, The ternary complex of Mn2+, synthetic decapeptide DP1 (DEHGTAVMLK), and orthophosphate is a superb antioxidant, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2417389121

Image credit: AI Art - Instructions - 2025. Hard to resist a picture of a piece of paper with instructions written on it, but by a computer that doesn't speak English, or know what instructions are, or a piece of paper for that matter. 


Solitude is better for your health when it's not too intense, research suggests
Dec 2024, phys.org

I'm only here for this phrase:

The Matrix of Solitude - The researchers built a matrix of solitude that includes a base level - no interaction with people - and a total level, which refers to being inaccessible to others and not engaging with media. 

"If you have a positive attitude toward solitude—because you use it to restore energy and know that you will be able to connect with people later—then choosing solitude will probably make you feel better. But if you choose solitude because of a negative attitude toward social interaction—because you don't want to talk to people—it will probably make you feel worse."

via Ohio University and Ohio State - Morgan Quinn Ross et al, The tradeoff of solitude? Restoration and relatedness across shades of solitude, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311738


Comfortable materials use friction to generate power when worn
Jan 2025, phys.org

Tunable Haptic Energy Harvester aka Amphiphiles - used in fabrics to prevent chaffing, but also have electronic properties that allow them to "donate" electrons, resulting in a material that was both comfortable and capable of generating electricity through friction produced by rubbing against human skin or other materials.

via North Carolina State U: Pallav Jani et al, Compressing slippery surface-assembled amphiphiles for tunable haptic energy harvesters., Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr4088.


New CAR-T cell therapy 'ALA-CART' shows promise for hard-to-treat cancers
Mar 2025, phys.org

ALA-CART - adjunctive LAT-activating CAR-T cells optimizes CAR-T cells to more effectively eliminate cancer cells that have been able to hide from traditional CAR-T cells

via Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus: Catherine Pham-Danis et al, Restoration of LAT activity improves CAR T cell sensitivity and persistence in response to antigen-low acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Cancer Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.02.008

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Sunday, March 30, 2025

On Language the Universal Autoencoder

 
  
The 'Arrow of Time' effect: LLMs are better at predicting what comes next than what came before
Sep 2024, phys.org

Their performance at predicting the previous word is always a few percent worse than at predicting the next word. This phenomenon is universal across languages, and can be observed with any large language model."

"In theory, there should be no difference between the forward and backward directions, but LLMs appear to be somehow sensitive to the time direction in which they process text. Interestingly, this is related to a deep property of the structure of language that could only be discovered with the emergence of large language models in the last five years."

via EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne: Vassilis Papadopoulos et al, Arrows of Time for Large Language Models, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.17505



Ouch! Study investigates pain vocalizations and interjections across 131 languages
Nov 2024, phys.org

Each of the three emotions yielded consistent and distinct vowel signatures across cultures. Pain interjections also featured similar open vowels, such as "a," and wide falling diphthongs, such as "ai" in "Ayyy!" and "aw" in "Ouch!"

However, for disgusted and joyful emotions, in contrast to vocalizations, the interjections lacked regularities across cultures. The researchers expressed surprise at this latter finding.

Is this because disgust is cultural, or at least not entirely physical, and heavily mediated by culture, as compared to actual pain? This is commonly understood in the realm of olfactory perception, where some people think the smell of revolting, rotten fish is delicious (they're Norwegian). Or the smell of vomit (they're Italian, Parmesan to be specific), or the smell of the inside of the skin folds of a homeless person who hasn't been able to bathe in months (they're called New Yorkers, and they kind of long for the smell of the subway, which contains these volatiles). In fact, anything that's fermented is so close to rotten food, that unless you've been culturally conditioned to like it, you won't, at least not at first. Cilantro, I'm looking at you too. 

via CNRS et Université Lumière Lyon, School of Social Sciences at University of Western Australia, and Institute of Psychology at University of Wrocław: Vowel signatures in emotional interjections and nonlinguistic vocalizations expressing pain, disgust and joy across languages, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2024). DOI: 10.1121/10.0032454


Words activate hidden brain processes shaping emotions, decisions and behavior
Jan 2025, phys.org

Words have meaning, but they also have emotional meaning:

"There's no single brain region handling this activity, and it's not as simple as one chemical representing one emotion."

(These studies were done thanks to the participation of patients being treated for epilepsy.)

