Category: Science & Technology

Alphabet’s Google and venture capital firm Accel will partner to fund at least 10 early-stage Indian AI startups, marking the U.S. technology giant’s first such funding partnership, top executives at the companies said on Thursday.

The move comes as several U.S. tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon and OpenAI make a beeline for the world’s most populous nation, seen as a critical growth market where nearly a billion users access the internet.

Under the partnership, Google’s AI Futures Fund and Accel will co-invest up to $2 million in each startup, Prayank Swaroop, partner at Accel, told Reuters in an interview, with the investments focussed on the wide areas of entertainment, creativity, work and coding.

The announcement comes after Google in October said it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an AI data centre in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, its biggest-ever investment in the country.

Its AI Futures Fund, launched six months ago, has funded over 30 companies, including Indian webtoon startup Toonsutra and U.S.-based legal-tech firm Harvey. Google has also teamed up with India’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio to provide free access to Gemini AI for 505 million users.

“We firmly believe that the founders in India, they are going to be playing a leading role in defining that next era of global technology,” Jonathan Silber, co-founder and director of Google’s AI Futures Fund, said.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/google-accel-partner-back-indian-ai-startups-5488261

According to the EY India’s report, GCCs are applying GenAI where it matters most — enhancing customer service (65 per cent), followed by finance (53 per cent), operations (49 per cent), IT and cybersecurity (45 per cent). Business intelligence adoption has increased to 86 per cent from 80 per cent last year, while data strategy has risen to 67 per cent from 51 per cent.

India-based global capability centres (GCCs) have moved from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption, with 58 per cent of centres currently investing in Agentic AI and another 29 per cent planning to scale over the next year, a report said on Sunday.

About 83 per cent of GCCs are already investing in GenAI, where pilots have increased from 37 per cent last year to 43 per cent as of 2025.

According to the EY India’s report, GCCs are applying GenAI where it matters most — enhancing customer service (65 per cent), followed by finance (53 per cent), operations (49 per cent), IT and cybersecurity (45 per cent).

Business intelligence adoption has increased to 86 per cent from 80 per cent last year, while data strategy has risen to 67 per cent from 51 per cent.

Meanwhile, according to the report, two-thirds of GCCs (67 per cent) are creating dedicated innovation teams and incubation programs to generate, test and globalise ideas from India.

“Global enterprises are rethinking how they run their operations. They want simpler models, tighter oversight and a place where AI, data and risk teams can operate in sync. Our survey shows that this shift is well underway at GCCs in India,” said Manoj Marwah, Partner and GCC Sector Leader – Financial Services, EY India.

The combination of talent, cross-functional maturity and a rapidly advancing AI ecosystem gives global firms something they can’t easily build elsewhere. The GCCs we set up now are poised to operate as decision centres shaping enterprise strategy around risk, new products, digital transformation and more, he added.

As per the report, GCCs in the nation are becoming key collaborators in global decision-making, with over half of India’s centres (52 per cent) holding shared accountability for global decisions, while another 26 per cent are formally consulted.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/india-gccs-shift-from-ai-pilots-to-large-scale-adoption-with-strong-push-for-agentic-ai-in-2025

CERT-In has issued a security alert for Google Chrome users, urging immediate updates for Windows, macOS, and Linux due to severe vulnerabilities identified as CVE-2025-13223 and CVE-2025-13224.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued a fresh security alert for Google Chrome users, advising immediate updates across Windows, macOS, and Linux. The warning comes after multiple high-risk vulnerabilities were discovered in the browser, raising concerns about potential remote attacks. If you rely on Chrome for your daily browsing, work or banking, this is one alert you shouldn’t ignore. Here’s everything you need to know about the newly flagged threat and what action you should take.

Ahead of the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, the company outlined a series of initiatives focused on shielding users from sophisticated scams, strengthening enterprise cybersecurity, and building inclusive, equitable AI models suited for India and the Global South.

Google on Thursday said that it is developing safe and trusted Artificial Intelligence as part of a broader effort to protect vulnerable users in India, emphasising that safety must serve as the foundation for transformational AI.

Ahead of the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, the company outlined a series of initiatives focused on shielding users from sophisticated scams, strengthening enterprise cybersecurity, and building inclusive, equitable AI models suited for India and the Global South.

The India-AI Impact Summit 2026, announced by India at the France AI Action Summit and scheduled for February 19-20 in New Delhi, will be the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South.

Highlighting the growing threat of digital arrest scams, screen-sharing fraud and voice cloning, Google said its approach centres on protections that are “faster than the scammer” and built directly into everyday technology. The company is rolling out real-time scam detection on Pixel phones, powered by Gemini Nano, which analyses suspicious calls on-device without recording audio. A new pilot with Google Pay, Navi and PayTM alerts users if they open financial apps while screen-sharing with an unknown contact, offering one-tap options to exit safely.

Google Play Protect has blocked over 115 million attempted installations of high-risk sideloaded apps in India, while Google Pay issues over 1 million weekly warnings for fraudulent transactions. Google is also pioneering Enhanced Phone Number Verification, replacing SMS OTPs with a secure SIM-based check to strengthen sign-ins.

To counter deepfakes, Google is expanding access to SynthID, its AI watermarking tool, to partners such as PTI, Jagran and India Today. On the cybersecurity front, Google introduced CodeMender, an AI agent that autonomously identifies and patches vulnerabilities.

The company is also investing in large-scale digital literacy efforts. Programs like LEO, Super Searchers, and senior-focused DigiKavach campaigns aim to equip millions with the skills to identify online risks. Through Google.org’s APAC Digital Futures Fund, the CyberPeace Foundation will receive USD 200,000 to strengthen AI-driven cyber-defence tools.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/google-developing-safe-trusted-ai-to-protect-vulnerable-users-in-india-9673160

MOSS has survived nine months exposed to outer space, giving hope it can help develop ecosystems for human life on Mars.

The plant even made it back to Earth after the experiment and was still capable of reproducing.

Researchers calculated it could have lasted for up to 15 years in conditions in which most living organisms cannot survive even briefly.

Its durability was confirmed during tests on the International Space Station.

Spores from a plant called spreading earthmoss were transported to the vessel in 2022.

There it was attached to the outside for 283 days before being returned to Earth in January 2023, with more than 80 per cent of the sample surviving.

They predicted that the encased spores could have survived for up to 5,600 days under space conditions.

But the team emphasised that this number is just a rough estimate, and that much more data is needed to make more realistic predictions.

They hope that their work helps advance research on the potential of extraterrestrial soils for facilitating plant growth.

Researcher Prof Tomomichi Fujita struck on the idea of testing the moss in space after seeing it survive in some of the harshest environments on Earth — but still expected none to last.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/15525233/moss-survives-space-scientists-astonished-humans-live-mars/

GOOGLE has launched its next-gen Nano Banana Pro AI bot that makes any image you can dream up – and it’s free.

And a Google insider has shared its brainy new tricks with The Sun, and even teased what’s next for the clever AI.

Earlier this year, Google’s Gemini AI chatbot added a new feature called Nano Banana.

It allowed users to create stunningly lifelike images, as well as craft pics using consistent characters – including your own face, or a pal’s.

Now Google is using its upgraded Gemini 3 Pro tech to offer a new image-maker called Nano Banana Pro and it has some big advantages, including properly displaying text.

LOOKING GOOG

“It’s much better at rendering text than any of our models have been before,” said Google’s Nicole Brichtova, speaking to The Sun.

Getting written text right has been a major bug-bear for AI bots.

A telltale sign of AI images has been scrambled words that don’t make sense or use letters that don’t exist.

But not only can Nano Banana Pro do text right, it can also help you out on holiday.

“It can also do that in more than 10 languages,” Nicole, the product lead for Image & Video at Google DeepMind, explained.

“So if you have a poster that’s in English, and you now want to localise it into Spanish, the model will keep the visual the same.

“And the font and the style and everything, but it will actually just translate the text into Spanish.”

The original Nano Banana became a hit, allowing users to restore old photos or turn themselves into action figures.

But it still struggled with text, which meant that it couldn’t create detailed text-heavy images.

Now Google says that the new model is good enough that you could create entire infographics – a major help for youngsters at school or uni.

“You can be like: ‘give me an infographic about how the pyramids were built that’s suitable for a 10-year-old’,” Nicole told us.

“And the model will adapt the content to that audience.”

It’s not just education either: sports fans can take advantage of it.

That’s because Google’s Nano Banana Pro can tap into up-to-date information via Google.

“The model can also tap into search’s knowledge database,” Nicole said.

“So if you want fresh, like ‘give me an infographic about the latest sports game for my favourite team’, you can now get that individual format.”

Nicole continued: “You can make your own comic book as well.

“You provide an image of yourself and then specify what you want to be.

“I just did a superhero one for myself because why not? And then you can get a full comic book that you can skip through.”

But it’s not just text that Google’s new AI image maker is better at.

FACE FIRST

Google says that the new Pro version is much better at keeping faces consistent across images – and with more people too.

“So Nano Banana took three images as input that you can compose into a new piece of content,” Nicole told The Sun.

“This model takes 14 – and the 14 is up to five actual characters or people.

“So you can keep five people consistent, and then you have other references, like their headphones, or a table, or plants or the background.

“And then you compose all of those elements into a new scene.”

On top of that, you can also be more specific about how you want your image files to be.

That means you can choose resolutions or the shape of images to fit your needs.

“We’re also now offering 2K and 4K resolution, up from one,” Nicole told us.

“So just sharper detail, which has been one of the top-requested features that we’ve had from Nano Banana.

“And we also offer a wide range of aspect ratios.”

NEXT UP

Google told us that there’s no word limit for the amount of text you can demand from a Nano Banana Pro image.

But Nicole warned that if you serve up page-length text, the small size of the font might start to create issues.

“And it’s really very, very small text where we still have some headroom to push on improving the model,” she added.

That’s not the only upgrade that Google is hoping to deliver in the future either.

Millions of office workers across the land spend hours crafting slide decks on apps like Google Sheets, Microsoft Powerpoint or Apple’s Keynote.

But Nicole said that Nano Banana Pro is getting very close to being able to take a lot of that work on itself.

However, despite its powerful AI brain, there’s still one issue that hasn’t been resolved yet.

“People have made full slide decks with this model internally,” Nicole said.

“If you look at it with a very critical design eye, you might still want a little more continuity.

“But single slides, it can absolutely do. With some work, you can absolutely make an entire slide deck.

“And then I think the next phase, which is not on this model, would also be able to edit the content.

“Because if you make a slide deck, you want to be able to edit the text, right?

“The output that you get from the model is pixels. And so you will get an image that you’re not able to edit. And so I think next up is being able to do that.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/15522269/google-nano-banana-pro-gemini-3-image-maker-app/

This initial rollout marks a major technological leap, which officials have likened to an upgrade from ‘3G to 5G’ in telecommunications technology

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has ushered in a new era for Indian travellers, launching the nationwide issuance of e-passports to significantly enhance security standards and expedite global travel. This transformation is part of the upgraded Passport Seva Programme (PSP) Version 2.0, which integrates cutting-edge technology into the nation’s travel documentation system.

The core of the new document is an embedded Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and antenna, compliant with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards, which securely stores the holder’s personal and biometric data. This information is digitally signed using Public Key Infrastructure, making the passport highly resistant to forgery, tampering, and fraudulent duplication, addressing a crucial security challenge.

This ambitious programme has rapidly gained traction. According to MEA officials, the government has already issued over 80 lakh e-passports domestically as of May 2025, with an additional 60,000 issued through Indian missions abroad. This initial rollout marks a major technological leap, which officials have likened to an upgrade from “3G to 5G” in telecommunications technology. The e-passport, visually identifiable by a small gold-coloured symbol on the front cover, facilitates faster and smoother immigration clearance at international e-gates and automated border control systems, supporting a global “trusted traveller programme”.

Source: https://www.news18.com/tech/digital-signature-global-access-every-indian-to-have-e-passport-by-2035-with-80-lakh-issued-so-far-9716498.html

Elon Musk has introduced X Chat, a messaging platform within X, designed to prioritise user privacy and security. It features end-to-end encryption for messages and file sharing, as well as disappearing messages.

Elon Musk has officially launched X Chat, a new messaging platform integrated within the social media site X. This new service aims to provide a privacy-focused alternative to established messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Arattai. X Chat is designed to enhance user communication while prioritising data security and user privacy. Here’s everything you need to know about this.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025, established by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, initiate the full implementation of India’s first comprehensive data law.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has introduced the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025 or DODP Rules 2025. It marks the initiation of full operations of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, hailed as India’s first comprehensive data law. It revolves around protecting digital data and setting out obligations of entities handling this data and rights and duties of the individuals.
The DPDP Rules 2025 offer a consent-based system in order to protect the personal data of people using social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or ecommerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon, or any digital payments application.
The main focus here is to make sure that the users know how their data is used so that they can have more control over the same. Under the new ruled, platforms and companies found mishandling the fata will face heavy penalties comprising up to Rs 250 crores for serious failures of data protection. All the apps and companies that collect data as of now have been asked to comply with all the rules in 18 months, after which, they can incur a fine.

The law mainly works on two things – Data Principals and Data Fiduciary. Starting with Data Fiduciary, it is a company or individual that determines why the data is being processed and how that processing will be carried out. On the other hand, the Data Principal is the individual to whom the data belongs or the person whose information is being collected and stored.

The tiny bird covered an astonishing 3,100 kilometres in just 76 hours, an aerial marathon that saw him slice across central India, glide past Gujarat, and skim out over the Arabian Sea.

Three new aerial travellers are rewriting the limits of endurance in the natural world.

On November 11 2025, wildlife scientists tagged three Amur Falcons, Apapang (an adult male), Alang (a young female), and Ahu (an adult female), as part of the Manipur Amur Falcon Tracking Project (Phase 2) led by the Wildlife Institute of India. Within days, one of them has already emerged as the season’s breakout performer.

Apapang, wearing the orange track on the satellite map, has surprised even veteran trackers. Barely 150 grams in weight, he launched into an extraordinary non-stop flight soon after tagging.

In just 76 hours, he has covered an astonishing 3,100 kilometres, an aerial marathon that saw him slice across central India, glide past Gujarat, and skim out over the Arabian Sea.

With favourable easterly tailwinds boosting his speed, Apapang has been averaging nearly 1,000 kilometres a day, a pace that places him among the fastest migrating raptors on the planet.

But the real test is only beginning.

Along with Alang (yellow track) and Ahu (red track), Apapang is now attempting the most dangerous segment of the Amur Falcon’s annual migration: a nonstop 6,000-kilometre oceanic crossing from India to Somalia.

With no place to rest, feed, or retreat, the Arabian Sea becomes a vast gamble of energy, endurance, and favourable weather. Only a handful of migratory species undertake such long, uninterrupted flights, and the Amur Falcon is among the smallest of them.

Their journey began in the dense forests and farmlands of Manipur, a crucial stopover site where thousands of Amur Falcons refuel each winter during their journey from East Asia to southern Africa.

Once victims of rampant hunting, the birds are now part of a celebrated community-led conservation success story. Manipur’s villages have transformed into guardians of the species, turning falcon season into a symbol of coexistence and pride.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/flying-1000-km-per-day-tiny-indian-falcon-stuns-scientists-with-marathon-flight-2821069-2025-11-17

The images, captured by the Mars Express orbiter, reveal the volcano’s southeast flank with hundreds of overlapping lava flows.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared stunning images of the foot of Mars’ giant volcano, Olympus Mons, which stands at an impressive 27 km high and has a base over 600 km wide, making it the largest volcano in our solar system – more than twice the height of Mauna Kea on Earth.

The images shared by the astronauts on Instagram show frozen rivers of lava which flowed down Olympus Mons.

See the images here:

Olympus Mons was first discovered by NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft in 1971. Initially, scientists believed it to be a mountain, but subsequent missions revealed its true nature.

It is believed that Olympus Mons was formed around 3.5 billion years ago, during Mars’ early geological period. The volcano is considered dormant, with no recent eruptions. Its gentle slopes and lack of impact craters suggest a relatively young surface, shaped by lava flows.

The images, captured by the Mars Express orbiter, reveal the volcano’s southeast flank with hundreds of overlapping lava flows, steep cliffs and traces of ancient collapse.

As per the ESA, the scarp, which is a cliff up to 9 km high, encircles the entire volcano, formed by huge landslides that sent debris hundreds of kilometres away.

“The lava flows – now solid rock – once streamed down the volcano’s slopes, spreading into wide fans and carving channels and tubes as they cooled. Some ended in smooth, rounded “tongues” before reaching the plains,” wrote ESA in the social media post.

The space agency further mentioned a “horseshoe-shaped channel” may once have carried lava, as well as water, in the lower plains. It hints at a more complex past.

“With only a few small craters, this surface is geologically young – perhaps just tens of millions of years old – a blink in Mars’ 4.6-billion-year history,” said ESA.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/science/astronauts-share-images-of-volcano-on-mars-reveal-stunning-details-of-frozen-lava-rivers-9643713?pfrom=home-ndtv_lateststories

The Google Pixel 10, priced around Rs 80,000, features a triple rear camera setup but with reduced sensor capabilities compared to its predecessor. For those seeking alternatives, five noteworthy options are highlighted.

Researchers have built a computer that performs complex AI calculations in a single pass of light, completing what today’s fastest AI chips need multiple steps to accomplish. The breakthrough promises substantial gains in parallelism and energy efficiency for AI computations.

The system, called parallel optical matrix-matrix multiplication or POMMM, performs complex mathematical operations by encoding data into laser beams and letting physics do the work. Published in Nature Photonics, the technology executes an entire matrix multiplication (the core calculation in AI neural networks) through a single propagation of coherent light. No waiting for sequential processing. Just light passing through optical elements, minimizing data movement during the core computation.

Why Light Beats Electronics for AI Calculations

The research team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Aalto University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences notes that current optical computing methods struggle with tensor-based tasks because they require multiple light propagations for each operation. POMMM collapses that entire sequence into a single instant.

When a GPU multiplies two matrices together, it performs thousands or millions of individual calculations in sequence. It reads values from memory, multiplies them, adds results and writes back to storage. Each step takes time. Each data movement consumes energy.

POMMM takes a different approach. It encodes one matrix into the amplitude and position of a spatial optical field, applies distinct phase patterns to different rows of data, then uses cylindrical lenses to perform optical Fourier transforms. These transforms naturally separate and combine the calculations simultaneously.

Testing showed the optical system produces results matching GPU computations with high consistency. Across matrix sizes ranging from 10×10 to 50×50 elements, POMMM maintained low average error that closely matched GPU results. The calculations happened during a single pass of light through the optical system.

Optical Hardware Runs Real Neural Networks

For practical AI applications, the researchers demonstrated POMMM running actual neural networks originally designed for GPUs. Their experimental prototype processed convolutional neural networks for image recognition, achieving 94.44% accuracy on handwritten digit classification and 84.11% on clothing item recognition. Vision transformer models showed similar performance. These tests used neural network weights trained on GPUs and deployed directly to the optical system.

The physics enabling this advantage comes from properties of light understood for over a century but not previously combined this way for computing. POMMM exploits two key properties of Fourier transforms: moving a signal in space doesn’t alter its frequency spectrum, and applying phase modulation shifts the spatial frequency. By encoding different rows of a matrix with different phase gradients, then performing optical transforms in perpendicular directions, the system makes all the partial products naturally separate into distinct spatial locations where a camera captures them simultaneously.

Inside the Speed-of-Light Computer

The experimental prototype uses spatial light modulators to encode input matrices onto a 532-nanometer laser beam, cylindrical lens assemblies to perform the parallel optical transforms and a high-resolution quantitative CMOS camera to record results. The core calculation happens during a single pass of light through the optical elements. The speed of the modulators and camera determines overall throughput.

Taking this further, the team demonstrated wavelength multiplexing for processing higher-dimensional data. By encoding the real and imaginary parts of a complex matrix onto two different laser wavelengths (540 and 550 nanometers), they performed complete complex-valued calculations in parallel. This wavelength-multiplexing capability points toward processing three-dimensional tensors—the multidimensional data arrays common in modern deep learning—through single-shot operations across multiple colors of light simultaneously.

Energy Efficiency and Future Potential

Theoretical analysis suggests POMMM’s single-propagation architecture could outperform existing optical computing paradigms by multiple orders of magnitude in both computational parallelism and energy efficiency, particularly when implemented with purpose-built photonic hardware rather than off-the-shelf components.

“Imagine you’re a customs officer who must inspect every parcel through multiple machines with different functions and then sort them into the right bins,” says lead author Dr. Yufeng Zhang, from the Photonics Group at Aalto University’s Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, in a statement. “Normally, you’d process each parcel one by one. Our optical computing method merges all parcels and all machines together — we create multiple ‘optical hooks’ that connect each input to its correct output. With just one operation, one pass of light, all inspections and sorting happen instantly and in parallel.”

The work addresses a critical bottleneck in modern AI hardware. Neural networks generate massive data movement between processors and memory, and today’s GPU tensor cores spend substantial time and energy shuttling information back and forth. Optical computing performs calculations through physical light propagation rather than electronic data transfer, potentially reducing memory bandwidth limitations.

Current challenges include the complexity of cascading multiple optical layers for deep neural networks and the precision required in aligning optical components. The researchers found that training neural networks with POMMM-specific error characteristics can compensate for some hardware imperfections, though physical implementation still demands careful engineering.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/new-system-performs-ai-calculations-in-single-flash/

Getting into your phone can be very tricky if you do not remember your PIN, pattern, or password. However, there are some ways in which you can try to get back into your phone, and some methods require giving up all your data. Let us dive into all the options you have to regain control over your phone once again.

Many a times, we forget our smartphone’s PIN, pattern or password. This usually happens when a phone is left abandoned for a long time. Even though fingerprint or face unlock has been registered, the smartphone will ask for additional authentication for added security.

Getting into your phone can be very tricky if you don not remember your PIN, pattern, or password. However, there are some ways in which you can try to get back into your phone, and some require giving up all your data. Let us dive us into all the options you have

Use Extend Lock

Android’s Extend Unlock feature is a temporary solution to get into your phone and backup all your data. Extend Unlock lets you bypass the lock screen when your phone is on your home Wi-Fi or any of the selected locations you’ve pre-approved earlier. The problem is, that Extend Unlock should have been setup earlier, and if not, then this solution is not for you.

But if you have, then you can simply take your phone to your trusted preset location, and you should automatically be able to enter into your phone without a PIN, pattern, or password.

If you haven’t already, go to Settings, search for Extend Unlock, and setup your trusted places. You can also turn on on on-body detection, which essentially keeps it unlocked while in motion. The latter could be risky, if the phone is ever stolen, so we recommend just sticking to places.

Also, the problem with this solution is that it will let you enter the smartphone, but won’t help in chaning the PIN, pattern, or password that you have forgotten. Therefore, you will need to backup all your data if you have gotten in once using Extend Unlock. Furthermore, if you restart your phone, then this feature won’t work.

Factory Reset

Plato’s legend of Atlantis has come to life once again, with archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences having just discovered “traces of a submerged city” destroyed by a devastating 15th-century earthquake underneath Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk Kul, the eighth deepest lake in the world.

The city at the flooded Toru-Aygyr complex, which lies near the lake’s northwest point, has now been excavated by the explorers, who surveyed four underwater zones at shallow depths ranging from 3 to 13 feet around the lake’s shoreline.

There, they found a wealth of everyday items that painted the picture of a once-thriving metropolis or “large commercial agglomeration.” Discoveries included multiple fired brick structures (one contained a millstone, which was used to crush and grind grain), caved-in stone structures and wooden beams.

In one of the zones, archaeologists also believe they’ve found what was once a public building that could have served as a mosque, bathhouse or school, also called a “madressa.”

In the three others, remnants of some kind of burial ground, a 13th-century Muslim necropolis — a large cemetery typically belonging to an ancient city — and mudbrick structures in round and rectangular shapes were also discovered.

There were also burials found that showed evidence of traditional Islamic rituals, with the skeletons facing north. Their faces are turned toward the qibla, the direction Muslims face during their daily prayers.

“All this confirms that an ancient city really once stood here,” a representative from the Russian Geographical Society (who funded the expedition), told the Daily Mail.

The lost Toru-Aygyr settlement sat on a major section of the historical culture-accelerating Silk Road, where merchants would trade silk, spices and precious metals — not to mention thoughts and ideas — between China and the Mediterranean from the second century BC to the mid-15th century.

Experts believe the complex once thrived but went under when a “terrible earthquake” hit near the start of the 15th century, Valery Kolchenko, the lead expeditionist and a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic, shared with the Daily Mail.

Luckily, Kolchenko and his colleagues believe that the area was abandoned by residents before the natural disaster.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/11/14/science/archeologists-discover-an-atlantis-like-metropolis-at-the-bottom-of-a-lake/

Ever had a persistent, nagging cough that just wouldn’t go away? You may have had a small piece of food stuck in your airway. It may sound like a rare occurrence, but plenty of people deal with this issue, as these objects are essentially invisible on a standard X-ray. Now, relevant research suggests AI can help catch these tricky cases earlier.

