Wednesday, April 2, 2025

The Graphene Zoo

 

From its slightly accidental inception 20 years ago, graphene has now turned into a large branch on the tree of technogenetic life.

Decoding 2D material growth: White graphene insights open doors to cleaner energy and more efficient electronics
Jan 2025, phys.org

White Graphene - the name for hexagonal boron nitride (where you blast out some of the carbon atoms from graphene and fill them with boron nitride instead)

via University of Surrey and Graz University of Technology: Anthony J. R. Payne et al, Unravelling the Epitaxial Growth Mechanism of Hexagonal and Nanoporous Boron Nitride: A First‐Principles Microkinetic Model, Small (2025). DOI: 10.1002/smll.202405404



Graphyne's transformation: A new carbon form with potential for electronics
Feb 2025, phys.org

Graphyne - It's not graphene, it's not carbon like diamonds with its 3-D lattice, it's not like graphite with its 2-D lattice, and it's not graphene with it's 1-D 2-D lattice. It's a 1-D 2-D 3-D lattice. Got it?

via Case Western Reserve University: Ali E. Aliev et al, A planar-sheet nongraphitic zero-bandgap sp2 carbon phase made by the low-temperature reaction of γ-graphyne, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2413194122


Synthetic diamond with hexagonal lattice outshines the natural kind with unprecedented hardness
Feb 2025, phys.org

Synthetic hexagonal diamonds - heating graphene samples to high temperatures while inside a high-pressure chamber. By adjusting the parameters of their setup, the researchers found they could get the graphene to grow into a synthetic diamond with hexagonal lattices.

via Umeå University and materials scientists and engineers affiliated with several institutions in China such as Jilin University: Desi Chen et al, General approach for synthesizing hexagonal diamond by heating post-graphite phases, Nature Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-025-02126-9


Olympicene molecular chains create quantum spin systems with spintronics applications
Mar 2025, phys.org

Olympicenes - open-shell nanographenes (shaped like the Olympics logo)

via Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics: Chenxiao Zhao et al, Spin excitations in nanographene-based antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains, Nature Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-025-02166-1

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Headlines From the Front Lines


It may be April Fool's, but the headlines are real.

Iberian nailed head ritual was more complex than expected, isotope analysis reveals
Feb 2025, phys.org

Not trying to be anti-literacy here, it's just that sometimes the headline is all you need. (Although this particular headline below requires the accompanying image.)

via Autonomous University of Barcelona: Rubén de la Fuente-Seoane et al, Territorialisation and human mobility during the Iron Age in NE Iberia: An approach through Isotope Analyses of the Severed Heads from Puig Castellar (Barcelona, Spain) and Ullastret (Girona, Spain), Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105035



Antioxidant carbon dot nanozymes alleviate depression in rats by restoring the gut microbiome
Sep 2024, phys.org

Some headlines just make me feel like how a cracked windshield can become the the quintessential heavy metal band name font, but for like a mad scientist type of science thing. 

via Henan Joint International Research Laboratory of Nanomaterials for Energy and Catalysis at Xuchang University: Huimin Jia et al, Antioxidant Carbon Dots Nanozymes Alleviate Stress-induced Depression by Modulating Gut Microbiota, Langmuir (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c02481


Google reacts angrily to report it will have to sell Chrome
Nov 2024, BBC News


'Alzheimer's in dish' model shows promise for accelerating drug discovery
Nov 2024, phys.org

(Alzheimer's isn't funny but Alzheimer's-in-a-dish is funny.)

via Massachusetts General Hospital: Yeganeah, PN et al. Integrative Pathway Analysis across Humans and 3D Cellular Models Identifies the p38 MAPK-MK2 Axis as a Therapeutic Target for Alzheimer's Disease, Neuron (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.10.029.


Topological quantum processor uses Majorana zero modes for fault-tolerant computing
Feb 2025, phys.org

It's got all the words - majorana fermion, topological things, and quantum computers - but I still don't buy it because it's Microsoft and they lie about shit all the time. In fact, I'm going to assume that specifically because it's a Microsoft press release, that it was engineered to have all these words on purpose. Shall we say, a kind of artificial headline generator trained on hype words more than the actual work that was done. 

(Actual scientists working in academia are not convinced, by the way.)

via UC Santa Barbara and Microsoft Station Q: David Aasen et al, Roadmap to fault tolerant quantum computation using topological qubit arrays, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.12252


Biohybrid hand uses sushi-like rolls of lab-grown human muscle to move objects
Feb 2025, phys.org

via University of Tokyo: XINZHU REN et al, Biohybrid hand actuated by multiple human muscle tissues, Science Robotics (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adr5512.


