Scientists have successfully translated an entire viral genome into a format a quantum computer can process and analyze — the first time this has been accomplished at full-genome scale.

The work, which involved encoding the genetic sequence of a virus as quantum data, was published and reported by researchers who say the approach could eventually allow quantum systems to identify viral mutations, model genomic interactions, and assist in drug discovery at speeds classical computers cannot match.

What the researchers did

The team converted the nucleotide sequence of a complete viral genome — the ordered string of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine base pairs that encodes all viral instructions — into qubits, the basic unit of quantum information. Unlike classical bits, which hold a value of either 0 or 1, qubits exploit superposition to represent both states simultaneously, allowing a quantum processor to evaluate many possible sequence configurations at once.

Translating a genome for quantum analysis requires mapping each nucleotide or group of nucleotides to a corresponding quantum state. The process is non-trivial: genomic data is inherently sequential and high-dimensional, while current quantum hardware operates with limited qubit counts and high error rates.

Getting a complete viral genome — even a relatively compact one — to fit within those constraints required data compression and encoding strategies tailored to the quantum architecture.

The viral genome selected for this experiment is small relative to bacterial or human genomes, but the encoding itself represents a meaningful proof of concept for how biological sequence data can interface with quantum processing systems.

Why quantum hardware is being applied to genomics

Classical genomic analysis tools — including BLAST for sequence alignment and machine learning models trained on genomic databases — are computationally intensive. Comparing a novel pathogen’s genome against a reference library, or predicting how mutations affect protein folding, demands significant processing time and energy when done at scale.

Quantum computing offers a theoretical speed advantage for certain classes of problems, including optimization and pattern matching across large combinatorial spaces.

Genomic sequence analysis, which often involves searching for the best alignment among millions of possibilities, fits that profile. Quantum technology is also being explored for improvements in semiconductor physics, with researchers finding that quantum phenomena in solid-state materials may open new device architectures.

For genomics specifically, the potential application is not just speed. Quantum algorithms such as the Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd (HHL) algorithm are designed to solve linear systems exponentially faster than classical counterparts, which could transform how researchers model gene expression networks or viral replication dynamics.

Hardware constraints and open questions

Current quantum computers operate in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era — devices with dozens to a few hundred physical qubits that are prone to decoherence errors. Encoding an entire genome does not mean a NISQ device can analyze it with the same fidelity as a fault-tolerant quantum computer would. The present achievement is closer to a compatibility demonstration than a functional genomic analysis pipeline.

Error correction remains a central obstacle. Physical qubits must be grouped into logical qubits with redundancy to suppress noise, which multiplies the hardware requirement substantially.

For reference, a truly fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of running complex genomic algorithms at scale could require millions of physical qubits — far beyond today’s hardware. The research is framed as an early but concrete step toward quantum-enabled biology, not an operational system.

There is also the question of data input bandwidth. Loading large biological datasets into a quantum system — a process called quantum random access memory (QRAM) — remains an active area of research with no widely agreed-upon hardware implementation.

Path to practical application

Translating a viral genome for quantum processing establishes that the conceptual pipeline — from biological sequence to quantum representation — is viable at the genome scale. The next engineering challenge is running meaningful quantum algorithms on that data and benchmarking their output against classical tools.

Pandemic preparedness is one area where faster genomic analysis would have concrete value. During the COVID-19 pandemic, tracking variant emergence required continuous re-sequencing and comparison of viral genomes across global databases.

A quantum-accelerated version of that workflow could, in principle, compress the timeline from sequence detection to variant characterization. Whether current or near-term quantum hardware can deliver that in practice remains an open question that this research alone cannot answer.

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Scientists find fog droplets host growing bacteria that may help clean polluted air.

This new five-step protocol could make surgery a lot less painful

The post The Healing Power of Dreaming Under Anesthesia appeared first on Nautilus.

Anthropic just released Claude Fable 5, calling it the most powerful AI model it has ever made widely available and praising its skills in biology, among others. But the model won't answer basic biology questions - the kind you'd expect a high schooler to handle. Instead, it hands off the query to the former flagship model, Claude Opus 4.8.