Published in Digital Medicine, a research team in Wuhan, China, trained a system to spot subtle signs of a radiolucent foreign body on routine chest CT scans. In a head-to-head test, the AI found about twice as many true cases as experienced radiologists, while still keeping solid precision. That’s a big difference. Missing a foreign body means weeks of symptoms and repeated misdiagnoses.

Why ‘Invisible’ Objects Get Missed

Foreign body aspiration happens when something you swallow goes down the “wrong pipe” and lodges in your lower airway. Dense items like metal show up clearly on imaging. Common food fragments and plant material often do not. Doctors rely on symptoms, history, and CT scans, yet radiolucent objects can hide in plain sight.

Prior clinical reviews have found that a large share of adult airway foreign bodies are invisible to X-rays, that many patients are misdiagnosed at first, and that the illness can drag on for months before the real problem is identified. That delay is rough: cough, chest discomfort, repeated infections, and time away from work or daily life.

What The Team Built

The researchers combined two steps:

1. Map the airways: a tool called MedpSeg draws a detailed 3D map of the bronchial tree from the CT. Think of it like tracing a city’s roads before looking for traffic jams.
2. Take many “snapshots”: the system then captures 12 different views of that 3D map and feeds them to a compact image classifier (ResNet-18). Looking from several angles helps the model pick up small blockages that could be easy to miss when scrolling through slices one by one.

All of this runs on standard CT data. No special scanner protocol is required. After a quick preprocessing step to keep image quality consistent, the software segments the airway, generates the 12 views, and makes a yes/no call: likely foreign body vs no foreign body.

AI vs. Radiologists: By The Numbers

In an independent test at a separate hospital, the AI and three board-certified thoracic radiologists read the same 70 cases without seeing bronchoscopy results. The AI showed higher recall: it correctly identified about 71% of true foreign bodies, compared with about 36% for the human readers. The AI’s overall balance of correctness—the F1 score—was also higher. Precision told a different story. The radiologists did not call any false positives, while the AI kept precision in the high-70s. In plain terms, the humans were very cautious and missed more true cases, and the AI caught many more but was willing to raise a few extra flags.

That is exactly what you want from a second reader. You would rather get a careful nudge to take a closer look than send someone home with an object still lodged in the airway.

How Artificial Intelligence Could Be Used In Clinics

Today, if an X-ray does not give answers, doctors look to a CT scan. The challenge is that radiolucent objects blend in. The AI is not meant to replace expertise. It is designed as a support tool that highlights suspicious spots so a clinician can decide whether a bronchoscopy, the definitive look with a camera, is worthwhile. Earlier bronchoscopy can shorten the long, frustrating path many patients travel: cough, antibiotics, repeat visits, and only then the true cause.

Since the system analyzes standard CTs, it could fit into existing workflows. For example, run in the background, flag a case, and let a radiologist or pulmonologist make the final call. This is most helpful in settings without a specialized chest radiologist or when a second opinion would be useful.

Across three different datasets used for development and testing, the model’s accuracy hovered around 90% or better. The independent test (the toughest one) matters most for real-world trust. There, the AI’s recall advantage and higher F1 score compared with experts suggest it can reduce missed cases. Precision was a bit lower than the radiologists’ perfect score, yet still strong. In practical terms, a few more false alarms are the price of catching more real problems, and a scoped exam can settle the question safely.

What’s Next?

Every study has limits, and this one was no different. To start, the data came from three hospitals in one city. Testing across many regions and scanner types would have resulted in a more universally applicable dataset. The study was retrospective, which is common early on, but future work should be prospective and multi-centered. The system also reads images alone. Adding basic clinical clues—like sudden choking, voice changes, or how long the cough has lasted—might make it even smarter. Finally, CT scans use radiation. That is acceptable for diagnosis, yet it is not a screening tool, especially for children.

Young children are more likely to put objects in their mouths. Many older adults have trouble swallowing. Both groups are at higher risk for aspiration and delayed diagnosis. Hospitals that do not have a dedicated thoracic radiologist could also benefit from an extra set of (digital) eyes. Even large centers may want a second reader for tricky cases or after-hours coverage.

The Bottom Line For Patients And Families

No one should have to wait months to figure out a nagging cough is being caused by a stuck bone fragment. This study showed an AI approach that doubled the catch rate compared with routine expert reads in a blinded test via everyday CT scans. To be clear, doctors still make the final call. The aim here is faster answers and fewer misses.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/ai-catches-hidden-airway-foreign-bodies/

Public WiFi networks offer convenience but pose significant security risks, according to Google. The tech giant warns users to avoid connecting their devices to public networks found in cafes, airports, and hotels, as they can be exploited by attackers to access sensitive information like banking details.

Public WiFis are nothing less than a convenience in today’s day and age. Who would not love to get free internet on the go without worrying about anything? But, the main question is that are these public WiFi networks are safe enough to keep your personal devices connected to them. Well, Google doesn’t think so, and the latest warning by the tech giant is proof of it. Google has issued a warning for all smartphone users to not use public WiFi available at hotel lobbies, cafes, airports, and other places.
According to Google, these networks serve as a super accessible entry point for attackers. And in these attacks, a user can end up giving up crucial details like banking credentials, private chats, and more. Google’s advisory has been published in the Android: Behind the Screen report on text-based scams.
The report highlights that public WiFi networks are prone to security flaws and could compromise connected devices. Users all over the globe have been asked to avoid public WiFi as much as possible, specifically when they are performing any tasks related to shopping online, banking, or accessing accounts that consist of personal details.

Healthcare workers and patients feel more warmth from AI-generated medical responses than from actual doctors, a surprising analysis of 15 studies shows. The largest study examined 2,164 patient interactions, with similar patterns emerging across smaller datasets.

ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots scored roughly two points higher than human healthcare professionals on 10-point empathy scales when responding to patient questions via text. AI had a 73% probability of being rated as more empathic than human practitioners in head-to-head comparisons.

“In text-only scenarios, AI chatbots are frequently perceived as more empathic than human HCPs,” study authors wrote. The meta-analysis from the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester pooled data from 13 of the 15 studies comparing AI chatbots to doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers.

The results, published in the British Medical Bulletin, challenge long-held assumptions about human connection in medicine and run counter to a 2019 UK government report that called empathy an “essential human skill that AI cannot replicate.”

AI Shows Empathy Edge Across Medical Specialties

ChatGPT-4 outperformed human clinicians in nine separate studies spanning cancer care, thyroid conditions, mental health, autism, and general medical inquiries. For thyroid questions, the AI scored 1.42 standard deviations above human surgeons in empathy ratings. Mental health queries showed similar patterns, with ChatGPT-4 scoring 0.97 standard deviations higher than licensed mental health professionals.

Patient complaints revealed the starkest gaps. When handling grievances across hospital departments, ChatGPT-4 scored 2.08 standard deviations higher than human patient relations officers.

The AI advantage appeared consistent regardless of who evaluated the responses. When both physicians and patients reviewed the same set of answers about systemic lupus, ChatGPT-4 received higher empathy ratings from physicians. For questions about multiple sclerosis, patient representatives using a validated empathy scale rated AI responses more favorably than neurologist responses.

Studies drawing from Reddit health forums and patient portals showed similar trends. Questions ranged from interpreting blood test results to managing chronic conditions to understanding cancer treatment options. Across this variety, AI responses were more likely to be rated as warm, understanding, and considerate of patient concerns.

Dermatology provided the sole exception. In both studies examining skin-related questions, dermatologists outperformed ChatGPT-3.5 and Med-PaLM 2, though researchers couldn’t explain this specialty-specific pattern.

The Text Message Caveat

All studies evaluated text-based interactions exclusively. Even when one study converted AI responses to audio, empathy ratings came from written transcripts alone.

A doctor’s nod, forward lean, or eye contact often conveys understanding as powerfully as words. Text-based healthcare interactions represent a small portion of patient care, though their use grows with patient portals and telemedicine.

Studies also relied on proxy evaluators rather than patients receiving actual care. Healthcare professionals, medical students, patient representatives, and researchers rated empathy in responses to real patient questions. Direct patient feedback might differ, particularly since healthcare providers and patients often rate empathy differently.

Most studies used custom, unvalidated empathy scales. Raters typically scored responses on 1-5 or 1-10 scales ranging from “not empathetic” to “very empathetic.” Only one study employed the CARE scale, a validated 10-item instrument designed specifically for measuring therapeutic empathy in clinical consultations.

The studies couldn’t determine whether AI’s perceived empathy advantage translates to better health outcomes. While empathic communication has been linked to reduced patient pain and anxiety, improved medication adherence, and higher satisfaction with care, these studies measured perception rather than clinical impact.

Twenty Percent of UK Doctors Already Use ChatGPT

The research lands as AI adoption in healthcare accelerates. One in five UK general practitioners now uses generative AI tools for tasks like writing patient correspondence. Over 117,000 patients across 31 NHS mental health services have interacted with Wysa, an AI-powered digital therapist, according to Wysa’s website.

Study authors propose a collaborative model where doctors draft initial responses while AI enhances tone and empathic language, with clinicians ensuring medical accuracy. This approach could reduce physician workload while potentially improving patient satisfaction.

Empathic delivery means little if medical advice proves wrong. AI reliability concerns persist, and gains in perceived warmth could vanish if responses contain factual errors or incomplete guidance.

How the Research Was Conducted

Researchers searched seven databases for studies published through November 2024, identifying 15 qualifying studies from 2023-2024. Most used unvalidated single-item scales asking raters to score empathy from 1-5 or 1-10. Only one employed a validated instrument, the CARE scale designed for measuring therapeutic empathy.

Fourteen studies assessed ChatGPT variants (versions 3.5 or 4), while others examined Claude, Gemini Pro, Le Chat, ERNIE Bot, and Med-PaLM 2. Patient questions came from emails in private medical records, Reddit and public forums, real-time chat transcripts, and in-person reception interactions. The largest dataset included 2,164 live outpatient queries at a Chinese hospital.

Nine studies had moderate risk of bias; six showed serious risk. Common problems included curated patient queries potentially skewing results, reliance on Reddit communities where users may face barriers to formal care, and supervised AI designs where human experts reviewed outputs before release.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/empathy-chatgpt-more-human-than-doctors/

Our immune system has a dark side: It’s supposed to fight off invaders to keep us healthy. But sometimes it turns traitor and attacks our own cells and tissues.

What are called autoimmune diseases can affect just about every part of the body – and tens of millions of people. While most common in women, these diseases can strike anyone, adults or children, and they’re on the rise.

New research is raising the prospect of treatments that might do more than tamp down symptoms. Dozens of clinical trials are testing ways to reprogram an immune system-gone-rogue, with some promising early successes against lupus, myositis and certain other illnesses. Other researchers are hunting ways to at least delay brewing autoimmune diseases, spurred by a drug that can buy some time before people show symptoms of Type 1 diabetes.

“This is probably the most exciting time that we’ve ever had to be in autoimmunity,” said Dr. Amit Saxena, a rheumatologist at NYU Langone Health.

Here are some things to know.

What are autoimmune diseases?

They’re chronic diseases that can range from mild to life-threatening, more than 100 with different names depending on how and where they do damage. Rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis attack joints. Sjögren’s disease is known for dry eyes and mouth. Myositis and myasthenia gravis weaken muscles in different ways, the latter by attacking how nerves signal them. Lupus has widely varied symptoms including a butterfly-shaped facial rash, joint and muscle pain, fevers and damage to the kidneys, lungs and heart.

They’re also capricious: Even patients faring well for long periods can suddenly have a “flare” for no apparent reason.

Why autoimmune diseases are so difficult to diagnose

Many start with vague symptoms that come and go or mimic other illnesses. Many also have overlapping symptoms – rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren’s also can harm major organs, for example.

Diagnosis can take multiple tests, including some blood tests to detect antibodies that mistakenly latch onto healthy tissue. It usually centers on symptoms and involves ruling out other causes. Depending on the disease it can take years and seeing multiple doctors before one puts the clues together. There are efforts to improve: The National MS Society is educating doctors about newly updated guidelines to streamline diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

How the immune system gets out of whack

The human immune system is a complex army with sentinels to detect threats like germs or cancer cells, a variety of soldiers to attack them, and peacemakers to calm things down once the danger is over. Key is that it can distinguish what’s foreign from what’s “you,” what scientists call tolerance.

Sometimes confused immune cells or antibodies slip through, or the peacemakers can’t calm things down after a battle. If the system can’t spot and fix the problem, autoimmune diseases gradually develop.

Autoimmune diseases are often set off by a trigger

Most autoimmune diseases, especially in adults, aren’t caused by a specific gene defect. Instead, a variety of genes that affect immune functions can make people susceptible. Scientists say it then takes some “environmental” trigger, such as an infection, smoking or pollutants, to set the disease into motion. For example, the Epstein-Barr virus is linked to MS.

Scientists are zeroing in on the earliest molecular triggers. For example, white blood cells called neutrophils are first responders to signs of infection or injury — but abnormally overactive ones are suspected of playing a key role in lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

Women are at highest risk for autoimmune diseases

Women account for about 4 of 5 autoimmune patients, many of them young. Hormones are thought to play a role. But also, females have two X chromosomes while males have one X and one Y. Some research suggests an abnormality in how female cells switch off that extra X can increase women’s vulnerability.

But men do suffer from autoimmune diseases. One especially severe one named VEXAS syndrome wasn’t discovered until 2020. It mainly affects men over 50 and in addition to typical autoimmune symptoms it can cause blood clots, shortness of breath and night sweats.

Certain populations also have higher risks. For example, lupus is more common in Black and Hispanic women. Northern Europeans have a higher risk of MS than other groups.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/autoimmune-symptoms-rheumatology-diagnosis-steps-ecc5981788b598fe08d2c19a0fa1523b

Scientists say the origins of the ‘Hippo pathway’ date back to single-celled organisms

Does technological progress equal social progress? Many have lost faith in this idea in an era of hatred, “fake news” and echo chambers. Can regulation make X, TikTok and co. better?

In January 2025, Elon Musk conducted an interview on X with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party, some regional branches of which are considered right-wing extremist by German intelligence services.

“Only the AfD can save Germany. End of story,” he said in an undisguised interference by a powerful social network in Germany’s election campaign.

In Romania in 2024, the far-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu won the first round of the elections to the surprise of many: The political outsider had not participated in any TV debates and had not invested any money in his campaign. His success came mainly through the video platform TikTok; his videos were very prominent in the feeds of many Romanians.

Suspicions quickly arose that social bots (automated accounts) and trolls (human users who are sometimes paid to act on behalf of a foreign body or government agency) must have been involved. The election was annulled. It is also known that bots and trolls have been used to manipulate public opinion in many other digital discussions and topics, such as Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social media: Extreme positions and vocal minorities get most attention

What happens in the digital sphere can have a huge influence on public opinion. At a conference entitled “Big Tech and digital democracy: How much regulation does public discourse need?” organized by DW and the University of Cologne as part of a series of events on Global Media Law, media and constitutional law expert Dieter Dörr stated that “democracy is under serious threat.”

Established and respected media outlets are present on these platforms and use Instagram, YouTube and others as channels for their content. But there are also numerous other players. They don’t even have to be bots or trolls: There are many accounts that do not maintain certain standards, andincite hatred against others, spread false claims or use artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate and generate images and videos.

The algorithms used by social media to decide what content is displayed when and shown to whom reward this kind of behavior.

“Extreme opinions, which have a wide-reaching scope, are pushed to the top,” said Dörr, explaining that this is what keeps users on platforms for longer, allowing for more money to be earned from them.

EU’s Digital Services Act offers glimmer of hope

Social media platforms have become an important, if not the only, source of information for many people. Politicians and researchers have long recognized that the power wielded by these platforms is a problem. But can anything be done about it?

The European Union (EU) has stepped up efforts in recent years to regulate the digital world, primarily through its Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in February 2024. It requires major online platforms and search engines such as Amazon, Google, X and Facebook to provide greater transparency and protection for users.

Renate Nikolay, the deputy director-general of the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) at the European Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the Digital Services Act, says: “We are pursuing three principles: First, platforms must assess and minimize systemic risks. Second, we are strengthening users’ rights, for example by providing complaint mechanisms. Third, we demand transparency in algorithms and require platforms to give researchers access to their data.”

This sounds like a big step forward: Platforms have to provide information on their algorithms and even offer users the option to disable personalized content or advertising. After all, algorithms tend not only to disadvantage moderate and differentiated content. Ultimately, they also create filter bubbles or echo chambers, in which users are mainly surrounded by content and other users that reflect their own views. This puts them at risk of falling into a spiral of radicalization.

The TikTok algorithm is particularly notorious. A recent study by the University of Potsdam and the Bertelsmann Foundation showed that during the last German election campaign, political parties were not equally visible in the TikTok feeds of young users. Videos from official party accounts on the political fringes, especially the AfD, were played more frequently than those from the accounts of more centrist parties.

During the period under review, the AfD uploaded 21.5% percent of all the videos, but these accounted for 37.4% of videos that appeared in feeds. The AfD’s videos were therefore overrepresented. For its part, the center-right CDU/CSU party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz uploaded 17.1% of all party videos, but these accounted for only 4.9% of videos in feeds.

When asked about this at the conference, Tim Klaws, Director of Government Relations and Public Policy for DACH, Israel and BeNeLux at TikTok, gave an evasive answer. He said that digital platforms had no interest in operating in an environment full of disinformation and populism, and were trying to minimize “fake news”, hate speech, etc. with the help of AI and their staff members.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/digital-platforms-are-a-danger-for-democracy-what-can-be-done/a-74668315

Experts say AI isn’t wiping out all junior roles, but it’s forcing fresh grads to level up and prove the one thing machines still can’t replace: human judgment.

When her six-month internship in public relations abruptly ended at the halfway mark, communications graduate K Sudhiksha, 23, wasn’t entirely surprised.

Officially, she was told it was due to a company restructuring, but she suspected that it had something to do with how her job could be done by artificial intelligence (AI).

“I was spending most of my time running prompts on ChatGPT,” she told CNA TODAY, referring to the popular AI chatbot.

“We were all encouraged to do it. I could do my tasks faster, but it also made me feel creatively stunted.”

Ms Sudhiksha, who had joined the PR firm in July hoping to learn how to craft press releases and pitch news stories to the media, found that much of her work revolved around using AI tools to generate first drafts of media releases and summarise weekly news coverage for clients.

While there were warnings to carefully fact-check the output generated by ChatGPT, she said the reliance on AI made the experience feel hollow as she had hoped for a more hands-on, creative process that would let her flex her own brain muscles.

Three months into her internship, her role was made redundant, Ms Sudhiksha said.

Currently between jobs, she admitted that her experience has left her feeling pessimistic and frustrated, as she has to compete with machines: “I wish I had experienced PR before the AI era.”

For Mr Mitchell Yap, 25, a customer service specialist at a tech firm, the impact of AI on job security has also been tangible. The company recently introduced a support bot designed to handle as many customer queries as possible before transferring them to a human agent.

“As the bot improves, my team now handles only the more complex or sensitive cases, but we can’t ignore that this also means the overall workload is shrinking.”

While he is not overly anxious yet, Mr Yap admits that every new update to the bot makes him and his colleagues wonder how long their roles will stay essential.

The experiences of Ms Sudhiksha and Mr Yap reflect a growing concern among young workers and jobseekers, including those who have not even entered the job market yet: Is AI going to take away the first jobs they’ve worked so hard to qualify for?

For some, that answer is affirmative. In the legal industry, for instance, recruiters like Ms Shulin Lee, managing director of legal executive search firm Aslant Legal, have already seen how automation and AI are impacting entry-level hiring.

“In 2024, law firms prioritised mid-level to senior hires. There were almost no openings for juniors with one to two years’ experience,” she said. “It was one of the toughest years for junior hiring I’ve seen in my 15 years in recruitment.”

While AI wasn’t the only factor behind the decline – cost and competency gaps among Gen Z hires also played a role – Ms Lee recalled law firm partners telling her that AI tools can now conduct due diligence on 200 contracts in two hours, hence reducing the need for juniors.

According to data from Jobstreet by Seek, the number of entry-level postings in Singapore fell by more than 25 per cent in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, even as total job openings rose slightly, by 4 per cent.

The data points to what Jobstreet calls a “recalibration” of the job market. Many entry-level roles are being reshaped as more companies embrace automation to handle routine tasks traditionally assigned to junior team members, said Ms Yuh Yng Chook, director of Asia sales and APAC service at Seek, which owns Jobstreet and Jobsdb.

Similarly, human resource (HR) platform Remote surveyed 250 Singapore employers in its Global Workforce Report 2025, and found that four in five had reduced the number of entry-level hires at their companies due to AI.

Eighteen per cent of Singapore firms said they had eliminated roles or reduced headcount due to AI, while another 18 per cent had hired or reassigned roles specifically to support AI-related initiatives.

Still, some experts stressed that it’s not just AI that is driving the decline in recruitment activity. Mr Lewis Garrad, partner and career practice leader for Asia at global consulting firm Mercer, said the slowdown in graduate hiring reflects both technological change and a more cautious business climate.

“AI can support and complete certain tasks, but it rarely replaces an entire job,” he said, adding that companies are automating routine parts of work while rethinking roles amid slower growth and tighter budgets.

Mr Chiew Chun Wee, regional policy and insights lead for Asia Pacific at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), agreed.

“‘AI is coming for your jobs’ makes for compelling headlines, but the reality is far more nuanced,” he said.

According to Mr Chiew, most organisations are trying out tools for limited tasks such as drafting written work, transcribing meeting minutes and supporting research – not replacing entire roles.

Adoption also varies by size and sector, as smaller firms tend to be nimbler in trying out new apps, while larger ones are developing in-house tools.

“The nuance lies in how AI reconfigures work … Automating knowledge work is actually quite hard,” Mr Chiew said.

“Processes are messy and full of judgment calls. So the future of work won’t be about replacing people. It’ll be a blend of automation, augmentation and human judgment.”

That’s also why some experts believe that companies cannot afford to stop hiring young people altogether. As Ms Lee put it: “If you stop hiring young people now, you’ll be short of mid-levels later. The pipeline will dry up.”

WHERE ENTRY-LEVEL ROLES ARE DISAPPEARING
While AI is not wiping out entry-level jobs across the board, its impact is most visible in routine roles.

JobStreet’s data shows that in Singapore, entry-level sales roles have fallen 61 per cent and entry-level customer service positions by 45 per cent, as chatbots, automated lead-generation tools and self-service systems take over tasks once handled by new hires.

Ms Gillian O’Brien, general manager of Remote Recruit at Remote, said similar declines are appearing in customer support, software development, sales development and marketing content production. Remote Recruit is a product under the Remote brand.

“These are roles where most of the tasks, such as IT ticket triaging, entry-level coding, sales lead list building and drafting blog content can be done by AI,” she added.

Globally, the pattern mirrors Singapore’s: In the United States, a 2025 study by ADP Research, the global thought leader on labour market and employee performance research and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, shows employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed jobs has dropped 6 per cent between late 2022 and July 2025.

Within that, junior software developers fell 20 per cent and customer-service roles 11 per cent – the very functions most easily automated.

The ripple effects are being felt far beyond frontline roles. Across industries, companies are reorganising their operations in response to the accelerating impact of AI and automation.

At Amazon, for instance, the company announced an overall reduction of about 14,000 corporate roles in October as part of efforts to “reduce layers” and “increase ownership”.

In a note to employees, Ms Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice-president of people experience and technology, called AI “the most transformative technology since the internet”, saying it enables companies to innovate faster and must be met with leaner, more agile structures.

While she did not link the layoffs directly to AI, her comments reflect how major firms are reorganising to stay competitive in an AI-driven economy.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/today/big-read/ai-junior-entry-level-jobs-young-workers-5449836

Committee seeks stronger trial design, urging SII to sharpen objectives and raise scientific standards for proving CERVAVAC’s non-inferiority to Merck’s Gardasil

India’s expert committee on vaccines has asked the Serum Institute of India (SII) to revise its Phase III trial plan before moving ahead with tests of its cervical cancer vaccine in women of childbearing age. The vaccine is currently approved only for girls and young women aged 9 to 26 years.

The committee has suggested key changes in the study design, including strengthening the trial’s objectives and tightening the scientific criteria for proving non-inferiority against Merck’s Gardasil.

The Pune-based vaccine maker had presented the protocol of its proposed study titled, “A Phase-III, double-blind, randomized, active-controlled, multicentric clinical trial to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of qHPV Vaccine (CERVAVAC) administered intramuscularly in women aged 27 to 45 Years as compared to Merck’s HPV 6/11/16/18 Vaccine (Gardasil).”

According to the minutes of the meeting of the subject expert committee (SEC), seen by News18, “the study vaccine is already approved in the age group of 9-14 years (male and female), at two-doses schedule (0 and 6 months) and for age group of 15-26 years (male and female), at three-dose schedule (0, 2 and 6 months) for prevention of the disease caused by Human Papilloma Virus types 6, 11, 16 and 18.”

CERVAVAC, developed by the Serum Institute in collaboration with the Department of Biotechnology, is India’s first indigenously made quadrivalent HPV vaccine, protecting against HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18—the strains responsible for the majority of cervical cancer cases. If approved for the expanded age group, the vaccine could mark a significant step in widening India’s cervical cancer prevention programme.

