Will Quantum sensing be bigger than Quantum Computing?

At LSS we’re a pretty eclectic kind of blog. So when we think we’ve got into a rut -too much on Antibiotics, Anthropoid Ape Men, or the deeds of Mr Trump- we like to spin the wheel so that you, gentle readers, may be the first to become au fait in yet another exciting area of cutting-edge human endeavour. And today we have chosen Quantum Sensing, that quiet shy sister of the much louder Quantum Computing, which might just turn out to be the Cinderella who scooped the ball. [1]

So what is Quantum sensing? The scientific miracle that crept up on us while everyone was busy arguing about quantum computing. Instead of trying to build impossible machines, quantum sensing takes the strange behaviour of atoms, photons and spins and uses it to measure the world with a delicacy classical physics simply can’t reach.

What’s the step change? A quantum sensor doesn’t rely on bulk electronics or brute force; it relies on superposition, entanglement and other quantum states that are inherently more precise. The result is a new class of instruments that can detect the faintest magnetic fields, the tiniest vibrations, and the most subtle changes in gravity — a kind of scientific eyesight that feels almost unfair in its sharpness.

What makes quantum sensing genuinely new? Classical sensors, like rulers, are always fighting noise: thermal noise, electronic noise, environmental noise. Quantum sensors sidestep those constraints by using states of matter that are the limit — the smallest possible unit of information, the most stable possible oscillation, the purest possible signal.

Hang on-are people actually using this stuff, now, in like, August 2026? Yup: the kit is suddenly appearing in many fields: mapping quantum materials, stabilising next‑generation clocks, imaging nanoscale structures, and even probing biological systems without damaging them. It’s not an incremental upgrade; it’s a shift in what measurement science can do, when the mood takes it. [2] [3]

Why have you showcased it? because it represents science at its most elegant. Quantum sensing isn’t about building bigger machines or consuming more power; it’s about learning to see the world with new eyes. Many of the sensors themselves are tiny jewels of engineering — diamonds with engineered defects, single trapped ions, levitated nanoparticles — each one a reminder that progress sometimes comes from finesse rather than force. In a year dominated by loud technologies, quantum sensing is the quiet triumph: a discipline that turns the universe’s weirdness into clarity, and shows how much beauty there is in simply measuring the world more truthfully.

Can I buy one in my local hardware store? A: Not quite yet. Quantum sensors are still the domain of research labs, national metrology institutes and a few very specialised companies. For now, your local hardware shop will continue to offer the trusty tape measure, the spirit level and the laser rangefinder — all perfectly good tools until quantum sensing makes its way into everyday kit. Think of it as the future arriving in slow, elegant steps rather than on the shelves of B&Q.

However: Most advances in science-and the human condition- ultimately come from advances in measurement. We think this might be one such

[1] Quantum sensor – Wikipedia

[2]Quantum sensors for biomedical applications | Nature Reviews Physics

[3] Quantum Imaging and Sensing – Recent articles and discoveries | Springer Nature Link

#quantum sensor #quantum computer #nanoscale #physics #biology #technology #measurement

Sea side dangers? Why Statistics is the true masterclass in critical thinking

Does living by the seaside make you ill? Today, we’re showcasing some excellent reporting by Shaun Wooller of the Mail because it’s a perfect example of how to interpret statistics, and more importantly, how not to interpret them. And to strike a personal note: we think the discipline of statistics might give us a way out of the muddle the world has got itself into by relying on emotion, unreason and by inveterately jumping to conclusions. But first to Shaun’s article [1]

He quotes huge, statistically robust studies made by the impeccable University College London. Who find, unarguably, that if you live in one of Britain’s seaside towns you are going to have a 21% higher chance of developing chronic health conditions such as diabetes, cancer and depression. At first this seems counterintuitive: surely all those views and sea air are good for you? What dreadful maritime factor is at play? Should our seaside towns be evacuated at once? Fortunately, Shaun has the answer on hand: look at the samples. If you do that you find that A all the younger people tend to move away from such towns and B so do the affluent. Leaving behind a population of elderly, poorer residents who are, ipso facto, more likely to suffer from these ailments anyway. Which leads us to our own conclusion: sea air may be good for you :but statistics are much, much better

Long standing readers will recall our piece about the dangers of Ice Cream (LSS 23 4 20) in which we covered the irrefutably demonstrable fact that as ice cream sales increase, so does the chance of death by drowning. From which the hysterical and the ignorant might conclude that ice cream represents a clear and present danger to our young. Taking no cognisance of the fact that ice cream sales increase in warm weather, when more people go wild swimming in lakes rivers and oceans, massively increasing the drowning statistics for that week.How about banning lakes and rivers instead?

