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Nature tidbits [11 Dec 2025]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2026 by xi'an

This issue of Nature features dinosaurs on its cover, as in old-time science magazines, yay! In association with a new (tiny) species of tyrannosaurus.

On the Trump 2.0 disaster scene, a reflection on the dangers of the Genesis Mission, which directed by the US Department of Energy to create AI scientists–and give AI companies access to federal datasets. Trump’s attempt to have his own (obviously Big & Beautiful) Manhattan Project?! Unsurprisingly, sounds very messy at this stage.

ICLR 2026 being exposed having 21% of the reviews are fully AI generated using tools from Pangram Labs, in New York. (And around 10% of the submissions being mostly written by AIs as well.) The inevitable evolution of the machine learning conference reviewing process?! Plus a review of the impact of Alphafold for its fifth anniversary. And a discussed paper by Oh & al. on meta-learning, conceiving reinforced learning algorithms that learn how to create learning algorithms. Without engaging with the paper per se I wonder at the degree of incrementality of the proposal. And hence find the catastrophic warning reproduced below rather over-the-top.

“In conclusion, it seems probable that AI will have an increasing role in the design of AI algorithms, a trend for which Oh et al.’s work is a harbinger. It is both exciting and worrying; the potential for intellectual discovery is vast, but the possible acceleration of a technology that already has an outsized societal impact is concerning in a world that is almost certainly not ready for the field’s dizziest possibilities to be realized ahead of schedule.” Joel Lehman

Also a book review of Belluz & Hall’s Food Intelligence, on the harms of processed food and the many myths that come with obesity and diets. Along a comment on diminishing investments on agricultural science being partly to blame for high food prices. And a concentration of the countries involved in R&D. But not helping (me) with the paradox that developed countries struggle to keep farming profitable enough for the farmers. As shown by the perpetual unrest of heavily subsidised farmers in the EU.

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Nature tidbits [06 Nov 2025]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2026 by xi'an

In this issue of Nature (I read on my way to Warwick), a pre-COP30 tribune, to be opposed to later issues!, with a positive take on the impact of the Trump Administration ignoring the conference, with the advances made by China and India (with a surprising 50% of “installed electricity generation capacity coming from non-fossil sources”, if more critical on Brazil’s efforts than the subsequent tribune by the Brazilian undersecretary for ecological transformation for environment, plus a tribune on the ambiguous terms used by countries to secure access to “critical” minerals, in tune with the on-going muscle-flexing attitudes of China and the US. Although the comment is more focussing on the universal access to minerals than to the protection of the workers extracting it and to the environmental impact of it. Followed though by another comment on the climate impact(s) on mining as (no longer) extreme weather events hinder mining all over the (mining) world.

A reflection on China’s 5y plan for science and its reaching a $500 billion annual investment in R&D, predicting (with a large confidence margin) that it will become the #1 power in sciences and technology in the coming decade. I am actually surprised that China has not yet achieved this goal for semi-conductors. And a tribune on the mixed signal of Takaichi Sanae becoming Japan’s first female prime minister, for science as a whole and for gender equity. (My take being that her having UK’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, as a role-model is not particularly promising. Just like the projection of Marine Le Pen on the verge of becoming France’s first female president does not carry any optimistic message!)

A light entry on a chemical analysis of the specifics of koti luwak (or civet coffee) that does not tell much, beside civet  digestion  adding caprylic and capric acids making beans lower in proteïns and higher in fat. Not yet reaching the goal of “leaving the animals out” from producing this luxury coffee ($75 a cup!).

An article on the shrinking number of US PhD admissions (in some colleges) conflicting with another article in a later issue of a stable influx. And a rather shallow article on the creativity or lack thereof of AI, along with the high sycophancy of LLMs,  to be opposed to a thoughtful reflection on how AI is radically changing the PhD experience and focus, if almost shelving statistics as a thing from the past! But insisting on graduates keeping their ability to check for the validity of their (AI’s)  statistical conclusions!! And another entry on the systematic dismantling of US federal scientific agencies like EPA, CDC, NASA, NOOA, NIH, &tc., by Trump -2.0, which beyond terminating staff contracts in huge proportions is culling the independence of these agencies. With generational impacts on science, training, and evidence-based policies.