It isn't because Fable doesn't know the answers. It's because Anthropic won't let it, by design.

Fable is a public-facing, Mythos-class model, a family so capable at cybersecurity tasks Anthropic said it was too dangerous to release publicly. But while Anthropic has spent much of the extended Mythos rol …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Researchers operating a deep-sea submersible have found the world’s largest known whale graveyard on the ocean floor, uncovering dozens of whale carcasses and a thriving ecosystem of creatures — many believed to be new to science — feeding off the remains.

What the submersible found

The discovery was made during a submarine dive that brought cameras and sensors to depths where light does not penetrate. Researchers observed multiple whale carcasses scattered across the seafloor in close proximity, forming what scientists are now calling the largest concentration of whale fall sites ever recorded in a single location.

Whale falls — the term for a whale carcass that sinks to the seafloor after death — are known to sustain entire biological communities for decades. Soft tissue attracts mobile scavengers first, followed by collagen-consuming organisms, and finally chemosynthetic bacteria that break down lipids embedded in the bones. Each stage can support a distinct faunal assemblage, and the full succession can span 50 to 100 years on a single carcass.

At this site, researchers reported seeing animals that they believe had not been previously documented by science. The density of carcasses in one location is particularly unusual; most documented whale falls are isolated, stumbled upon by chance during unrelated deep-sea surveys.

The biology of a whale fall

A whale carcass functions as a nutrient island in an otherwise food-scarce environment. In the deep ocean, organic material from the surface is sparse by the time it drifts to abyssal depths.

A single large whale can deliver tens of thousands of pounds of organic carbon to the seafloor in a single event — a concentrated pulse of energy that would otherwise take decades to accumulate through marine snow, the slow drift of organic particles from surface waters.

Chemosynthetic bacteria, analogous in ecological function to those found at hydrothermal vents, colonize whale bones during the final decomposition stage. These bacteria oxidize hydrogen sulfide produced by the anaerobic breakdown of bone lipids, generating energy without sunlight.

This process can sustain specialized invertebrates — including polychaete worms, clams, and gastropods — that are adapted exclusively to chemosynthetic environments.

Finding multiple whale falls in proximity means the overlapping succession stages may allow species to migrate between carcasses, effectively turning the graveyard into a connected habitat rather than a series of isolated biological islands. Whether that dynamic is occurring at this newly discovered site remains a question researchers will need to address through further sampling.

Limits of what is currently known

The full taxonomic scope of what lives at the site is not yet established. Identifying potentially new species from submersible footage alone is preliminary; formal species descriptions require physical specimens, morphological analysis, and genetic sequencing.

The claims about novel organisms, while scientifically plausible given the inaccessibility of the deep sea, remain unconfirmed until peer-reviewed taxonomy is completed.

The precise location and depth of the graveyard have not been publicly disclosed in detail, which limits independent verification at this stage. Deep-sea expeditions of this kind are expensive and logistically complex, meaning follow-up dives to collect physical samples may take months or years to organize.

The research was first published in the journal Nature.

IQM Quantum Computers has developed a new quantum error-correcting code that it says can reduce logical error rates by up to 1,000 times compared with the widely used surface code while requiring up to eight times fewer physical qubits.

The company said the new approach, called barbell codes, could help address one of the biggest challenges facing quantum computing: correcting errors quickly enough to enable large-scale, fault-tolerant machines.

Quantum computers are highly sensitive to noise, which can introduce errors during calculations. To overcome this, researchers use quantum error correction, a process that spreads information across multiple physical qubits to create more reliable logical qubits. However, existing methods often require large numbers of qubits and increasingly complex hardware.

According to IQM, its new code aims to improve both efficiency and practicality by lowering error rates while reducing the number of physical qubits needed to protect quantum information.