What is the main goal?
The main goal of the study is to show that women who get CERVAVAC develop an immune response against Human Papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18 that is just as strong as the response seen in women who get Merck’s Gardasil. A secondary goal is to check if the immune response against HPV types 6 and 11 with this vaccine is also as good as that with Gardasil.

According to the proposal, “the primary objective of the present study is to demonstrate that the immune response to HPV types 16 and 18 among women receiving CERVAVAC is non-inferior to that in the women receiving Gardasil and one of the secondary objectives is to demonstrate that the immune response to HPV types 6 and 11 among women receiving CERVAVAC is non-inferior to that in the women receiving Gardasil.”

However, the panel has advised the company to strengthen the trial by upgrading some of the study goals. It said that checking how well the vaccine triggers an immune response against HPV types 6 and 11 should be treated as a main goal of the study, not just a side one. It also advised the company to measure how well the vaccine protects women from long-lasting HPV infections (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) at 24 and 36 months, and to count this as an important study goal, not just an optional or exploratory part. “The firm should include determination of immune response to HPV types 6 and 11 as primary objective instead of secondary objective,” it recommended.

It also said the company should “consider assessing the protection against incident persistent cervical HPV 6, 11, 16 and 18 infections in women receiving CERVAVAC and Gardasil at 24, 36 months as secondary objective instead of exploratory objective for serotypes 6 and 11 infections.”

Source: https://www.news18.com/india/expert-panel-asks-serum-institute-to-tighten-hpv-vaccine-trial-before-testing-on-women-of-childbearing-age-9685995.html

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google has reached a comprehensive U.S. court settlement with “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games, agreeing to Android and app store reforms aimed at lowering fees, boosting competition and expanding choices for developers and consumers.
In a joint filing, opens new tab on Tuesday in the federal court in San Francisco, the companies asked U.S. District Judge James Donato to consider a proposal resolving Epic’s 2020 antitrust lawsuit, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing how users access apps and make in-app purchases on Android devices.

Google has denied any wrongdoing throughout the closely watched litigation.
The proposal requires Donato’s approval. The judge oversaw a jury trial in 2023 that Epic won and last year he issued a sweeping injunction mandating Play app store reforms that Google said went too far. Google said the reforms potentially harmed its competitive position and compromised user safety.
Under the new proposal, Google would allow users to more easily download and install third-party app stores that meet new security and safety standards.
Developers will also be allowed to direct users to alternative payment methods both within apps and via external web links. Google said it would implement a capped service fee of either 9% or 20% on transactions in Play-distributed apps that use alternative payment options. Those caps apply to apps first installed or updated from Google Play after October 30.

Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android Ecosystem, said, opens new tab on Tuesday the proposed changes maintained user safety while increasing flexibility for developers and consumers. Samat said Google looked forward to discussing the resolution with Donato, who is expected on Thursday to meet with lawyers involved with the case at a previously scheduled hearing.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called, opens new tab Google’s proposal “awesome” and said it “genuinely doubles down on Android’s original vision as an open platform.”
Google unsuccessfully challenged Donato’s injunction in a federal appeals court, which upheld it in a ruling in July. The U.S. Supreme Court last month declined Google’s request to temporarily freeze parts of the injunction.
Tuesday’s court filing from Google and Epic asked Donato to modify his injunction, while keeping many parts of it intact. The proposal keeps in place a three-member technical committee to review disputes over implementing the injunction.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/google-proposes-app-store-reforms-settlement-with-fortnite-maker-epic-games-2025-11-05/

Google says the feature is designed to make navigation more accurate, stress-free, and safer, especially on busy highways or in unfamiliar areas

Google Maps is taking its navigation experience to the next level. The tech giant has announced a new feature called Live Lane Guidance, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and car sensors to tell drivers exactly when and where to change lanes, almost like having a co-driver who’s always alert.
However, there’s a catch. This feature will be available only in vehicles with Google’s built-in system and not on smartphones. It will launch first in the Polestar 4 in the United States and Sweden, before expanding to more cars and regions in the coming months.
How It Works
Unlike the regular lane guidance on the Google Maps app — which simply shows lane arrows on the screen — this new version will actually detect your car’s position on the road using its front-facing camera and sensors. AI then analyses the road markings and signs in real time, integrating them with Google Maps navigation.

So, if you’re in the wrong lane for an upcoming turn or exit, the system will alert you through both visual and audio warnings — guiding you safely to the correct lane.

For example, if you’re stuck in the left lane but your exit is on the right, the car will detect that and tell you exactly when to move.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/google-maps-will-soon-watch-the-road-for-you-but-only-in-select-cars-article-153106645

Australia has added message board Reddit and livestreaming service Kick to its list of social media platforms that must ban children younger than 16 from holding accounts.

The platforms join Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube in facing a world-first legal obligation to shut the accounts of younger Australian children from Dec. 10, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Wednesday.

Platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children younger than 16 could be punished with a fine of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million).

“We have met with several of the social media platforms in the past month so that they understand there is no excuse for failure to implement this law,” Wells told reporters in Canberra.

“Online platforms use technology to target children with chilling control. We are merely asking that they use that same technology to keep children safe online,” Wells added.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who will enforce the social media ban, said the list of age-restricted platforms would evolve with new technologies.

The nine platforms currently age-restricted meet the key requirement that their “sole or significant purpose is to enable online social interaction,” a government statement said.

Inman Grant said she would work with academics to evaluate the impacts of the ban, including whether children sleep or interact more or become more physically active.

“We’ll also look for unintended consequences and we’ll be gathering evidence” so that others could learn from Australia’s achievements, Inman Grant said.

Australia’s move is being closely watched by countries that share concerns about social media impacts on young children.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a United Nations forum in New York in September that she was “inspired” by Australia’s “common sense” move to legislate the age restriction.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/australia-social-media-ban-reddit-kick-e6ae0be8c6b2571edd94d0318f47cb14#

Apple is reportedly working on a new low-cost MacBook that will likely be powered by an iPhone chipset. The Cupertino giant is expected to target students who would otherwise buy Chromebooks or Windows PCs.

Apple is said to be working on an affordable MacBook for some time now. The Cupertino giant has seen a rise in MacBook sales recently, but its devices remain at the higher end, including the base M4 MacBook Air. Now, the company is planning to fill the gap in the lineup, with the low-cost MacBook targeting students and users on a budget.

According to Bloomberg, Apple will use less-advanced components to keep the price of the affordable MacBook under $1,000 (roughly Rs 88,740) in the US. The report states that the device will be powered by an iPhone chipset. Previously, it was believed that the low-cost MacBook would use the A18 Pro chipset from the iPhone 16 Pro.

On the surface, the iPhone chip may raise doubts over performance. However, the report suggests that it would perform better than the M1 chipset.

Additionally, the new MacBook is expected to pack a lower-end LCD compared to the 13.6-inch unit in the MacBook Air.

Apple wants to target students with new MacBook
Apple is planning to target students with its low-cost MacBook. The company wants to cater to users who would normally use a Windows laptop or a Chromebook at around $600 (roughly Rs 53,000) in price. As per IDC, Apple stood in fourth place in terms of global PC market share in the third quarter of 2025 with 9 per cent. The company trailed behind Lenovo, HP and Dell.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/apple-is-coming-to-eat-google-and-microsofts-lunch-with-new-low-cost-macbook-report-says-2813819-2025-11-05

A massive bat-shaped cloud appeared in telescope images released on Halloween, spanning an area four times the size of a full moon. The European Southern Observatory’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile caught this eerie celestial creature just in time for the spookiest night of the year, revealing a stellar nursery where infant stars are actively forming 10,000 light-years from Earth.

Flying between the southern constellations of Circinus and Norma, this space bat looks like it’s hunting the glowing spot hovering above it. What looks like a Halloween decoration is actually a star factory hard at work. Baby stars are being born right now inside those bat-shaped clouds of gas and dust.

Newborn Stars Make The Bat Glow Red
The bat gets its haunting red appearance from infant stars energizing the hydrogen gas around them. These young stars pump out enough energy to make the surrounding gas shine in an intense crimson shade, painting the cosmic bat’s wings and body across the night sky.

Dark filaments streak through the nebula like bones in a skeleton. These structures are colder, denser pockets of gas and dust that block visible light from stars behind them. Dust grains within these dark patches act like cosmic curtains, preventing starlight from reaching observers on Earth and creating the skeletal appearance.

Combining Light Wavelengths Reveals Hidden Details
Astronomers have catalogued the brightest parts of this stellar nursery. RCW 94 forms the bat’s right wing, while RCW 95 creates the body. Other portions remain officially unnamed.

Getting this shot required combining different types of light, akin to using different filters on a camera. Most of the bat’s shape and that red color came from photographing visible light, the kind human eyes can see. But astronomers also added infrared images from ESO’s VISTA telescope, which reveal the densest parts hidden inside the clouds. Putting both together shows details that would stay invisible otherwise.

A 268-Megapixel Camera Captured the Scene
OmegaCAM, a 268-megapixel camera aboard the VST telescope, made capturing this enormous creature possible. The telescope’s wide field of view allowed astronomers to frame the entire bat in a single portrait. For comparison, most smartphone cameras max out around 12 to 50 megapixels.

Both sets of telescope data are available to the public. Anyone curious enough can dig through the archives and hunt for more cosmic creatures hiding in space. Thousands of similar photos sit waiting for someone to discover them.

The telescope sits in Chile’s Atacama Desert at an observatory called Paranal. Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics owns and runs it, though it’s hosted at a European facility designed for scanning large chunks of the southern sky.s.

While the nebula has existed for millennia, releasing this particular image on October 31st gives stargazers a cosmic treat to match the holiday’s spooky spirit. The bat continues its eternal flight through space, birthing new stars as it soars between constellations.

Source: https://studyfinds.org/cosmic-bat-halloween/

A momentous week in the technology sector made it clear there is no sign the boom in building artificial intelligence infrastructure is slowing — despite the bubble talk.
Nvidia (NVDA.O), whose processors are the AI revolution’s backbone, became the first company to surpass $5 trillion in market value. Microsoft (MSFT.O), and OpenAI inked a deal enhancing the ChatGPT maker’s fundraising ability and OpenAI promptly started laying groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at $1 trillion.

Amazon (AMZN.O), said it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs, just days before its cloud unit posted its strongest growth in nearly three years.
These developments, along with numerous earnings calls and interviews with executives, make clear that AI has cemented itself as the single biggest catalyst for global corporate investment and the engine of the market rally, even as some question the sustainability of both.

SPENDING WITHOUT ENDING

Soaring revenue at Microsoft, Alphabet (GOOGL.O), and other technology giants was expected. But more than 100 non-tech global companies noted data centers on quarterly calls this week, including Honeywell , turbine maker GE Vernova (GEV.N), and heavy equipment maker Caterpillar (CAT.N).

Sales in Caterpillar’s division that supplies data centers jumped 31% in its most recent quarter. “We’re definitely really excited about the prime power opportunity with data centers,” CEO Joseph Creed said this week.
“The AI supply chain now spans power, industrials and cooling technology, and investors are looking at the entire ecosystem rather than just core tech,” said Ayako Yoshioka, portfolio manager at Wealth Enhancement Group.
Goldman Sachs estimates global AI-related infrastructure spending could reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Alphabet are expected to spend roughly $350 billion combined this year.
AI investment is propping up global trade, with about 60% of U.S. data-center capex spent on imported IT equipment, according to Oxford Economics, much of it semiconductors from Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam.

At least two dozen companies representing more than $21 trillion in combined market value reported quarterly earnings or spoke with Reuters about AI in recent days. Many, including Procter & Gamble (PG.N), and Boliden (BOL.ST), noted that the hoped-for productivity gains, though uneven, are beginning to show.
“We strongly believe the future contribution of artificial intelligence within R&D, within developing innovation, will steadily increase,” Schindler (SCHP.S), CEO Paolo Compagna told Reuters, though he said AI’s impact is yet to be seen. The Swiss lift and escalator maker raised its annual margin forecast last week.
Year-over-year revenue growth in the U.S. tech sector is up more than 15%, outpacing all other sectors, according to LSEG data.
Apple (AAPL.O), said it was significantly increasing AI investment and Amazon projected capital spending of $125 billion in 2025.

WORRIES ABOUT OVERVALUATION

Since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022, global equity values have climbed 46%, or $46 trillion. One-third of that gain has come from AI-linked companies, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
Analysts warn of a quickening replacement cycle for servers, accelerators and chips as each new generation delivers exponential performance gains. The useful life of AI chips is shrinking to five years or less, forcing companies to “write down assets faster and replace them sooner,” said UBS semiconductor analyst Tim Arcuri.
The surge in AI-related spending has widened the gap between investment and returns, with a Reuters analysis showing that sales-to-capex ratios at major tech firms have fallen sharply as outlays on chips and data centers grow faster than revenue. Capital expenditures represent a larger chunk of cash generated by operating activities for some companies, causing some investor concern.
“If progress hasn’t been made toward monetization within three years, the market will start asking hard questions,” said Sumali Sanyal, senior portfolio manager at investment firm Xponance.

Microsoft reported a record $35 billion in capex in its most recent quarter and projected higher spending, prompting Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler to ask whether the company was spending into a bubble. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood responded that AI-related demand still outpaces Microsoft’s spending. “I thought we were going to catch up. We are not,” she said.
Some companies are financing AI projects with debt. Oracle’s $18 billion bond sale last month was one of the largest ever for a tech company, and it looks set to be surpassed by an up to $30 billion bond sale from Meta Platforms (META.O). News of its largest ever bond sale knocked Meta’s shares down 11% on Thursday.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/great-ai-buildout-shows-no-sign-slowing-2025-10-31/

Reliance Industries on Thursday said its artificial intelligence arm Reliance Intelligence has partnered with Google to offer free access to Google AI Pro for 18 months, worth Rs 35,100 to select Jio 5G users initially.

The Reliance-Google offer includes higher access to Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro model in the Gemini app, higher limits to generate stunning images and videos with their state-of-the-art Nano Banana and Veo 3.1 models, expanded access to Notebook LM for study and research, 2 TB of cloud storage, etc, a statement said.

The development follows an announcement by OpenAI to offer ‘ChatGPT Go’, which supports higher query limits and more image generation, free for one year to users in India who sign up during a limited-time promotional period beginning November 4.

“Reliance Intelligence aims to make intelligence services accessible to 1.45 billion Indians. Through our collaboration with strategic and long-term partners like Google, we aim to make India not just AI-enabled but AI-empowered – where every citizen and enterprise can harness intelligent tools to create, innovate and grow,” RIL Chairman Mukesh D Ambani said.

OpenAI ChatGPT Go, at present, is priced at Rs 399 per month.

Websites for Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft returned to service late on Wednesday after experiencing problems amid a global Microsoft outage.

Outage tracker Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with a number of websites around the world over several hours.

Microsoft said some users of Microsoft 365 saw delays with Outlook among other services, but by 21:00GMT, many websites that went down were once again accessible after the company restored a prior update.

The company’s Azure cloud computing platform, which underpins large parts of the internet, had reported a “degradation of some services” at 16:00 GMT.

It said this was due to “DNS issues” – the same root cause of the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week.

Amazon said AWS was operating normally.

Other sites that were impacted in the UK include supermarket Asda, M&S, and mobile phone operator O2 – while in the US, people reported issues accessing the websites of coffee chain Starbucks and retailer Kroger.

Microsoft said business Microsoft 365 customers experienced problems.

Some web pages on Microsoft also directed users to an error notifications that read “Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.”

The tech giant resorted to posting updates to a thread on X after some users reported they could not access the service status page.

While NatWest’s website was temporarily impacted, the bank’s mobile banking, web chat, and telephone customer services remained available during the outage.

The UK consumer organisation Which? said businesses had an obligation to ensure customers were kept informed and supported as services were restored, and to compensate consumers impacted.

“Customers should keep evidence of any failed or delayed payments in case they need to make a claim,” advised Which? consumer law expert Lisa Webb.

“Those worried about missing a bill should contact the relevant company to explain the situation and request that any fees be waived,” Ms Webb added.

Meanwhile, business at the Scottish Parliament was suspended because of technical issues with the parliament’s online voting system.

The outage prompted a postponement of debate over land reform legislation that could allow Scotland to intervene in private sales and require large estates to be broken up.

A senior Scottish Parliament source told BBC News they believed the problems were related to the Microsoft outage.

Azure’s crucial role online
Exactly how much of the internet was impacted is unclear, but estimates typically put Microsoft Azure at around 20% of the global cloud market.

The firm said it believed the outage was a result of “an inadvertent configuration change”.

In other words, a behind-the-scenes system was changed, with unintended consequences.

The concentration of cloud services into Microsoft, Amazon and Google means an outage like this “can cripple hundreds, if not thousands of applications and systems,” said Dr Saqib Kakvi, from Royal Holloway University.

“Due to cost of hosting web content, economic forces lead to consolidation of resources into a few very large players, but it is effectively putting all our eggs in one of three baskets.”

Recent outages have laid bare the fragility of the modern-day internet, according to engineering professor Gregory Falco of Cornell University.

“When we think of Azure or AWS, we think of a monolithic piece of technology infrastructure but the reality is that it’s thousands if not tens of thousands of little pieces of a puzzle that are all interwoven together,” said Mr Falco.

He noted that some of those pieces are managed by the companies themselves while others are overseen by third parties such as CrowdStrike, which last year deployed a software update that affected more than eight million computers run on Microsoft systems.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rj45n4x5eo

Atlas, OpenAI’s new ChatGPT-powered browser, launched on Tuesday looking to “rethink what a browser can be about” and challenge the hegemony of Google Chrome. But how accurate are AI browsers?

The US artificial intelligence company OpenAI said on Tuesday that it is launching its own web browser, Atlas, to rival Google’s popular Chrome browser.

Atlas will be powered by OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT, as the California-based firm looks to revolutionize how people use the internet.

“Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of browser innovation since then,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a video presentation broadcast on Tuesday, speaking off a “rare, once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about and how to use one.”

What’s different about ChatGPT’s Atlas?
For instance, Altman suggested that the classic URL search bar at the heart of traditional browsers could be replaced by an AI chatbot interface.

The browser will initially only be available for Apple’s Mac computers, the company said, adding that it is designed to help users complete “tasks without copying and pasting or leaving the page.”

Another key feature of the Atlas browser is its so-called “agent mode” which effectively surfs around the internet automatically on the user’s behalf, armed with a person’s browser history and predicting what sort of information they are likely to be looking for.

“It’s using the internet for you,” Altman said.

Criticism of AI-powered browsers
That’s one way of looking at it. But analyst Paddy Harrington of London-based market research group Forrester warned that another way of thinking about OpenAI’s new browser is that it’s “taking personality away from you.”

“Your profile will be personally attuned to you based on all the information sucked up about you,” Harrington told the Associated Press (AP) news agency. “OK, scary. But is it really you, really what you’re thinking, or what that engine decides it’s going to do? And will it add in preferred solutions [to users’ queries] based on ads?”

Either way, Harrington said it will be a big challenge for Atlas to “[compete] with a giant who has ridiculous market share.”

Atlas launched in Chrome-dominated market
Since launching in 2008, Google Chrome has amassed around 3 billion users worldwide, blowing rivals such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and then Edge browsers out of the water.

But AI chatbots such as ChatGPT are increasingly summarizing information on the internet so efficiently that many users are turning to them rather than the traditional practice of clicking on links suggested by a browser.

OpenAI has said ChatGPT already has more than 800 million users, while a survey conducted on behalf of AP this year found that about 60% of Americans – and 74% of those under 30 – use AI to find information at least some of the time.

Browsers such as Chrome have also integrated AI summaries into their search results, generally visible at the top of the results page above the first link, although concerns have been raised about the accuracy of this information.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/openai-launches-browser-to-rival-google-chrome/a-74452151

Meta (META.O), opens new tab has struck a $27 billion financing deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund its biggest data center project globally, as large technology companies race to build out the infrastructure needed to power their artificial intelligence ambitions.
Tuesday’s announcement marks Meta’s largest-ever private capital deal. Under it, Meta will retain about 20% equity in the Louisiana project, with the majority owned by funds that alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital (OWL.N), opens new tab manages. Blue Owl contributed roughly $7 billion in cash to the joint venture, with Meta receiving a one-time payout of about $3 billion.

The planned data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, known as Hyperion, is projected to deliver more than 2 gigawatts of compute capacity to support training of large language models, the technology behind tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz, Co-CEOs of Blue Owl, called Hyperion “an ambitious project that reflects the scale and speed required to power the next generation of AI infrastructure.”
Major tech companies, including Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Meta (META.O), opens new tab, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and CoreWeave (CRWV.O), opens new tab, are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Morgan Stanley estimates.

OpenAI, the startup at the heart of the AI boom, recently signed multiple deals that may cost over $1 trillion to secure about 26 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power roughly 20 million U.S. homes.
Meta’s finance chief, Susan Li, called Tuesday’s deal “a bold step forward.” The company has signed leases for the facility with a four-year initial term with an option to extend and expects the project to create more than 500 jobs once it goes online.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-forms-joint-venture-with-blue-owl-capital-louisiana-data-center-2025-10-21/

The establishment of a $15 billion Google AI hub in Andhra Pradesh has ignited political tensions, particularly between Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh has responded to political criticism from Tamil Nadu over Google’s decision to set up a $15 billion Artificial Intelligence hub in Visakhapatnam. The investment, announced as part of a five-year plan, sparked a political row after opposition parties in Tamil Nadu accused the ruling DMK government of failing to attract Google to the state, despite the tech giant’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, hailing from Madurai.
Taking to X, Lokesh wrote, “He chose Bharat,” dismissing regional politics and emphasising that India as a whole stood to gain from the tech major’s investment.
The AIADMK had targeted Chief Minister MK Stalin’s administration, with senior leader RB Udayakumar telling reporters, “Despite Google CEO Sundar Pichai being a Tamil, the DMK government failed to invite the company to establish its AI infrastructure hub here. This is not just a missed investment. It’s a lost chance for Tamil Nadu to emerge as a national hub for AI, data analytics, and digital infrastructure.”

India’s Biggest $15 Billion AI hub In Andhra
Google will invest USD 15 billion over the next five years in setting up an AI hub in India, which will include the country’s largest data centre in partnership with Adani Group. The AI hub at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh will be Google’s largest outside the US and will include 1-gigawatt data centre campus, new large-scale energy sources, and an expanded fiber-optic network, the tech super giant said.

“It’s the largest AI hub that we are going to be investing in anywhere in the world outside of the US,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at an event here to sign the formal agreement.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/india/sundar-pichai-chose-bharat-nara-lokeshs-swipe-at-aiadmk-as-state-politics-erupts-over-google-ai-hub-article-153032228

Posting about her kids brings joy and connection, but with growing online risks, this mum-of-two has learnt that some moments are best kept just for family.

The first time I shared a photo of my firstborn son online, he was just 30 days old.

I was still adjusting to motherhood, revelling in the fact that I now had a baby boy.

Sure, I could have shouted it from the rooftops, but posting it on social media felt like the easiest way to tell the world.

Now that he’s four years old, I still find myself scrolling back to that photo, trying to remember how tiny those hands were.

Or when conversations about the newborn stage come up, I go straight to that picture and say: “This was how small he was!”

On my account page, I know exactly where to find it among my dozens of posts – unlike scrolling endlessly through the thousands of items in my phone gallery, which would take ages.

I’ve always found it heartwarming to capture and share memories of my children online. But now, I often find myself wondering how much of our children’s lives we should share online, especially in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) where every photo can be re-edited in seconds.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA HAS TRANSFORMED PARENTING
Social media has transformed modern parenting into a highly visible and heavily scrutinised experience. On one hand, it offers parents access to a wealth of information, support groups and expert advice.

It has also helped normalise honest conversations about the challenges of parenthood, such as burnout, postpartum depression and mental health.

But there’s another side. Social media has fostered a culture of comparison, where curated highlight reels can often leave parents feeling inadequate or judged.

Influencer parenting is also rampant – people capitalising on their parenting experience by promoting trends and products, adding pressure or setting unrealistic expectations for the rest of us.

At the same time, I also follow parents who choose not to post their children online at all, or who blur their faces, especially on public accounts. For them, it’s about protecting their children from online harm, negative commentary, or simply thinking that posting pictures of their children online is performative.

I respect that deeply – what should always come first is the child’s wellbeing.

SHARING, BUT WITH INTENTION
The way I see it, posting updates isn’t about showing off – it’s about connection.

Family and friends living in other parts of the world can feel a sense of involvement in our lives, celebrating milestones and the little joys that make up our days.

This is especially true for a dear friend who had relocated to the Netherlands. We would find ourselves laughing at a funny photo I shared of my two sons or marvelling at how tall her daughter has grown. It’s our way of remaining part of each other’s daily lives, even from afar.

It also creates moments of joy in an otherwise hectic routine and allows us to reflect on the small wins that parenthood often obscures.

Despite this, I’m aware that the internet is not a safe place, and you never really know who’s lurking in your followers list.

So I don’t post indiscriminately.