The researchers discovered emotionally charged words - whether positive, negative, or neutral - modulate neurotransmitter release. By measuring the sub-second dynamics of the releases, they identified distinct patterns tied to emotional tone, anatomical regions, and which hemisphere of the brain was involved.

"The surprising result came from the thalamus. This region hasn't been thought to have a role in processing language or emotional content, yet we saw neurotransmitter changes in response to emotional words. This suggests that even brain regions not typically associated with emotional or linguistic processing might still be privy to that information. For instance, parts of the brain responsible for mobilizing movement might benefit from having access to emotionally significant information to guide behavior."

Note: The words used in the study were drawn from the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) database, which rates words by positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence.

via Virginia Tech School of Neuroscience and Fralin Biomedical Research Institute: Seth R. Batten et al, Emotional words evoke region- and valence-specific patterns of concurrent neuromodulator release in human thalamus and cortex, Cell Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.115162

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Friday, February 14, 2025

The Entelechy of Information

 

Things that aren't alive behave as if they are, making us question what life is.  Darwin's theory of evolution started with a Tree of Life for language, not for Life. This is a great piece, and she's the one who did the 'black traffic stop' study btw, very clever.


Study traces an infectious language epidemic
May 2024, phys.org

Note for context: More than 692,000 preventable hospitalizations were reported among unvaccinated patients from November to December 2021 alone, and at a minimum cost of $13.8 billion.

They used GPT-4 to find Covid prevention-opposed posts in banned subreddits. They were looking for something called "gists" - Reyna has shown that individuals learn and recall information better when it is expressed in a cause and effect relationship, and not just as rote information. This holds true even if the information is inaccurate or the implied connection is weak. Reyna calls this cause-and-effect construction a "gist."

The results show that, indeed, social media posts that linked a cause, such as "I got the COVID vaccine," with an effect, such as "I've felt like death ever since," quickly showed up in people's beliefs and affected their offline health decisions. In fact, the total and new daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. could be significantly predicted by the volume of gists on banned subreddit groups.

Rho's work is grounded in a social science framework called Fuzzy Trace Theory that was pioneered by Valerie Reyna, a Cornell University professor of psychology and a collaborator on this Virginia Tech project.

via Eugenia Rho and Society + AI & Language Lab in the Department of Computing at the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech: Xiaohan Ding et al, Leveraging Prompt-Based Large Language Models: Predicting Pandemic Health Decisions and Outcomes Through Social Media Language, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2403.00994

And this, an important to note to stand by itself:
Many other social media platforms have barred outside researchers from using their data.

(And this is why they used reddit, which I think as of today no longer allows ^this. Regardless consider for a moment that digital social-mediated misinformation is a thing, and it's a real risk, and yet we can't even study it anymore because it's all totally proprietary. But don't consider the fact that data - all the data - is created by the users, yet it's not owned by the users to the extent that they, or anyone, can study it; that's for another post.)

Image credit: Plant root via Fiber Optic 2x - Dr Adolfo Ruiz De Segovia Nikon Small World - 2024


Back to language as an epidemic, behold Legalese:
Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style
Aug 2024, phys.org

A 2022 study found legal documents frequently have long definitions inserted in the middle of sentences - a feature known as "center-embedding" which makes text more difficult to understand, even for lawyers. "Legalese somehow has developed this tendency to put structures inside other structures, in a way which is not typical of human languages." 

"Lawyers don't like it, laypeople don't like it, so the point of this current paper was to try and figure out why they write documents this way."

Hypotheses:
"Copy and edit hypothesis" - legal documents begin with a simple premise, and then additional information and definitions are inserted into already existing sentences, creating complex center-embedded clauses.

"Magic spell hypothesis" - the convoluted style of legal language signals a kind of authority, "if you want to write something that's a magic spell, people know that the way to do that is you put a lot of old-fashioned rhymes in there."

Test:
They did two experiments, one with people split in two groups for writing laws and then adding to them, or writing laws all at once. They found that people wrote center-embeddings regardless of whether they had to copy and edit.

The other experiment gave people laws from another country and asked them to rewrite them, both as law itself and as a description of the law. They found that people put embeddings in the law but not the description. 