Fewer qubits, fewer errors

The barbell code family was designed specifically for IQM’s Constellation processor architecture, which features enhanced connectivity between qubits. In the system, each qubit can directly interact with up to 12 neighboring qubits, compared with four in a conventional square-grid arrangement.

The company said the design allows high-performance error correction without requiring extensive additional hardware. Barbell codes rely on a single long coupler connection for every second qubit, reducing the need for multiple long-range crossing couplers that can complicate chip fabrication.

By taking advantage of the processor’s connectivity, the code can generate the entanglement needed for error correction while keeping hardware requirements comparatively low.

“We are pioneering the next chapter in quantum computing,” said Jan Goetz, CEO and Co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers.

“Our approach offers a highly competitive path to scalable quantum error correction with superconducting qubits, paving the way for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.”

The company said the approach is intended for real-world superconducting quantum processors rather than idealized laboratory systems, with an emphasis on manufacturability and scalability.

Building practical quantum

Error correction is widely considered one of the key hurdles preventing today’s quantum computers from tackling commercially valuable problems at scale. While advances in qubit quality have steadily improved hardware performance, experts believe fault-tolerant systems will require robust error-correction schemes capable of suppressing errors faster than they accumulate.

IQM claims its barbell codes offer a path toward that goal by combining lower logical error rates with lower hardware complexity. The company said the technology supports its roadmap toward quantum systems capable of operating with hundreds of high-precision logical qubits.

The development comes as IQM prepares to deploy 150-qubit quantum systems to customers later this year. The company has also announced IQM Halocene, a quantum computer designed for testing and developing error-correction technologies.

If the reported performance gains can be replicated in large-scale systems, the new approach could help reduce the hardware overhead traditionally associated with fault-tolerant quantum computing.

The development details and numerical performance analysis were published on arXiv.

DEDURU OYA, Sri Lanka – On April 16, eight members of Priyantha Kumara’s family including his wife, son, brother, father-in-law, and four other relatives were swept away by strong currents in the Deduru Oya, a river in Sri Lanka’s North Western province. Sri Lanka Police reported more than 30 drowning deaths between April 12 and 21 this year, underscoring the risks posed by flooding rivers. Sri Lanka Police media spokesperson Udaya Kumara Wootler told Mongabay that 376 individuals have died due to drowning in rivers last year while 595 fatalities were reported in 2024. Buddhika Sampath, spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Navy told Mongabay that the Navy Diving Unit recovered 148 bodies of people between May 2022 and May 2023. While the police are yet to disclose official statistics of deaths due to drowning from January to May 2026, the number of reported incidents show over 50 fatalities. Kumara is a resident of Gopallawa in the northwestern district of Kurunegala. His son had requested that they all go for a bath in the river. The group had been bathing at a popular spot named Kuriyagas Mankada when they met the tragedy. “My son was only 13 years old, and he was a bright student,” Kumara told Mongabay. “My brother was about to hold a housewarming ceremony at his newly built house. But all these dreams were shattered within seconds. My father used to take us to this same spot to bathe when we were young. But the river has changed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Submit your abstract for “Advancing Weather and Environmental Science Through NASA and NOAA Commercial Satellite Data Programs,” a joint session hosted by NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, in partnership with the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Commercial Data Program (CDP).

The session is part of the 23rd Symposium on Operational Environmental Satellite Systems, which will take place at the 2027 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting January 10-14 in Denver, Colorado. It will examine the growing capabilities of commercial Earth observation providers that are creating new opportunities to advance weather research, operational forecasting, and environmental science applications.

NASA’s CSDA program and NESDIS’s CDP collaborate to expand federal access to commercial satellite data and accelerate its use in both research and operational applications.

The CSDA program supports the scientific community by evaluating and acquiring diverse commercial datasets, including optical, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation and Reflectometry, methane, precipitation, and Digital Elevation/Terrain Models for modeling, hazard monitoring, climate studies, and applied research.

Similarly, the CDP operationalizes commercial space-based environmental data, with demonstrated impacts from assimilated observations in weather forecasting and space weather applications. It also conducts pilot projects and transitions the piloted data to operations.

