A Concordia-led team of researchers has developed a new artificial intelligence-based method of detecting toxic online content that is faster and more accurate than existing tools. The system is designed to ensure social media platforms can reliably prevent user-generated content they deem harmful from appearing online.

Bumble bees demonstrated an unexpected ability to solve a novel object-based challenge without training. A bee’s brain is smaller than a sesame seed, yet in a new experiment, some bumble bees appeared to solve a problem that required more than simple instinct. They had to move an object into position, climb onto it, and use [...]

Individuals subject to extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), or "red flag" laws, were significantly less likely to be arrested—including for violent and firearm-related offenses—while the orders were in effect than in the six months before. Strikingly, the drop in arrests did not end when the orders expired and continued for months afterward, according to a new study published in PNAS Nexus.

Every year, more people in England and Wales are involved in disputes before the civil courts than in the criminal courts. More than 1 million claims a year—for personal injury, debt, housing disrepair, faulty consumer goods or breach of contract, for example—are dealt with in the county court.

The Life House Impact Project, led by Dr. Georgia Bowers, Professor Andrew King and Dr. Richard Green, worked with older LGBTQ+ people to document their real concerns about housing and social care—and then brought those experiences into training for the people responsible for that care. The report shows that the proportion of staff who said they regularly or always met their LGBTQ+ service users' needs rose from 55% to 85% in the weeks following the training.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.

Quantum science is the study of matter at the smallest scales, like atoms, electrons, and single particles of light. While it’s easy to imagine atoms as billiard balls bouncing off one another, they also exhibit wave-like behavior, can exist simultaneously in two places at once, and may even pass through one another.

About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, just above absolute zero, atoms form a large quantum object called a Bose‑Einstein condensate, or BEC, a collection of matter waves that is a fifth state of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. This object follows the rules of quantum mechanics despite being much larger than subatomic particles, and the microgravity of low Earth orbit helps make the waves even larger.

“At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced,” said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility. “The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe.”

The project supports five international teams studying fundamental physics. It also tests the space-readiness of quantum tools that could support future Earth science and space exploration missions.

How it works

The heart of the Cold Atom Lab is a complex set of instruments called its science module. An upgraded module launched on April 11 as part of a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, enabling new kinds of experiments.

For each experiment, a strip of rubidium or potassium metal is heated to as high as 750 F (400 C) — hot enough to form a gas within the facility’s vacuum chamber. Lasers tuned to specific frequencies are then fired at the gas, draining the energy from these atoms, and cooling them by slowing them down. Once this gas has completed the laser-cooling stage, a magnetic trap captures and holds the gas in place. Through a series of complex techniques, the laboratory reduces an atom cloud’s energy further, bringing it close to a standstill and maximizing its time in microgravity.

While facilities for studying ultracold gases exist on Earth, the Cold Atom Lab can study quantum gases in microgravity for longer periods of time and at even lower temperatures. Conducting these experiments in low gravity allows scientists to study larger quantum waves that also interact for longer times with gravity. To harness these benefits, the Cold Atom Lab essentially shrinks an atom physics lab, typically the size of an entire room filled with lasers and tabletop mirrors, to fit within an experiment rack aboard the space station.

“As the first project to create Bose-Einstein condensates in orbit, we’re demonstrating that we can make quantum technology work reliably in space,” said Ethan Elliott, deputy project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at JPL. “In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging. We’re performing quantum 2.0 — direct manipulation of large quantum states — and we hope for similar gains in quantum tech by advancing this science in orbit.”

The latest upgrade is the fourth since the Cold Atom Lab arrived at the space station in 2018. Key improvements include a newly designed magnetic trap that changes the shape of the quantum gas clouds, allowing scientists to test different properties related to their atoms. The upgrade also features redesigned metal strips that act as sources for those gas clouds.

“It’s the closest thing we have to controlling the boundary of the quantum world,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, project manager of Cold Atom Lab at JPL, referring to those low temperatures. “This new upgrade pushes that boundary even further.”

The upgrade, Oudrhiri added, “demonstrates NASA’s ability to maintain U.S. leadership in space-based quantum technologies while maturing future quantum instruments, such as matter-wave interferometers for fundamental physics missions, positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing of Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”

More about Cold Atom Lab

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed, built, and operates the Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth. 

To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:

https://nasa.gov/cold-atom-laboratory/

Media Contact

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2026-039

The post NASA’s Quantum Lab Aboard Space Station Gets Chilly Upgrade appeared first on NASA Science.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.

Quantum science is the study of matter at the smallest scales, like atoms, electrons, and single particles of light. While it’s easy to imagine atoms as billiard balls bouncing off one another, they also exhibit wave-like behavior, can exist simultaneously in two places at once, and may even pass through one another.

About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, just above absolute zero, atoms form a large quantum object called a Bose‑Einstein condensate, or BEC, a collection of matter waves that is a fifth state of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. This object follows the rules of quantum mechanics despite being much larger than subatomic particles, and the microgravity of low Earth orbit helps make the waves even larger.

“At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced,” said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility. “The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe.”

The project supports five international teams studying fundamental physics. It also tests the space-readiness of quantum tools that could support future Earth science and space exploration missions.