My Instagram account is fully private. I cleaned up my friends and followers list before my kids were born because I knew I wanted to share our daily lives with friends and family, and only fully clothed images and carefully chosen snapshots make it online.

I also never post anything that could embarrass them – tantrums, toilet training mishaps, or moments that should remain private.

No full names, no addresses, and no geotags that reveal our routines or locations.

And yes, that includes moments like when my son ran around the house in nothing other than a Spider-Man mask during a toilet training session and screaming, “Muuuuuum, look at my poop!”

GROWING UP WITH A DIGITAL TRAIL

Even with strict boundaries, I am conscious that my kids already have a digital footprint at a young age.

I know that every photo, caption or tag contributes to a record they did not consent to.

And yes, it’s a little unnerving, especially when I think about how there’s a chance – however slim that may be – that a prospective employer might have access to this footprint, even if my account is fully private.

A constellation of classified defense satellites built by the commercial company SpaceX is emitting a mysterious signal that may violate international standards, NPR has learned.

Satellites associated with the Starshield satellite network appear to be transmitting to the Earth’s surface on frequencies normally used for doing the exact opposite: sending commands from Earth to satellites in space. The use of those frequencies to “downlink” data runs counter to standards set by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency that seeks to coordinate the use of radio spectrum globally.

Starshield’s unusual transmissions have the potential to interfere with other scientific and commercial satellites, warns Scott Tilley, an amateur satellite tracker in Canada who first spotted the signals.

“Nearby satellites could receive radio-frequency interference and could perhaps not respond properly to commands — or ignore commands — from Earth,” he told NPR.

Outside experts agree there’s the potential for radio interference. “I think it is definitely happening,” said Kevin Gifford, a computer science professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder who specializes in radio interference from spacecraft. But he said the issue of whether the interference is truly disruptive remains unresolved.

SpaceX and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the satellites for the government, did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.

Caught by the wrong antenna

The discovery of the signal happened purely by chance.

Tilley regularly monitors satellites from his home in British Columbia as a hobby. He was working on another project when he accidentally triggered a scan of radio frequencies that are normally quiet.

“It was just a clumsy move at the keyboard,” he said. “I was resetting some stuff and then all of a sudden I’m looking at the wrong antenna, the wrong band.”

The band of the radio spectrum he found himself looking at, between 2025-2110 MHz, is reserved for “uplinking” data to orbiting satellites. That means there shouldn’t be any signals coming from space in that range.

A video posted by minister’s social media account shows that he gave go ahead to the team to prepare for the indigenous production of the chipset that can be used in IT servers.

India’s first indigenously-designed 7 nanometer computer processor ‘Shakti’ is expected to be ready by 2028, which can be produced at chip plant locally in future, the IIT Madras-based team informed Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday.

A video posted by minister’s social media account shows that he gave go ahead to the team to prepare for the indigenous production of the chipset that can be used in IT servers.

Vaishnaw said that the 7 nm chip design will be ready by 2028 and the wafer fabrication (chip production plant) in the country will be ready by then.

“We will be taking path from 28 nanometer to 7 nm so in future this can be loaded in our Fab. Let’s do it,” Vaishnaw said in the video.

The processor being developed by a team at IIT Madras will look at the deployment in computer servers for financial, communications, defense and strategic sectors.

Source : https://www.deccanherald.com/technology/indias-first-7-nanometer-computer-chip-design-to-be-ready-by-2028-3769029

In the next few weeks, OpenAI will put out a version of ChatGPT that will let people have more control over the chatbot’s tone and personality, CEO Altman said.

OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will soon allow more content like “erotica for verified adults” as part of what the company describes as a “treat adult users like adults” principle. This is expected to be part of OpenAI’s major update for ChatGPT, allowing users to customise their AI assistant’s personality and include options for more human-like answers.

Notably, users usually have to turn to social storytelling platforms like Wattpad to read, write, and share original stories, including erotic content, but with restrictions.

In a post on X, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, said they observed that stricter controls on AI to deal with mental health concerns had made the chatbot “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems”.

Notably, the stricter safety rules came in after a teenager from California, Adam Raine, died by suicide earlier this year. His parents filed a lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT gave him advice on how to take his own life.

“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,” Altman wrote.

In the next few weeks, OpenAI will put out a version of ChatGPT that will let people have more control over the chatbot’s tone and personality, Altman said.

“If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing),” he posted.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/no-more-wattpad-openai-chatgpt-to-allow-adult-users-to-generate-erotic-content-soon-101760492450275.html

Medications prescribed years ago may still be influencing the bacteria living in your gut today, according to new research that challenges the assumption that drug effects end when treatment stops.

Analyzing gut bacteria samples from 2,509 people in Estonia, researchers discovered that various medications continue to leave detectable fingerprints on the microbiome long after someone has stopped taking them. Beta-blockers, antidepressants, proton pump inhibitors, and benzodiazepines all left effects that lasted for years, with some changes visible three or more years after last use.

The gut microbiome, which is the collection of trillions of bacteria in the digestive system, influences digestion, immunity, and overall health. Changes to this ecosystem can affect everything from nutrient absorption to susceptibility to infections.

Tracking Medication History Through Electronic Health Records

The research team from the University of Tartu in Estonia took advantage of something most microbiome studies lack: detailed electronic health records showing exactly when people filled prescriptions over a five-year period. Looking backward in time, they could see whether medications used years earlier were still associated with changes in gut bacteria composition.

They compared people who had last used certain drugs more than one, two, three, or even four years before providing stool samples with people who hadn’t used those drugs at all in the preceding five years. The differences, while modest in size, were consistent across drug classes.

Out of 186 medications analyzed, 167 were associated with changes in the gut microbiome when actively used. But 78 of them—roughly 42 percent—displayed what researchers call “carryover effects” that lasted well beyond the treatment period.

Beta-Blockers And Anxiety Medications Leave Lasting Marks On The Microbiome

While antibiotics left the expected long-term effects, medications targeting human biology rather than bacteria left surprisingly durable impacts as well.

Beta-blockers, commonly prescribed for high blood pressure and heart conditions, were associated with gut bacteria changes detectable even when people had stopped taking them several years earlier. The same held true for benzodiazepine derivatives like Xanax and Valium, which are used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders.

Antidepressants, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, also demonstrated carryover effects. So did proton pump inhibitors, the medications millions take for acid reflux and heartburn.

In some cases, the more prescriptions someone had filled in the past, the stronger the effect on their current microbiome. The “additive” pattern suggests that medication history compounds over time rather than simply washing away after treatment ends.

Anxiety Drugs Rival Antibiotics In Gut Health Impacts

Benzodiazepines stood out in the analysis. These anti-anxiety medications had effects on gut bacteria composition that rivaled those of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Different drugs in this class had varying impacts, with alprazolam exerting a broader effect than diazepam, even though both treat similar conditions.

The study also revealed differences among medications in the same class. Among beta-blockers, metoprolol was associated with much stronger microbiome changes than nebivolol. Among proton pump inhibitors, omeprazole demonstrated different patterns than pantoprazole or esomeprazole.

These variations matter for clinical practice. If two medications treat the same condition but one has a more dramatic effect on gut bacteria, that information could eventually influence prescribing decisions.

Which Bacterial Species Are Most Affected

Specific bacterial species followed consistent patterns across multiple drug classes. Several members of the Clostridiales order increased in abundance among people taking beta-blockers, macrolide antibiotics, biguanides like metformin, and proton pump inhibitors.

Proton pump inhibitors were linked to increases in oral bacteria like Streptococcus parasanguinis and Veillonella parvula, species that normally reside in the mouth but can colonize the gut when stomach acid is reduced. The finding aligns with previous research and helps explain why PPIs can sometimes lead to gut infections.

Many of the medications studied were negatively correlated with overall bacterial diversity in the gut. People taking more unique medications at the time of sampling tended to have lower microbial richness, meaning fewer different species of bacteria.

Before-and-After Evidence Supporting Causal Links

To confirm their findings, researchers analyzed a subset of 328 people who provided stool samples twice, about four years apart. Watching what happened when people started or stopped taking medications between the two time points provided clearer evidence.

When people began taking penicillins, macrolides, proton pump inhibitors, benzodiazepines, or glucocorticoids, their gut bacteria changed in predictable ways. When they discontinued medications, the bacterial changes moved in the opposite direction, supporting a likely causal relationship between drug use and microbiome alterations.

These before-and-after comparisons provide stronger evidence than simply observing differences between people taking and not taking medications at a single point in time.

Why This Matters For Gut Health Research

The study has immediate consequences for microbiome research. Scientists trying to understand links between gut bacteria and diseases need to account not just for current medication use, but for prescriptions filled months or years earlier. Otherwise, they risk confusing medication effects with disease effects.

The researchers demonstrated this problem by revealing that several disease-microbiome associations were actually confounded by long-term drug usage. When past medication history was properly accounted for, some apparent disease signals disappeared.

For clinical medicine, the findings raise questions about cumulative effects of medications taken over time. If drugs leave lasting marks on the microbiome, and if the microbiome influences health, then medication decisions today could have consequences that extend far beyond the treatment period.

The research also suggests that gut bacteria might not fully recover after antibiotic courses. People who had used antibiotics years earlier still had lower bacterial diversity than people who had avoided antibiotics entirely during the five-year observation window. Time since last antibiotic treatment didn’t seem to bring diversity levels back to baseline.

Study participants who used prescription medications took an average of about three different drugs from diverse classes at the time of sample collection. During the five-year observation period, they had used more than 500 different medications at the most specific classification level.

When someone takes multiple medications, their combined effects on the microbiome might be additive or even synergistic. Past drug usage explained slightly more variance in microbiome composition than current drug usage, suggesting that accumulated medication history matters at least as much as what someone is taking right now.

While the study was conducted in Estonia, the medications analyzed are used worldwide. Beta-blockers, antidepressants, proton pump inhibitors, and benzodiazepines rank among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States and many other countries.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/common-medications-continue-altering-gut-years-after-stop-taking-them/

Elon Musk’s race to dominate our planet’s orbit with his satellite constellations is creating tons of space junk — enough of it, in fact, that we might want to start looking up.

According to storied Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, there are now one or two of these Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every single day, he recently told EarthSky. And that figure, McDowell warned, is only going to keep climbing.

The alarming statistic underscores the concerns around rapidly populating the planet’s Low Earth Orbit with expendable satellites. Musk’s SpaceX has been launching thousands of them up there using his reusable rockets since 2019, with more than 8,000 currently in operation.

With those efforts accelerating in recent years, SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 satellites in 2025 alone. Meanwhile, its competitors are rushing to catch up with their own satellite-based internet service, with Amazon kickstarting its plan to deploy more than 3,200 with its first batch launched earlier this year.

“With all constellations deployed, we expect about 30,000 low-Earth orbit satellites (Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, others) and perhaps another 20,000 satellites at 1,000 km [620 miles] from the Chinese systems,” McDowell told EarthSky.

Low Earth Orbit’s rapidly getting more crowded, in other words, and that means a lot of satellite casualties. One of the reasons they’re occurring so frequently is that Starlink’s satellites have a short lifespan of around five years. After this, they’re guided towards the Earth, where they’re supposed to burn up upon re-entering the atmosphere.

All those cremated satellites have scientists concerned about the pollution they’re causing by releasing metals into the stratosphere, with one study speculating that it could kick off a chain reaction that devastates the ozone layer.

“So far answers have ranged from ‘this is too small to be a problem’ to ‘we’re already screwed,’” McDowell told The Register. “But the uncertainty is large enough that there’s already a possibility we’re damaging the upper atmosphere.”

And atmospheric pollution may soon be the least of our worries. In a 2023 report, the Federal Aviation Administration warned that by 2035, some 28,000 fragments from Starlink satellites could survive re-entry each year, skyrocketing the chance of someone on the ground getting struck and killed by space debris — once considered an astronomical improbability — to a staggering 61 percent each year.

As it stands, the Earth’s on track to be bombarded by five satellite re-entries per day in the near future, McDowell warned. But that’s not even the worst case scenario. McDowell fears that if satellite constellations become too crowded, it could host a disastrous chain reaction called Kessler syndrome, in which a few collisions between satellites cascade out of control and create even more space debris, potentially trapping humankind below a whirling vortex of orbital shrapnel. SpaceX’s satellites are low enough that it’s unlikely they’d survive the amount of time needed for this cascade to happen, but its dominance there may force competitors to higher orbits where their craft could take decades, if not centuries, to de-orbit.

Source : https://futurism.com/space/elon-musks-satellites-falling

OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker.

Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The investors buying the shares included Thrive Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group and T. Rowe Price, along with Japanese tech giant SoftBank and the United Arab Emirates’ MGX, the source said Thursday.

The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.

But with the San Francisco-based company not yet turning a profit, it could also amplify concerns about an AI bubble if the generative AI products made by OpenAI and its competitors don’t meet the expectations of investors pouring billions of dollars into research and development.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has sought to dismiss those concerns, most recently last week, when he toured a massive data center complex being built to run the company’s AI systems in Abilene, Texas.

“Between the ten years we’ve already been operating and the many decades ahead of us, there will be booms and busts,” Altman said after being asked about a bubble. “People will overinvest and lose money, and underinvest and lose a lot of revenue.”

He added that “we’ll make some dumb capital allocations” and there will be short-term ups and downs but that “over the arc that we have to plan over, we are confident that this technology will drive a new wave of unprecedented economic growth,” along with scientific breakthroughs, improvements to quality of life and “new ways to express creativity.”

Just this week, the company launched two different business ventures, one a partnership with Etsy and Shopify for online shopping through ChatGPT and another a social media app, Sora, for generating and sharing AI videos.

OpenAI has been struggling to offer investors and staff the same perks and compensation as the publicly traded tech giants with which it competes. Facebook parent Meta Platforms, in particular, has been on a hiring spree for elite AI engineers and in June made a $14.3 billion investment in AI company Scale that recruited its CEO Alexandr Wang.

OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary, valued at $500 billion, is technically controlled by the board of OpenAI’s nonprofit and both are still bound to pursue the nonprofit’s charitable purpose.

OpenAI’s partnerships with major companies and its plans to change its corporate structure have drawn the scrutiny of regulators, including the attorneys general of California and Delaware, who oversee charitable organizations that operate or are incorporated in their states.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/openai-500b-valuation-chatgpt-53dffc56355460a232439c76d1ccf22b

Elon Musk axed an X engineer after they delivered the harsh truth about why his posts were flopping, a new book claims.

Journalist Jacob Silverman revealed in his new book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley that Musk became fixated on how people interacted with his posts following his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

“Firing more than half of Twitter employees, Musk transformed how the platform operated,” Silverman writes in an excerpt obtained by Newsweek about the mass layoffs that occurred after the tech billionaire’s 2022 Twitter takeover.

Silverman then details a 2023 firing reported at the time by the tech news site Platformer.

“He fired a company engineer who told him that engagement on his tweets was down because people weren’t as interested in him,” Silverman writes.

The original report described how Musk gathered engineers and advisers at Twitter’s headquarters in 2023, where multiple sources recalled him saying: “This is ridiculous… I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”

“One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach,” Platformer reported, withholding the engineer’s name due to the harassment Musk directed at former employees.

According to the publication, employees presented Musk with internal data and a Google Trends chart showing his popularity had fallen from a peak score of 100 to just nine. Musk then reportedly told the engineer, “You’re fired, you’re fired.”

In his new book, Silverman cites an example—also reported at the time by Platformer—recounting the 2023 Super Bowl, when both then-President Joe Biden and Musk tweeted their support for the Philadelphia Eagles, with Biden’s post generating nearly 20 million more impressions.

“That apparently was unacceptable to Musk, who deleted his tweet and flew to California after the game to demand changes to Twitter’s algorithm,” Silverman writes.

Silverman then quotes an alleged 2:36 a.m. Slack message from Musk’s cousin James Musk after the Super Bowl fiasco, which read: “We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform. Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

“Thanks to the middle-of-the-night participation of 80 company engineers, the ‘high urgency’ issue was quickly solved,” Silverman writes, detailing the changes made that ensured “Twitter’s systems to privilege Musk’s posts above all others.”

“The For You feed became a mirror of Musk’s interests, containing the right-wing accounts he followed,” Silverman writes.

The author of the original Platformer article, which detailed the operation to change the X (formerly Twitter) algorithm, had been called out by Musk on X following its publication.

“The “source” of the bogus Platformer article is a disgruntled employee who had been on paid time off for months, had already accepted a job at Google and felt the need to poison the well on the way out. Twitter will be taking legal action against him,” Musk posted on X in response.

“All my sources for the story were current Twitter employees,” Zoe Schiffer, the author of the Platformer story, wrote about her sources after Musk’s threat.

Source : https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/musk-axed-x-engineer-after-truth-about-his-poor-performing-posts/ar-AA1NGYTM

When two researchers at the University of Cambridge challenged ChatGPT with a classic puzzle from ancient Greece, they found that the model sometimes behaved less like a search engine and more like a learner. The platform took time testing approaches, reconsidering when prompted, and even resisting wrong suggestions.

The study suggests that artificial intelligence may do more than retrieve memorized answers. In certain settings, it can appear to work through problems in a way that resembles student reasoning.

This finding does not mean ChatGPT “thinks” like a human. The authors emphasize their study is exploratory and based on a single conversation. Still, the results raise questions about how AI might support education if guided well.

How Researchers Gave ChatGPT Plato’s Famous Math Test

Nadav Marco, who’s now at Hebrew University, and Andreas Stylianides revisited Plato’s dialogue “Meno.” In that text, Socrates shows an uneducated slave boy how to double the area of a square through guided questions. Socrates used this exchange to argue that knowledge already exists in the mind and can be drawn out through teaching.

The researchers posed the same 2,400-year-old puzzle to ChatGPT-4. Instead of repeating the well-known geometric solution from Plato’s dialogue, ChatGPT used algebra, which wasn’t invented until centuries later.

What made this notable is that the AI later showed it did know the geometric method. If it were simply recalling from training data, the obvious move would have been to cite Plato’s approach immediately. Instead, it appeared to construct a different solution pathway.

The researchers also tried to mislead ChatGPT into making the same mistake as Plato’s slave, who initially thought doubling the sides would double the area. But ChatGPT refused to accept this wrong answer, carefully explaining why doubling the sides actually creates four times the area, not twice.

When ChatGPT Faced Variations on the Problem

The researchers then changed the puzzle, asking ChatGPT how to double the area of a rectangle. Here, the model showed surprising awareness of the problem’s limitations. Rather than incorrectly applying the square’s diagonal method, ChatGPT explained that “the diagonal does not offer a straightforward new dimension” for rectangles.

This response demonstrated something resembling mathematical reasoning. The AI seemed to understand that techniques working for one shape don’t automatically apply to others—a distinction that often challenges human students learning geometry.

When prompted for more practical solutions, ChatGPT initially focused on algebraic approaches, similar to its first response about squares. But the AI’s explanations of how it was reasoning were inconsistent. At times it described generating answers in real time; at other points it implied the responses were not spontaneous.

The authors noted that these reflections may not accurately represent how the system works. They cautioned against taking the AI’s own words at face value, since language models are not reliable guides to their inner processes.

The “Chat’s ZPD”: Where AI Learns with Guidance

Drawing on psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the researchers described a “Chat’s Zone of Proximal Development.” These are problems ChatGPT could not solve independently but managed when guided with timely prompts.

Vygotsky’s original concept describes the gap between what a child can do alone versus what they can accomplish with help from a teacher or more skilled peer. The researchers found a similar pattern with ChatGPT: certain problems remained out of reach until the right kind of guidance appeared.

Some answers looked like retrieval from training data. Others, especially those involving resistance to incorrect suggestions or adaptation to new prompts, resembled the problem-solving steps of students. While this does not prove that the model truly “understands,” it does suggest that, under the right conditions, AI output can mirror aspects of human learning.

When the researchers asked for an “elegant and exact” solution to the original square problem, ChatGPT provided the geometric construction method. The AI itself admitted that “there [was] indeed a more straightforward and mathematically precise approach … which [it] should have emphasised directly in response to [our] initial inquiry.”

This self-correction suggested the model could reflect on and improve its responses when given appropriate prompts, much like a student who realizes they took a harder path than necessary.

What This Means for Students and Teachers

If AI tools can sometimes behave like learners, they could become useful educational partners. Instead of treating ChatGPT as an answer machine, students and teachers might experiment with prompts that invite collaboration and exploration.

The type of prompt matters significantly. The researchers found that asking for exploration and collaboration yielded different responses than requesting summaries based on reliable sources. Knowing how to phrase prompts could shape whether the model retrieves or attempts to generate new approaches.

Teachers could use this approach to model problem-solving strategies. Rather than asking AI for the final answer, they might guide it through the same thinking process they want students to follow. This could help students see that even sophisticated systems sometimes struggle, reconsider approaches, and need guidance to reach better solutions.

Students, meanwhile, could practice their own reasoning by working alongside AI that shows its thinking process. When ChatGPT resists incorrect suggestions or explains why certain approaches won’t work, students get opportunities to understand mathematical reasoning rather than just memorize procedures.

The authors stress that their study, published in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, involved only one conversation with one model (ChatGPT-4 in February 2024). Results may differ with newer versions or different systems. Still, the findings invite educators to consider how AI might support exploration, not just provide ready-made answers.

As the researchers put it, users should “pay attention to the type of knowledge they wish to get from an LLM and try to communicate it clearly in their prompts.” Guidance can help AI attempt solutions it would not manage on its own.

Building Mathematical Understanding Through AI Collaboration

The study reveals potential for AI to serve as more than an information source. When ChatGPT resisted incorrect suggestions and explained its reasoning, it demonstrated behaviors that could help students develop critical thinking skills.

Rather than simply accepting or rejecting AI outputs, students could learn to evaluate mathematical reasoning, whether from artificial systems or human sources. This skill becomes increasingly valuable as AI tools become more prevalent in academic and professional settings.

The researchers’ approach also highlights how questioning techniques can reveal different aspects of AI behavior. By varying their prompts and challenging the system’s responses, they uncovered evidence of both retrieval and generation processes within the same conversation.

A Tentative Step, Not a Final Word

The study opens questions about how we understand machine intelligence. If AI can engage in something resembling reasoning, complete with self-correction and resistance to errors, the line between retrieval and generation becomes blurred. This doesn’t mean AI has achieved consciousness, but it suggests these systems might be more sophisticated thinking partners than previously imagined.

For teachers and students, the lesson is not that machines replace human reasoning, but that they could help learners explore strategies, confront mistakes, and practice persistence in problem-solving. The key lies in knowing how to prompt and guide these systems effectively.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/chatgpt-solves-platos-ancient-math-test/

The Moon and Sun staged a dramatic spectacle on September 21, when a deep partial solar eclipse darkened skies over the Pacific Ocean and turned the glowing disk of the sun into a radiant crescent.

The eclipse occurred during the new Moon phase, when the Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun. The alignment hid much of the solar surface without fully blocking its light, creating the distinctive crescent-shaped sun seen across parts of the Southern Hemisphere.

The best views came from Antarctica, New Zealand and southern Australia, where the Moon appeared to take the deepest bite out of the Sun. In Dunedin, New Zealand, daylight dimmed noticeably as the lunar disk covered much of the solar face. Even everyday shadows reflected the spectacle — pinpoints of light shining through trees or small gaps turned into miniature crescents.

The timing added another layer of drama. For Southern Hemisphere viewers, the eclipse fell on Monday local time, just two weeks after Asia witnessed a striking total lunar eclipse.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/in-pics-partial-solar-eclipse-turns-sun-into-crescent-over-pacific-skies-glbs-2791087-2025-09-22

Astronomers have glimpsed the inner structure of a dying star in a rare kind of cosmic explosion called an “extremely stripped supernova.”

In a paper published in Nature, Steve Schulze of Northwestern University in the United States and colleagues describe the supernova 2021yfj and a thick shell of gas surrounding it.

Their findings support our existing theories of what happens inside massive stars at the end of their lives – and how they have shaped the building blocks of the universe we see today.

How Stars Make The Elements

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion – a process in which lighter atoms are squished together into heavier ones, releasing energy.

Fusion happens in stages over the star’s life. In a series of cycles, first hydrogen (the lightest element) is fused into helium, followed by the formation of heavier elements such as carbon. The most massive stars continue on to neon, oxygen, silicon and finally iron.

Each burning cycle is faster than the previous one. The hydrogen cycle can last for millions of years, while the silicon cycle is over in a matter of days.

As the core of a massive star keeps burning, the gas outside the core acquires a layered structure, where successive layers record the composition of the progression of burning cycles.

While all this is playing out in the star’s core, the star is also shedding gas from its surface, carried out into space by the stellar wind. Each fusion cycle creates an expanding shell of gas containing a different mix of elements.

Core Collapse

What happens to a massive star when its core is full of iron? The great pressure and temperature will make the iron fuse, but unlike the fusion of lighter elements, this process absorbs energy instead of releasing it.

The release of energy from fusion is what has been holding the star up against the force of gravity – so now the iron core will collapse. Depending on how big it is to start with, the collapsed core will become a neutron star or a black hole.

The process of collapse creates a “bounce,” which sends energy and matter flying outwards. This is called a core-collapse supernova explosion.