Together, the CSDA and CDP strengthen the nation’s weather enterprise by enabling innovative research, closing observational gaps, and integrating commercial data into real-world forecasting and decision support applications.

To submit an abstract or for additional information about the abstract submission process, visit the symposium’s website.

The post NASA, NOAA to Hold Joint Session at 23rd Symposium on Operational Environmental Satellite Systems appeared first on NASA Science.

Submit your abstract for “Advancing Weather and Environmental Science Through NASA and NOAA Commercial Satellite Data Programs,” a joint session hosted by NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, in partnership with the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Commercial Data Program (CDP).

The session is part of the 23rd Symposium on Operational Environmental Satellite Systems, which will take place at the 2027 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting January 10-14 in Denver, Colorado. It will examine the growing capabilities of commercial Earth observation providers that are creating new opportunities to advance weather research, operational forecasting, and environmental science applications.

NASA’s CSDA program and NESDIS’s CDP collaborate to expand federal access to commercial satellite data and accelerate its use in both research and operational applications.

The CSDA program supports the scientific community by evaluating and acquiring diverse commercial datasets, including optical, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation and Reflectometry, methane, precipitation, and Digital Elevation/Terrain Models for modeling, hazard monitoring, climate studies, and applied research.

Similarly, the CDP operationalizes commercial space-based environmental data, with demonstrated impacts from assimilated observations in weather forecasting and space weather applications. It also conducts pilot projects and transitions the piloted data to operations.

Together, the CSDA and CDP strengthen the nation’s weather enterprise by enabling innovative research, closing observational gaps, and integrating commercial data into real-world forecasting and decision support applications.

To submit an abstract or for additional information about the abstract submission process, visit the symposium’s website.

Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in the US found an elusive type of vibration, called the Higgs mode, in a semiconductor material for the first time. The collective movement of atoms resulted in a change in the symmetry of the crystal, which can be tuned to optimize the material’s properties. 

If you recall science taught at school, you will remember that in gases molecules are loosely packed and are in motion, whereas in solids, molecules are densely packed and rigid, which gives them a defined shape. Yet, even within solids, atoms are in a constant motion. Much of this is vibrational motion, which is random and uncoordinated. 

Scientists know that certain inputs can turn this random motion into coordinated, in-sync movement. Collectively, these vibrations make a sound, referred to as phonons. By tuning phonons, scientists have also found a way to influence the structure and behavior of materials. 

Finding the Higgs mode

Researchers at ANL were using light to change the phonon activity in a semiconductor material called metal halide perovskites. These materials are crucial as we look to build the next generation of solar cells, advanced sensors and quantum technologies. 

During one of their experiments, where the scientists exposed a two-dimensional perovskite crystal to ultrafast laser pulses, they noticed a complex and elusive type of vibration that modulated the symmetry of the crystal itself. This is called Higgs mode. 

Throughout history, researchers have found mathematical analogs of Higgs mode in various materials. The Higgs boson in particle physics, or that in superconductivity, which allows electricity to flow through a material with no resistance. 

The Higgs mode is an oscillation in a system to a degree where it shows some symmetry or order. It typically emerges when a system undergoes a phase transition due to a phenomenon known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. 

On this occasion, ANL researchers observed Higgs mode for the first time in a semiconductor material. 

Higgs mode in semiconductor material

The researchers were working with butylammonium lead iodide, a metal halide perovskite which is used to make single-layer semiconducting crystals. Finding its Higgs mode allowed researchers to tune their band gaps, making them better suited for solar cell applications. 

Band gaps of a semiconductor material determine which light frequencies it can absorb to make electricity in a solar cell and which ones they scatter. In their experiments, when the researchers exposed the semiconductor to ultrafast laser pulses, small groups of atoms in it began to oscillate. 

The interactions between the electrons of these oscillating atoms changed their angles too. Interestingly, this also changed the bandgap of the material. 

