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Exploring particular issue themes, articles will be created by contributors via invitation, commission and open submission from subscribers.

DNA from soil could soon reveal who lived in ice age caves

Gerlinde Bigga is a Scientific Coordinator of the Leibniz Science Campus “Geogenomic Archaeology Campus Tübingen”, University of Tübingen
“I am an archaeologist specialized in Early Prehistory (Palaeolithic), Near Eastern Archaeology, and Archaeobotany. Currently, I work as the Scientific Coordinator and Science Communicator at a large research campus in Tübingen, where we conduct cutting-edge research developing new methods to detect ancient DNA in (cave) sediments.”

‘CHOKE’: A meditation on grief and the alchemy of the abject

Claire Morgan is a UK-based Irish artist. She concluded a 3-month residency at Stiftung Bartels Fondation, Basel, with a solo exhibition, ‘Choke’ (14 – 21 June 2026). Coinciding with Basel’s international art week, this artist-initiated presentation of deeply intimate new work marks a profound evolution in her practice, stepping back from the scale of her signature suspended installations to embrace an intensely personal, visceral vulnerability.

Visualizing the Invisible: Resonance, Water and Light as Photographic Event

‘Visualizing the Invisible: Resonance, Water and Light as Photographic Event’ traces a four decade investigation into photography as physical event rather than descriptive mechanism. Spanning the caustic works of the Vanitas, Glass and Ophelia series through to the recent Cymatic Water + Light body of work, this essay proposes that invisible forces — resonance, pressure, frequency, surface tension — do not require invention. They require conditions through which they become legible. Working exclusively in analogue process, Alexander James Hamilton constructs systems in which frequency, liquid and light are brought into controlled relation. The resulting photographs are not representations of these forces but their material consequence. Authorship, in this context, is not diminished through physical process. It is intensified by it.

When your eyelids become a cinema screen: what strobing light reveals about the brain

David Schwartzman is a Research Fellow (Informatics), School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex.
“I study how stroboscopic light stimulation (SLS), flickering light viewed through closed eyes, can alter conscious experience in powerful yet controlled ways. My work examines the visual patterns and altered states SLS can produce, why people respond differently, and how we can study these experiences safely.
A big part of my research is about subjective experience: what people actually feel, see, and report during these states, and how that relates to what is happening in the brain. I’m interested in SLS both as a tool for understanding consciousness and perception, and for its possible practical uses in mental health.
I currently lead an MRC-funded research programme exploring whether SLS could have therapeutic potential for depression. More broadly, my work asks a simple question: if we can safely and reliably shift perception, can that help us better understand the mind — and potentially support wellbeing too?”

HELIOS

Tom Liggett is a London-based artist and final-year BA (Hons) Photography student at Arts University Bournemouth. His practice operates at the intersection of photography and science, investigating how invisible forces such as radiation, oxidation and electrical discharge can generate images beyond the limits of conventional photographic processes.

We Go Way Back at The Francis Crick Institute

We Go Way Back, an exhibition exploring how ancient DNA is revealing new insights into human evolution, migration, culture and disease, will open at the Francis Crick Institute on 16 July 2026.

Ancient DNA is the genetic material from our ancestors long gone. These fragments of DNA are extracted from bones and teeth, before being processed in an ultra-clean laboratory and sequenced to reveal the underlying genetic code.

World’s biggest astronomy camera seeks to answer pressing questions about the universe

Joshua Weston is a PhD Candidate, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast.
“My research sits at the intersection of time-domain astrophysics, machine learning, and the societal implications of large-scale scientific automation. In particular, I am interested in how algorithmic systems can be designed, monitored and interpreted to translate high-volume survey data into reliable, high-fidelity transient discoveries, while retaining meaningful human oversight.
My current research focuses on:
Machine Learning for Transient Discovery and Host Association: I develop and deploy ML pipelines for real–bogus classification and extragalactic transient–host matching in major sky surveys. For the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), I retrained convolutional neural networks that reduced false positives in the data and significantly lowered human validation demands. I have also built software tools for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time Deep Drilling Fields, integrating archival data and applying interpretable ML to improve host galaxy identification for faint, high-redshift transients. Ongoing work focuses on early alert filtering via brokers such as Lasair and constructing robust transient samples.
AI, Citizen Science, and Responsible Survey Automation: As part of the Leverhulme Interdisciplinary Network on Algorithmic Solutions (LINAS), I examine how AI systems reshape discovery, expertise and public engagement in astronomy. I am developing a citizen-science framework to label early Rubin alerts and systematically compare expert and public classifications, quantifying their impact on model performance, bias and interpretability. This work situates large-survey automation within broader questions of transparent and sustainable human–AI collaboration in scientific research.”

The Universe May Be Stranger Than Religion Imagined

David W. Falls writes about artificial intelligence, belief, secular meaning, and the future of human identity. This essay explores how human beings have long interpreted strange or unseen experiences as signs, spirits, visitations, or messages from beyond. Its central argument is that science has not made the universe less mysterious. It has made supernatural explanations harder to defend. The unseen may be real, profound, and astonishing without being sacred, personal, or watching us.

The piece moves through perception, pattern-making, grief, ghost belief, religious explanation, and the hidden realities revealed by modern science. It is skeptical of supernatural claims, but not dismissive of the experiences that often give rise to them. My aim is to take mystery seriously without turning it too quickly into doctrine.

Biological DNA Art: Beauty Is in the Eye That Is Beheld

Claude E. Gagna, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the New York Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the structure and function of DNA and RNA, including noncanonical (unusual) nucleic acid conformations in biological tissues. In parallel, he develops interdisciplinary bioart. ‘Biological DNA Art: Beauty is in the Eye that is Beheld (Bulbus Oculi)’, is a series of mixed-media works developed as an ongoing experimental and archival practice, focused on stabilizing and integrating non-human eye globes and purified DNA from multiple species within acrylic composite matrices on canvas supports. The work is conceived not only as visual art, but as a form of biopreservation and experimental archive, in which biological materials are maintained with consideration for long-term molecular integrity and the potential for future retrieval. It also engages in an evolutionary framework, bringing together biological materials from multiple species to reflect shared structural origins and divergence across life. The work emerges from laboratory-derived, peer-reviewed methodologies adapted for artistic production, raising questions about the boundary between preserved scientific specimens and visual artifacts.

Psychedelics and Language Model Temperature

The effect of psychedelics is often described as an increase in fluidity – of being, in some non-specific sense, more free to wander out of usual habit patterns. This essay presents an analogy to a feature of LLMs, namely the temperature parameter, that allows a precise characterisation of this increased fluidity. It begins with a semi-technical description of how this parameter affects the operation of an LLM, and then draws a parallel to how psychedelics affect human experience at multiple levels from perception to thought patterns and life reflections, before concluding by placing this analogy inside a larger project of using the internal mechanism of AI to better understand our own minds.