The explosion lights up the layers of gas shed from the star earlier, allowing us to see what they are made of. In all known supernovae until now, this material was either the hydrogen, the helium or the carbon layer, produced in the first two nuclear burning cycles.

The inner layers (the neon, oxygen and silicon layers) are all produced in a mere few hundred years before the star explodes, which means they don’t have time to travel out far from the star.

An Explosive Mystery

But that’s what makes the new supernova SN2021yfj so interesting. Schulze and colleagues found the material outside the star came from the silicon layer, the last layer just above the iron core, which forms on a timescale of a few months.

Artist interpretation of SN2021yfj’s origin

The stellar wind must have expelled all the layers right down to the silicon one before the explosion occurred. Astronomers don’t understand how a stellar wind could be powerful enough to do this.

The most plausible scenario is a second star was involved. If another star were orbiting the one that exploded, its gravity might have rapidly pulled out the deep silicon layer.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/astronomers-glimpse-core-dying-star-supernova

During the Meta Connect event, the launch of Meta Ray Ban glasses was overshadowed by technical failures. AI miscommunication and unresponsive features led to a chaotic demonstration, prompting CEO Mark Zuckerberg to blame connectivity issues for the mishaps.

More than 330 websites have been linked to a phishing operation that stole over 5,000 Microsoft user credentials.

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it seized 338 websites linked to a Nigerian-based service that allowed users to carry out phishing campaigns

The service, called “Raccoon0365,” allowed users to engage in phishing campaigns that involved thousands of emails at a time, according to Steven Masada, assistant general counsel for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

The phishing operation ended up stealing at least 5,000 Microsoft user credentials.

Phishing is a cybercrime in which criminals impersonate trustworthy domains to deceive users into revealing sensitive information like passwords or banking details.

How did the phishing scheme work?
Raccoon0365 operates through a private Telegram channel with over 850 subscribers.

The service enables users to impersonate trusted brand names and get targets to enter Microsoft login details on fake Microsoft platforms. According to Microsoft’s Masada, the service has generated at least $100,000 (€84,425) in cryptocurrency payments for its operators since launching in July 2024.

Google shared eight Nano Banana prompts, which you can use to create surreal and extraordinary profile pictures on Google Gemini.

The Nano Banana craze has taken over social media and is still going strong. People are sharing various prompts that can be used to turn unassuming pictures into extraordinary visuals. Google, in a recent post, revealed eight such prompts that will help you create unusual profile pics.

“Looking to Nano Banana your profile pic?” read a post on the official Instagram profile dedicated to Google Gemini. The tech company also shared several images which show the incredible results created using different prompts.

How to create your perfect profile pic?

Step 1: The first step is to visit the Google Gemini app or website. Be careful and avoid fake sites or apps

Step 2: The second step is to upload a high-quality picture

Step 3: Once done, you can add your prompt.

Step 4: Click generate and wait a few seconds for the AI to generate your image.

What are the prompts you can use?

Prompt 1

“Turn me into a huge, graffiti mural on the side of a building.”

Prompt 2

“Create a custom tarot card with a detailed folk-art, vibrant color style, of me.”

China accused Nvidia on Monday of violating the country’s antimonopoly laws and said it would step up scrutiny of the world’s leading chipmaker, escalating tensions with Washington as the two countries held trade talks this week.

Chinese regulators said a preliminary investigation found that Nvidia didn’t comply with conditions imposed when it purchased Mellanox Technologies, a network and data transmission company.

The one-sentence statement from the State Administration for Market Regulation statement did not mention any punishment, but said it would carry out “further investigation.”

An Nvidia spokesperson said, “We comply with the law in all respects. We will continue to cooperate with all relevant government agencies as they evaluate the impact of export controls on competition in the commercial markets.”

Regulators said in December that they were investigating the company for suspected violations stemming from the $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox. The deal was completed in 2020 after the Chinese regulator gave conditional approval for Nvidia to buy the Israeli company.

The announcement, which came as the two sides held trade talks in Spain, is the latest tit-for-tat move between Washington and Beijing in their trade battle over technology focusing on semiconductors and the equipment to make them.

On Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was carrying out an antidumping investigation into certain analog IC chips imported from the U.S., including commodity chips commonly made by companies such as Texas Instruments and ON Semiconductor.

The ministry also announced a separate antidiscrimination probe into U.S. measures against China’s chip sector.

A day earlier, the U.S. had sanctioned two Chinese companies accused of acquiring equipment for major Chinese chipmaker SMIC.

The talks in Madrid between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid concluded Monday with Bessent telling reporters the two sides reached a framework deal for U.S. ownership of TikTok. However, details were scant and Chinese negotiators provided no confirmation of a deal.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-china-technology-trade-us-be817903c4b92a2569f2bfa57597956e

It feels like there are so many things constantly vying for our attention: the sharp buzz of the phone, the low hum of social media, the unrelenting flood of emails, the endless carousel of content.

It’s a familiar and almost universal ailment in our digital age. Our lives are punctuated by constant stimulation, and moments of real stillness – the kind where the mind wanders without a destination – have become rare.

Digital technologies permeate work, education, and intimacy. Not participating feels to many like nonexistence. But we tell ourselves that’s OK because platforms promise endless choice and self-expression, but this promise is deceptive. What appears as freedom masks a subtle coercion: distraction, visibility, and engagement are prescribed as obligations.

As someone who has spent years reading philosophy, I have been asking myself how to step out of this loop and try to think like great thinkers did in the past. A possible answer came from a thinker most people wouldn’t expect to help with our TikTok-era malaise: the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger argued that modern technology is not simply a collection of tools, but a way of revealing – a framework in which the world appears primarily as a resource, including the human body and mind, to be used for content. In the same way, platforms are also part of this resource, and one that shapes what appears, how it appears, and how we orient ourselves toward life.

Digital culture revolves around speed, visibility, algorithmic selection, and the compulsive generation of content. Life increasingly mirrors the logic of the feed: constantly updating, always “now” and allergic to slowness, silence and stillness.

What digital platforms take away is more than just our attention being “continuously partial” — they also limit the deeper kind of reflection that allows us to engage with life and ourselves fully. They make us lose the capacity to inhabit silence and confront the unfilled moment.

When moments of silence or emptiness arise, we instinctively look to others — not for real connection, but to fill the void with distraction. Heidegger calls this distraction “das man” or “they:” the social collective whose influence we unconsciously follow.

In this way, the “they” becomes a kind of ghostly refuge, offering comfort while quietly erasing our own sense of individuality. This “they” multiplies endlessly through likes, trends, and algorithmic virality. In fleeing from boredom together, the possibility of an authentic “I” disappears into the infinite deferral of collective mimicry.

Heidegger feared that under the dominance of technology, humanity might lose its capacity to relate to “being itself.” This “forgetting of being” is not merely an intellectual error but an existential poverty.

Today, it can be seen as the loss of depth — the eclipse of boredom, the erosion of interiority, the disappearance of silence. Where there is no boredom, there can be no reflection. Where there is no pause, there can be no real choice.

Heidegger’s “forgetting of being” now manifests as the loss of boredom itself. What we forfeit is the capacity for sustained reflection.

Boredom As A Privileged Mood

For Heidegger, profound boredom is not merely a psychological state but a privileged mood in which the everyday world begins to withdraw. In his 1929 to 1930 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he describes boredom as a fundamental attunement through which beings no longer “speak” to us, revealing the nothingness at the heart of being itself.

Boredom is not absence but a threshold — a condition for thinking, wonder, and the emergence of meaning.

The loss of profound boredom mirrors the broader collapse of existential depth into surface. Once a portal to being, boredom is now treated as a design flaw, patched with entertainment and distraction.

Never allowing ourselves to be bored is equivalent to never allowing ourselves to be as we are. As Heidegger insists, only in the totality of profound boredom do we come face to face with beings as a whole. When we flee boredom, we escape ourselves. At least, we try to.

The problem is not that boredom strikes too often, but that it is never allowed to fully arrive. Boredom, which has paradoxically seen a rise in countries drowning in technology like the US, is shameful. It is treated like an illness almost. We avoid it, hate it, fear it.

Digital life and its many platforms offer streams of micro-distractions that prevent immersion into this more primitive attunement. Restlessness is redirected into scrolling, which, instead of meaningful reflection, produces only more scrolling. What disappears with boredom is not leisure, but metaphysical access — the silence in which the world might speak, and one might hear.

In this light, rediscovering boredom is not about idle time, it is about reclaiming the conditions for thought, depth, and authenticity. It is a quiet resistance to the pervasive logic of digital life, an opening to the full presence of being, and a reminder that the pause, the unstructured moment, and the still passage are not failures – they are essential.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/put-down-phone-engage-in-boredom-digital-overload/

Approximately 30% of the global population is affected by metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MASLD), a condition that previously lacked targeted treatments. In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers have identified a genetic factor that exacerbates the disease, and remarkably, the FDA-approved drug that most effectively targets this factor is vitamin B3.

Scientists in the Netherlands discovered a new pair of salivary glands in the human throat while testing a cancer scan.

Scientists in the Netherlands have made a surprising discovery of a new organ in the human throat. While testing a new cancer scan in 2020, they accidentally found a set of glands deep in the upper part of the throat. This discovery could change the understanding of human anatomy.

The newly found glands, called the ‘tubarial salivary glands,’ are believed to help keep the area behind the nose well-lubricated. Researchers think this could be important for improving the quality of life for patients undergoing radiation therapy for head and neck tumours.

The Discovery Happened By Accident During Cancer Tests

Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam were testing a new PSMA PET-CT scan, which combines computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) to detect prostate cancer. During the process, a radioactive tracer is injected into the patient’s body, allowing doctors to track its path.

While this method is usually used to find prostate tumours, the team noticed two unexpected areas lighting up in the back of the nasopharynx, the area behind the nose. These glands, about 1.5 inches long, looked similar to the major salivary glands already known.

“People have three sets of large salivary glands, but not there,” said radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel, as quoted by the Daily Mail. “As far as we knew, the only salivary or mucous glands in the nasopharynx are microscopically small and up to 1,000 are evenly spread out throughout the mucosa. So, imagine our surprise when we found these,” he added.

The glands appeared in all 100 patient scans they studied.

This Discovery Can Help Reduce Side Effects of Radiation

At the institute, Vogel and surgeon Matthijs H Valstar study how radiation affects patients with head and neck tumours. Radiation therapy can damage known salivary glands, making it hard for patients to eat, swallow, or speak.

Vogel explained, “Radiation would cause the same side effects in the submandibular salivary glands.” After examining more than 700 cases, the researchers found that the more radiation these new glands received, the worse the patients’ complications were.

Source : https://www.news18.com/viral/after-300-years-scientists-find-new-organ-in-human-body-and-it-can-change-cancer-treatment-aa-ws-l-9565868.html

Google has introduced an innovative feature called Nano Banana that allows users to easily transform photos into 3D collectible models using its Gemini 2.25 Flash Image technology.

Ever wished you could turn a simple photo into a cool 3D collectable? Thanks to Google’s quirky new feature called Nano Banana, you actually can and it only takes a few clicks. The magic comes from Google’s Gemini 2.25 Flash Image model, but don’t worry, you don’t need expensive tools or any pro-level skills. Just your Google account, a browser, and a bit of imagination. Here’s how you can make your own action-figure style 3D model for free.

NASA has revealed the clearest signs of life on Mars ever after making an incredible rover discovery.

Evidence of ancient alien microbes have been uncovered in a dry river channel formed roughly 3.7 billion years ago, scientists reported Wednesday.

A sample obtained by Nasa’s Perseverance rover found sediment on the bottom of the ancient Neretva Vallis lake which points towards potential signs of ancient microbial life, according to scientists.

Researchers say the rocks contain tiny dark specks which are less than a millimetre in length and have been nicknamed “poppy seeds”.

Other sediments found contain larger dark-rimmed rosettes with lighter centres – dubbed “leopard spots”.

Both speckles are said to be rich in iron and phosphorus.

These chemicals can form when tiny microbes break down organic material – a sign of life back down on Earth.

Scientists also found vein-like structures believed to be white calcium sulfate.

Between these veins sat a material with a reddish color suggesting the presence of hematite – one of the minerals which gives Mars its distinctive colour.

The age of the samples collected by Perseverance are estimated to be aged somewhere between 3.5 to 3.7 billion years old.

Each of the rocks are now due to be taken for in-depth analysis.

They are sealed inside Perseverance along with a number of rock cores awaiting a potential trip back to Earth.

The Perseverance – the same size as a standard car – has been roaming Mars since 2021.

It carries a drill to penetrate rocks and tubes to hold the samples gathered from places judged most suitable for hosting life billions of years ago.

The discovery is one of the best pieces of evidence to date about the possibility that Mars once harbored life.

Sean Duffy, the acting Nasa administrator, said: “A year ago, we thought we found what we believe to be signs of microbial life on the Mars surface.

“We put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyse it – did we get this right? Do we think this is a sign of ancient life on Mars?

“After a year of review, they’ve come back and they said: ‘Listen, we can’t find another explanation.’

“So, this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars.”

One other potential reason for the discovery may be due to chemical processes which have taken place on Mars over millions of years.

This would, in theory, create similar rock forms which are made up from the same elements.

But experts believe the reactions appear to have occurred at cool temperatures – potentially pointing towards a more biological origin to the sediment.

Professor Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College London, co-author of the study, added: “It’s not a slam dunk by any means. But this is the most exciting evidence so far.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/15159152/nasa-mars-discovery-rover-evidence-alien-microbes/

iPhone 17 series has launched along with the new Air variant and the Pro models that get serious upgrades this year.

Apple iPhone 17 series event has wrapped up on Tuesday, and we now have four new models from the company that will be looking for your money later this month when they go on sale. The new iPhone 17 series has a surprising iPhone Air addition since the Plus variant has been removed from the lineup. You also have the iPhone 17 Pro versions while the iPhone 17 gets not one but multiple upgrades that makes it a quality buy this year.

Here are all the iPhone 17 series variants and the iPhone Air model, their prices in India and what they offer for the price.

Apple iPhone 17 Series: All Variants Explained And Price In India

iPhone 17

• iPhone 17 256GB – Rs 82,900
• iPhone 512GB – Rs 1,02,900

iPhone 17 Pro

• iPhone 17 Pro 256GB – Rs 1,34,900
• iPhone 17 Pro 512GB – Rs 1,54,900
• iPhone 17 Pro 1TB – Rs 1,74,900
• iPhone 17 Pro Max 256GB – Rs 1,49,900
• iPhone 17 Pro Max 512GB – Rs 1,69,900
• iPhone 17 Pro Max 1TB – Rs 1,89,900
• iPhone 17 Pro Max 2TB – Rs 2,29,900

As you can see here, the iPhone 17 starting price has gone up and you are getting 256GB as the base model this year. The iPhone 17 Pro also costs a little more than before, same with the 17 Pro Max version which now gets a 2TB variant.

iPhone 17 Air Prices

• iPhone 17 Air 256GB – Rs 1,19,900
• iPhone 17 Air 512GB – Rs 1,39,900
• iPhone 17 Air 1TB – Rs 1,59,900

And yes, the iPhone Air version might be replacing the Plus variant but its premium design and Pro-hardware means it is priced like the iPhone 16 Pro model from last year.

Scientists at Stanford University have identified a specific brain region that appears to drive core autism symptoms in mice and successfully improved those behaviors using targeted treatments. The breakthrough focuses on overactive neurons deep in the brain that serve as gatekeepers for sensory information, controlling what signals reach conscious awareness

The findings, published in Science Advances, come from mouse studies, a standard model in autism research, and more work is needed before testing in humans. Still, the results point toward potential therapies that may address autism’s biological foundations rather than just managing symptoms.

Overactive Brain Cells Disrupt Normal Function

The problem originates in a brain structure called the reticular thalamic nucleus, which acts like a traffic control system for sensory information. In healthy brains, this region determines which sensory signals (sounds, sights, and touches) warrant attention from higher brain areas. In autism-model mice, however, these neurons fired in rapid, excessive bursts that scrambled normal brain communication.

Stanford researchers studied mice engineered to lack Cntnap2, a gene strongly linked to autism in humans. These mice exhibited classic autism-like traits, including social avoidance of other mice, repetitive grooming, hyperactivity, and increased seizure susceptibility. Brain examinations revealed that reticular thalamic nucleus neurons were firing far more frequently than normal.

Scientists traced this hyperactivity to overactive calcium channels, proteins that regulate how neurons communicate. In autism-model mice, these T-type calcium channels enabled neurons to burst-fire much more easily, resulting in disrupted brain signals that manifested as behavioral symptoms.

Two Treatment Methods Show Promise

Researchers tested whether reducing this neural overactivity could restore normal behavior using two different approaches, both of which produced remarkable results.

First, they administered Z944, a drug that blocks the problematic calcium channels, to the mice. Mice receiving this treatment showed substantial behavioral improvements, including decreased hyperactivity, restored social preferences, and cessation of excessive grooming behaviors. Z944 has already undergone human testing for treating certain seizure types, which could speed its potential path to autism trials.

The second method used advanced genetic tools called DREADDs (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs). Scientists modified the mice so specific neurons could be controlled using engineered proteins and matching drugs. When they used this technique to quiet reticular thalamic nucleus activity, autism-like behaviors improved substantially again.

The simulation is part of Nasa’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), a series of Earth-based experiments to evaluate how humans cope with the physical and psychological demands of deep-space travel.

Four volunteers are preparing to step into a year-long mission designed to mirror what it might be like to live on Mars.

On October 19, Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer will enter Nasa’s Mars Dune Alpha, a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat inside the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

They will remain inside for 378 days, concluding their mission on October 31, 2026.

The simulation is part of Nasa’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), a series of Earth-based experiments to evaluate how humans cope with the physical and psychological demands of deep-space travel. Two alternate crew members, Emily Phillips and Laura Marie, are also on call should any of the volunteers be unable to participate.

CHAPEA missions are intended to mimic the significant challenges astronauts would face while living on the Red Planet. The volunteers will endure resource limitations, isolation, communication delays, equipment malfunctions, and high-tempo simulated spacewalks.

These scenarios are designed to provide Nasa with vital data on human health and performance for long-duration exploration.

“As Nasa gears up for crewed Artemis missions, CHAPEA and other ground analogs are helping us determine the best capabilities future astronauts will need,” said Sara Whiting, project scientist with Nasa’s Human Research Program.

During the simulation, the crew will perform daily research and operational activities, including simulated Mars walks, robotic operations, and cultivating a vegetable garden. They will also test new technologies designed for long stays on Mars, such as potable water dispensers and diagnostic medical devices.

“The simulation will allow us to measure both cognitive and physical performance under Mars-like conditions,” explained Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. “This insight will help Nasa make key decisions to ensure future astronauts remain safe and mission-ready.”

This marks the second year-long surface simulation under CHAPEA. The first, completed in July 2024, provided baseline data that is already influencing mission planning.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/four-humans-to-begin-living-on-artificial-mars-year-long-mission-to-simulate-life-on-red-planet-2783563-2025-09-08

When you decide to reach for your morning coffee, more than half a million brain cells spring into action across nearly every region of your brain. Scientists have now captured this moment-by-moment neural activity in unprecedented detail, revealing that decision-making is far more brain-wide than researchers once believed.

An international team published two breakthrough studies in the journal Nature showing that making choices involves coordinated activity across the entire brain, not just specialized decision centers. The discovery challenges long-held models of how the brain processes information and could reshape research into conditions like schizophrenia and autism.

International Team Records Activity from 621,733 Brain Cells

Twelve laboratories across Europe and the United States joined forces to record activity from 621,733 individual brain cells in 139 mice. After applying quality-control measures, researchers identified 75,708 well-isolated neurons for their main analyses. Using advanced electrodes called Neuropixels probes, they monitored 279 different brain areas, representing about 95% of the entire mouse brain.

“This is the first time anyone has produced a full, brain-wide map of the activity of single neurons during decision-making. The scale is unprecedented as we recorded from over half a million neurons across mice in 12 labs, covering 279 brain areas, which together represent 95% of the mouse brain volume. The decision-making activity, and particularly reward, lit up the brain like a Christmas tree,” explained Professor Alexandre Pouget, Co-Founder of the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) and Group Leader at the University of Geneva, in a statement.

The experimental task was straightforward: mice watched a screen where a light appeared on the left or right side, then turned a wheel toward the light to receive a reward. On some trials, the light was so faint it was nearly invisible, forcing the mice to guess based on patterns they had noticed in previous rounds.

Brain Activity Spreads Everywhere During Decisions

The brain map challenged the traditional view of neural processing as a tidy assembly line. Instead of sensory areas passing information to decision areas, which then activate motor regions, researchers discovered something far more interconnected.

When mice made decisions, signals appeared simultaneously across the brain. Reward responses activated regions from visual processing areas to movement control centers. Even basic sensory regions showed decision-related activity.

“We’d seen how successful large-scale collaborations in physics had been at tackling questions no single lab could answer, and we wanted to try that same approach in neuroscience. The brain is the most complex structure we know of in the universe and understanding how it drives behaviour requires international collaboration on a scale that matches that complexity,” said Professor Tom Mrsic-Flogel, Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London and one of the core members of IBL.

This coordinated, brain-wide activity occurred not just during the final act of making a choice, but throughout the entire process of sensing, choosing, and acting.

Brain Makes Predictions at Every Processing Level

The second study revealed where expectations live in the brain. When mice used past experience to guess where the next light would appear, those predictions weren’t confined to higher-thinking areas as many scientists had assumed.

Instead, expectations appeared across the brain, even in the thalamus (the first relay station for visual information from the eyes). This means the brain begins making predictions about what it will see before higher brain regions have even started processing.

The widespread encoding of expectations supports the view that the brain operates as a prediction machine, constantly using past experience to anticipate what comes next. Scientists now know this predictive activity occurs at every level of brain processing, from basic sensory input to motor output.

New Research Directions for Brain Disorders

These discoveries could transform how researchers approach neurological and psychiatric conditions. Schizophrenia and autism, for example, involve difficulties with forming and updating expectations about the world. Knowing that expectations are encoded across the brain, rather than in isolated regions, opens new paths for investigation.

“Traditionally, neuroscience has looked at brain regions in isolation. Recording the whole brain means we now have an opportunity to understand how all the pieces fit together. This was too big of a project for any one lab, and a collaboration on this scale was only possible because of the dedication and talent of our staff scientists, who are the best in the business,” said Dr. Kenneth Harris, Professor of Quantitative Neuroscience at UCL and one of the core members of IBL.

“It’s immensely gratifying to see the IBL deliver the first brain-wide map of neural activity with such high spatial and temporal resolution. The map describes the activity of over 650,000 individual neurons with single-spike resolution. This activity underlies the brain’s sensory and motor activity that constitutes a decision. The map is a fantastic resource that is already being mined by myriad scientists, and yielding unexpected discoveries. It’s a great success for team science and open science,” added Dr. Matteo Carandini, Professor of Visual Neuroscience at UCL and one of the core members of IBL.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/scientists-map-complete-brain-activity-during-decision-making-for-first-time/

Scientists have discovered that small molecules naturally present in every cell may hold the key to understanding why cancer spreads so aggressively. Researchers have identified a specific protein that could become the target for more precise treatments.

A new study reveals that polyamines, which are small molecules that help maintain normal cell functions, actually hijack cancer cells in a surprising way. Instead of supporting healthy growth, these molecules boost production of a protein called eIF5A2, which appears essential for cancer survival. Even more intriguing: eIF5A2’s nearly identical twin protein, eIF5A1, doesn’t have the same effect on cancer cells.

Published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the research shows that targeting eIF5A2 could offer a way to attack cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue largely unharmed.

Cancer Cells Switch Energy Systems for Rapid Growth

When researchers from Tokyo University of Science, led by associate professor Kyohei Higashi, removed polyamines from cancer cells, something unexpected happened. The cells’ entire energy production system shifted gears.

Normal cells prefer using their mitochondria, the cellular powerhouses that efficiently convert nutrients into energy. Cancer cells, however, switched to a faster but less efficient process called glycolysis, even when plenty of oxygen was available. Cancer cells choose this approach because it supports their rapid, uncontrolled growth.

The study found that polyamines orchestrate this metabolic switch by increasing levels of two key proteins: PDK1 and PKM2. Both proteins are crucial players in the glycolysis pathway that fuels cancer cell multiplication.

Using advanced protein analysis techniques on over 6,700 proteins, researchers discovered that polyamine removal affected 300 proteins, about 5.3% of the cell’s entire protein machinery.

Twin Proteins With Different Jobs in Cancer

eIF5A1 and eIF5A2 share 84% of their genetic code and scientists long assumed they worked similarly. But the new research reveals these molecular twins have drastically different jobs in cancer.

When researchers silenced eIF5A2 in multiple cancer cell lines including cervical and breast cancer, cell growth stopped within three days. Silencing eIF5A1 barely affected cancer growth until day five, and even then the impact was minimal. Based on their experimental results, the researchers concluded that eIF5A2 plays a more critical role in cancer cell proliferation than eIF5A1.

The difference comes down to a cellular brake system. A microRNA called miR-6514-5p normally prevents eIF5A2 production. Polyamines essentially cut those brake lines, allowing eIF5A2 to be produced freely. Meanwhile, eIF5A1 production remains under normal cellular control.

