Saturday, April 05, 2025

Hot Schrödinger cat states created

University of Innsbruck

ADAM WEISHAUPT'S ALMA MATER

Schrödinger's cat — image:
In Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment, it is a cat that is alive and dead at the same time.
view more
Credit: University of Innsbruck/Harald Ritsch

Quantum states can only be prepared and observed under highly controlled conditions. A research team from Innsbruck, Austria, has now succeeded in creating so-called hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. The study, recently published in Science Advances, shows that quantum phenomena can also be observed and used in less perfect, warmer conditions.

Schrödinger cat states are a fascinating phenomenon in quantum physics in which a quantum object exists simultaneously in two different states. In Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment, it is a cat that is alive and dead at the same time. In real experiments, such simultaneity has been seen in the locations of atoms and molecules and in the oscillations of electromagnetic resonators. Previously, these analogues to Schrödinger’s thought experiment were created by first cooling the quantum object to its ground state, the state with the lowest possible energy. Now, researchers led by Gerhard Kirchmair and Oriol Romero-Isart have demonstrated for the first time that it is indeed possible to create quantum superpositions from thermally excited states. “Schrödinger also assumed a living, i.e. ‘hot’ cat in his thought experiment,” remarks Gerhard Kirchmair from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). “We wanted to know whether these quantum effects can also be generated if we don't start from the ‘cold’ ground state,” says Kirchmair.

In their study published in the Science Advances, the researchers used a transmon qubit in a microwave resonator to generate the cat states. They succeeded in creating the quantum superpositions at temperatures of up to 1.8 Kelvin – which is sixty times hotter than the ambient temperature in the cavity. “Our results show that it is possible to generate highly mixed quantum states with distinct quantum properties,” explains Ian Yang, who performed the experiments reported in the study.

The researchers used two special protocols to create the hot Schrödinger cat states. These protocols were previously used to produce cat states starting from the ground state of the system. “It turned out that adapted protocols also work at higher temperatures, generating distinct quantum interferences,” says Oriol Romero-Isart, until recently Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck and research group leader at IQOQI Innsbruck and since 2024 Director of ICFO - the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona. “This opens up new opportunities for the creation and use of quantum superpositions, for example in nanomechanical oscillators, for which achieving the ground state can be technically challenging.”

“Many of our colleagues were surprised when we first told them about our results, because we usually think of temperature as something that destroys quantum effects”, adds Thomas Agrenius, who helped develop the theoretical understanding of the experiment. “Our measurements confirm that quantum interference can persist even at high temperature”.

These research findings could benefit the development of quantum technologies. “Our work reveals that it is possible to observe and use quantum phenomena even in less ideal, warmer environments,” emphasizes Gerhard Kirchmair. “If we can create the necessary interactions in a system, the temperature ultimately doesn't matter.”

The study was funded by the Austrian Research Fund FWF and the European Union, among others.

Publikation: Hot Schrödinger Cat States. Ian Yang, Thomas Agrenius, Vasilisa Usova, Oriol Romero-Isart, Gerhard Kirchmair. Science Advances 2025 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr4492 [arXiv:2406.03389]

Researchers generated highly mixed quantum states with distinct quantum properties.

Credit

IQQOI Innsbruck

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adr4492

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Hot Schrödinger Cat States

Article Publication Date

4-Apr-2025

Oxygen is running low in inland waters—and humans are to blame

New Utrecht-led study reveals major shifts in the global freshwater oxygen cycle

Utrecht University

Rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs aren’t just scenic parts of our landscape—they’re also vital engines for life on Earth. These inland waters ‘breathe’ oxygen, just like we do. But a new study led by Utrecht University researchers shows that we’ve been suffocating them during the last century, an era also known as the Anthropocene. The research, published today in Science Advances, reveals that the way oxygen is produced and used in inland waters has dramatically changed since 1900. The culprit? Human activities.

Oxygen, the most critical resource for life on Earth, plays an important role in other nutrient cycles such as carbon and nitrogen. Oxygen depletion in water, called hypoxia, is causing problems. They are piling up in various coastal and freshwater systems. The result? Dying fish, disrupted food webs, poor water quality and more which is already affecting freshwater ecosystems across the globe. This study shows it’s not just a local problem—it’s a planetary one.

