Granular Aluminum Parametric Amplifier for Low-Noise Measurements in Tesla Fields.

Josephson junction parametric amplifiers have become essential tools for microwave quantum circuit readout with minimal added noise. Even after improving at an impressive rate in the past decade, they remain vulnerable to magnetic fields, which limits their use in many applications such as spin qubits, Andreev and molecular magnet devices, dark matter searches, etc. Kinetic inductance materials, such as granular aluminum (grAl), offer an alternative source of nonlinearity with innate magnetic field resilience.

Refuting the hypothesis of Centinelan extinction at its place of origin.

Scientists' limited understanding of tropical plant communities obscures the true extent of species loss caused by habitat destruction. The Centinelan extinction hypothesis posits an extreme but widely referenced scenario wherein forest clearing causes the immediate extinction of species known only from a single geographic location. It remains unclear, however, whether the disappearance of such microendemics reflects their global extinction or insufficient collection effort at larger scales.

 (Gesneriaceae), an exceptionally small lithophilous new species from the western Andean slopes of Ecuador.

Recent exploratory field expeditions to the western slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes resulted in the discovery of a new species of (Gesneriaceae). J.L.