Computer simulations revealed why eIF5A2 might be more effective in cancer cells. Though the proteins differ by just 28 building blocks, those differences occur in the region that interacts with ribosomes, or the cellular factories that make proteins.

Patient Survival Data Confirms Laboratory Findings

The laboratory discoveries translate to real patient outcomes. Analysis of breast cancer data from over 2,400 patients showed that higher eIF5A2 levels correlated with worse survival rates. eIF5A1 levels showed no such correlation.

Cancer cells also modify their protein-making factories by increasing production of specific ribosomal proteins, particularly RPS27A, RPL36A, and RPL22L1. All three have been previously linked to aggressive cancer behavior and poor patient outcomes.

Several existing drugs already target parts of the polyamine pathway. DFMO, the compound used in this study to deplete polyamines, is currently in clinical trials for various cancers. The new research suggests that combining such treatments with drugs specifically targeting eIF5A2 might prove more effective than current approaches.

The discovery changes how scientists understand cancer cell behavior. Rather than being passive victims of genetic mutations, cancer cells actively recruit natural molecules like polyamines to support their growth. By identifying eIF5A2 as a critical player in this process — and one that healthy cells don’t depend on — researchers have uncovered a potential vulnerability that could lead to more precise treatments for cancer patients.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/cancers-weakness-tiny-molecules-that-control-tumor-growth/

A judge ruled on Tuesday that Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), Google must share search data with competitors but rejected prosecutors’ bid to make the internet giant sell off its popular Chrome browser and Android operating system.
Here is what has happened so far in the case and what comes next:

The Justice Department during President Donald Trump’s first administration sues Google alleging that it illegally monopolized the online search and related advertising markets. This was the first time in a generation that the U.S. government accused a Big Tech corporation of an illegal monopoly. Prosecutors continue pursuing the case under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Google defends its practices at a trial before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, saying it had won its market share by providing a high-quality service.

The trial’s evidence phase concludes, after Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stand and acknowledged the importance of making its search engine the default on phones and other devices.

Mehta hears closing arguments in the case, pressing Google on how rival search engines could compete, and whether online advertisers would substitute social media or other ads for search advertising.

The judge finds Google violated U.S. antitrust law, saying that “Google has no true competitor.”

Prosecutors propose a sweeping set of remedies they said would work in tandem to open up competition in the markets for online search and related advertising. The 10-year reformation plan includes requiring Google to sell off its Chrome browser, cease paying device makers like Apple to make it the default search engine on new devices, share data with rivals, and end its investments in artificial intelligence companies.

Google proposes a much narrower remedy that would loosen its agreements with Apple and others, calling the government’s proposal a drastic attempt to intervene in the search market.

The Justice Department, once again led by Trump appointees, backs most of the November proposals but drops a bid to make Google sell off AI investments.

Mehta kicks off a 14-day trial on the proposals where prosecutors say Google needs strong measures imposed on it to prevent its online search dominance from extending to AI. At trial, OpenAI says that proposed data-sharing remedies could help it improve ChatGPT, Google executive Sundar Pichai says data sharing would let competitors copy Google’s product, and Google’s stock takes a hit after an Apple executive testifies that the iPhone maker plans to add AI-driven search options to its Safari browser.

After a break for both sides to file court papers, Mehta holds closing arguments in the case where he suggests he is considering less aggressive measures than the 10-year regime proposed by antitrust enforcers, citing the rapid pace of developments in the AI sector.

Google says it has hired Donald Verrilli Jr., the U.S. solicitor general during the Barack Obama administration, to handle its appeal in the case.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-comes-next-googles-antitrust-case-over-search-2025-09-02/

Researchers have successfully performed the first DNA-free gene editing on raspberry plants, marking a scientific advance that could eventually lead to improved berries without the regulatory complexities of traditional genetic modification.

The technique, described in a paper published in Frontiers in Genome Editing, uses molecular scissors called CRISPR to make precise cuts in raspberry genes, then relies on the plant’s natural repair mechanisms. Unlike conventional genetic engineering, no foreign DNA remains in the plant’s genome after editing. While regulatory frameworks for such “precision bred” crops are still evolving, early legislation in England suggests these plants may face fewer hurdles than traditional GMOs.

For raspberries, this could represent a major step forward. These berries present unique challenges for plant breeders because each seed produces a genetically different plant. Commercial growers rely on cloning techniques to maintain consistent berry quality, making traditional breeding extremely slow. Improvements that could take years through conventional methods might be achievable much faster through direct gene editing.

How Scientists Removed Cell Walls to Enable Raspberry Gene Editing

Led by Ryan Creeth, a PhD student at Cranfield University in England, researchers started with raspberry tissue cultures, then used enzymes to strip away the rigid cell walls, creating protoplasts. Without their protective barriers, these naked plant cells become permeable to gene-editing tools.

Scientists combined the protoplasts with pre-assembled CRISPR components, including Cas9 proteins and guide RNAs, along with chemicals that help the editing machinery penetrate cell membranes. After 24 hours, they extracted DNA and used sequencing techniques to confirm successful edits.

The team successfully modified a gene called phytoene desaturase with a 19% efficiency rate. That’s a notable improvement over the very low efficiencies reported in earlier Agrobacterium-based genetic modification attempts in raspberry. They also edited three other genes linked to fruit firmness and disease resistance, though with lower success rates.

Editing Success Varied Dramatically Between Gene Targets

The 19% editing efficiency represents progress over existing approaches and eliminates the years of backcrossing typically required to remove unwanted genetic material from conventionally modified plants.

However, editing efficiency varied dramatically depending on the target gene, ranging from 0.3% to 19%. This variation suggests each genetic target would need extensive optimization before achieving reliable results for practical applications.

Source material quality proved critical. Protoplasts from healthy, vigorous raspberry canes produced between 1 million and 12 million usable cells per milliliter, while poor-quality plants yielded far fewer. Researchers noted the best results came from bright green stems with deep red thorns and rapidly growing tissue cultures.

Will Consumers Be Eating Gene-Edited Raspberries Anytime Soon?

The biggest obstacle is regenerating whole plants from edited protoplasts. While previous research suggests raspberry protoplasts can potentially grow into complete plants, no one has demonstrated this capability with gene-edited cells. Without successful plant regeneration, the technique remains a laboratory proof-of-concept rather than a practical breeding tool.

Cost considerations also pose challenges. The study relied on expensive commercially synthesized CRISPR components, though researchers suggested costs could decrease if laboratories produce these tools internally once targets are validated.

The research does open possibilities for addressing long-standing raspberry problems. Enhanced disease resistance could reduce pesticide use, while improved fruit firmness could extend shelf life and reduce food waste. Both outcomes would benefit farmers, consumers, and the environment.

As the researchers noted in their paper, “To our knowledge, this study constitutes the first use of DNA-free genome editing in raspberry protoplast. This protocol provides a valuable platform for understanding gene function and facilitates the future development of precision breeding in this important soft fruit crop.”

The work represents an early step in precision agriculture for raspberries, a crop that has seen limited innovation due to complex genetics. If the remaining technical hurdles can be overcome, DNA-free editing could eventually enable rapid, targeted improvements throughout the raspberry industry.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/first-dna-free-gene-editing-raspberry-plants-crispr/

A major new study reveals that nearly half of young children diagnosed with ADHD receive medication within just one month of diagnosis, even though pediatric guidelines recommend starting with behavioral therapy first for this age group.

The largest study of its kind examined electronic health records from more than 712,000 children seen at eight major pediatric health systems across the United States between 2016 and 2023. Among the 9,708 children who received an ADHD diagnosis between ages 4 and 5, over two-thirds were ultimately prescribed medication before turning 7.

Why Guidelines Recommend Therapy First

ADHD affects an estimated 10% of American children, and diagnoses in preschoolers are becoming more common. A 2022 national survey found that 2.4% of children aged 3 to 5 had an ADHD diagnosis.

Current American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines, reaffirmed in 2019, recommend that children aged 4 to 5 first receive evidence-based parent training in behavior management before considering medication. Medication should be considered only if these interventions prove insufficient or if symptoms cause substantial disruption.

Yet across the eight health systems studied, between 26% and 49% of preschoolers were prescribed medication within a month of diagnosis, often leaving little or no time for behavioral treatments to take effect.

The AAP recommendations exist because preschoolers’ brains are still rapidly developing, and the evidence base for behavioral interventions is stronger in this age group than for medication. Parent training helps caregivers manage challenging behaviors, establish routines, and create structured environments that can meaningfully reduce ADHD symptoms.

For children who were prescribed medication within 30 days, there often wasn’t enough time to properly implement or assess these therapies, which typically require weeks or months to show benefit.

Racial and Insurance Disparities in ADHD Treatment

The study revealed clear disparities. Asian children with ADHD were least likely to receive early medication, with only 28.6% prescribed within 30 days, compared to 43.9% of White children. Hispanic children were at 35.8%, Black children 41.8%, and multiracial children the highest at 47.7%.

These gaps persisted two years after diagnosis. White children had prescription rates of 78.2%, while Asian children had substantially lower rates at 55.6%.

Publicly insured children were more likely to receive early prescriptions than privately insured peers. Families on Medicaid often face barriers accessing behavioral therapy, making medication the more immediate option. Prior research suggests that minority families may have greater hesitancy toward ADHD medication, but also encounter obstacles to behavioral care.

Preschool ADHD Care Varies Widely

Prescription rates varied dramatically across the eight health systems, from 44.1% to 74.1%. This suggests that treatment decisions may depend as much on geography and local resources as on clinical guidelines.

Older preschoolers were more likely to receive medication quickly. The median time to prescription was zero days for 5-year-olds, compared to nearly 400 days for 3-year-olds.

Comorbidities played a role too. Children with sleep problems or disruptive behavior disorders were more likely to get early medication. About 65% of children had a documented additional condition, such as language delays or learning difficulties.

Follow-up care was inconsistent. Only about 40% of children prescribed medication had a documented follow-up within two months, though the true number may be higher since many doctors use phone calls or secure messaging not captured in records.

A System Under Strain

The study exposes how practical realities often drive treatment. Behavioral therapies require trained providers, multiple sessions, and significant family commitment. In many communities, especially for families with public insurance, such resources are scarce.

Primary care doctors face heavy caseloads and limited access to mental health specialists. Writing a prescription takes minutes, while arranging therapy can take hours, with no guarantee that services are available.

The results don’t mean early prescriptions are always inappropriate. Some children may genuinely need immediate medication, especially with severe symptoms or multiple conditions. But the scale of early prescribing points to a startling gap between recommended best practice and what families actually experience.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/doctors-often-prescribe-adhd-meds-preschoolers-without-delay/

Meta faces scrutiny over its use of chatbots mimicking celebrities, including notable figures like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. A report revealed that some chatbots, specifically parody versions, were created by Meta staff, while others were user-generated.

Meta, due to its involvement in different domains, keeps getting into trouble one way or the other. In a recent development, a disturbing report published by Reuters suggested that the platform has been using chatbots by the names of Anne Hathaway, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and even Scarlet Johannson. Most of these chatbots were created by users with which Meta allows them to make chatbots. But, around three chatbots out of all, specifically parody bots of Taylor Swift, were created by a Meta employee.

College students have a clear message for their schools: artificial intelligence skills matter more than traditional coursework. A new survey of 2,000 students reveals that 50% believe learning to use AI is the most important skill they’ll gain in college.

The research, commissioned by Grammarly and conducted by Talker Research, shows students are already living in an AI-powered world while their institutions struggle to keep up. About 87% of students use AI for schoolwork, and 90% use it for daily tasks outside of class. They spend about 10 hours per week with these tools, split evenly between schoolwork and personal tasks.

Another 62% believe that learning to use AI responsibly will be necessary for their future careers. Students aren’t just experimenting with technology. They’re preparing for a job market where AI literacy could determine their success.

School Policies Differ Dramatically Across Campuses

Most schools (73%) now have AI policies, but the rules vary wildly from campus to campus. About 30% of institutions allow AI for specific tasks only, while 31% permit general use as long as students cite their AI assistance properly. However, 32% still maintain complete “don’t use AI” policies.

Even at schools with clear guidelines, there’s a disconnect between policy and practice. While 69% of students say their professors have discussed AI rules, only 11% report that instructors actually encourage AI use. Many students find themselves caught between using tools they consider necessary and worrying about academic consequences.

The anxiety is real: 46% of students worry about getting in trouble for AI use, and 10% actually have faced consequences. More concerning, 55% feel they’re navigating AI use without proper guidance from their schools.

“AI is no longer a theoretical concept in education; it’s a core part of how students learn, work and prepare for what’s next,” said Jenny Maxwell, Head of Education at Grammarly, in a statement. “With around half of students feeling they’re navigating using AI without clear direction and many worried about getting in trouble, we see this as a wake-up call for educational institutions to provide the support students need to be both comfortable and confident using the technology.”

How Students Really Use AI for School and Life

Students aren’t using AI to cheat. They’re using it as a learning tool. The most popular uses include brainstorming ideas (49%), checking grammar and spelling (42%), and understanding difficult class concepts (41%). Other common applications include grasping topics outside school like taxes and finances (35%), developing thoughts and ideas (34%), and creating study materials like flashcards (24%).

Beyond academics, 29% of students ask AI questions they’re embarrassed to pose to real people, and 25% seek general life advice. Students also use AI for resume help (25%) and interview preparation (22%).

The social acceptance of AI use is growing among students. About 37% view using AI for schoolwork as acceptable when properly disclosed, while only 25% consider it cheating. Another 22% say their classmates view AI use as smart and efficient.

Students Want Better AI Training

Despite widespread use, only 34% of students feel confident they’re using AI ethically and responsibly for school tasks. The gap between usage and confidence shows the need for better training programs.

Most students (72%) don’t think their schools are behind the times with technology, but the disconnect between policy creation and practical guidance remains problematic. Students are essentially teaching themselves how to use AI while institutions focus on creating rules rather than providing education.

“Whether it’s curbing writer’s block, proofing students’ work or helping answer questions they’re hesitant to raise in class, AI is becoming a trusted collaboration partner for students,” said Maxwell. “Their enthusiastic adoption gives educators a powerful opportunity to meet students where they are and help shape a future where technology enhances learning and sets students up for long-term success in their professional and personal lives.”

The data reveals a generation that has already decided AI skills are necessary for their futures. Students aren’t waiting for institutional approval. They’re moving forward with or without guidance. The question for colleges and universities is whether they can evolve quickly enough to help students use these tools effectively and ethically.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/college-students-say-learning-ai-most-important-skill/

The Nisar mission, a $1.5 billion joint venture between the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), is now set to revolutionise climate monitoring and disaster response, not just for India, but worldwide.

India crossed a milestone in its space and climate ambitions on Wednesday with the successful launch of the Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar (Nisar) satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The 2393-kilogram satellite lifted off at 5:40 pm IST aboard Isro’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) into the vacuum of space.

The Nisar mission, a $1.5 billion joint venture between the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), is now set to revolutionise climate monitoring and disaster response, not just for India, but worldwide.

Nisar is the world’s first Earth-mapping satellite equipped with dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar.

This combination of Nasa’s L-band radar and Isro’s S-band radar enables Nisar to capture the faintest shifts on Earth’s surface — whether under forests, clouds, or even in darkness — detecting movements as small as a few millimetres.

The synthetic aperture radar combines multiple measurements, taken as a radar flies overhead, to sharpen the scene below. It works like conventional radar, which uses microwaves to detect distant surfaces and objects, but steps up the data processing to reveal properties and characteristics at high resolution.

Nisar is designed to orbit the planet every 97 minutes, mapping nearly all land and ice surfaces with an unparalleled imaging swath every 12 days.

The implications for India, often at the frontline of climate change impacts and natural disasters, are profound.

Nisar’s freely accessible, near-real-time data will empower Indian researchers, disaster managers, and policymakers to monitor glacier movements in the Himalayas, detect fault-line shifts before earthquakes, track agricultural cycles, and manage water resources more effectively.

With this tool, India is set to improve forecasting for floods, droughts, and landslides, enabling rapid response and informed policy decisions.

A MAJOR COLLABORATION

This historic mission not only cements India’s position as a leader in space-based climate monitoring but also demonstrates how international collaboration can drive scientific progress for the collective good.

The development of the satellite spanned nearly a decade as the Indian and American space agencies came together for development, launch and now the operations of the satellite.

The S-Band SAR and L-Band SAR were independently developed, integrated, and tested by Isro and JPL/Nasa, respectively. The Integrated Radar Instrument Structure (IRIS), comprising both SAR systems and additional payload elements, was assembled and tested at JPL/NASA before being delivered to Isro.

The mainframe satellite elements and all payloads were then assembled, integrated, and tested at Isro’s U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC).

WHAT’S NEXT AFTER LAUNCH?

The NISAR mission comprises four main phases: Launch, Deployment, Commissioning, and Science Operations.

In the Deployment Phase, a 12-meter diameter reflector will be extended 9 meters from the satellite using a complex deployable boom developed by JPL/Nasa.

The 90-day Commissioning Phase involves system checks and calibrations. The Science Operations Phase begins thereafter, continuing through the mission’s life with regular orbit manoeuvres, calibration/validation activities, and coordinated observation plans for L- and S-band instruments managed jointly by JPL and Isro.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/isro-nisar-mission-launch-gslv-nasa-earth-movement-climate-change-2763672-2025-07-30

When SpaceX was negotiating a deal with the Bahamas last year to allow its Falcon 9 rocket boosters to land within the island nation’s territory, Elon Musk’s company offered a sweetener: complimentary Starlink internet terminals for the country’s defense vessels, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The rocket landing deal, unlocking a more efficient path to space for SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9, was then signed in February last year by Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper, who bypassed consultation with several other key government ministers, one of the sources and another person familiar with the talks said.

Reuters could not determine the dollar value of the Starlink arrangement or the number of vessels outfitted with Starlink terminals. The Bahamian military, mostly a sea-faring force with a fleet of roughly a dozen vessels, did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters found no evidence that Cooper broke any laws or regulations in striking the deal with SpaceX, but the people said the quick approval created tension within the Bahamian government.
By this April, two months after the first and only Falcon 9 booster landed off the nation’s Exuma coast, the Bahamas announced it had put the landing agreement on hold. The government said publicly it wanted a post-launch investigation after the explosion in March of a different SpaceX rocket, Starship, whose mid-flight failure sent hundreds of pieces of debris washing ashore on Bahamian islands.

But the suspension was the result of the blindsided officials’ frustration as well, two of the people said.
“While no toxic materials were detected and no significant environmental impact was reported, the incident prompted a reevaluation of our engagement with SpaceX,” Chequita Johnson, the acting director general of the Civil Aviation Authority Bahamas, said in a statement.
SpaceX did not respond to questions for comment. Cooper did not respond to questions about how the rocket landing deal was arranged.
SpaceX’s setbacks in the Bahamas – detailed in this story for the first time – offer a rare glimpse into its fragile diplomacy with foreign governments.
As the company races to expand its dominant space business, it must navigate the geopolitical complexities of a high-stakes, global operation involving advanced satellites and orbital-class rockets – some prone to explosive failure – flying over or near sovereign territories.

These political risks were laid bare last month when Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was considering taking legal action against SpaceX over “contamination” related to Starship launches from Starbase, the company’s rocket site in Texas, 2 miles north of the Mexican border.
Her comments came after a Starship rocket exploded into a giant fireball earlier this month on a test stand at Starbase. Responding to Sheinbaum on X, SpaceX said its teams have been hindered from recovering Starship debris that landed in Mexican territory.

MISSION TO MARS

SpaceX is pursuing aggressive global expansion as Musk, its CEO, has become a polarizing figure on the world stage, especially following high-profile clashes with several governments during his time advising President Donald Trump. More recently he has fallen out with Trump himself.

Starlink, SpaceX’s fast-growing satellite internet venture, is a central source of revenue funding Musk’s vision to send human missions to Mars aboard Starship. But to scale globally, SpaceX must continue to win the trust of foreign governments with which it wishes to operate the service, as rivals from China and companies like Jeff Bezos’ Amazon ramp up competing satellite networks.
The company’s talks with Bahamian officials show how Starlink is also seen as a key negotiating tool for SpaceX that can help advance other parts of its business.
According to SpaceX’s orbital calculations, the Falcon 9 rocket can carry heavier payloads and more satellites to space if its booster is allowed to land in Bahamian territory. Meanwhile, Starship’s trajectory from Texas to orbit requires it to pass over Caribbean airspaces, exposing the region to potential debris if the rocket fails, as it has in all three of its test flights this year.
SpaceX’s deal with the Bahamas, the government said, also included a $1 million donation to the University of Bahamas, where the company pledged to conduct quarterly seminars on space and engineering topics. The company must pay a $100,000 fee per landing, pursuant to the country’s space regulations it enacted in preparation for the SpaceX activities.
While SpaceX made steep investments for an agreement prone to political entanglement, the Falcon 9 booster landings could resume later this summer, two Bahamian officials said.
Holding things up is the government’s examination of a SpaceX report on the booster landing’s environmental impact, as well as talks among officials to amend the country’s space reentry regulations to codify a better approval process and environmental review requirements, one of the sources said.
Arana Pyfrom, assistant director at the Bahamas’ Department of Environmental Planning and Protection, said SpaceX’s presence in the country is “polarizing”. Many Bahamians, he said, have voiced concerns to the government about their safety from Starship debris and pollution to the country’s waters.
“I have no strong dislike for the exploration of space, but I do have concerns about the sovereignty of my nation’s airspace,” Pyfrom said. “The Starship explosion just strengthened opposition to make sure we could answer all these questions.”

STARSHIP FAILURES ROCK ISLANDS

Starship exploded about nine and a half minutes into flight on March 6 after launching from Texas, in what the company said was likely the result of an automatic self-destruct command triggered by an issue in its engine section. It was the second consecutive test failure after a similar mid-flight explosion in January rained debris on the Turks and Caicos Islands, a nearby British overseas territory.
Matthew Bastian, a retired engineer from Canada, was anchored in his sailboat on vacation near Ragged Island, a remote island chain in southern Bahamas, just after sunset when he witnessed Starship’s explosion. What he initially thought was a rising moon quickly became an expanding fireball that turned into a “large array of streaking comets.”
“My initial reaction was ‘wow that is so cool,’ then reality hit me – I could have a huge chunk of rocket debris crash down on me and sink my boat!” he said. “Fortunately that didn’t happen, but one day it could happen to someone.”
Thousands of cruise ships, ferries, workboats, fishing boats, yachts and recreational sailboats ply the waters around Caribbean islands each year, maritime traffic that is crucial for the Bahamas tourism industry.
Within days of the explosion, SpaceX dispatched staff and deployed helicopters and speedboats to swarm Ragged Island and nearby islands, using sonar to scan the seafloor for debris, four local residents and a government official told Reuters. On the surface, recovery crews hauled the wreckage from the water and transferred it onto a much larger SpaceX vessel, typically used to catch rocket fairings falling back from space, the people said.
The SpaceX team included its vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, who emphasized in a news conference with local reporters that the rocket is entirely different from the Falcon 9 boosters that would land off the Exuma coast under SpaceX’s agreement.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/science/how-spacexs-rocket-diplomacy-backfired-bahamas-2025-07-29/

Recent revelations by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on a podcast indicate that private conversations with AI chatbots like ChatGPT lack legal confidentiality.

Your private conversations with AI chatbots like ChatGPT may not be as confidential as you might believe. In a recent YouTube podcast episode of This Past Weekend, hosted by Theo Von, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that interactions with AI tools are not protected by legal confidentiality, unlike conversations with doctors, lawyers, or therapists. According to Altman, the AI industry simply hasn’t caught up when it comes to protecting deeply personal conversations with users, and if sought legally, they might not remain confidential.
“People talk about the most personal sh*t in their lives to ChatGPT,” Altman confessed. “People use it, young people, especially, use it as a therapist, a life coach; having these relationship problems and [asking] ‘what should I do?’ And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it. There’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality, whatever. And we haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.”
Altman warned that this could create a “privacy concern” for users in the case of a lawsuit, explaining that OpenAI would currently be legally obliged to produce those records.

“I think that’s very screwed up. I think we should have the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever — and no one had to think about that even a year ago,” he added.

The secret to fighting global malnutrition might be hiding in the soil beneath wheat fields. Australian scientists discovered that when farmers add specific fungi to wheat crops, the grain absorbs significantly more zinc, and delivers it in a form that the human body can more easily use. Iron absorption also improved, even though iron levels in the grain didn’t increase overall.

Around the world, 2 billion people don’t get enough zinc, while 4.5 billion lack sufficient iron in their diets. Both deficiencies cause serious health problems: stunted growth in children, weakened immune systems, and dangerous complications during childbirth. Since wheat provides about one-sixth of these nutrients for many people globally, any improvement could save lives.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Plants, People, Planet, centers on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which are microscopic organisms that naturally partner with plant roots. When researchers added these fungi to eight different wheat varieties, zinc levels increased significantly while a nutrient-blocking compound called phytate stayed the same or even decreased.

What Are Mycorrhizal Fungi and How Do They Help Plants?