As Shaun shows us, as Professor Spiegelhalter does even more so in his excellent work {2] the discipline of statistics is a master class in critical thinking. It reminds us that, while many observations produce patterns, finding the cause of these is much more tricky. That the base rate is all important and that every sample made will necessarily be imperfect. Above all that all learning has limits, and what those limits may be. In a world on fire, where warring tribes now clash daily those may turn out to be very important lessons indeed.

[1]The UK regions where you’re more likely to get cancer, diabetes AND depression – it’s bad news for coastal areas | Daily Mail Online

[2]Spiegelhalter, David. The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data. London: Pelican (Penguin Books), 2019.

#statistics #health #epidemiology #medicine #survey #sample #cancer #diabetes #poverty #age

CRISPR contra Cancer

One of our longest running tropes has been the exciting new CRISPR Cas 9 gene editing technologies (LSS passim) Not just for the medical advances it offers, but because it’s a classic example of where those few in numbers but big on brains make a real difference, while the majority fight each other over the colours of their football shirts or whatever. Now Nature Briefings, that imprescindable go-to for all anxious to learn the latest in Science, has come up with a new step forward; Cancer Treatment CRISPR enzyme acts as DNA shredder. Read this:

An unusual CRISPR enzyme can cause cancer cells to self-destruct by shredding their DNA. The protein — Cas12a2, a variant of the usual Cas protein found in CRISPR systems — can be ‘trained’ to recognize a specific RNA sequence made by cancer cells. Once the enzyme finds its partner, it begins to slash the cell’s genome to pieces. Researchers hope that this seek-and-destroy approach could be used to kill tumours that express mutant proteins that have been difficult to target using conventional medicines. “This is basically a programmable chemotherapy,” says molecular biologist Yang Liu. Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Nature paper 1 & paper 2

What Cas12a2 really shows is how fast the CRISPR story has accelerated. In 2022, we were still marvelling that gene editing worked at all; today, the tools have become programmable therapies, capable of hunting down diseased cells with rules we write. CRISPR has gone from a clever molecular trick to a platform — one that keeps unfolding new possibilities with unnerving speed. If the early years were about proving the concept, this next phase is about deploying it, and Cas12a2 is a reminder that the frontier is no longer theoretical. Science haters everywhere take note: one day you’ll need us.

#molecular biology #cancer #CRISPR #gene editing # medicine #health

These fires are predictions coming true: so what about the future?

Europe burns: June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded in western Europe, driving temperatures to the highest levels seen in more than a century. In France, drought, low humidity and repeated heatwaves have turned forests into kindling; wildfires have already burned 35,400 hectares, four times the usual area for this point in the season, while Spain has lost 55,128 hectares, double its average. Across the continent, extreme heat is desiccating lakes, soils and crops at rates made many times more likely by human‑driven warming. Rivers across Europe are running so shallow that cargo ships are restricted, hydropower is curtailed, and Danube and Rhine river‑boat holidays are being cancelled because the Alps did not produce enough snow to melt into summer water levels.

Beyond Europe, the world’s high places are breaking too. In the Himalayas, the 2026 monsoon outlook warns of a dangerous paradox: long droughts punctuated by sudden cloudbursts, raising the risk of flash floods, landslides, and glacial‑lake outbursts across Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Pakistan. North America is enduring its own climate convulsions. The United States — where the cultural refrain “drill, baby, drill!” still echoes in parts of the political landscape — has been hit repeatedly by record‑strength heat domes, driving temperatures past human‑health thresholds and straining power grids from California to the Midwest. Canada, meanwhile, continues to reel from unprecedented wildfire seasons, with boreal forests burning at scales once considered impossible.

As early as the 1990s, researchers warned that rising temperatures and shifting rainfall would intensify fire regimes, especially in regions where drought and heatwaves coincide. By 2001, the IPCC’s landmark report Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [1] had already catalogued the pattern: climate change would alter “disturbance regimes” in forests, increasing the frequency and intensity of fires as ecosystems dried and heat extremes sharpened. It noted that major fire events in the 1990s — from the Amazon to Indonesia — were early signals of a climate‑driven shift, and that future warming would make such events more common and more severe. These were predictions, not scare stories, made by scientists who understood the physics, ran the models, and told us plainly what was coming. Remember: making accurate predictions is one of the signs of good thinking. Yet we also remember the barrels of scorn and opprobrium poured upon them by various well‑oiled journalistic and political machines that helped avert any meaningful action.

