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Abstract: It’s about TIME (tumor immune microenvironment) for BreastCancer

Here, Carlos L. Arteaga & team analyze patient biopsies, finding CD8+ T cells in the TIME promote resistance to estrogen suppression in HR+ breast cancer via CXCL11 and immune-related pathways:

The images: GeoMx-based immunofluorescence of breast tumor tissue obtained during estrogen deprivation therapy (letrozole) demonstrates increased immune cell infiltration in estrogen deprivation–resistant tumors (right) compared with sensitive tumors (left).

1UT Southwestern Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.

2Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy.

3Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Few studies report on urinary microbiota, especially in pediatric conditions

Here, Miguel Verbitsky & team analyze urine from 325 participants in the Randomized Intervention for Children with Vesicoureteral Reflux study (RIVUR study), revealing genetic variations influence bacterial composition of urine in children with recurrent urinary infections and vesicoureteral reflux:

The image shows cytokeratin 5 and smooth muscle actin labeling after UTI in mouse bladder, which increases expression of Cxcl12 and Cxcr4.

3Department of Dermatology; and.

4Center for Precision Medicine and Genomics, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.

5Department of Neurology, Heersink School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

How AI & Quantum Are Reshaping Federal Innovation

By Chuck Brooks

#artificialintelligence #tech #government #quantum #innovation #federal #ai

By Chuck Brooks, president of Brooks Consulting International

In 2026, government technological innovation has reached a key turning point. After years of modernization plans, pilot projects and progressive acceptance, government leaders are increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence and quantum technologies directly into mission-critical capabilities. These technologies are becoming essential infrastructure for economic competitiveness, national security and scientific advancement rather than merely scholarly curiosity.

We are seeing a deliberate change in the federal landscape from isolated testing to the planned implementation of emerging technology across the whole government. This evolution represents not only technology momentum but also policy leadership, public-private collaboration and expanded industrial capability.

The Hot Mess of AI: How Does Misalignment Scale with Model Intelligence and Task Complexity?

When AI systems fail, will they fail by systematically pursuing the wrong goals, or by being a hot mess? We decompose the errors of frontier reasoning models into bias (systematic) and variance (incoherent) components and find that, as tasks get harder and reasoning gets longer, model failures become increasingly dominated by incoherence rather than systematic misalignment. This suggests that future AI failures may look more like industrial accidents than coherent pursuit of a goal we did not train them to pursue.

Edge of Many-Body Quantum Chaos in Quantum Reservoir Computing

Reservoir computing (RC) is a machine learning paradigm that harnesses dynamical systems as computational resources. In its quantum extension—quantum reservoir computing (QRC)—these principles are applied to quantum systems, whose rich dynamics broadens the landscape of information processing. In classical RC, optimal performance is typically achieved at the “edge of chaos,’’ the boundary between order and chaos. Here, we identify its quantum many-body counterpart using the QRC implemented on the celebrated Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Our analysis reveals substantial performance enhancements near two distinct characteristic “edges’‘: a temporal boundary defined by the Thouless time, beyond which system dynamics is described by random matrix theory, and a parametric boundary governing the transition from integrable to chaotic regimes.

One-of-a-kind ‘plasma tunnel’ recreates extreme conditions spacecraft face upon reentry

Picture a spacecraft returning to Earth after a long journey. The vehicle slams into the planet’s atmosphere at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. A shockwave erupts. Molecules in the air are ripped apart, forming a plasma—a gas made of charged particles that can reach tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, many times hotter than the surface of the sun.

The sight is spectacular to behold, but it’s also dangerous, said Hisham Ali, assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.

The Columbia disaster is a tragic example. On Feb. 1, 2003, as the space shuttle reentered Earth’s atmosphere, plasma flooded into the vehicle through a defect in its shield of protective tiles. The shuttle disintegrated, and seven crewmembers, including CU Boulder alumna Kalpna Chawla, died.

Pushback Works: Adobe Animate Is Not Shutting Down

According to the company’s new announcement, the earlier warning stating that March 1, 2027, would be the application’s final day should now be disregarded, as Adobe is neither discontinuing nor removing access to Adobe Animate, and there is no longer any deadline or date set for when Animate will stop being available.

Going forward, the software will remain accessible to both new and existing users, although Adobe has confirmed that users shouldn’t expect the addition of any new features. Instead, the program will remain in a perpetual “maintenance mode,” meaning Adobe will continue supporting the application and providing regular security updates and bug fixes.

Angstrom-scale plasmonic gap boosts nonlinear light output by 2,000% per volt

Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (NINS, Japan) and SOKENDAI have demonstrated a more than 2000% voltage-induced enhancement of near-field nonlinear optical responses. To achieve this giant modulation, they focused on an angstrom-scale gap formed between a metallic tip and substrate in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which can strongly confine and enhance light intensity through plasmon excitation. The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers discovered that when the voltage across the junction was varied within ±1 V, the intensity of second-harmonic generation (SHG) changed quadratically with voltage and exhibited giant modulation with a depth of ~2000%/V. This represents a more than two-orders-of-magnitude improvement over previous electroplasmonic systems.

Moreover, similar giant electrical modulation was also observed for sum-frequency generation, a nonlinear optical process that upconverts mid-infrared light into visible or near-infrared light. This demonstrates that the newly discovered electrical modulation mechanism is applicable to the broad spectral range, not limited to a specific optical wavelength or nonlinear optical process.

Physicists achieve near-zero friction on macroscopic scales

For the first time, physicists in China have virtually eliminated the friction felt between two surfaces at scales visible to the naked eye. In demonstrating “structural superlubricity,” the team, led by Quanshui Zheng at Tsinghua University, have resolved a long-standing debate surrounding the possibility of the effect. Published in Physical Review Letters, the result could potentially lead to promising new advances in engineering.

When two objects slide over each other, any roughness on their surfaces will almost inevitably resist the motion, creating the force of friction. Yet in 2004, physicists showed that friction can be virtually eliminated between two graphite surfaces, simply by rotating their respective molecular structures.

Named structural superlubricity (SSL), the effect is highly desired by engineers; in principle, allowing them to eliminate wear on both surfaces and minimize energy lost as waste heat.

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