A Where I work column featuring a pangolin treated by a Singapore vet, Charlene Yeong. (Unfortunately said pangolin was euthanised after the surgical intervention.) And a book review on the background and motivations of Francis Crick,  just prior to his collaborator James Watson passing away. As noted by the author, Cobb, as MRC staff and later non-resident fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego,  “Crick never had to teach or grapple with university administration: he applied for a grant only once in his life.” And concludes that he was not a saint or a hero but “an extraordinarily clever man with limits to his interests and perception”.

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Nature tidbits [23 October 2025]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 27, 2025 by xi'an

In this October issue of nature, plenty of the “usual” topics, namely AI and Trump.2.0 wrecking balls, along with two cosmology entries that related to my trip to the early universe last week, and a pros-and-cons opposition about animal testing,

a discussion on the nature of the “little red dots” that have been recently observed and whose nature remains open, the most popular explanation (I was given during lunch) being black holes surrounded by gas (even though I cannot understand why the gas is not attracted by the black hole!) [and would have produced a more exciting cover!]

a review of the recent book Discordance: The Troubled History of the Hubble Constant by Jim Baggott, entitled Why we still don’t understand the Universe — even after a century of dispute! A review that regrets that more time is spent on the Hubble “constant” (which varies with time!) rather than more controversial issues like dark matter and dark energy (And strangely bemoans that the book is focussed on scientific developments, missing sociological ones. Duh?! (Bonus for a picture of suit-and-tie Edwin Hubble sitting at the centre of a telescope),

two entries on the well-being [or lack thereof] of PhD students, with nothing particularly surprising (eg, inclusivity and respect help!), and Brazil, Australia and Italy ranking top locations but in a comparative study that does not mention France (as often in international comparisons found in Nature) despite the place being in the top 10 countries delivering PhD degrees, not that I believe PhD students are particularly well-treated in French academia!, the (unexplained) surprise being Italy ranking so high given the close resemblance between the two countries (low stipends, shortage of postdoc and permanent positions, high teaching loads for the advisor, limited travel budgets),

a conference (purposedly) made of AI-written papers reviewed by AI referees, Agents4Science 2025, how universities are rushed into adapting to AI-fluent students, whose skills are changing, and the rise in fake authors produced by paper mills, with a limited range of acceptable solutions,

why Trump 2.0‘s blackmail on pharmaceutical companies is counter-productive and likely to slow down progress, and why his massive increase of highly qualified scientists is shooting (or nuking) USelf in the foot, given the huge proportion) of im/emigrated Nobel prize winners (for physics, chemistry, and medicine), along the (post-) Nobel prize in economics is a direct or indirect reply to this regression by awarding the Prize to economists who worked on the importance of creativity and science on growth (not very surprising at first look!)

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Nature tidbits [30th October 2025]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2025 by xi'an

In this October issue of nature, items of interest (to me) [already highlighted in an emailed News Highlight]:

Google claim a significant ‘quantum advantage’ by quantum-echoes algorithms that they say is 13,000 faster than classical algorithms, but it is unclear from the nature article where and when their algorithms can be used, apparently missing to apply to realistic scientific applications… (Along with a paper on an “atom-array architecture that enables continuous operation with reloading rates of up to 30,000 initialized qubits per second while preserving coherence across a rearranged large-scale qubit array”.)

On the Trump vs. Science scene, a predicted drop in PhD admissions as an adaptation to (uncertain) Trump’s cuts, bans, visa restrictions, and other attempts at arm-bending and blackmailing  (And the novelty of me receiving applications from the US, a first!) Some U.S. departments have simply cancelled PhD admissions… But some universities have so far resisted the Orange pressure. Namely, the MIT, Brown University, (good old) Penn, UCLA, the University of Virginia (albeit agreeing to a deal), Dartmouth College, and the University of Arizona in Tucson. Vanderbilt has given in. (UT Austin and Harvard seem to be continuing the discussion with the Trump administration.) Meanwhile, China is zooming past! The issue also contains articles on how fundamental science discoveries have had hugely practical consequences, in case one need argue with a sceptic.