How it works

The heart of the Cold Atom Lab is a complex set of instruments called its science module. An upgraded module launched on April 11 as part of a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, enabling new kinds of experiments.

For each experiment, a strip of rubidium or potassium metal is heated to as high as 750 F (400 C) — hot enough to form a gas within the facility’s vacuum chamber. Lasers tuned to specific frequencies are then fired at the gas, draining the energy from these atoms, and cooling them by slowing them down. Once this gas has completed the laser-cooling stage, a magnetic trap captures and holds the gas in place. Through a series of complex techniques, the laboratory reduces an atom cloud’s energy further, bringing it close to a standstill and maximizing its time in microgravity.

While facilities for studying ultracold gases exist on Earth, the Cold Atom Lab can study quantum gases in microgravity for longer periods of time and at even lower temperatures. Conducting these experiments in low gravity allows scientists to study larger quantum waves that also interact for longer times with gravity. To harness these benefits, the Cold Atom Lab essentially shrinks an atom physics lab, typically the size of an entire room filled with lasers and tabletop mirrors, to fit within an experiment rack aboard the space station.

“As the first project to create Bose-Einstein condensates in orbit, we’re demonstrating that we can make quantum technology work reliably in space,” said Ethan Elliott, deputy project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at JPL. “In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging. We’re performing quantum 2.0 — direct manipulation of large quantum states — and we hope for similar gains in quantum tech by advancing this science in orbit.”

The latest upgrade is the fourth since the Cold Atom Lab arrived at the space station in 2018. Key improvements include a newly designed magnetic trap that changes the shape of the quantum gas clouds, allowing scientists to test different properties related to their atoms. The upgrade also features redesigned metal strips that act as sources for those gas clouds.

“It’s the closest thing we have to controlling the boundary of the quantum world,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, project manager of Cold Atom Lab at JPL, referring to those low temperatures. “This new upgrade pushes that boundary even further.”

The upgrade, Oudrhiri added, “demonstrates NASA’s ability to maintain U.S. leadership in space-based quantum technologies while maturing future quantum instruments, such as matter-wave interferometers for fundamental physics missions, positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing of Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”

More about Cold Atom Lab

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed, built, and operates the Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth. 

To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:

https://nasa.gov/cold-atom-laboratory/

Media Contact

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2026-039

Half of young men in Switzerland are concerned that "real men" are increasingly being marginalized in society. A large-scale study by the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich (UZH), in collaboration with männer.ch, shows how prevalent restrictive and dominance-based concepts of masculinity are. These ideas go hand in hand with misogyny, a propensity for violence and opposition to gender equality. Prevention efforts should start in schools.

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools closed 49 elementary schools—the largest mass public school closure in U.S. history at the time. A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in Social Science & Medicine, shows that, in addition to limiting access to education, the school closures also led to increases in gun violence.

It's the time of year when parents are thinking of registering their children for kindergarten in September—a much-anticipated moment in the lives of many parents and their young ones.

"What do dads do on Tuesdays?" This wasn't a rhetorical question when I posed it to my wife as our daughter's birth approached. Before my daughter was born, I had seen my father just once in the past 27 years. That's more than 1,400 Tuesdays. In fact, as a kid I hardly saw fathering any day of the week, save for on TV sitcoms; absent dads were prevalent within my family and among my peers.

At the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bielefeld University is looking for fans of all national teams. The Football Fever Study uses smartwatch data to record how match events affect fans' heart rates and stress levels. Anyone wearing a device from one of 13 supported brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and Garmin, can take part.

JUNO’s first results have launched a new era of precision neutrino physics and brought scientists closer to solving the neutrino mass mystery. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) has achieved its first major scientific milestone. On June 10, its debut physics result was featured as a cover article in Nature. Using 59 days of high-quality [...]

As public trust in the U.S. Supreme Court continues to fall, new research from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania finds that jury service is associated with more positive attitudes toward courts and judges—but that Americans' opportunities to serve are shrinking as jury trials become increasingly rare.

According to UNESCO, around 250 million children (16%) globally are out of school, although they are of an age to be at school in their countries. Available evidence suggests that out-of-school numbers are extremely high in conflict-affected countries, though the exact number is hard to quantify. For example, in the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Eritrea, more than 50% of primary school-age children are not going to school.

Children not only enjoy watching movies like Moana, but also learn lessons from them and apply those lessons to their own lives. That is the conclusion reached by communication scientists at Radboud University. For example, a movie can inspire children not to give up, to work together and to develop their own identity. In addition, movies can encourage children to think about social issues such as climate change and beauty standards.

Does it seem as though more people are coming out as neurodivergent these days?

Since 2022, Georgia's surrogacy industry has boomed, with oversubscribed clinics now recruiting women from across Central Asia via Instagram and TikTok. New research conducted at the University of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) provides unprecedented insight into the hidden systems of emotional control sustaining Georgia's transnational surrogacy market.

A child at a playground tries to climb, jump or negotiate with a peer, and the attempt does not work. They fall, get left out of a game or reach another impasse. Then they try again.

Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year, "brain rot," refers to the loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills due to the overconsumption of specific types of content, most often in the digital sphere. A Binghamton University doctoral student has published findings that help explain how the structural forces of large tech companies make it difficult to focus, read and even engage in democracy.