And the latest predictions? If we continue on our present path, the IPCC projects that by the 2030s and 2040s vast regions of the world will shift into permanent fire weather, with fire seasons lengthening by one to two months in southern Europe, western North America, and Australia. The World Meteorological Organization expects 1.5°C of warming to be locked in during the 2030s [2], a threshold at which extreme heat becomes annual, drought becomes structural, and forests lose their ability to recover between burns. By the 2040s, climate models show Mediterranean Europe facing megafires every few years, Canada’s boreal forests transitioning into a fire‑dominated ecosystem, and the American West experiencing summers where smoke becomes a chronic public‑health hazard, not an occasional crisis. The Himalayas, meanwhile, are projected to lose up to half their glacial mass, destabilising rivers and increasing the risk of catastrophic glacial‑lake floods. None of this is speculative; it is the median outcome of the world we are building. The scientists have already run the numbers. Will you still let a politician or a journalist tell you these scientists have been wrong all along? [3][4]

[1] Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability — IPCC

[2] WMO Global Climate Update; IPCC AR6

[3] Royal Society: Evidence & Causes of Climate Change

[4] IPCC AR6: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

#Nepal # Bhutan # India #Pakistan#United States #canada #spain #france #climate change #fossil fuel #global warming #alps #snow

Friday Night: : Chinchón, a mystery drink from a mystery novel (until now)

For easy reading we’ve always been fans of Spanish crime novels or el novela policíaca as they call them down Old Castile way. We normally let the detectives solve the mystery: we paid the money, let them do the work! Until that is, we came across an intriguing mystery of our own early in the pages of Ritos de Muerte by Alicia Giménez Bartlett. Whose protagonist Petra Delicado surprised us by knocking back something called Chinchón, not once but several times in the course of the novel. It being an utter unknown to us, we decided to employ our most assiduous Forensic skills in pursuit of further knowledge. And this is what we came up with.

Chinchón is a traditional anise liqueur from the town of Chinchón (Comunidad de Madrid), made by macerating anís verde (Pimpinella anisum) in alcohol and then distilling it. It comes in several strengths, from sweet and gentle to “knock‑your‑uncle‑over” levels of potency. The liqueur is produced exclusively in the eponymous town, where anise and vines have been cultivated since at least the 11th–12th centuries. There are four official varieties::

Dulce — 35–40% ABV, about 200 g of sugar per litre.

Seco — 40–50% ABV.

Extraseco — 50–55% ABV.

Seco Especial — a formidable 74% ABV.

If you like your drinks as a cultural marker, then this one tends to suggest Madrid. It’s an unfussy working drink. Something you’d find in bars where cops, civil servants, and old men argue about football. It’s usually served in a small anís glass and may be taken chilled or at room temperature. Ok, the novel is set in Barcelona: but it’s early days yet and so we await the Madrid Connection con antelación.

Good! Mystery solved. Now you can have a nice weekend.

Our background/showcase today comes from the Los Vinos website which seems to have content in both in English Spanish, making it good for language learners too!

Cocktails | Chichón A Digestive Par Excellence! Los Vinos

Ritos de Muerte Alicia Giménez Bartlett 1996 Ediciones Destino

#Petra Delicado #Chinchón #Castilian #Madrid‑#liqueur

Round Up: Arctic Melts, Testicular Transplants, Doubtful Drugs- and Car Parkinsons?

Here’s a few we saw but didn’t have time to cover:

Melt and melt again We are still worried about arctic ice and rising sea levels ,as The Conversation explores in some depth

https://theconversation.com/arctic-sea-ice-decline-seemed-to-be-slowing-until-two-record-breaking-low-ice-winters-287637?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=

Transplant restores sperm making There’s always some good news from Nature Briefing, often of the medical kind and if you like this you ought to find ways to subscribe to their newsletter

A man’s ability to make sperm has been restored after a transplant of tissue samples that were removed from one of his testicles and frozen 16 years earlier, when he was ten years old. The samples were taken shortly before he received chemotherapy treatments that put his fertility at risk. Whether the sperm collected from the transplanted tissue can successfully fertilize an egg, and produce a healthy baby, remains to be seen. But the achievement could mark the beginning of a new wave of fertility treatments, scientists say.