Behind oxygen depletion: accelerated oxygen cycle

A group of researchers, led by Utrecht Earth scientists Junjie Wang and Jack Middelburg, have developed for the first time a global model that describes the entire oxygen cycle of inland waters around the world. ‘With this model, we offer the most complete possible understanding of this cycle on a large scale, so that one can see oxygen related problems coming, get to know the causes, and hopefully intervene in time,’ Jack Middelburg explains.

Inland waters have become much busier places when it comes to oxygen. The team found that the global "oxygen turnover"—that is how much oxygen is produced and consumed—has increased. But here’s the twist: these waters are consuming more oxygen than they produce, making them a growing sink of atmospheric oxygen.

Cause

‘More farming, more wastewater, more dams, and a warmer climate—they all change how our freshwater ecosystems function,’ says Junjie Wang. With more nutrients flowing into rivers, lakes and reservoirs, algae grow faster, but when they die and decompose, they use up huge amounts of oxygen. ‘We found that the main causes lay in these direct human activities. First, it turns out that nutrient input through, for example, over-fertilization, is a major driver of this acceleration. Secondly, the longer travel time of freshwater to the sea through the construction of dams and reservoirs has proven to be just as important’, says Jack Middelburg.

At the same time, indirect human impacts like rising temperatures make oxygen less soluble in water, transport slower vertically across the water column, and speed up processes that burn through it even faster. 'Until now, the consensus in the scientific literature has always been that the rise in temperature is primarily causing this acceleration. But our model shows that warming only contributes about 10-20% to this phenomenon,' Junjie Wang says.

The Anthropocene fingerprint

This study showed that the modern oxygen cycle in inland waters looks nothing as it did in the early 1900s. ‘Even though these waters cover just a tiny fraction of Earth’s surface, they now remove nearly 1 billion tonnes of oxygen from the atmosphere each year—overall half of what the entire ocean emits back,’ says Middelburg. ‘We can’t ignore inland waters in global climate and oxygen budgets anymore,’ Junjie Wang adds. ‘They’re changing faster than we thought, and they’re crucial pieces of the Earth system puzzle.’

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adr1695

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Article Title

Global inland-water oxygen cycle has changed in the Anthropocene

Article Publication Date

4-Apr-2025

Researchers improve chemical reaction that underpins products from foods to fuels

Oregon State University

image:
Palladium single-atom catalyst
view more
Credit: Image provided by Zhenxing Feng, Oregon State University

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A chemical reaction that’s vital to a range of commercial and industrial goods may soon be initiated more effectively and less expensively thanks to a collaboration that included Oregon State University College of Engineering researchers.

The study, published in Nature, involves hydrogenation – adding the diatomic hydrogen molecule, H2, to other compounds.

“Hydrogenation is a critical and diverse reaction used to create food products, fuels, commodity chemicals and pharmaceuticals,” said Zhenxing Feng, associate professor of chemical engineering. “However, for the reaction to be economically viable, a catalyst such as palladium or platinum is invariably required to increase its reaction rate and thus lower cost.”

Feng, OSU doctoral students Alvin Chang and Mason Lyons and researchers at four institutions in China took a deep dive into single-atom catalysts; a catalyst is anything that speeds the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction, and a single-atom catalyst is one in which the metal catalytic sites exist as isolated single atoms on a supporting substrate.

“SACs are a rising star among hydrogenation catalysts and demonstrate excellent catalytic activities compared to nanoparticle catalysts,” Feng said. “Interactions between the metal catalyst and support material lead to unique synergies that improve catalytic activity and stability, but the reason for this enhanced performance had not been understood.”

In a project led by collaborators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China, researchers created and characterized 34 palladium SACs on 14 semiconductor supports.

Advanced X-ray, infrared and electrochemical characterization techniques showed the SACs’ effectiveness depended on how well a substrate could accept electrons, a connection that was consistent and predictable.

“The catalytic abilities of palladium SACs have a universal linear relationship with the molecular orbital position of their supporting substrates,” Feng said. “This opens a new avenue for the screening of metal-support pairs for high activity and stability. We also found that this molecular orbital position can be tuned by reducing support particle size, leading to SACs with record high activities and excellent stabilities.”

For this study, researchers looked at the semihydrogenation of acetylene in excess ethylene, a common industrial process. In hydrogenation, hydrogen molecules are added to unsaturated bonds in organic compounds, converting them to saturated compounds. For example, hydrogenation is used to convert vegetable oils, which are unsaturated fats, into margarine and shortening.

Hydrogenation is also important for the refining of petroleum products, including converting alkenes like ethylene into alkanes to make cleaner-burning fuels such as propane and butane.

