Category Physics

Schrödinger’s anthill: Quantum entanglement found in a crystal large enough to hold

Computer visualization of quantum effects in a 3D crystal
© TU Wien / Harald Ritsch

Scientists have uncovered surprisingly strong quantum entanglement inside a hand-sized crystal, revealing that even macroscopic materials can behave in profoundly quantum ways. A centimeter-sized crystal has revealed clear signs of quantum entanglement, showing that large, everyday objects can display surprisingly deep quantum behavior. The discovery could help solve the mystery of strange metals while opening new possibilities for ultra-precise quantum sensors and other advanced technologies.

Quantum phenomena are usually associated with extremely small objects such as individual atoms, molecules, or photons that must be carefully isolated from their surroundings...

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New AI add-on helps developers automate everyday programming tasks

New AI add-on helps developers automate everyday programming tasks
Overview of the Program-as-Weights paradigm. Credit: arXiv (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2607.02512

Developers are increasingly relying on large language models (LLMs) for everyday computing tasks such as fixing bugs, explaining code and automating text-processing tasks like filtering logs.

However, it’s not as simple as entering or submitting a question and relying on the model to give you the answer. While humans easily understand these tasks and know exactly what they want, it is difficult to translate them into rigid computer code.

The cloud dilemma
As standard programming is often not up to the task, developers often use AI to handle jobs that are difficult to express as traditional rules...

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Some agentic AI browsers may come with major cybersecurity risks

Some agentic AI browsers come with major cybersecurity risks, study finds
Attack concept in which a malicious website leverages a prompt injection and a browser agent’s cross-origin access to circumvent the same-origin policy and steal cross-origin data. Credit: University of Washington

In the last year or so, artificial intelligence companies have rolled out a spate of web browsers equipped with AI agents. A user might ask one of these agents to plan a vacation, and it will open browser tabs to research routes and restaurants, then make reservations and add events to the user’s calendar. How well it does any of this varies.

New research from the University of Washington found that the most powerful of these browsers also open users up to significant cybersecurity risks...

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AI tool improves prediction of who will respond to cancer immunotherapy drugs

AI tool improves prediction of who will respond to cancer immunotherapy drugs
Fine-tuning strategies based on the pretrained COMPASS model. Credit: Nature Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-026-04502-7

Cancer immunotherapy drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can be miracle drugs for cancer patients, curing some and turning deadly disease into a manageable chronic condition in others. But these drugs work for only a subset of patients, with few indications why—a knowledge gap that has detrimental effects on patient prognosis, clinical trial recruitment and research that could lead to new therapies.

A new artificial intelligence model called COMPASS, developed by Harvard Medical School researchers and their colleagues, improves prediction of which patients are most likely to respond to ICIs...

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