Engineers develop a fully 3D-printed electrospray engine that can power tiny satellites
Feb 2025, phys.org

via MIT: Hyeonseok Kim et al, High‐Impulse, Modular, 3D‐Printed CubeSat Electrospray Thrusters Throttleable via Pressure and Voltage Control, Advanced Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202413706

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Monday, March 31, 2025

Does It Compute


AKA All Computers All the Time

Right now a computer is a box that sits on your desk. It's plugged in. Maybe it's a little box, one you keep in your pocket. That one's not plugged in, but it does need power. Soon, the computer will not be a thing. Instead, all things will be a computer. Maybe it's better to say that all things will compute. And like instead of saying 'there's an app for that' we might hear instead 'does it compute'? Like, "Can you pass me the paper towel?" "Does it compute?" Or, "Hey I just got a new haircut." "But does it compute?" 

First - The Fiber Computer:

Fiber computer allows apparel to run apps and 'understand' the wearer
Feb 2025, phys.org

It's an autonomous programmable computer in the form of an elastic fiber.

The fiber computer contains a series of microdevices, including sensors, a microcontroller, digital memory, Bluetooth modules, optical communications, and a battery, making up all the necessary components of a computer in a single elastic fiber.

"Our bodies broadcast gigabytes of data through the skin every second in the form of heat, sound, biochemicals, electrical potentials, and light, all of which carry information about our activities, emotions, and health. Unfortunately, most, if not all, of it gets absorbed and then lost in the clothes we wear."

via MIT, RISD, Brown, Stanford, Soldier Nanotechnologies: Yoel Fink, A single-fibre computer enables textile networks and distributed inference, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08568-6. 



Materials can remember a sequence of events in an unexpected way
Jan 202,5 phys.org

Material memory is like wrinkles on a crumpled piece of paper. These memories are stored in disordered solids in which the arrangement of particles seems random but actually contains details about past deformations. Materials should not be able to form return-point memory when the force only occurs in one direction. For example, a bridge might sag slightly as cars drive over it, but it doesn't curve upwards once the cars are gone.

The researchers boiled down the components of the system—such as the particles in a solid or the microscopic domains in a magnet—into abstract elements called hysterons. "Hysterons are elements of a system that may not immediately respond to external conditions, and can stay in a past state."

The hysterons in the model interact either in a cooperative way, where a change in one encourages a change in the other, or in a non-cooperative "frustrated" way, where a change in one discourages a change in the other. Frustrated hysterons are the key to forming and recovering a sequence in a system with asymmetric driving.

"We think this is a way to design artificial systems with this special kind of memory, starting with the simplest mechanical systems not much more complicated than a bendy straw, and hopefully working up to something like an asymmetrical combination lock."

via Penn State: Chloe Lindeman et al, Generalizing multiple memories from a single drive: The hysteron latch, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr5933


Soap's maze-solving skills could unlock secrets of the human body
Jan 2025, phys.org

"Surfactants—the molecules found in soap—can naturally find its way through a maze"

We're talking about things acting like people. Imagine discovering that chairs can figure out how to best position themselves in a theater. Or the straps on your backpack can figure out the best length for positioning the pack on your back depending on the weight and the way you walk etc. Your pencil can figure out how to write a better sentence for convincing your roommate to do the dishes. I'm just trying to imagine what this all means.  

"When we put soap into a liquid filled maze, the natural surfactants already present in the liquid interact, creating an omniscient view of the maze, so the soap can intuitively find the correct path, ignoring all other irrelevant paths. This behavior occurs due to very subtle but powerful physics where the two types of surfactants generate tension forces that guide the soap to the exit."

Yes, they called soap bubbles omniscient. 

via Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester: Richard Mcnair et al, Exogenous–Endogenous Surfactant Interaction Yields Heterogeneous Spreading in Complex Branching Networks, Physical Review Letters (2025). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.034001

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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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Saturday, March 29, 2025

The Artist Within


The first tremblings of terror come from a computer program that can write a legal brief, and then argue in real time against a trained human lawyer. But that's obvious. Diagnosing cancer by looking at an x-ray? Pssh. Saw that coming. 

The way technology co-evolves with our species is by getting in the middle of the more creative processes, because that's insidious, which means we don't notice, and so we can't stop it.