“We found that the bandgap increased and decreased periodically and rapidly,” said Richard Schaller, a scientist at ANL who was involved in the work. ​“Essentially, the color of the sample oscillated as it rocked through different crystal symmetries — turning redder and then bluer, over and over.”

The researchers also found that this Higgs mode steered the crystal toward a phase that cannot be achieved by heating it. This demonstrates that light-based excitation of material is different from heat-based excitation, thereby offering a new way to explore material phases and properties. 

“If we can use light to control structural and electronic changes in materials on ultrafast time scales they might find use as optical switches in modern microelectronics and quantum technologies,” added Ayushi Shukla, postdoctoral researcher at ANL in a press release. ​

“Also, stabilizing novel, high-symmetry phases with low band gaps could open exciting opportunities for photovoltaic applications.”

The research findings were published in Nature Materials. 

Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System.

The post Lunar Meteorite Preserves Evidence of Colossal Asteroid Strike appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Brain scans have uncovered two biologically distinct forms of autism hidden within the spectrum. An international team of researchers has identified at least two biologically distinct forms of autism by examining how different regions of the brain communicate with one another. The findings could help advance more precise and personalized approaches to autism care and [...]

California could be due for a major earthquake in the near future, according to concerning new models based on data comprising 1,000 years of quake activity on the West Coast.

According to recent findings, tectonic stress has quietly been building in California to levels not seen since the last major earthquake in the region, which bore a magnitude of 7.9 and struck the West Coast nearly 170 years ago.

That event, known as the Fort Tejon earthquake, affected the greater Los Angeles area, and since the time of those historic rumblings, researchers have grown increasingly concerned about a period of seismic silence that could point to the likelihood of an event of similar magnitude at some point in the future.

The potentially concerning new forecast was detailed in a recent study by an international team of researchers led by Dr. Liliane Burkhard of the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, which focused on historic earthquake data as a means of gauging current stress loading at Cajon Pass.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, indicates tectonic stress levels that are now believed to exceed the highest seen during the years the team surveyed.

The “Earthquake Gate” at Cajon Pass

The researchers aimed to investigate stress that has slowly built along the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults and incorporated what they likened to an “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass, which, in their models, functioned like a point of control that governed the size of earthquakes and whether they could spread to both systems.

For their research, they used a four-dimensional earthquake cycle model that allowed them to replicate certain processes both in spatial dimensions and across time.

Using a millennium of reconstructed earthquake data from the region based on geological information such as radiocarbon dates, unusual events recorded in dendrochronological data (i.e., information obtained from tree rings), and historical information sources, the team gave this to the model they devised.

Dr. Burkhard said the team’s simulation offered them a unique opportunity to better understand the ways stresses in the fault system build up over long periods of several centuries.

“By running the earthquake history of Southern California as a simulation, we can estimate the extent to which the fault system is already under stress today,” Dr. Burkhard said. The results of those simulations weren’t particularly promising either: according to Burkhard, current stress levels in the region are the highest they have been in 1,000 years, based on the data.

Concerning New Earthquake Data

The team also identified significant new information regarding the function of the so-called “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass.

“The earthquake gate concept captures something important about how fault junctions work,” Burkhard said in a recent statement. “Cajon Pass doesn’t simply block or channel earthquakes: It responds to stress conditions, and those conditions change over centuries.”

Not only this, but Burkhard and her team also determined that a key element to these quakes involves not only the level of stress that accumulates at a single fault, but perhaps more significantly, the way stress between two systems can align. This is because, as the stress across a pair of faults rises together over longer periods, this appears to be most conducive to a large joint rupture comparable to the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake.

Conversely, if stress levels are not in concert as they evolve, the team determined that this causes quakes that probably will not propagate beyond the junction.

In short, a more severe earthquake event today would entail a joint rupture that crosses the Cajon Pass, as opposed to one constrained either to the San Andreas or the San Jacinto Fault alone. Should such an event occur, it would likely impact one of the largest population centers, as well as a crucial infrastructure system that supplies energy and transportation to surrounding areas.