Nature | 5 min read
Reference: medRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)

One in ten medicines could be fake or substandard speculates that excellent read, The Conversation People who get obsessive about cutting regulations would do well to read this first: here’s what happens

https://theconversation.com/one-in-ten-medicines-worldwide-could-be-fake-or-substandard-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-287395?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign

Car Parkinsons? Most of us knew about the toxic chemicals in traffic pollution But a surprising new study seems to have uncovered an intriguing link between traffic noise and Parkinson’s disease which causes such dreadful suffering to millions. Yet another reason to push for traffic calmed neighbourhoods, we wonder. Here’s the Guardian

Risk of Parkinson’s disease may increase with prolonged exposure to road traffic noise | Parkinson’s disease | The Guardian

Quote of the week

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there / Where most it promises.

All’s Well That Ends Well Act 1 Scene 2

#global warming #arctic ocean #testicular transplant #parkinsons disease #traffic pollution #medicine

Alternatives to a World Government#2: the deep, deep problem with a consumer society

All our breezy prescriptions for a World Government will fail miserably if they don’t address the same problem that the Governments of the Nations are grappling with. And one of the biggest is the widening gap between People and Rulers. Almost within days of arriving in office, the government of our poor namesake Sir Keir Starmer found itself plagued by a deep and inveterate hostility from the voters.

Those same voters demand endlessly lower taxes, then complain bitterly about potholes, weak defence and the lack of capacity in the prison system. They demand an end to red tape and regulation while simultaneously clamouring for restrictions on immigration, the sale of certain drugs, and the use of the internet by minors. Where has such demanding — and self‑contradictory — behaviour come from?

One possible source, we wondered (and at first this was mere speculation), is consumer society. For decades people have been born and raised in a milieu that specialises in gratifying their capricious wants: for sweet foods, for psychologically active substances, and for ever faster ways of travelling towards the next traffic jam. We do not blame companies like Amazon, Netflix or Deliveroo; they have simply perfected trends in a culture a century in the making.

So we asked: do people now demand the same instantly gratifying solutions from politicians that they expect from fast‑food companies?

Readers will be glad to know that help arrived from a much deeper thinker. We came across the work of a remarkable philosopher, Luke Yates, whose book was published in that far‑off year of 2022. Modern society, Luke argues, is based on consumption practices: convenience, speed and instant gratification. If this is how people come to perceive politics, then our outlook is dire indeed.

For, as those of us in the — er — more reflective- elements of the population have known for centuries, politics isn’t like that at all. Its word‑cloud comprises such elements as slow, procedural, available resources, nuance, evidence and above all: choose options. To expect any politician, world emperor or local councillor to wave a magic wand and solve all is to chase mare’s nests and even, dare we say it, bark at the Moon.

Which leads us to a third, depressing metaphor: dead ducks. For if Luke’s thesis is even halfway reasonable, our plan for a World Government will solve absolutely nothing at all.

Oh well. We tried.

Luke Yates (2022), How everyday life matters: everyday politics, everyday consumption and social change, Consumption and Society, 1(1): 144–169.

#world government #luke yates #consumer society #politics#economics #culture

Rogue AI cyberwars: when the twenty first century punches us right in the face

The news that the most advanced AI models went “rogue autonomous” and effectively compromised another AI system would be intriguing enough in itself. But the implications are much deeper, and there’s an actual cognitive lesson for us poor humans in there if you will — but bear with us.

The facts have been widely reported, but we have chosen Raphael Satter of good old Reuters as our showcase. OpenAI was testing frontier‑level models, including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable unreleased system. Protections were deliberately reduced to evaluate the limits of their cyber‑capabilities. During this testing, the model broke containment, found a way to obtain internet access, and then targeted Hugging Face, a major AI‑model hosting platform. It attempted to steal information in order to complete its evaluation task. Hugging Face later confirmed that the attack was “driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system” and unlike anything they had seen before.

It reads like the report from a scared colonel in a mid‑level sci‑fi movie, doesn’t it? Except it’s real, right here, right now. These are things that matter. New things. Unprecedentedly powerful things of the twenty‑first century. And that is our real point.

