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Category: computing

‘Virtual clinical trials’ may predict success of heart failure drugs

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a new way to predict whether existing drugs could be repurposed to treat heart failure, one of the world’s most pressing health challenges. By combining advanced computer modeling with real-world patient data, the team has created “virtual clinical trials” that may facilitate the discovery of effective therapies while reducing the time, cost, and risk of failed studies.

“We’ve shown that with our framework, we can predict the clinical effect of a drug without a . We can say with high confidence if a drug is likely to succeed or not,” says Nansu Zong, Ph.D., a biomedical informatician at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the study, which was published in npj Digital Medicine.

Entanglement of photonic modes from a continuously driven two-level system

The ability to generate entangled states of light is a key primitive for quantum communication and distributed quantum computation. Continuously driven sources, including those based on spontaneous parametric downconversion, are usually probabilistic, whereas deterministic sources require accurate timing of the control fields. Here, we experimentally generate entangled photonic modes by continuously exciting a quantum emitter — a superconducting qubit — with a coherent drive, taking advantage of mode matching in the time and frequency domain. Using joint quantum state tomography and logarithmic negativity, we show that entanglement is generated between modes extracted from the two sidebands of the resonance fluorescence spectrum. Because the entangled photonic modes are perfectly orthogonal, they can be transferred into distinct quantum memories. Our approach can be utilized to distribute entanglement at a high rate in various physical platforms, with applications in waveguide quantum electrodynamics, distributed quantum computing, and quantum networks.

Yang, J., Strandberg, I., Vivas-Viaña, A. et al. Entanglement of photonic modes from a continuously driven two-level system. npj Quantum Inf 11, 69 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-025-00995-1

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Avatars for Astronaut Health to Fly on NASA’s Artemis II

NASA announced a trailblazing experiment that aims to take personalized medicine to new heights. The experiment is part of a strategic plan to gather valuable scientific data during the Artemis II mission, enabling NASA to “know before we go” back to the lunar surface and on to Mars.

The AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation will use organ-on-a-chip devices, or organ chips, to study the effects of deep space radiation and microgravity on human health. The chips will contain cells from Artemis II astronauts and fly side-by-side with crew on their approximately 10-day journey around the Moon. This research, combined with other studies on the health and performance of Artemis II astronauts, will give NASA insight into how to best protect astronauts as exploration expands to the surface of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Mapping the universe, faster and with the same accuracy

If you think a galaxy is big, compare it to the size of the universe: it’s just a tiny dot which, together with a huge number of other tiny dots, forms clusters that aggregate into superclusters, which in turn weave into filaments threaded with voids—an immense 3D skeleton of our universe.

If that gives you vertigo and you’re wondering how one can understand or even “see” something so vast, the answer is: it isn’t easy. Scientists combine the physics of the universe with data from astronomical instruments and build , such as EFTofLSS (Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure). Fed with observations, these models describe the “cosmic web” statistically and allow its key parameters to be estimated.

Models like EFTofLSS, however, demand a lot of time and computing resources. Since the astronomical datasets at our disposal are growing exponentially, we need ways to lighten the analysis without losing precision. This is why emulators exist: they “imitate” how the models respond, but operate much faster.

New Phoenix attack bypasses Rowhammer defenses in DDR5 memory

Academic researchers have devised a new variant of Rowhammer attacks that bypass the latest protection mechanisms on DDR5 memory chips from SK Hynix.

A Rowhammer attack works by repeatedly accessing specific rows of memory cells at high-speed read/write operations to cause enough electrical interference to alter the value of the nearby bits from one to zero and vice-versa (bit flipping).

An attacker could potentialluy corrupt data, increase their privileges on the system, execute malicious code, or gain access to sensitive data.

The Role of Bioelectrical Patterns in Regulative Morphogenesis: An Evolutionary Simulation and Validation in Planarian Regeneration

Endogenous bioelectrical patterns are an important regulator of anatomical pattern during embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer. While there are three known classes of instructive bioelectric patterns: directly encoding, indirectly encoding, and binary trigger, it is not known how these design principles could be exploited by evolution and what their relative advantages might be. To better understand the evolutionary role of bioelectricity in anatomical homeostasis, we developed a neural cellular automaton (NCA). We used evolutionary algorithms to optimize these models to achieve reliable morphogenetic patterns driven by the different ways in which tissues can interpret their bioelectrical pattern for downstream anatomical outcomes. We found that: All three types of bioelectrical codes allow the reaching of target morphologies; Resetting of the bioelectrical pattern and the change in duration of the binary trigger alter morphogenesis; Direct pattern organisms show an emergent robustness to changes in initial anatomical configurations; Indirect pattern organisms show an emergent robustness to bioelectrical perturbation; Direct and indirect pattern organisms show a emergent generalizability competency to new (rotated) bioelectrical patterns; Direct pattern organisms show an emergent repatterning competency in post-developmental-phase. Because our simulation was fundamentally a homeostatic system seeking to achieve specific goals in anatomical state space (the space of possible morphologies), we sought to determine how the system would react when we abrogated the incentive loop driving anatomical homeostasis. To abrogate the stress/reward system that drives error minimization, we used anxiolytic neuromodulators. Simulating the effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors diminished the ability of artificial embryos to reduce error between anatomical state and bioelectric prepattern, leading to higher variance of developmental outcomes, global morphological degradation, and induced in some organisms a bistability with respect to possible anatomical outcomes. These computational findings were validated by data collected from in vivo experiments in SSRI exposure in planarian flatworm regeneration.

From Sci-Fi to Reality: New Breakthrough Could Bring Holograms to Your Phone

New research from the University of St Andrews is advancing holographic technology, with potential applications in smart devices, communication, gaming, and entertainment. In a paper published in the journal Light, Science and Application, physicists from the School of Physics and Astronomy reported the creation of a new optoelectronic device that combines Holographic Metasurfaces (HMs) with Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs).

Until now, holograms have typically been generated using lasers. The St Andrews team, however, demonstrated that pairing OLEDs with HMs provides a more compact and straightforward method. This approach is not only easier to implement but also less expensive, addressing one of the key challenges that has limited wider use of holographic technology.

OLEDs are thin-film devices already common in mobile phone displays and some televisions, where they create colored pixels. Because they are flat and emit light across their surface, OLEDs are also promising for emerging fields such as optical wireless communication, biophotonics, and sensing. Their versatility and ability to integrate with other components make them well-suited for developing miniaturized, light-based systems.

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