For Burkhard, “The question of when and how the next major earthquake will occur in this region is one of the most pressing problems in applied geoscience.” Based on the team’s findings, they say that their new modeling hopes to provide a much more complete picture of the science behind the factors that could lead to a major quake—conditions that could apply equally to other parts of the world as they do to California.

Burkhard adds that her team’s study is not intended merely as a prediction for when the next major earthquake could potentially occur, but also as a means of preparing for future quakes and mitigating their effects.

“What we can say is that the system is critically stressed and that physics-based models like ours give a clearer picture of the range of scenarios we should be prepared for,” Burkhard says. “This information is important for hazard assessment, infrastructure planning, and emergency preparedness.”

The team’s study, “Cajon Pass and the Southern San Andreas Fault System: Earthquake Cycle Stress Accumulation and Present‐Day Loading,” appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

In the literature related to the powerful entheogen dimethyltriptamine (DMT), it is often reported that individuals claim to have had encounters with what they perceived as non-human entities during their DMT experiences. Descriptions related to these powerful visionary experiences range from what some describe as insect-like forms and machine-like intelligences, to what some describe as conscious entities associated with intricate geometries.

For years, many researchers have regarded these reports purely as hallucinations generated by the human brain while under the influence of the psychedelic compound. However, past studies have never directly tested whether these reported entities could represent something other than internally generated hallucinations.

Now, a recent preprint paper outlines a path toward testing this assumption experimentally.

A collaborative team from the Trace Institute and the nonprofit Noonautics has released a preprint titled Traces of the Other –Are DMT Entities Real? DMT Phenomenology in the Framework of Conscious Realism. The study presents a mathematical framework for understanding the human psychedelic experience and outlines experiments designed to test its primary hypothesis.

The research was led by Professor Emeritus Donald Hoffman, founder of the Trace Institute, and Dr. Andrew Gallimore, a neurobiologist and pharmacologist at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and head of Noonautics. The preprint is currently awaiting peer review.

A Problem With a Default Answer

According to some figures, as many as 45% of the individuals who take a sufficient dose of DMT report experiences involving non-human beings. People describe these entities as intelligent and autonomous, and report similar experiences across different cultures and backgrounds.

Typical hallucinations tend to draw on material from memory, such as familiar faces, animals, or places. By contrast, encounters with other humans appear in less than 5% of DMT encounters.

The authors of the new preprint study argue that these reports are difficult to reconcile with conventional accounts of pure hallucination and that the consistency of reports regardless of culture, location, belief systems, and other factors warrants deeper investigation. 

A Framework Built on Conscious Realism

The project draws on Hoffman’s theory of conscious realism, which proposes that interacting conscious agents fundamentally constitute reality. In this framework, the physical world as humans perceive it functions more like a user interface than a direct view of objective reality. According to this theory, conscious agents of varying levels of complexity may exist beyond what humans normally perceive and go unnoticed in everyday life.

The researchers propose that DMT changes the perceptual interface, allowing consciousness to access regions where normal perceptual constraints are absent. In these regions, it may be possible to detect traces of other conscious agents. Hoffman says the project “will provide a new framework for exploring the effects of psychoactive substances such as DMT on the structure and function of spacetime.”

The Protocol That Makes Testing Possible

Testing these ideas has become possible due to past work involving technical development by Gallimore and researcher Rick Strassman. Typically, a DMT experience lasts only three to five minutes, which is not long enough for structured experiments. The extended-state DMT protocol, called DMTx, uses a controlled intravenous infusion to maintain a stable experience for up to an hour, allowing researchers to adjust the dosage as required.

That controllable window makes experimentation possible. “With a theoretical foundation for the highly unusual state of consciousness induced by DMT, we can test these theories experimentally,” Gallimore says.

Experiments Built to Fail

The proposed experiments are designed so that if the external-agent hypothesis is incorrect, the results will be negative. In one protocol, a computer in a sealed room randomly displays either blue or yellow, and a subject under DMTx attempts to learn the hidden color by interacting with an entity. Another experiment involves two isolated subjects under DMTx who try to transmit a random word to each other through a shared entity, a process that would be difficult to explain solely in terms of internal brain mechanisms.