The advance of creative pursuit is circuitous, it's unmeasurable, and subject to unannounced yet dramatic shifts in paradigmatic underpinnings. In fact, nobody is even arguing that it's a kind of progress. Your benchmarks, your metrics - they have no power here. A state board of medical examiners will tell you how good this year's crop of doctors perform on their exams etc. There is no national artist database counting the overall social effects of Banksy's automated self-destructive artwork, or Kehinde Wiley's painting of Barack Obama. Because that's not how that works. 

When you let the robot into the house - the temple that is your body and the mind that controls it - it does things there. And because this isn't a real place, it's hard for us to keep track of what's happening. 

These things start small, and they don't seem like a big deal, because who cares if a robot is making art, or even suggestions for making art. I mean it's not like it's making executive orders from the Presidential Office, right? And the willingness to use an automated industrial process to reproduce imagery, let's say via Japanese woodcuts or Andy Warhol's prints, vs "requiring" that a human, perhaps a shaman, maybe just an "artist", to make each image from their own hands, what did that do to us as a species? Did that change us more than allowing in-vitro fertilization for reproduction? Or birth control pills? I doubt it. Then again, maybe they're related (for example by changing the way we value and rely on "real" humans among us). 

We can't answer these questions very well, but we can probably agree that this is where shit gets weird:

Graph-based AI model finds hidden links between science and art to suggest novel materials
Nov 2024, phys.org

They analyze a collection of 1,000 scientific papers about biological materials and turn them into a knowledge map in the form of a graph, using "category theory". The graph revealed how different pieces of information are connected and was able to find groups of related ideas and key points that link many concepts together.

Researchers can use this framework to answer complex questions, find gaps in current knowledge, suggest new designs for materials, and predict how materials might behave, and link concepts that had never been connected before.

The AI model found unexpected similarities between biological materials and "Symphony No. 9," suggesting that both follow patterns of complexity.

In another experiment, the graph-based AI model recommended creating a new biological material inspired by the abstract patterns found in Wassily Kandinsky's painting, "Composition VII." The AI suggested a new mycelium-based composite material. "The result of this material combines an innovative set of concepts that include a balance of chaos and order, adjustable property, porosity, mechanical strength, and complex patterned chemical functionality."


Above image: Mycelium-based biological material inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII - Markus Buehler at MIT - 2025 [link]

via MIT: Markus J Buehler, Accelerating scientific discovery with generative knowledge extraction, graph-based representation, and multimodal intelligent graph reasoning, Machine Learning: Science and Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1088/2632-2153/ad7228

Thumbnail image credit: Graffiti from Berlin Wall stone section - Chew Yen Fook Nikon Small World - 2024

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Thursday, March 27, 2025

Science Works in Mysterious Ways

 

I'm collecting images of the photon revolution, where all the articles about advancements in computing have rainbows in them. You're welcome. 

Next, how science works:

Miniature treadmills accelerate studies of insects walking
Sep 2024, phys.org

Yes, fruit fly-sized treadmills.

via University of Washington School of Medicine: Brandon G. Pratt et al, Miniature linear and split-belt treadmills reveal mechanisms of adaptive motor control in walking Drosophila, Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.08.006


Artificial mouth mimics human tongue movements to understand the oral processing of soft foods
Oct 2024, phys.org

Yes it is.

The device is based on anatomical data collected at the Fujita Health University and features a silicone tongue that contracts using compressed air to mimic the movements of the human tongue. 

Click the link above if you want to see a picture of the artificial tongue. But only if you want to.

via National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment: Alejandro Avila-Sierra et al, A first-of-its-kind 3D biomimetic artificial mouth capable of reproducing the oral processing of soft foods, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-73629-9


What a gut fungus reveals about symbiosis and allergy
Nov 2024, phys.org

The finding suggests that preclinical studies until now have overlooked a major influencer of mouse physiology:

In 2019, a team led by National Institutes of Health found that "wildling" lab mice raised with gut microbes like those of wild mice do a better job of modeling human immune responses than traditional lab mice. The lab, which participated in that study, found significantly higher levels of fungal DNA in the gut of these mice—magnitudes greater than previously observed in lab mice.

The team looked for evidence of the fungus in fecal samples and other material provided by pest-control companies in New York City and Los Angeles, and acquired samples from multiple research institutions that use or sell lab mice. Ultimately, they determined that K. pintolopesii is very common in wild mice, but also often present in lab mouse colonies without researchers knowing about its presence.