They're now investigating the origins of center-embedding in legal documents, back to the Hammurabi Code of 1750 BC.

via MIT, University of Melbourne, University of Chicago Law School: Martínez, Eric, Even laypeople use legalese, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2405564121


But in case you still weren't convinced that contagion is a function of information systems, and not of living systems ... or perhaps you'd rather believe that language is in fact a form of life:
How new words arise in social media
Sep 2024, phys.org

They analyzed 650 million tweets written in French between 2012 and 2014 to identify 400 words that were new to appear on the social media network then called Twitter, then they tracked the diffusion of these words over the following five years, and looked at the position and connectivity of users who adopted the words.

"lexical innovations" - new words

On average, the words that eventually persisted were used by people who were more central to their community, and remained in circulation at low levels for a longer period before entering a growth phase (18.5 months in circulation compared to 6.5 months for buzzes).

Words that became only temporary buzzes were used by people with less central positions within a social network and had a more rapid rise in use - followed by a rapid decline.

via École Normale Supérieure in France: Tarrade L, Chevrot J-P, Magué J-P (2024) How position in the network determines the fate of lexical innovations on Twitter, PLOS Complex Systems (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcsy.0000005

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Saturday, January 25, 2025

Peak Climate Confusion


There's a lot happening in the climate news, but Network Address is less interested in the facts, and more interested in the meta-facts, like how many superlatives an article uses, or how many new words have to be coined in order to keep track of what the heck is going on, or just cases where the weather centers monitoring disasters are themselves in the disaster zone, or maybe just outer space observatories that were never meant to be weather stations yet provide more accurate data than actual weather stations. It's all in there:

But first! More examples of scientists saying the word "crazy"
Hurricane Beryl supercharged by ‘crazy’ ocean temperatures, experts say
Jul 2024, The Guardian

“In the Caribbean Sea it has actually been warmer than its usual peak since mid-May, which is absolutely crazy,” said McNoldy. “If the ocean already looks like it’s the peak of hurricane season, we are going to get peak hurricanes.” [Not just crazy but absolutely crazy.]



Shipping emissions regulations enacted in 2020 improved air quality but accelerated warming
Aug 2024, phys.org

Regulations put into effect in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization required a roughly 80% reduction in the sulfur content of shipping fuel used globally.

They scanned over a million satellite images and quantified the declining count of ship tracks, estimating a 25 to 50% reduction in visible tracks. Where the cloud count was down, the degree of warming was generally up.

Further work by the authors simulated the effects of the ship aerosols in three climate models and compared the cloud changes to observed cloud and temperature changes since 2020. Roughly half of the potential warming from the shipping emission changes materialized in just four years, according to the new work. In the near future, more warming is likely to follow as the climate response continues unfolding. (Although it is noted that the magnitude of warming in 2023 is too significant to be attributed to the emissions change alone, according to their findings.)

via Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: A. Gettelman et al, Has Reducing Ship Emissions Brought Forward Global Warming?, Geophysical Research Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024GL109077


Say something about the speed of new word occurrence in a general field as related to a kind of turbulence or unpredictability or some kind of measurement of entropy in a system: 

Mexico counting dead from 'zombie storm' John
Sep 2024, BBC News

The term "zombie storm" was first used by meteorologists from the US National Weather Service in 2020 to describe a storm which dissipates only to regenerate again.

This storm hit Mexico's Pacific Coast, then dissipated over the mountains before regaining strength over the waters of the Pacific and hitting the Mexican coast a second time.


We’re only beginning to understand the historic nature of Helene’s flooding
Sep 2024, Eric Berger for Ars Technica

The National Climatic Data Center maintains the world's largest climate data archive and provides historical perspective to put present-day weather conditions and natural disasters into context in a warming world due to climate change.

Unfortunately, the National Climatic Data Center is based in Asheville, North Carolina. As I write this, the center's website remains offline. That's because Asheville, a city in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, is the epicenter of catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene that has played out over the last week. The climate data facility is inoperable because water and electricity services in the region have entirely broken down due to flooding.

N.J. weather - Is this our driest October ever?
Oct 2024, nj.com

So many superlatives:
If our long streak of dry weather continues, this not only will turn out to be the driest October in most areas of New Jersey — but also the driest of any month on record.

If the month ended today, this would be the driest October ever recorded in the Newark, Trenton and Atlantic City areas, as well as New York City and Philadelphia.

It also would be number one for the least amount of rain to fall from the sky in any month of any year — not just October, according to the weather data.