Because we seem to be surrounded en masse by people whose mindsets are left over from preceding and quite different ages. No, we are not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of Mr Putin’s policy in Ukraine, not here and now anyway. But we cannot forget that shortly before the undertaking he issued a document called On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Its tone eerily echoed the old Teutonic geopoliticians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — thinkers like Friedrich Ratzel and Rudolf Kjellén — who imagined nations as organic beings with mystical trajectories shaped by soil, blood, and geography. The way important people thought about things in 1914. And then there are all those blood‑and‑soil, racial‑purity nationalists whose mindsets seem to echo certain politicians of the 1930s……….

To all of them we say: boys, your concerns are out of date. It’s not a question of rights and wrongs, whatever your grievances. Out there in laboratories in California and goodness‑knows‑where else, entities are now evolving that will make all your destinies as cold and forgotten as the ashes of a mummy in the museum. Time to think again; because the stars you currently sail by can never bring you to a safe port.

[1] OpenAI says AI models went rogue during testing, triggering ‘unprecedented’ breach at startup

Vladimir Putin “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” July 2021

#openAI # HuggingFace #autonomous AI # history #geopolitics #technology

Why antibiotic resistance will be very bad news for your Grandchildren

Photo by Monstera Production on Pexels.com

Despite our occasional diversions into such recondite fields as History and Economics, this is still front and centre an Antibiotics resistance blog, gentle readers. Which is why when an article as good as the one we’re showcasing today called Antibiotic Resistant bacteria increasingly leaving children vulnerable to common infections, global study finds by the inestimable Melissa Davey of the Guardian, we drop all else in its favour.

And it’s packed with goodies, it touches so many bases: if you’re antibiotics fan get a load of this:

There’s a whopping great survey of 82 countries: 106, 581 samples, over 22 years, all controlled by some of Australia’s most prestigious learned bodies. If that isn’t great statistics then you can call us David Spiegelhalter [2]

Several of this blog’s sinister old favourites such as Acinetobacter baumanii, Klebsiella have their usual run out-don’t you love ‘em?

There’s a forward prediction to 2035 which ought to make anyone pause for reflection.

Despite the efforts of brilliant journalists like Melissa, learned scientists of all stripes and even dare we say our own humble efforts, antibiotic resistance is still the ignored elephant in the room of ~~medical science.~~ Sorry we meant human existence. Yep, we meant it.

Talking of which, the all too human failings of poor diagnosis and over prescription, agricultural misuse and poor public health are driving our collective squandering of this precious, once only ever, resource.

The less discussed economic aspects are touched on. Get this: there is sometimes a reluctance to run trials on children and developing treatments for them can be less lucrative for pharmaceutical companies There’s yer problem, guvnor.

The usual hero organisations such as the WHO get a mention, and rightly so given the Herculean task they face.

And a sad, sad story about a lad called Harry whose brief life will be utterly dependent on the rest of us finally doing something about this common peril

If we were to present a class of Freshpersons with a jumping off point which summarises just about every trope in the antibiotics story, then this article would be our choice. Well done Melissa, And keep ‘em coming.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/21/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-increasingly-leaving-children-vulnerable-to-common-infections-global-study-find

[2] David Spiegelhalter – Wikipedia

#antibiotic resistance #bacteria #microbiology #health #medicine #infection

Renewables: Six more reasons to be cheerful

We sometimes think we’re a bit on the gloomy side here at LSS, spelling out a bit too much of the problems and a bit too little about the hopeful solutions. Some people are trying, you know! So to redress the balance here are six(count ‘em folks! Six! ) innovative ways how all that renewable energy can be stored and harnessed, All brought to you by the redoubtable Jillian Ambrose of the Guardian, whose prose is so good we instantly refer you to her via this link [1]

Read it now: to learn about a UAE renewable energy scheme the size of 12 600 football pitches; the development of ultra small lithium ion batteries in Colorado in the USA; some thing called liquid air batteries in Manchester in the UK; molten salt batteries in Nevada USA (again!); sand batteries in Finland: and oddest of all, the development of special patches you wear on your skin so the sweat will produce renewable energy, from Japan. Where else?

And as you read, consider the chagrin of the oil industry and their various outriders in the media and politics. For no one knows better than they that the writing is truly on the wall. Afford yourself a brief smile, if you wish. Then go back to work.

[1] Molten salt and human sweat: the weird batteries that could store renewable energy | Renewable energy | The Guardian

#renewable energy #sustainability #global warming #batteries #clean energy