Category: News

(Quanta Magazine) – Innovations in imaging and genetic engineering are coming together to probe the biophysics of cytoplasm inside living animals.

Over the past few years, thanks to stunning advances in imaging and genetic engineering, scientists have been able to observe and measure crowding inside cells in living organisms for the first time. The experiments have revealed a more dynamic and crowded place than anyone expected, and are the latest evidence that cells actively regulate their internal crowdedness to optimize for the chemical reactions required for life.

(Science Daily) – Scientists have created the most detailed maps yet of how genes control one another inside the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Using a powerful new AI-based system called SIGNET, the team uncovered cause-and-effect relationships between genes across six major brain cell types, revealing which genes are truly driving harmful changes. The most dramatic disruptions were found in excitatory neurons, where thousands of genetic interactions appear to be extensively rewired as the disease progresses. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Moderna held further discussions with regulators and announced that the agency would accept the company’s application for approval of its flu vaccine that uses mRNA technology.

The Food and Drug Administration reversed its decision on Moderna’s flu vaccine and has agreed to review it for possible approval.

Just last week, Moderna announced that the agency had rejected its application for review of a new flu vaccine. The F.D.A. said the company’s research design had been flawed.

But in subsequent discussions, the agency had relented and agreed to begin a review, the company said on Wednesday. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Some patients in a clinical trial of one new drug lost so much weight that they became concerned and dropped out.

Recent top-line results from a recent trial on retatrutide, a compound that Eli Lilly is developing, found that people with obesity and knee osteoarthritis lost an average of 28.7 percent of their body weight after 68 weeks on the highest dose. Currently available weight-loss drugs have helped people lose around 20 percent of their body weight over the same time period.

Between 12 and 18 percent of participants dropped out of the trial because of side effects, a higher percentage than is typical in trials of existing weight loss drugs. (Read More)

(NPR) – Dr. Mehmet Oz is pitching a controversial fix for America’s rural health care crisis: artificial intelligence.

“There’s no question about it — whether you want it or not — the best way to help some of these communities is gonna be AI-based avatars,” Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said recently at an event focused on addiction and mental health hosted by Action for Progress, a coalition aimed at improving behavioral health care. He said AI could multiply the reach of doctors fivefold — or more — without burning them out. (Read More)

(Wired) – EVA AI created a pop-up romantic date night at a Manhattan wine bar to help in making AI-human relationships a “new normal.”

While dating apps have been yielding diminishing returns for singles for years now, more people are finding companionship with AI partners.

But where do you take your AI lover for a night on the town? (Read More)

(ABC13) – Aymeric and Naiah Monello-Fuentes contracted with Miracle Surrogacy only to discover the baby they’re raising isn’t who they expected.

Aymeric and Naiah Monello-Fuentes spent just under $81,000 with Miracle Surrogacy, a Florida-based agency operating in Mexico, to have a child using Aymeric’s sperm and a donor egg. But after baby Emma was born in January 2025, two separate DNA tests showed Aymeric is not the biological father, and one test suggests the surrogate may be Emma’s biological mother. (Read More)

(The Guardian) – Exclusive: Google fails to include safety warnings when users are first presented with AI-generated medical advice

Google is putting people at risk of harm by downplaying safety warnings that its AI-generated medical advice may be wrong.

When answering queries about sensitive topics such as health, the company says its AI Overviews, which appear above search results, prompt users to seek professional help, rather than relying solely on its summaries. “AI Overviews will inform people when it’s important to seek out expert advice or to verify the information presented,” Google has said.

But the Guardian found the company does not include any such disclaimers when users are first presented with medical advice. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Patrick Darling used a music tool from ElevenLabs to perform a song with his former bandmates.

Darling’s last stage performance was over two years ago. By that point, he had already lost the ability to stand and play his instruments and was struggling to sing or speak. But recently, he was able to re-create his lost voice using an AI tool trained on snippets of old audio recordings. Another AI tool has enabled him to use this “voice clone” to compose new songs. Darling is able to make music again. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Inventors and executives are warning of widespread consequences that they don’t begin to understand.

In the end you wonder of the creators: Are they even in control, or is their creation?

We don’t know. That’s why we are looking, with awe and a resigned terror, at that wave, and wondering where is safety, and can we get to it. Or is the land flat all around and nowhere to go? (Read More)

(Public Discourse) – So, all in all, a propitious time to reflect on Sen. Ben Sasse’s announcement, in December of last year, that he has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. As he says, that diagnosis is without doubt a death sentence, a death that will be upon him rather quickly. He has now prematurely entered his own winter, and however much time he has left will in some ways be an ongoing February of suffering. 

Yet Sasse’s announcement reveals to us both goods and virtues that show in his dying a glimmer of light, a stirring of hope, and the possibility of spring even in one’s final winter. All of us labor under the same death sentence that Sasse does, and so it is worth our time to reflect upon the lessons he offers us. (Read More)