The OSU China Experience Fund and the National Natural Science Foundation of China Center for Single-Atom Catalysis were among the funders of this project, which also featured researchers from the National University of Defense Technology and Suzhou Laboratory.

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-08747-z

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Metal–support frontier orbital interactions in single-atom catalysis

Article Publication Date

2-Apr-2025

Researchers reveal why young plants may be more vulnerable to disease

A University of Maryland study reveals an evolutionary trade-off that young plants face to develop disease resistance

University of Maryland

A picture of the Silene latifolia plant infected with anther-smut disease — image:
A picture of the *Silene latifolia* plant infected with anther-smut disease.
view more
Credit: Emily Bruns

From toddlers in daycare to seedlings in forests, young organisms tend to get sick more easily than adults—a phenomenon that has long puzzled parents and scientists alike.

University of Maryland biologists offer new insights into this mysteriously universal pattern in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 4, 2025. The new study on baby plants shows that fighting disease at a young age often comes at a steep cost to growth and future evolutionary fitness—or their ability to reproduce.

“It’s a mystery why young organisms don’t evolve stronger disease resistance because getting sick early in life can be deadly,” said study co-author Emily Bruns, an assistant professor of biology at UMD. “Our findings suggest that a hidden trade-off is involved, stopping them from being able to completely fight off a disease.

The researchers studied a wild plant called Silene latifolia (commonly known as white campion) and its relationship with a fungal disease called anther-smut that infects it. This disease doesn’t kill the plants but prevents them from producing pollen, making them unable to reproduce—much like a “plant STD,” as Bruns describes it.

By testing 45 different genetic variations of the Silene plant under controlled settings, the team discovered that plants with stronger disease resistance as seedlings produced significantly fewer flowers and seeds over their lifetime when grown in a disease-free field. Meanwhile, plants with stronger resistance as adults showed no such penalty.

“We found that young plants paid a higher ‘cost’ for fighting the disease compared with adult plants,” Bruns said. “Trying to fight off the fungus was more difficult and resource-consuming for these baby plants. They only have so much energy to spend. If baby plants spend it on disease defense, they can’t put it toward future growth.”

Using their findings, the researchers created a mathematical model showing that these costs of fighting off pathogens are high enough to prevent the evolution of stronger disease resistance in younger plants. Without these costs, plant families with stronger juvenile resistance would theoretically be able to eliminate the disease entirely. But because developing resistance is so impactful for young plants, they remain vulnerable to infection.

“Some young plants ‘pay the cost’ and survive into adulthood, but they make fewer flowers, meaning they’re less able to reproduce,” Bruns explained. “But most remain susceptible as babies, allowing the disease a toehold.”

The team was surprised that these costs didn’t show up right away. Plants that invested in disease resistance as seedlings looked fine at first but produced dramatically fewer flowers in their second year when reproduction would normally peak.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that male plants suffered much higher costs for disease resistance than female plants. Bruns noted that this may be because male plants produce many more flowers than females to spread their pollen as widely as possible—making the cost of diverting resources to disease resistance especially steep for males.

Bruns believes that the team’s findings have implications beyond wild plants. Because juvenile susceptibility drives disease epidemics across many species, understanding the evolutionary mechanisms behind this pattern could inform disease management strategies in agriculture, conservation and public health.

Next, Bruns and the team hope to investigate whether disease resistance costs can be reduced by introducing pathogens to plants slightly later in life when plants establish their first true leaves and no longer rely on stored energy. They also plan to explore whether adult plants with higher disease resistance might protect nearby seedlings by reducing the overall presence of disease presence in a specific area.

“Nature is full of infectious diseases,” Bruns said. “Understanding the different checks and balances between hosts and pathogens helps us understand how evolution has shaped these relationships over millions of years.”

###

In addition to Bruns, other UMD-affiliated research team members include lead author and former UMD postdoctoral researcher Samuel Slowinski, former Bruns lab manager Allyson Kido and former lab manager and technician Andrea Shirdon (B.S. ’22, biological sciences).

The study, “Disease resistance is more costly at younger ages: An explanation for the maintenance of juvenile susceptibility in a wild plant,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 4, 2025.