"K. pintolopesii can completely change the experimental outcome."

via Weill Cornell Medical College: Yun Liao et al, Fungal symbiont transmitted by free-living mice promotes type 2 immunity, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08213-2


Microplastics found in the brains of mice within hours of consumption
Jan 2025, phys.org

(Blinking guy meme)
The team installed tiny windows in their skulls, allowing them to track the movement of the plastic in their brains.

via Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Duke University, and National University of Singapore: Haipeng Huang et al, Microplastics in the bloodstream can induce cerebral thrombosis by causing cell obstruction and lead to neurobehavioral abnormalities, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr8243


Scientists discover neurons that count each bite and signal when to stop eating
Feb 2025, phys.org

via Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Brainstem Neuropeptidergic Neurons Link a Neurohumoral Axis to Satiation, Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.01.018.


High-speed videos show what happens when a droplet splashes into a pool
Feb 2025, phys.org 

How are we still studying this? Yet here we are.

via MIT: R. Dandekar et al, Splash on a liquid pool: coupled cavity–sheet unsteady dynamics, Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2024). DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2024.1105


Post Script Extraordinaire:
How UFO sightings can help measure public attention and economic patterns
Dec 2024, phys.org

Now this is some actual ufo science: UAP sightings are more frequent in wealthier regions but exhibit counter-cyclical patterns within those regions over time. These findings suggest that shifts in attention to extraordinary phenomena may reflect broader fluctuations in public focus.

  • Positively correlated with economic conditions across regions but display counter-cyclical patterns within regions over time.
  • Causal link between restricted mobility (like COVID lockdowns) and increased UAP reports
  • Regions with higher sighting levels show muted responses to monetary policy shocks, suggesting that attention variations can significantly influence economic outcomes.

via Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Nathan Goldstein et al, Looking up the sky: unidentified aerial phenomena and macroeconomic attention, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-04182-z

In related news, you've never had so much fun at a science lecture:
Sasquatch Distribution Modelling: Investigating patterns of Bigfoot sightings in North America
Annual Halloween lecture by Prof Joss Wright at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oct 31 2024
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Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Sub-contracting the Subconscious

 
People just don't think like they used to!

Increased AI use linked to eroding critical thinking skills
Jan 2025, phys.org

Cognitive Offloading - where individuals rely on the tools to reduce mental effort; questions arise about long-term impacts on memory, attention, and problem-solving.

Younger participants showed higher dependence ... 

It's hard, or near impossible, not to remember that Socrates warned of the alphabet and reading as having the same effect on the youth of ancient Greece. Yet still, this is the recommendation:

The study's findings, if replicated, could have significant implications for educational policy and the integration of AI in professional settings. Schools and universities might want to emphasize critical thinking exercises and metacognitive skill development to counterbalance AI reliance and cognitive effects.

I am not marketing for the AI takeover in any way, but how about the idea that instead of these "tools" causing a decline in critical thinking, they might be allowing us to choose where we use critical thinking...like they might be allowing us to better decide when to decide, and when to leave it to the robots. It's likely that the majority of people, no matter their age, will not ask a robot how to best take care of their mom after their dad dies. Or whether to tell their spouse they've been unfaithful.

Maybe we're actually wasting precious brainpower on stupid decision all day; maybe we're wasting our most important skill over all skills, that of critical thinking, that which sets us apart from every other organism on this planet. And maybe it's the wasted decisions, the wasted thoughts, that we're getting rid of. And maybe it's a sign that the critical thinking tests we use today are actually part of that waste, and we need to devise even more complex surveys to detect the even more complex thinking that we can attain now that we've dumped all the less important stuff. 

I mean what happened to the youth of ancient Greece? How were we measuring their intelligence and how might it have changed? Could you imagine what the test would have looked like? And what it would leave out that today we take for granted as basic thinking skills?

via Swiss Business School: Michael Gerlich, AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking, Societies (2025). DOI: 10.3390/soc15010006



Post Script:
New essay warns of dangers in measurement illiteracy
Jan 2025, phys.org

"From the American eugenics movement to the 2008 market crash, history is replete with episodes showing the adverse impact that failures of measurement literacy can exact on the enterprise of science and everyday human affairs."

This essay is a good reminder of how complicated science is. 

via City College of New York's Grove School of Engineering and several others: Arthur Paul Pedersen et al, Discourse on measurement, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401229121

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