As a less urgent issue, some researchers at Institut Pasteur in Paris identified new diseases that did not help Napoléon’s Grande Armée as it retreated from Moscow, from the DNA of 13 soldiers buried in Lithuania. (With nature failing to give credit to the painter Adolph Northen for his famous “Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow” illustrating the story, attributed to the researchers in the paper!)

In this period of ERC announcements of their grantees, an analysis of the two-digit rise in applications. Unsurprising, given the international context. Along with a decrease in funding due to a lack of adjustment against inflation since 2007. (Incidentally, I found out this week that Torsten Elßin—at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics—I visited once had been selected for a Synergy grant on a 3D Milky Way Atlas. Along another cosmology Synergy grant at MPA on the Epoch of Reionization.)

A runner’s must-read that starts with the statement “the human body has a ‘metabolic ceiling’ that even the most extreme athletes cannot surpass”. Which would be 2.4 times the basal metabolic rate (BMR) for extended periods—by which the authors mean 30 weeks and over!, not a half-marathon. Not so exciting a paper in the end.

As predicted by the cover, a Royal Society meeting acknowledging the AI language models killed Turing’ test and questioning the next one. Since assessing the capacities and limitations of novel AIs and AGIs sounds more relevant and societally important. To wit, “;the Turing test of the future should question whether an AI is safe, reliable and provides meaningful benefit, he said, and should also ask who bears the cost of that benefit”. (As discussed in the book review of The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits) by Maximilian Kasy, in the same volume. And yet another paper on AI biases.)

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Natural quantum MCMC

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2025 by xi'an

Quite unexpectedly, I opened Nature of 16 October 2025 only to realise it featured a paper by Chi-Fang Chen et al. on a valid MCMC algorithm for quantum computing. The motivation is for simulating quantum multi-body physics, with details that escape me. The paper claims this is the first valid quantum MCMC quantum thermal simulation, with further application similar to the MCMC revolution in Bayesian inference. (An earlier proposal by Davies in 1974 cannot be implemented for many-bodies problems.)

“Although early proposals for simulating thermalization directly considered simulating the global system–bath Hamiltonian evolution, more tractable approaches use a master equation, or Lindbladian, to capture the effect of a large bath on the small system using a continuous-time Markovian process. However, previous approaches inherited issues of the prototypical Davies generator, which worked well in quantum optics but has unphysical features in noncommuting many-body systems because of the exponentially small level spacing. Our nature-inspired algorithm takes precisely the form of a Lindbladian, inherits the locality from the physical model, exactly satisfies detailed balance and resembles the interactions we expect from weak coupling to a Markovian thermal bath.”

The setup is one of a continuous-time quantum Markov chain (or Lindbladian) over a finite set of configurations. The arguments for validating the algorithm (into a completely spelled out theorem!) involve quantum detailed balance (illustrated by the above cartoon) and locality (which I understand as a form of Markovianity in the updating rule). The transition attached to the algorithm however remains incomprehensible to me, involving a Fourier transform of a Hermitian jump operator (both notions escaping me in this context).  And the illustration on an Ising model does not seem particularly quantum related, albeit the “Pauli operators” may be unrelated with the original spin binaries… There is also no MCMC reject step.

“Detailed balance (…) gives a coherent Gibbs sampler, in which we prepare the purified Gibbs state by a natural adiabatic path parametrized by the inverse temperature β. Of course, the purified Gibbs state reduces to the (mixed) Gibbs state once we trace out the purifying replica system, but the purification opens doors to advanced quantum algorithmic tools, such as verification (for example, through the swap test or measuring the energy of the parent Hamiltonian) or faster mean estimation.”

If I understand correctly the above “Gibbs sampler” relates to the Gibbs distribution as in the original 1984 paper of Geman and Geman! It may thus be that the current paper is similarly annunciating a new era in scientific computing, although I remain in the dark as to how to link it with a practical problem.

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