The researchers acknowledge several limitations. Cooperation from entities cannot be guaranteed, results depend on subjective reports, and expectation bias is difficult to rule out. The preprint continues to treat the hallucination model as the default explanation for these entities. What distinguishes this work is that the hypothesis is now formulated in a way that allows for experimental testing.

“This collaboration is a first step to a mathematics of altered states of consciousness and, ultimately, for engineering our perceptual interface to expand our view of reality,” Gallimore says.

Hoffman and Gallimore will discuss the research publicly on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at the Lighthouse Campus at the historic Venice Beach Post Office in Los Angeles, with video to follow on YouTube.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly skilled at understanding the world around it, but new research suggests it still has a major weakness: reading human facial expressions. Researchers at Cornell University have been exploring ways to give robots greater social intelligence so they can work more effectively alongside people. Social intelligence allows humans to read facial […]

The post Why robots struggle to understand human facial expressions appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

An unexpected human behavioral tendency to prefer turning counterclockwise rather than clockwise has been uncovered by a team of researchers in Spain and Japan, and its cause remains unknown.

In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, the team sought to identify patterns in individual human behavior among large crowds and determine which factors influence them. Surprisingly, the team found that counterclockwise turning is the overwhelmingly common behavioral preference, regardless of gender or culture, with only age making a slight difference.

An Unexpected Behavior

The team’s work could have ramifications not only for psychology but also for architecture, engineering, and design, enabling more intuitive layouts. Work on the project began at Spain’s University of Navarra, before experiments continued at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

The University of Navarra team discovered the phenomenon entirely by accident while researching social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, their interest was in monitoring how effectively the recommended six-foot spacing could be maintained in public spaces. They observed how humans moved through spaces, such as museums, without a set route. While closely monitoring crowd video, they were surprised to witness the counterclockwise trend emerge.

“When analyzing the experiments, my colleagues realized by chance that in 32 out of 33 experimental trials, as people moved and turned, they noticeably preferred to turn counterclockwise,” said co-author Professor Claudio Feliciani from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

“This was completely unexpected as, at least instinctively, when people walk around randomly, you imagine people turn as their needs suit them with little sign of an overall preference,” Feliciani added. “But there was a definite, measurable tendency for people to turn counterclockwise over clockwise, all things being equal.”

Exploring Internationally

With their curiosity piqued, the University of Navarro team sought to test their findings against further observations to determine which factors might be influencing the behavior. They decided to seek international follow-up observations. This brought them into contact with Claudio Feliciani, whose presence in Tokyo would allow the project to test how the trend played out across cultures, and among other factors. 

For the second stage of the project, Feliciani and his team developed a series of experiments targeting age, handedness, gender, group size, and cultural influence. They observed pedestrian test subjects in both constrained and open environments.

“Of all these things, the only thing that stood out was that kids tend to have a stronger bias for the counterclockwise direction, so probably age plays a role in making the effect weaker or stronger,” said Feliciani. “Our results may appear as a minor, insignificant discovery, but in nature, most phenomena related to locomotion show that animals mostly walk without directional preference.”

“The strong bias found in people hints to some asymmetry at the biomechanical level,” Feliciani added.

Unknown Behavioral Causes

With the international project having confirmed the counterclockwise trend, the researchers are now moving on to more granular exploration of the phenomenon at the individual level. They hope that this more individualized research will yield some information on what biomechanical factors may be driving the behavior.

“It likely does not come from the eyes, because we tried to patch people’s left or the right eyes and the bias was still there,” Feliciani said. “And some people asked us if it might be large-scale phenomena like the Coriolis force or Earth’s magnetic field, but this seems unlikely given what we have managed to point to so far. “

Both lead investigator Iñaki Echeverría Huarte and Feliciani say that the Coriolis effect has become something of a joke among the team, and that they are invariably asked about it when presenting their findings.