These soil fungi operate like an underground trading network. They latch onto wheat roots and spread thin threads throughout the soil, gathering nutrients that plants can’t reach on their own. In return, the wheat feeds the fungi sugars. More than 80% of plants on Earth form these partnerships, including virtually every major food crop.

When soil nutrients are scarce, this relationship becomes especially valuable. Phytate acts like a nutrient thief in the human digestive system: it binds to zinc and iron, preventing the body from absorbing them. Farmers face a frustrating problem: phosphorus fertilizers boost crop yields but also increase phytate levels, making the grain less nutritious even as it becomes more abundant.

How Scientists Tested Fungi on Eight Wheat Varieties

Scientists grew eight popular Australian wheat varieties in controlled greenhouse conditions, comparing plants treated with Rhizophagus irregularis fungi to untreated controls. They tested each variety under both low and high phosphorus fertilizer conditions across 192 individual pots.

After three months of growth, researchers harvested the mature grain and analyzed it using advanced techniques. They measured mineral content with specialized chemical analysis and created detailed maps showing exactly where zinc accumulated within each grain using X-ray technology.

Root examinations revealed that the fungi successfully colonized up to 70% of root length when soil phosphorus was low, dropping to about 40% when phosphorus was abundant. The fungi naturally reduce their efforts when nutrients become readily available.

Fungal Treatment Boosts Zinc Levels and Crop Yields

Five wheat varieties (Calibre, Mace, Rockstar, Scepter, and Trojan) showed increased zinc levels regardless of soil conditions when partnered with fungi. The remaining varieties responded positively under specific fertilizer conditions. One variety, Gladius, achieved particularly impressive zinc concentrations of 19.26 milligrams per kilogram.

Beyond nutrition, the fungi also boosted productivity. Grain weight increased 7–10% in some varieties, particularly under low-phosphorus conditions. Scepter and Spitfire varieties showed the most dramatic yield improvements when treated with fungi.

Most importantly, the fungal partnerships broke the usual trade-off between phosphorus fertilization and mineral absorption. Even when researchers added high levels of phosphorus fertilizer, plants with fungal partners maintained better zinc-to-phytate ratios compared to untreated plants. In several wheat varieties, the fungi sharply improved this ratio, a key factor that affects how well the human body can absorb nutrients. In some cases, the improvement was large enough to suggest that bioavailable zinc levels may have doubled.

Could Fungi-Enhanced Wheat Help Fight Global Malnutrition?

Commercial fungal products already exist for various agricultural uses, though their effectiveness varies based on soil conditions and environmental factors. The researchers used a commercially available product containing about 800 fungal spores per gram of soil.

Different wheat varieties responded uniquely to fungal treatment, which means farmers need to match specific crops with appropriate fungal partners. Some varieties formed extensive partnerships immediately, while others showed more modest colonization rates.

For populations that rely heavily on wheat and other grains, particularly in developing countries with limited meat consumption, even small improvements in mineral absorption could yield significant health benefits. Iron deficiency anemia alone affects over one billion people worldwide and contributes to reduced brain development and increased death rates.

Even in wealthier countries where wheat products provide 20–25% of dietary zinc intake, enhanced mineral absorption could help address hidden deficiencies that impact immune function and overall health without obvious symptoms.

Rather than requiring genetic modification or dramatic changes to farming practices, this approach harnesses biological partnerships that have existed for millions of years. As researchers continue investigating these fungal networks, naturally enhanced nutrition in staple crops moves closer to becoming a practical reality for addressing one of humanity’s most persistent challenges.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/how-underground-fungi-could-make-wheat-more-nutritious/

What if everything we can see, stretching hundreds of millions of miles in all directions, sits inside a cosmic bubble where matter is spread more thinly than everywhere else in the universe? New research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society says that’s exactly where we might be living, and it could solve one of astronomy’s most confusing problems.

For years, scientists have been grappling with what study author Indranil Banik describes as “a crisis known as the Hubble tension: the local universe appears to be expanding about 10% faster than expected.” When astronomers measure how fast space is expanding using two different methods, they get answers that don’t match. The discrepancy has grown large enough to suggest our fundamental understanding of the universe might be wrong.

“Looking up at the night sky, it may seem our cosmic neighborhood is packed full of planets, stars and galaxies. But scientists have long suggested there may be far fewer galaxies in our cosmic surroundings than expected,” Banik writes in a commentary for The Conversation. His study provides the strongest evidence yet that Earth sits inside a massive cosmic void called the “KBC void,” a region roughly 300 million light-years across where matter is about 20% less dense than the cosmic average.

How Scientists Used Ancient Sound Waves to Test the Theory

To test whether we live in a cosmic void, the researchers examined fossilized sound waves from when the universe was young. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the cosmos cooled enough for atoms to form, and sound waves that had been traveling through the hot, dense early universe suddenly stopped. These waves left behind patterns that astronomers can still detect today by studying how galaxies cluster together.

“By studying CMB temperature fluctuations on different scales, we can essentially ‘listen’ to the sound of the early universe, which is especially ‘noisy’ at particular scales,” Banik explains in his commentary. These ancient sound patterns, called baryon acoustic oscillations, work like a cosmic measuring stick that astronomers use to gauge distances across the universe.

The team compiled measurements from major sky surveys over the past two decades, including data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). They then compared how well different models matched these observations: the standard model assuming space is uniform everywhere versus models that account for us living in a local void.

The concept works because if Earth sits in a cosmic void, the sparse matter around us would be gravitationally pulled toward denser regions outside the void, creating an outward flow. “My colleagues and I previously argued that the Hubble tension might be due to our location within a large void. That’s because the sparse amount of matter in the void would be gravitationally attracted to the more dense matter outside it, continuously flowing out of the void,” Banik writes.

The Evidence Strongly Supports the Void Theory

The results were dramatic. When the researchers tested their void models against 20 years of astronomical data, they found compelling evidence that we do live in such a cosmic bubble. In their analysis of 42 separate distance measurements, the standard model without a void showed significant tension with the observations. But the void models reduced this tension from 3.3-sigma to just 1.1-1.4 sigma, which is well within normal statistical variation.

To put this in perspective, Banik uses a coin-flipping comparison: “Our research shows that the ΛCDM model without any local void is in ‘3.8 sigma tension’ with the BAO observations. This means the likelihood of a universe without a void fitting these data is equivalent to a fair coin landing heads 13 times in a row. By contrast, the chance of the BAO data looking the way they do in void models is equivalent to a fair coin landing heads just twice in a row.”

Interestingly, the researchers didn’t adjust their void model parameters to fit the data. Instead, they used parameters established in previous work based on completely different observations, like galaxy counts and local expansion measurements.

What This Means for Our Understanding of the Universe

Rather than overturning current theories, this study proposes that where we are in the universe might be skewing our measurements. A large cosmic void around Earth could help explain why the local universe appears to be expanding faster than expected. The results encourage more precise low-redshift observations to test whether this local effect is real and significant.

The evidence extends beyond statistics. Galaxy surveys have consistently found fewer galaxies than expected in our local region across multiple types of observations, from optical light to X-ray wavelengths. Recent data from DESI, one of the most ambitious galaxy-mapping projects ever undertaken, also supports this interpretation.

As Banik writes, expanded research will be paramount: “In the future, it will be crucial to obtain more accurate BAO measurements at low redshift, where the BAO standard ruler looks larger on the sky – even more so if we are in a void.”

Source : https://studyfinds.org/distorted-sound-early-universe-suggests-we-are-living-in-a-giant-void/

USERS of Elon Musk’s Starlink have been left without connection today following a major network outage.

Reported issues began to emerge around 3.30pm EDT, according to DownDetector.

A Starlink spokesperson said on X: “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution.

“We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved.”

The outage is reported to have caused disruption for thousands of users.

Some social media users have vented their frustration at the lack of connection.

One posted on Reddit: “Down in Tennessee. WFH too, right in the middle of the workday. Such a pain.”

Another said: “We have multiple Starlinks at different locations and they’re all down right now. We’re located in Florida.”

Users across the United States logged their loss of connection with DownDetector.

“Down in Maryland – Washington, DC area,” one shared.

Another posted: “Down in Northern California.”

“Down in rural central Texas,” reported a third.

Musk posted on X: “Service will be restored shortly.

“Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Elon Musk and his companies have continued to make headlines over the past few months.

AI chatbot Grok went rogue earlier this month and started sharing pro-Hitler and antisemitic comments on X.

A spokesperson for xAI, the company behind Grok, said: “We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

Customers have also made their way to a Tesla high-tech diner where hungry guests can charge their cars as they’re served by robots.

Musk opened up the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Monday.

He praised the venue on X last week, saying: “I just had dinner at the retro-futuristic @Tesla diner and Supercharger.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14813441/elon-musk-starlink-outage/

A sweeping cyber espionage operation targeting Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab server software compromised about 100 organizations as of the weekend, two of the organizations that helped uncover the campaign said on Monday.
Microsoft on Saturday issued an alert about “active attacks” on self-hosted SharePoint servers, which are widely used by organizations to share documents and collaborate within organizations. SharePoint instances run off of Microsoft servers were unaffected.

Dubbed a “zero-day” because it leverages a previously undisclosed digital weakness, the hacks allow spies to penetrate vulnerable servers and potentially drop a backdoor to secure continuous access to victim organizations.
Vaisha Bernard, the chief hacker at Eye Security, a Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm, which discovered the hacking campaign, opens new tab targeting one of its clients on Friday, said that an internet scan carried out with the Shadowserver Foundation had uncovered nearly 100 victims altogether – and that was before the technique behind the hack was widely known.
“It’s unambiguous,” Bernard said. “Who knows what other adversaries have done since to place other backdoors.”

He declined to identify the affected organizations, saying that the relevant national authorities had been notified.
The Shadowserver Foundation confirmed the 100 figure. It said most of those affected were in the United States and Germany, and the victims included government organizations.
Another researcher said that, so far, the spying appeared to be the work of a single hacker or set of hackers.

“It’s possible that this will quickly change,” said Rafe Pilling, director of Threat Intelligence at Sophos, a British cybersecurity firm.
Microsoft said it had “provided security updates and encourages customers to install them,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
It was not clear who was behind the ongoing hack, but Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google, which has visibility into wide swaths of internet traffic, said it tied at least some of the hacks to a “China-nexus threat actor.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/microsoft-server-hack-hit-about-100-organizations-researchers-say-2025-07-21/

Eight babies have been born in the UK using genetic material from three people to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions, doctors say.

The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman.

The technique has been legal here for a decade but we now have the first proof it is leading to children born free of incurable mitochondrial disease.

These conditions are normally passed from mother to child, starving the body of energy.

This can cause severe disability and some babies die within days of being born. Couples know they are at risk if previous children, family members or the mother has been affected.

Children born through the three-person technique inherit most of their DNA, their genetic blueprint, from their parents, but also get a tiny amount, about 0.1%, from the second woman. This is a change that is passed down the generations.

None of the families who have been through the process are speaking publicly to protect their privacy, but have issued anonymous statements through the Newcastle Fertility Centre where the procedures took place.

While it might seem surprising that returning from just 400 kilometers above Earth takes nearly a full day, the extended duration is a result of complex orbital mechanics, safety protocols, and precise landing requirements.

When Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and his Axiom-4 crewmates undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on July 14, 2025, they began a carefully planned 22.5-hour journey back to Earth.

While it might seem surprising that returning from just 400 kilometers above Earth takes nearly a full day, the extended duration is a result of complex orbital mechanics, safety protocols, and precise landing requirements.

Unlike simply descending straight down, the Dragon spacecraft must first perform a series of engine burns to safely distance itself from the ISS and enter a slightly different orbit. This manoeuvre prevents any risk of collision with the station and initiates what engineers call “free flight,” during which the spacecraft orbits Earth independently for several hours before re-entry begins.

The timing of the deorbit burn, the critical engine firing that slows the capsule enough to begin atmospheric re-entry, is carefully calculated to align with the rotation of Earth and the position of the designated splashdown zone off the coast of California.

Since the ISS orbits Earth at roughly 28,000 km/h, the spacecraft must wait for the right orbital position to ensure a safe and accurate landing.

During re-entry, the Dragon capsule faces extreme heat, with temperatures nearing 1,600 degrees Celsius. To protect the crew and spacecraft, the descent is gradual and carefully controlled.

Parachutes deploy in two stages—first stabilising chutes at about 5.7 km altitude, then main parachutes at around 2 km—to slow the descent for a safe ocean splashdown.

Weather conditions and recovery ship availability also influence the timing. If conditions at the primary landing site are unfavourable, the spacecraft may remain in orbit longer before initiating re-entry.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/why-shubhanshu-shuklas-return-on-dragon-spacecraft-will-take-22-hours-2755640-2025-07-14

As Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla prepares for his return to Earth, his farewell message from the International Space Station (ISS) resonated with pride, gratitude, and hope for India’s space future.

In a heartfelt ceremony, Shukla reflected on his journey, the achievements of the mission, and the collaborative spirit that defined his time in orbit.

In his address, Shukla captured the spirit of a new India as seen from the vantage point of space. “Today, India looks ambitious from space, fearless, confident, and proud. India is still saare jahan se accha,” he declared, referencing the iconic patriotic song that has inspired generations.

Shux described his mission as an “incredible journey” and emphasised that while his personal chapter in space exploration is ending, the journey of the Indian space agency is just beginning. “If we come together, it is attainable,” he said, urging continued unity and collaboration for future achievements.

CELEBRATING SCIENCE, COLLABORATION AND CAMARADERIE

Reflecting on his time aboard the ISS, Shukla expressed deep gratitude to the people who made the mission possible. “It has been made incredible by people on the space station. It was a joy to be working with professionals like you,” he said, acknowledging both his Indian and international colleagues.

He highlighted the mission’s scientific achievements, outreach efforts, and the sense of wonder that comes from viewing Earth from orbit. “We have done a lot of science, outreach, and always looked out on Earth-it seems magical to me,” Shukla noted.

Shukla also thanked ISRO for its vision and support, the researchers and students who contributed to the mission’s experiments, and NASA for their training and logistical support. “These missions have far-reaching implications beyond science and will also boost our countries,” he added.

THE POWER OF GLOBAL UNITY

Shukla’s sentiments were echoed by fellow astronauts. Peggy Whitson, Ax-4 commander, praised the camaraderie and teaching spirit that the ISS team extended to the Ax-4 crew.

Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu spoke emotionally: “We came with a purpose and made a lot of things happen-science, amazing pictures of Earth, funny videos, and made a lot of people proud on the ground. We made friends in space, shared inside jokes, and I can say we made it and did it. We were able to do it because we are people collaborating in space in the name of science. It was a great mission.”

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/india-looks-ambitious-fearless-from-space-says-shubhanshu-shukla-ahead-of-homecoming-2755197-2025-07-13

A simple blood test might soon reveal whether your brain functions like a 30-year-old’s or a 70-year-old’s — and whether you’re likely to live a long, healthy life or face an early death. Stanford University researchers analyzed blood samples from nearly 45,000 people and discovered something surprising: organs age at wildly different speeds, and having a young brain and immune system could be your ticket to longevity.

People whose brains aged rapidly faced the same Alzheimer’s risk as those carrying the most dangerous genetic variant for the disease. On the flip side, those with younger brains had protection equal to carrying protective genes. Most striking of all, people with both young brains and immune systems had 56% lower odds of dying during the study.

Reading Your Body’s Age Through Blood

Stanford’s research team, led by Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences, created what works like an age test for 11 major organs by measuring nearly 3,000 proteins in blood samples. When organs age or sustain damage, they leak specific proteins into the bloodstream — traces that reveal their condition. Scientists trained AI models to predict chronological age based on these protein patterns from each organ.

If someone’s predicted organ age exceeded their actual age, that organ was labeled “aged.” When it fell below, the organ was considered “youthful.” The method worked across 44,498 participants aged 40-70 from the UK Biobank, with researchers tracking them for up to 17 years to monitor disease development and deaths.

The findings, published in Nature Medicine, confirmed that organs don’t age in lockstep. Brain aging showed minimal correlation with other organs, proving that biological aging follows its own timeline in different body systems.

The More Aged Organs, The Higher Your Risk

Death risk climbed steeply with each additional aged organ. Those with 2-4 aged organs faced 2.3 times higher death risk. People with 5-7 aged organs saw their risk jump to 4.5 times normal. Most concerning were those with 8 or more aged organs. These individuals faced 8.3 times higher odds of death.

“More than 60% of people with 8+ extremely aged organs at blood draw died within 15 years,” researchers observed.

Brain aging proved especially critical among all organs tested. Beyond predicting death, it signaled increased risk for conditions far outside the brain, including heart failure and lung disease. This makes sense given the brain’s role as the body’s command center, controlling hormones, immune responses, and other vital functions through intricate signaling networks.

Your Lifestyle Shapes Your Organ Age

The research brought some good news: organ aging isn’t set in stone by genetics. Multiple lifestyle factors affected biological age across several organs. Smoking, heavy drinking, processed meat consumption, and poor sleep accelerated aging. In contrast, vigorous exercise, eating fish, and higher education levels correlated with younger organ profiles.

Several supplements and medications showed protective effects. Ibuprofen, glucosamine, cod liver oil, multivitamins, and vitamin C linked to younger biological ages in multiple organs, especially kidneys, brain, and pancreas. The hormone therapy Premarin, commonly prescribed for menopausal symptoms, correlated with younger immune, liver, and artery profiles.

Young Brain and Immune System: The Golden Combination

While aged organs generally meant higher death risk, the study revealed an important twist: not all youthful organs offered equal benefits. Surprisingly, people with young arteries actually showed increased death risk, and those with broadly youthful organs across many systems showed no survival advantage over normal agers.

Two organs, however, provided exceptional protection. People with young brains had 40% lower death risk, while those with young immune systems saw 42% lower risk. The combination proved especially powerful — individuals with both enjoyed the strongest protection from death.

“I expected many more organs to be linked to longevity, but our data suggest the immune system and brain are key,” lead author Hamilton Oh, PhD, tells StudyFinds. “After thinking more about it though, it makes intuitive sense. Both the brain and immune system control so many parts of our physiology – the brain through nerve branches that sprout from the spinal cord and the immune system through resident and migratory cells present in all tissues. These systems may be the guardians of our whole body.”

During the 17-year follow-up, only 3.8% of people with young brains and immune systems died, compared to 7.9% of normal agers. The brain-immune connection makes biological sense, as these systems constantly communicate and chronic inflammation speeds up aging throughout the body.

Brain aging stemmed largely from proteins produced by oligodendrocytes. These are cells that create myelin, the insulation around nerve fibers. This suggests white matter breakdown plays a central role in brain aging. The strongest marker was neurofilament light chain, already used in clinical trials to track brain degeneration.

The biological analysis showed that young brain aging correlated with preserved brain support structures, potentially because inflammatory factors caused less damage. Young immune aging linked to lower levels of inflammation-promoting proteins, indicating that controlling chronic inflammation helps maintain both systems.

Instead of viewing aging as an unstoppable, uniform decline, this research shows it’s an organ-specific process where the brain and immune system serve as crucial regulators of lifespan. For the first time, scientists can map which biological systems matter most for longevity — and many factors that influence organ aging appear modifiable through lifestyle choices.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/blood-test-reveals-which-organs-are-aging-fastest-how-long-you-might-live/

The new Galaxy Z Fold7, Z Flip7, and the new Z Flip7 FE are available for pre-orders now.

Samsung introduced several updates to its foldable devices lineup on Wednesday (Jul 9), with the new Galaxy Z Fold7, Z Flip7, and the new Z Flip7 FE taking stage at the latest Unpacked event.

The Korean electronics company unveiled the upgrades – including a new version of their watch – in New York but also announced an expanded partnership with Google to inject more artificial intelligence into its foldable lineup.

Pre-orders for the devices in Singapore have already started, with those who pre-ordered able to receive their devices from Jul 29. The devices will be available in stores for purchase from Aug 1.

Here’s a quick look at each device announced:

A THINNER GALAXY FOLD7

The Fold7 is much thinner and lighter than its predecessors, coming in at 4.2mm (0.17 inch) thick when unfolded and 8.9mm folded.

It weighs 215g, an impressive feat considering the company also added bigger screens than the Fold 6 – 6.5 inches to the exterior screen and 8 inches on the interior screen.

The battery capacity remains the same as the previous generation.

A 200 megapixel camera will act as the main camera and a 10 megapixel camera will extend along the frame of the phone, giving users a quick option to capture wide shots. The Fold7 will retail for US$1,999.

In Singapore, it’s priced from S$2,698.

THE GALAXY Z FLIP7 AND THE FE

The flippable cousin of the Fold has an enlarged 4.1-inch top screen and folds down to only 13.7mm. It weighs just 188g.

It gets a slightly bigger 4,300mAh battery but only maintains a 50 megapixel main camera.

A cheaper version of the phone, called the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE was also announced. It’s a slightly smaller version – with a 6.7 inch screen – of its premium counterpart.

Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/living/samsung-galaxy-fold-7-flip7-fe-467741

Yet another story from Soham Parekh’s controversy is out. Dhruv Amin, co-founder of AI startup Create, reveals Parekh came to work only once and frequently missed meetings, and delayed deliverables.

In a bizarre saga that could be ripped straight from a tech satire, Soham Parekh, an India-based software engineer, has stunned Silicon Valley after admitting to secretly working full-time for dozens of US startups, at the same time. What began as whispers of moonlighting quickly exploded into a full-blown controversy after revelations surfaced that Parekh was juggling roles at up to 34 different companies, sparking outrage, disbelief, and a flurry of memes.

The story broke when Suhail Doshi, founder and former CEO of Mixpanel, posted on X (formerly Twitter), accusing Parekh of deceiving several Y Combinator-backed startups. Doshi claimed he had fired Parekh within a week of uncovering the truth. As the thread gained traction, more founders chimed in, admitting they had either hired or interviewed Parekh, only to discover he was already employed elsewhere.

One such founder, Dhruv Amin, co-founder of AI startup Create, shared his experience with Parekh in an X thread that quickly went viral. Dhruv explained that Soham had joined his team in San Francisco as engineer number five, on the back of a recruiter’s recommendation and an impressive pair-programming interview. “Yes, we hired him He was eager and crushed our in-person pair programming onsite. I believe he’s actually a good engineer,” Dhruv wrote.

But the enthusiasm quickly turned into frustration.

After accepting the job, Parekh said he’d be away in New York and would begin a week later. When Monday rolled around, he texted Dhruv excitedly, only to call in sick on his first day. “He said he’d onboard from home. Gave an address to ship the laptop,” Dhruv noted.

From there, things only got weirder. Parekh missed meetings, delayed deliverables, and made excuses. It all unravelled when Dhruv’s team discovered he was actively working at another company, Sync, at the same time.

“When we called Soham up, he denied it to the end. Said Sync guys were just friends,” Dhruv recalled. But the real kicker came when Sync published an ‘Employee of the Month’ video, featuring none other than Soham Parekh himself.

His contract was swiftly terminated. “He dipped,” Dhruv said, assuming he was just a young engineer who had made a bad call. But when the wider story broke, Dhruv’s embarrassment turned to amazement. “Then I was pissed. Then impressed Still not sure how he pulled it off for so long with in-person startups and long hours, but appreciated the hustle. Hope he had a good reason. Feels like a stressful way to make money.”

As the tech world demanded answers, Parekh finally spoke out in an interview on The Backchannel podcast (TBPN), confirming what many had suspected. “It is true,” he said, calmly owning up to the deception. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done. But, you know, financial circumstances, essentially. No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do this out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances.”

He added that he completed all the work himself — no shortcuts, no AI, no external help — and maintained that his output met expectations.

Parekh claimed the hustle began in 2022, after postponing graduate school and enrolling in an online programme from Georgia Tech. But that detail raised more questions when a Georgia Tech spokesperson confirmed there was no record of his enrolment, casting further doubt on the timeline and fuelling speculation around how far the deception may have gone.

Despite the storm, Parekh has already landed on his feet. He’s now joined a San Francisco-based AI startup named Darwin, and has promised to leave his multi-job days behind. “I won’t be taking up any more additional jobs,” he said.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/from-hired-to-fired-tech-founder-reveals-how-soham-parekh-operated-and-hints-at-how-he-fooled-companies-2751290-2025-07-05

Over the past decade, health insurance companies have increasingly embraced the use of artificial intelligence algorithms. Unlike doctors and hospitals, which use AI to help diagnose and treat patients, health insurers use these algorithms to decide whether to pay for health care treatments and services that are recommended by a given patient’s physicians.

One of the most common examples is prior authorization, which is when your doctor needs to receive payment approval from your insurance company before providing you care. Many insurers use an algorithm to decide whether the requested care is “medically necessary” and should be covered.

These AI systems also help insurers decide how much care a patient is entitled to — for example, how many days of hospital care a patient can receive after surgery.

If an insurer declines to pay for a treatment your doctor recommends, you usually have three options. You can try to appeal the decision, but that process can take a lot of time, money and expert help. Only 1 in 500 claim denials are appealed. You can agree to a different treatment that your insurer will cover. Or you can pay for the recommended treatment yourself, which is often not realistic because of high health care costs.

