Described in the cover article of this month's Science Robotics, Caltech's innovative algorithm called Spectral Expansion Tree Search helps autonomous robotic systems make optimal choices on the move.

Can insights from topology---the study of the properties of 3D objects that persist when an object is stretched or compressed---be applied in the field of quantum information processing? Juan Lin, Shou-Bang Yang, Fan Wu, and Zhen-Biao Yang, researchers at Fuzhou University, China, believe so. Accordingly, they studied changes in the first Chern number, a topological invariant, in connection with a Kerr nonlinear oscillator. Their research was published August 5 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal, in an article titled “Topological Transitions in a Kerr Nonlinear Oscillator.”

A new AI method enables the generation of sharp, high-quality 3D shapes that are closer to the quality of the best 2D image models. Previous approaches typically generated blurry or cartoonish 3D shapes.

Lung cancer is emerging as a public health crisis. Yet, there is limited information on the lifetime risk of developing and dying from lung cancer at global, regional, and national levels. To bridge this gap, researchers from China estimated the lifetime risk of lung cancer across 185 countries in 2022. Their findings reveal the diverse impact of lung cancer across countries, sexes, and age groups, highlighting the need for more targeted interventions.

Dr Florian Kaiser, Head of the Quantum Materials group at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), has been awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant worth €3 million. This grant will fund his research project, “Q-Chip”, which aims to demonstrate that quantum processors and quantum memories can be operated simultaneously on a single chip, thus overcoming existing scalability challenges in quantum technologies.

The project will build on groundbreaking research, also led by Dr Kaiser and his team, that explores silicon carbide's potential to significantly improve scalability in quantum computing. On completion, this project will drive a major shift towards reliable, affordable, and widely accessible quantum technologies.