“As a curious aside, a friend and collaborator in Argentina was intrigued enough to run some similar experiments when he heard about this,” Huarte told The Debrief of the team’s research in an email. “He tells me that, with no proper scientific confirmation yet, the counterclockwise rotation still seems to be there in the southern hemisphere too.

“There are some interesting parallels to certain sports,” Feliciani concluded. “Some running and driving competitions are always, but inexplicably, taken on courses that run counterclockwise. But that’s an investigation for another time.”

The paper, “Individual Locomotor Bias Drives Counterclockwise Motion in Pedestrian Crowds,” appeared in Nature Communications on June 10, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

A process originally developed to decarbonize steel production may also function as a large-scale electrical energy storage system, according to research into molten oxide electrolysis (MOE) and iron-based flow battery chemistry.

The convergence of these two approaches has drawn attention from engineers looking for ways to store renewable electricity without relying on lithium or other scarce materials.

How molten oxide electrolysis works in iron production

Molten oxide electrolysis involves dissolving iron ore — primarily iron oxide, or Fe2O3 — in a molten oxide electrolyte at temperatures exceeding 1,500°C (2,732°F). An electrical current is passed through the melt, reducing the iron oxide at the cathode to produce liquid metallic iron, while oxygen is released at the anode.

The process produces no direct carbon dioxide emissions, unlike the conventional blast furnace route that relies on coke as a reductant. Boston Metal has been among the companies advancing this approach at pilot scale, and the company’s progress on emissions-free steel illustrates how capital-intensive the transition away from fossil-fuel-based metallurgy will be.

Iron-air and iron flow batteries as a parallel technology

Separately, iron-based flow batteries and iron-air batteries have been gaining traction as candidates for long-duration energy storage. Iron-air cells cycle between oxidation states of iron — essentially rusting and de-rusting the electrode material — to store and release electricity.

Form Energy has publicly discussed iron-air battery systems targeting 100-hour storage duration at costs intended to compete with natural gas peaker plants. Iron flow batteries, meanwhile, use dissolved iron salts in an aqueous electrolyte circulated through electrochemical cells, with the energy stored in the oxidation state difference between iron(II) and iron(III) ions.

The dual-use concept: steelmaking reactor as energy storage

The more technically ambitious idea explored in recent research is whether a single electrochemical system could perform both functions — reducing iron ore while storing energy during periods of excess renewable generation, and releasing that energy on demand. In this model, the electrolysis cell charges when electricity is cheap and abundant, reducing iron oxide to iron metal.

When electricity is needed, the process reverses: the iron is re-oxidized, generating current. The iron ore feedstock effectively becomes the storage medium.

This approach draws on the well-understood electrochemistry of the Fe2+/Fe3+ redox couple, but scaling it to industrial steelmaking temperatures and throughput rates introduces significant materials challenges.

Electrode and refractory materials must survive prolonged exposure to both highly oxidizing and highly reducing conditions at extreme temperatures, and the round-trip energy efficiency of a reversible high-temperature system remains an open engineering question. Thermal losses alone at 1,500°C (2,732°F) represent a substantial efficiency penalty compared to room-temperature flow batteries.

Grid integration and practical constraints

From a grid-storage perspective, coupling an industrial process to electricity dispatch introduces scheduling conflicts. A steel plant optimized for continuous production cannot freely pause or reverse its electrochemical reactors to follow an electricity price signal without affecting throughput and product quality.

Partial decoupling — using dedicated MOE cells purely for storage, separate from production cells — would recover flexibility but at increased capital cost and facility footprint.

Iron as a storage material does offer one practical advantage over lithium-ion systems: it is abundant, geographically well-distributed, and carries no significant supply chain concentration risk.

The electrochemical reactions are also well-characterized, which lowers the barrier for modeling system behavior over thousands of charge-discharge cycles.

The path from laboratory electrochemistry to a commercially viable dual-use plant requires resolving electrode degradation rates, thermal management at scale, and the economic trade-offs between storage revenue and steel output.

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