This research was supported by U.S. National Science Foundation (Award No. DEB-1936334). This story does not necessarily reflect the view of this organization.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2419192122

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Disease resistance is more costly at younger ages: An explanation for the maintenance of juvenile susceptibility in a wild plant,

Article Publication Date

4-Apr-2025

An antiviral chewing gum to reduce influenza and herpes simplex virus transmission

Researchers at Penn Dental Medicine and collaborators have used a clinical-grade antiviral chewing gum to substantially reduce viral loads of two herpes simplex viruses and two influenza A strains in experimental models

University of Pennsylvania

Engineering and evaluation of anti-viral bean gum — image:
The engineering and evaluation of anti-viral bean gum.
view more
Credit: Yuwei Guo, Rachel Kulchar, Rahul Singh, and Geetanjali Wakade

In today’s interconnected world, infectious diseases pose an escalating threat, as demonstrated by the coronavirus pandemic and outbreaks of H1N1, SARS, Ebola, Zika, and H5N1 (bird flu) viruses—all of which have had significant global health and economic impacts.

But more common viral diseases also contribute to global health challenges and economic costs. For example, seasonal influenza epidemics occur annually, causing a substantial global disease burden and economic losses exceeding $11.2 billion each year in the United States alone. Meanwhile, herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), spread primarily through oral contact, infects over two-thirds of the global population and is the leading cause of infectious blindness in Western countries.

Low vaccination rates for influenza viruses and the lack of an HSV vaccine underscore the need for a new approach—one that targets reducing viral loads at the sites where transmission occurs. And for viruses like these, which are transmitted more efficiently through the mouth than the nose, this means focusing on the oral cavity.

Now, in a study published in Molecular Therapy, researchers at the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and collaborators in Finland, have done just that.

Building on their previous work—now in clinical trial—showing that a similar approach was able to reduce SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 patient saliva or swab samples by more than 95%, Henry Daniell, W.D. Miller Professor in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine, and collaborators tested the ability of a chewing gum made from lablab beans, Lablab purpureus—that naturally contain an antiviral trap protein (FRIL)—to neutralize two herpes simplex viruses (HSV-1 and HSV-2) and two influenza A strains (H1N1 and H3N2). The chewing gum formulation allowed for effective and consistent release of FRIL at sites of viral infection.

They demonstrated that 40 milligrams of a two-gram bean gum tablet was adequate to reduce viral loads by more than 95%, a reduction similar to what they saw in their SARS-CoV-2 study.

Importantly, the researchers prepared the gum as a clinical-grade drug product to comply with the FDA specifications for drug products and found the gum to be safe. Daniell notes, “These observations augur well for evaluating bean gum in human clinical studies to minimize virus infection/transmission.”

Daniell and his colleagues are now looking to use lablab bean powder to tackle bird flu, which is currently having a significant impact in North America. In the previous three months, 54 million birds have been affected by H5N1, and several human infections have been reported in the U.S. and Canada.

Previously, bean powder was shown by others to effectively neutralize H5N1 and H7N9—two strains of influenza A known to cause bird flu in humans as well as in birds. Daniell and colleagues are currently looking to test its use in bird feed to help control bird flu in birds.

“Controlling transmission of viruses continues to be major global challenge. A broad spectrum antiviral protein (FRIL) present in a natural food product (bean powder) to neutralize not only human flu viruses but also avian (bird) flu is a timely innovation to prevent their infection and transmission,” says Daniell.

Henry Daniell is the W.D. Miller Professor in the Department of Basic & Translational Sciences at the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Other authors include Gary H. Cohen, Yuwei Guo, Uddhab Karki, Rachel J. Kulchar, Rahul Singh, and Geetanjali Wakade of Penn Dental Medicine, Hamid Khazaei of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) and the University of Finland and Juha-Matti Pihlava of the University of Finland.

Research performed in the Daniell lab is supported by NIH grant R01 HL 107904.

Release of FRIL and total prot [VIDEO] |

The release of FRIL and total protein from bean gum using chewing simulator ART-5.

Credit

Rachel Kulchar

Journal

Molecular Therapy

DOI

10.1016/j.ymthe.2024.12.008

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Debulking influenza and herpes simplex virus strains by a wide-spectrum anti-viral protein formulated in clinical grade chewing gum

Article Publication Date

8-Arl-2025

COI Statement

HD is a patentee in plant-based oral and topical drug delivery and was previously funded by Novo Nordisk, Bayer, Shire and Takeda. Several industry discussions for advancing clinical trials in oral or topical delivery are in progress. Complete list of patents is available in the Google Scholar or ScholarGPS links below: http://scholar.google (in PBS buffer).com/citations?user = 7sow4jwAAAAJ&hl = en https://scholargps.com/scholars/82094026790000/henry-daniell.