Observatory finds local 1.1 ºC increase in 20 years, twice as much as predicted by climate models
Oct 2024, phys.org

Surprise - At the observatory, the weather station has sent data on temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure and wind speed and direction every two seconds for the past twenty years. "The station was built with the intention to have some guidance for telescope operations, not to characterize local weather professionally, let alone the effects of climate change on the measured parameters. But the fact that they were relatively low-cost devices has been an advantage, since they had to be changed and recalibrated every two years or so, which has favored the reliability of the data and greatly limited the effects of long-term sensor drifts, which are difficult to detect."

But alas - The experimental data obtained show an increase of 1.1ºC over the past 20 years, i.e., 0.55ºC per decade. This is more than double the increase predicted by climate models for the same area, and even more than expected for the next 20 years.

via Department of Physics of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Roque de los Muchachos  Observatory: Markus Gaug et al, Detailed analysis of local climate at the CTAO-North site on La Palma from 20 yr of MAGIC weather station data, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2024). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae2214


'Doomsday' Antarctic glacier melting faster than expected, fueling calls for geoengineering
Nov 2024, phys.org

This is about glacial geoengineering not just the "regular kind" (i.e., stratospheric injection)

One example - creating a giant submarine curtain that would at least partially prevent warm tidal currents from reaching the glacier ice. 

via the Columbia University Climate School


Unexplained heat-wave 'hotspots' are popping up across the globe
Nov 2024, phys.org

Just here for the ad copy:

Distinct regions are seeing repeated heat waves that are so extreme, they fall far beyond what any model of global warming can predict or explain.

For instance, a nine-day wave that hammered the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada in June 2021 broke daily records in some locales by 30°C, or 54°F. This included the highest ever temperature recorded in Canada, 121.3°F, in Lytton, British Columbia. The town burned to the ground the next day ... .

via Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: Kai Kornhuber et al, Global emergence of regional heatwave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2411258121

You know we're having a problem making sense of what's happening with the climate when we're willing to take into consideration the quantum effects of water:

Quantum mechanism identified as a key to accelerating ocean temperatures
Nov 2024, phys.org

Professor Smith said the apparent role of non-thermal energy in accelerating ocean temperatures now needs to be factored into climate models:

"When ocean water is heated by radiation from the sun and the sky it stores energy not only as heat, but as hybrid pairs of photons coupled to oscillating water molecules.

"These pairs are a natural form of quantum information, different to the information researchers are pursuing in the development of quantum computing. This extra store of energy has always been present and aided ocean thermal stability prior to 1960.

"But now the average heat dissipated overnight from each day's heating is no longer stable as extra heat input from Earth's atmosphere raises both forms of stored energy [including the quantum energy described above]."

via University of Technology Sydney: G B Smith, A many-body quantum model is proposed as the mechanism responsible for accelerating rates of heat uptake by oceans as anthropogenic heat inputs rise, Journal of Physics Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1088/2399-6528/ad8f11


On the heels of recent concern over the use of the word "tipping point" as having become kind of useless, and the scientific community is asking to stop using the word because it's confusing and counterproductive:

Rapid surge in global warming mainly due to reduced planetary albedo, researchers suggest
Dec 2024, phys.org

Far worse than expected - not only is it yes to the shipping sulfur aerosols, but also the warming itself is doing this, which means we've passed the tipping point (decades early).

"The 0.2-degree-Celsius 'explanation gap' for 2023 is currently one of the most intensely discussed questions in climate research."

One trend appears to have significantly affected the reduced planetary albedo: the decline in low-altitude clouds in the northern mid-latitudes and the tropics. In this regard, the Atlantic particularly stands out, i.e., exactly the same region where the most unusual temperature records were observed in 2023. [Albedo being the reflection of sunlight back off the earth, so that it never accumulates as heat.]

"It's conspicuous that the eastern North Atlantic, which is one of the main drivers of the latest jump in global mean temperature, was characterized by a substantial decline in low-altitude clouds not just in 2023, but also—like almost all of the Atlantic—in the past 10 years." 

It appears global warming itself is reducing the number of low clouds.

"If a large part of the decline in albedo is indeed due to feedbacks between global warming and low clouds, as some climate models indicate, we should expect rather intense warming in the future. We could see global long-term climate warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius sooner than expected to date."

via Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts: Helge F. Goessling, Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq7280.

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