As a legal scholar who studies health law and policy, I’m concerned about how insurance algorithms affect people’s health. Like with AI algorithms used by doctors and hospitals, these tools can potentially improve care and reduce costs. Insurers say that AI helps them make quick, safe decisions about what care is necessary and avoids wasteful or harmful treatments.

But there’s strong evidence that the opposite can be true. These systems are sometimes used to delay or deny care that should be covered, all in the name of saving money.

A Pattern Of Withholding Care

Presumably, companies feed a patient’s health care records and other relevant information into health care coverage algorithms and compare that information with current medical standards of care to decide whether to cover the patient’s claim. However, insurers have refused to disclose how these algorithms work in making such decisions, so it is impossible to say exactly how they operate in practice.

Using AI to review coverage saves insurers time and resources, especially because it means fewer medical professionals are needed to review each case. But the financial benefit to insurers doesn’t stop there. If an AI system quickly denies a valid claim, and the patient appeals, that appeal process can take years. If the patient is seriously ill and expected to die soon, the insurance company might save money simply by dragging out the process in the hope that the patient dies before the case is resolved.

This creates the disturbing possibility that insurers might use algorithms to withhold care for expensive, long-term or terminal health problems , such as chronic or other debilitating disabilities. One reporter put it bluntly: “Many older adults who spent their lives paying into Medicare now face amputation or cancer and are forced to either pay for care themselves or go without.”

Research supports this concern – patients with chronic illnesses are more likely to be denied coverage and suffer as a result. In addition, Black and Hispanic people and those of other nonwhite ethnicities, as well as people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, are more likely to experience claims denials. Some evidence also suggests that prior authorization may increase rather than decrease health care system costs.

Insurers argue that patients can always pay for any treatment themselves, so they’re not really being denied care. But this argument ignores reality. These decisions have serious health consequences, especially when people can’t afford the care they need.

Moving Toward Regulation

Unlike medical algorithms, insurance AI tools are largely unregulated. They don’t have to go through Food and Drug Administration review, and insurance companies often say their algorithms are trade secrets.

That means there’s no public information about how these tools make decisions, and there’s no outside testing to see whether they’re safe, fair or effective. No peer-reviewed studies exist to show how well they actually work in the real world.

There does seem to be some momentum for change. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, which is the federal agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, recently announced that insurers in Medicare Advantage plans must base decisions on the needs of individual patients – not just on generic criteria. But these rules still let insurers create their own decision-making standards, and they still don’t require any outside testing to prove their systems work before using them. Plus, federal rules can only regulate federal public health programs like Medicare. They do not apply to private insurers who do not provide federal health program coverage.

Some states, including Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Maine and Texas, have proposed laws to rein in insurance AI. A few have passed new laws, including a 2024 California statute that requires a licensed physician to supervise the use of insurance coverage algorithms.

But most state laws suffer from the same weaknesses as the new CMS rule. They leave too much control in the hands of insurers to decide how to define “medical necessity” and in what contexts to use algorithms for coverage decisions. They also don’t require those algorithms to be reviewed by neutral experts before use. And even strong state laws wouldn’t be enough, because states generally can’t regulate Medicare or insurers that operate outside their borders.

A Role For The FDA

In the view of many health law experts, the gap between insurers’ actions and patient needs has become so wide that regulating health care coverage algorithms is now imperative. As I argue in an essay to be published in the Indiana Law Journal, the FDA is well positioned to do so.

The FDA is staffed with medical experts who have the capability to evaluate insurance algorithms before they are used to make coverage decisions. The agency already reviews many medical AI tools for safety and effectiveness. FDA oversight would also provide a uniform, national regulatory scheme instead of a patchwork of rules across the country.

Some people argue that the FDA’s power here is limited. For the purposes of FDA regulation, a medical device is defined as an instrument “intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.” Because health insurance algorithms are not used to diagnose, treat or prevent disease, Congress may need to amend the definition of a medical device before the FDA can regulate those algorithms.

If the FDA’s current authority isn’t enough to cover insurance algorithms, Congress could change the law to give it that power. Meanwhile, CMS and state governments could require independent testing of these algorithms for safety, accuracy and fairness. That might also push insurers to support a single national standard – like FDA regulation – instead of facing a patchwork of rules across the country.

The move toward regulating how health insurers use AI in determining coverage has clearly begun, but it is still awaiting a robust push. Patients’ lives are literally on the line.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/how-artificial-intelligence-controls-your-health-insurance-coverage/

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), Google has been hit by an EU antitrust complaint over its AI Overviews from a group of independent publishers, which has also asked for an interim measure to prevent allegedly irreparable harm to them, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Google’s AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages and are shown to users in more than 100 countries. It began adding advertisements to AI Overviews last May.

The company is making its biggest bet by integrating AI into search but the move has sparked concerns from some content providers such as publishers.
The Independent Publishers Alliance document, dated June 30, sets out a complaint to the European Commission and alleges that Google abuses its market power in online search.
“Google’s core search engine service is misusing web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search, which have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,” the document said.

It said Google positions its AI Overviews at the top of its general search engine results page to display its own summaries which are generated using publisher material and it alleges that Google’s positioning disadvantages publishers’ original content.
“Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page,” the complaint said.
The Commission declined to comment.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority confirmed receipt of the complaint.
Google said it sends billions of clicks to websites each day.
“New AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” a Google spokesperson said.

The Independent Publishers Alliance’s website says it is a nonprofit community advocating for independent publishers, which it does not name.
The Movement for an Open Web, whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, and British non-profit Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, which says it advocates for fairness in the tech world, are also signatories to the complaint.
They said an interim measure was necessary to prevent serious irreparable harm to competition and to ensure access to news.
Google said numerous claims about traffic from search are often based on highly incomplete and skewed data.
“The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to Search,” the Google spokesperson said.

Foxglove co-executive director Rosa Curling said journalists and publishers face a dire situation.
“Independent news faces an existential threat: Google’s AI Overviews,” she told Reuters.
“That’s why with this complaint, Foxglove and our partners are urging the European Commission, along with other regulators around the world, to take a stand and allow independent journalism to opt out,” Curling said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/googles-ai-overviews-hit-by-eu-antitrust-complaint-independent-publishers-2025-07-04/

Leaving a workplace after a certain period is part of one’s professional journey, as people often switch companies for better opportunities, higher compensation or different types of exposure at other organisations. However, the decision completely lies with the employee, with no role for the current company to play, at least not before a formal resignation is submitted. What if your company is already aware of your plans in advance? While it is not too likely for anyone to learn about someone’s resignation plans, ChatGPT seems to have made that possible.

Sarthak Ahuja, an investment banker and content creator (finance), recently opened up on how ChatGPT can actually predict a soon-to-resign employee. Not just that, it can also help companies understand if one is applying elsewhere months before making it public.

In his explanatory video, Sarthak mentioned that if a company uses transcriptions during Zoom calls or records the meetings, the meeting transcripts are later uploaded to ChatGPT to check the pattern, which starts showing which person may resign first. “There are two things. The first is that ChatGPT recognises people who use the term ‘you guys’ a lot more than the term ‘we should.’ These people are at higher risk of resigning from the company. The second factor is who makes the most number of excuses about why their video is turned off during meetings,” Sarthak explained in his post.

He then went on to explain how the patterns give certain information to the manager, who then creates a descending order ranking of the least engaged employees with clear actions to re-engage them. These factors take into account the expressed frustration, tenure in the company, pay scale compared to the market structure and more. Companies can also use the information to stop giving such employees any promotions or higher pay packages during the appraisal.

“It’s pattern recognition from human behaviour coupled with psychology and market dynamics put into use. Forbes did a piece this week called ‘5 ChatGPT Prompts To Predict Which Of Your Employees Will Quit Next’ and it’s something you should read,” the creator wrote in his caption.

The post grabbed quite some attention on Instagram, with many sharing diverse opinions about such possibilities. Some even poked fun at the early prediction of resignations. One wrote, “More like a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who receive unfair appraisals/compensation are more likely to leave,” while another added, “Functional analysis in psychotherapy using AI is definitely challenging but will deliver robust results once optimised.”

Source : https://www.news18.com/viral/can-chatgpt-reveal-employees-resignation-plans-to-company-heres-the-truth-9417916.html

Your body is quietly collecting genetic changes right now, and scientists want to map every single one. A massive new research network is launching the most ambitious genetic study since the Human Genome Project, but this time they’re tracking the thousands of DNA alterations that pile up throughout your lifetime.

The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network, backed by the National Institutes of Health, plans to catalog genetic changes that happen after conception. These aren’t mutations inherited from your parents, rather, they’re DNA alterations that accumulate as you live, making each person’s tissues genetically distinct by adulthood.

These quadrillions of genetic changes help explain why identical twins grow more genetically different with age, and why diseases like cancer can seemingly appear from nowhere. “A typical cell may acquire hundreds to thousands of somatic mutations in a lifetime,” the researchers write in their paper published in Nature. “There are trillions of cells in a human body and so the total number of somatic mutations acquired in a single individual may well exceed quadrillions.”

Your Body’s Daily DNA Changes

Your cells face constant attack from environmental toxins, UV radiation, and normal cellular processes. Most DNA changes are harmless, but some dramatically alter cell behavior. Cancer represents the most extreme example, though these mutations also factor into heart disease, neurological disorders, and aging.

Different body parts collect mutations at wildly different rates. Brain cells, which rarely divide after birth, gather about 16-20 new mutations yearly. Rapidly dividing colon cells rack up approximately 44 mutations annually. Sun-exposed skin shows clear UV damage patterns, while smokers’ lung tissue bears molecular tobacco scars.

These patterns, called mutational signatures (distinct patterns that reveal what caused specific DNA changes), work like genetic fingerprints revealing specific environmental exposures or cellular processes that caused particular DNA changes.

“Specific mutations can be present in very small numbers of cells or even single cells, and so detecting them is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says co-lead author Tim Coorens, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and currently a research group leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute, in a statement.

The Largest Genetic Study Ever Attempted

SMaHT researchers plan to analyze tissue samples from 150 deceased donors, examining 19 different tissue types from each person. Samples will include organs from all three developmental layers forming the human body: brain, skin, and adrenal glands; heart, blood, and muscle; plus lungs, liver, and intestines.

Advanced DNA sequencing methods will detect mutations present in just single cells among millions. One technique, duplex sequencing (a method that sequences both strands of DNA to reduce errors), reduces error rates to less than one in 100 million, allowing scientists to spot authentic mutations that would otherwise disappear in sequencing noise.

Over 250 researchers from 52 institutions are involved, organized into five genome characterization centers and 14 technology development projects. Each donor gets extensive analysis, with researchers collecting tissue samples plus detailed medical histories, environmental exposure data, and demographics.

Game-Changing Discoveries Already Emerging

Early SMaHT research has revealed unexpected insights about human development and disease. Studies tracking these mutations show that when a fertilized egg first divides, one of the two resulting cells often gives rise to twice as many descendant cells in the adult body as its sibling—explaining developmental patterns scientists observed for decades.

More surprisingly, normal tissues often harbor mutations typically associated with cancer. In healthy 60-year-olds, approximately 90% of endometrial tissue contains driver mutations that could theoretically cause cancer, while only about 1% of colon tissue shows similar changes, despite colon cells having much higher mutation frequency (the rate at which mutations occur).

This contradiction demonstrates how context determines whether mutations cause disease. The endometrium goes through monthly cycles of shedding and regrowth that may prevent dangerous cell populations from establishing, while colon tissue faces different biological pressures.

SMaHT’s comprehensive mapping could transform medical practice by establishing baselines for normal mutation patterns, helping doctors distinguish between harmless age-related changes and early disease signs. The research might also predict which patients face higher risks for specific cancers or other mutation-driven diseases.

Beyond medicine, the project promises insights into fundamental biological questions about aging, longevity, and how environmental exposures leave lasting cellular marks. Rather than having one static genome, each person carries millions of subtly different genetic variants distributed across tissues, a discovery that could revolutionize approaches to human health and personalized medicine.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/250-scientists-building-smaht-network-genetic-mutations/

Microsoft is firing thousands of workers, its second mass layoff in months. The tech giant began sending out layoff notices Wednesday (July 2, 2025).

The company declined to say how many people would be laid off but said that it will comprise less than 4% of the workforce it had a year ago.

Microsoft said the cuts will affect multiple teams around the world, including its sales division and its Xbox video game business.

“We continue to implement organisational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” it said in a statement.

Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. The company said Wednesday (July 2, 2025) that its latest layoffs would cut close to 4% of that workforce, which would be about 9,000 people. But it has already had at least three layoffs this year.

Until now, at least, the biggest was in May, when Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers, nearly 3% of its global workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years as the company spent heavily on artificial intelligence.

Source : https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/microsoft-layoff-tech-giant-cuts-over-9000-employees-in-second-mass-layoff/article69765276.ece

Roman Chiporukha also told The Sun how it’s the human race’s ‘destiny’ to live in space

ONLY the mega-wealthy know that there is a travel agent who brokers trips to space for the rich.

Roman Chiporukha, otherwise known as Mr Intergalactic, founded SpaceVIP to take thrill-seekers out to space – but he believes holidays to the stars will be available for all soon.

Space tourism is an industry that has been blossoming, slowly but steadily, for several years now.

Companies around the world are sharpening their elbows for a slice of the market, whose target audience is the Earth’s ultra-wealthy.

And founder of SpaceVIP Chiporukha is ahead of the game, already offering a Michelin star meal in a pressurised Neptune capsule in the fringes of space.

But this comes at a hefty cost of $495,000 – appealing to the world’s wealthiest.

He told The Sun that, despite the eye-watering price, what started as terrifying, high-risk suborbital flights will soon transform into affordable trips for those wanting to see Earth at a different angle.

Drawing comparison to commercial flights, Chiporukha said how once space tourism expands, the cost will then decrease.

But it will also take more people to experience what’s dubbed the “overview effect” to start the shift to space.

He said: “The overview effect has been catalogued by every single astronaut that has been in space, and that is this notion of feeling, interconnectedness with the earth that you see from afar, and all of the beings on it.

“I’ve come to believe that space can be a catalyst for greater human change and a shift in consciousness.

“That’s a real governing factor of why people are drawn to this, and they want to educate humanity on.”

Chiporukha, however, is desperate to ditch the narrative that space travel and tourism is only for the world’s elite.

He said: “I find it, frankly, really frustrating when people are tweeting or talking their slightly irrelevant opinions, or speaking poorly about Bezos or Branson or Elon.

“They don’t realize that they’re using technology that was brought to them by satellites in space.

“So what some of these travelers are trying to do is they want to go up to space, they want to experience the overview effect.

“It’s very convenient for, you know, the media to sensationalize this billionaire joyride narrative ‘a****** rich guy goes to space, and we’re starving here’.

“That narrative is inherently false, because all of their missions have a tremendous purpose in this notion of space for earth.”

Despite this, SpaceVIP has teamed up with a Danish chef to create a six-hour dining experience up in space – and has had great interest in it.

It’s set to depart later this year from the Kennedy Space in Florida, with the flight set to last around six hours in a pressurized capsule, lifted by a stratospheric balloon to the lowest barrier of space.

Future passengers will have access to WiFi the entire time and will even be able to livestream the incredible experience for their family and friends to watch from Earth.

But organising such a trip doesn’t come without some difficulties.

As Chiporukha works essentially as a travel agent but for space specifically, he has complained that with space travel not fully understood yet, it can be hard to plan.

Chiporukha explained: “We are very transparent about the process, and the training, and all of the things that come in engaging in such an adventure.

“[So] sorry, sir, or, madam, you can’t get insurance, because there’s no actuarial data for space travel just yet, so it’s fly at your own risk.”

Mr Intergalactic also revealed how it is the human race’s “destiny” to eventually live in space.

He said: “I think we’re meant to be a space-faring species.

“I think that’s our inevitable future, and not to leave Earth because we f***** it up so much, but because it’s our destiny for lack of a better word.”

STAR SPACE MISSION
In April, Katy Perry soared 62 miles above Earth with Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez, journalist Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

The group flew in Bezos’ own Blue Origin New Shepard NS-31 ship and soared past the Kármán line – the internationally recognised boundary of space.

They blasted off from West Texas as part of a history-making, 11-minute flight set to be the first all-female space trip since 1963.

The women on board even passed a “pink moon” as part of the first all-female spaceflight in over 60 years.

The women spent three minutes in pure weightlessness before the craft safely parachuted back down and landed in Texas.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14570994/space-travel-agent-mr-intergalactic-stars-trips/

Around midday on June 13 last year, my colleagues and I were scanning the skies when we thought we had discovered a strange and exciting new object in space. Using a huge radio telescope, we spotted a blindingly fast flash of radio waves that appeared to be coming from somewhere inside our galaxy.

After a year of research and analysis, we have finally pinned down the source of the signal – and it was even closer to home than we had ever expected.

A Surprise In The Desert

Our instrument was located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara – also known as the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory – in remote Western Australia, where the sky above the red desert plains is vast and sublime.

We were using a new detector at the radio telescope known as the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder – or ASKAP – to search for rare flickering signals from distant galaxies called fast radio bursts.

We detected a burst. Surprisingly, it showed no evidence of a time delay between high and low frequencies – a phenomenon known as “dispersion.”

This meant it must have originated within a few hundred light years of Earth. In other words, it must have come from inside our galaxy – unlike other fast radio bursts which have come from billions of light years away.

A Problem Emerges

Fast radio bursts are the brightest radio flashes in the Universe, emitting 30 years’ worth of the Sun’s energy in less than a millisecond – and we only have hints of how they are produced.

Some theories suggest they are produced by “magnetars” – the highly magnetized cores of massive, dead stars – or arise from cosmic collisions between these dead stellar remnants. Regardless of how they occur, fast radio bursts are also a precise instrument for mapping out the so-called “missing matter” in our Universe.

When we went back over our recordings to take a closer a look at the radio burst, we had a surprise: the signal seemed to have disappeared. Two months of trial and error went by, until the problem was found.

ASKAP is composed of 36 antennas, which can be combined to act like one gigantic zoom lens six kilometers across. Just like a zoom lens on a camera, if you try to take a picture of something too close, it comes out blurry. Only by removing some of the antennas from the analysis – artificially reducing the size of our “lens” – did we finally make an image of the burst.

We weren’t excited by this – in fact, we were disappointed. No astronomical signal could be close enough to cause this blurring. This meant it was probably just radio-frequency “interference” – an astronomer’s term for human-made signals that corrupt our data.

It’s the kind of junk data we’d normally throw away.

Yet the burst had us intrigued. For one thing, this burst was fast. The fastest known fast radio burst lasted about 10 millionths of a second. This burst consisted of an extremely bright pulse lasting a few billionths of a second, and two dimmer after-pulses, for a total duration of 30 nanoseconds.

So where did this amazingly short, bright burst come from?

A Zombie In Space?

We already knew the direction it came from, and we were able to use the blurriness in the image to estimate a distance of 4,500 km. And there was only one thing in that direction, at that distance, at that time – a derelict 60-year-old satellite called Relay 2.

Relay 2 was one of the first ever telecommunications satellites. Launched by the United States in 1964, it was operated until 1965, and its onboard systems had failed by 1967.

But how could Relay 2 have produced this burst?

Some satellites, presumed dead, have been observed to reawaken. They are known as “zombie satellites.”

But this was no zombie. No system on board Relay 2 had ever been able to produce a nanosecond burst of radio waves, even when it was alive.

We think the most likely cause was an “electrostatic discharge.” As satellites are exposed to electrically charged gases in space known as plasmas, they can become charged – just like when your feet rub on carpet. And that accumulated charge can suddenly discharge, with the resulting spark causing a flash of radio waves.

Electrostatic discharges are common, and are known to cause damage to spacecraft. Yet all known electrostatic discharges last thousands of times longer than our signal, and occur most commonly when the Earth’s magnetosphere is highly active. And our magnetosphere was unusually quiet at the time of the signal.

Another possibility is a strike by a micrometeoroid – a tiny piece of space debris – similar to that experienced by the James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022.

According to our calculations, a 22 micro-gram micrometeoroid traveling at 20km per second or more and hitting Relay 2 would have been able to produce such a strong flash of radio waves. But we estimate the chance the nanosecond burst we detected was caused by such an event to be about 1%.

Plenty More Sparks In The Sky

Ultimately, we can’t be certain why we saw this signal from Relay 2. What we do know, however, is how to see more of them. When looking at 13.8 millisecond timescales – the equivalent of keeping the camera shutter open for longer – this signal was washed out, and barely detectable even to a powerful radio telescope such as ASKAP.

But if we had searched at 13.8 nanoseconds, any old radio antenna would have easily seen it. It shows us that monitoring satellites for electrostatic discharges with ground-based radio antennas is possible. And with the number of satellites in orbit growing rapidly, finding new ways to monitor them is more important than ever.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/astronomers-finally-solve-mystery-behind-strange-bright-burst-in-space-that-baffled-them-for-a-year/

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday for Meta Platforms against a group of authors who had argued that its use of their books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system infringed their copyrights.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision that the authors had not presented enough evidence that Meta’s AI would dilute the market for their work to show that the company’s conduct was illegal under U.S. copyright law.

Chhabria also said, however, that using copyrighted work without permission to train AI would be unlawful in “many circumstances,” splitting with another federal judge in San Francisco who found on Monday in a separate lawsuit that Anthropic’s AI training made “fair use” of copyrighted materials.

“This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” Chhabria said. “It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.”

A spokesperson for the authors’ law firm Boies Schiller Flexner said that it disagreed with the judge’s decision to rule for Meta despite the “undisputed record” of the company’s “historically unprecedented pirating of copyrighted works.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company appreciated the decision and called fair use a “vital legal framework” for building “transformative” AI technology.

The authors sued Meta in 2023, arguing the company misused pirated versions of their books to train its AI system Llama without permission or compensation.

The lawsuit is one of several copyright cases brought by writers, news outlets and other copyright owners against companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic over their AI training.

The legal doctrine of fair use allows the use of copyrighted works without the copyright owner’s permission in some circumstances. It is a key defense for the tech companies.

Chhabria’s decision is the second in the U.S. to address fair use in the context of generative AI, following U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s ruling in the Anthropic case.

AI companies argue their systems make fair use of copyrighted material by studying it to learn to create new, transformative content, and that being forced to pay copyright holders for their work could hamstring the burgeoning AI industry.

Copyright owners say AI companies unlawfully copy their work to generate competing content that threatens their livelihoods. Chhabria expressed sympathy for that argument during a hearing in May, which he reiterated on Wednesday.

The judge said generative AI had the potential to flood the market with endless images, songs, articles and books using a tiny fraction of the time and creativity that would otherwise be required to create them.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/meta-fends-authors-us-copyright-lawsuit-over-ai-5204041

SCIENTISTS have raised “urgent concerns” over new viruses discovered in bats which have the potential to spill over into humans and could be “highly fatal”.

Testing bats in China, experts found 22 viruses – 20 of which have never been seen before.

Two of these new bugs were of particular concern, as they were closely related to the deadly Nipah and Hendra viruses.

Both viruses can cause brain inflammation and dangerous respiratory disease in humans.

Nipah is a bat-bourne virus that’s been flagged as a “priority pathogen” by the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its potential to trigger an epidemic.

It can kill up to 70 per cent of its victims, with outbreaks reported in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.

Meanwhile, Hendra is a rare virus that can spread to humans from horses that have been infected by disease-carrying bats.

Only seven cases have been reported in people, in Australia.

Scientists at the Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention detected two worrying viruses – described as the “evolutionary cousins” of Nipah and Hendra – while testing the kidneys of bats in the Yunnan province of China.

The bats lived in orchards close to villages, sparking concerns that fruit eaten by inhabitants and livestock may get contaminated and risk wider transmission.

“Bats have been implicated in a number of major emerging disease outbreaks, including Hendra, Nipah, Marburg and Ebola virus disease, severe and acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Covid-19,” researchers wrote in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

“Bat-borne viruses are transmitted to humans either through direct contact with bats or via the ingestion of food or water contaminated with bat saliva, faeces, or urine.”

The study team – led by Dr Yun Feng – pointed out that previous research looking at the disease spreading potential of bats has only focused on their faeces.

But they said bugs living in bats’ kidneys also “present potential transmission risks” as they may be excreted through urine.

“The kidney can harbour important zoonotic pathogens, including the highly pathogenic Hendra and Nipah viruses,” scientists said.

They looked inside the kidneys of 142 bats from ten species, which were collected over four years in five areas of the Yunnan province.

Using advanced genetic sequencing, the team found 22 viruses, 20 of them never seen before.

Two of the most concerning were new henipaviruses, which are in the same group as Nipah and Hendra bugs.

The henipaviruses were found in fruit bats living near orchards close to villages.

Scientists said their study “rais[ed] urgent concerns about the potential for these viruses to spill over into humans or livestock.”

Dr Alison Peel, a veterinarian and wildlife disease ecologist from the Sydney School of Veterinary Science at The University of Sydney, said: “The main significance of this work lies in the discovery of viruses in bats in China that are ‘evolutionary cousins’ to two of the most concerning pathogens in humans – Hendra virus and Nipah virus – which circulate in bats and are highly fatal if they spill over into people.”

But she said the viruses require further study before we can definitively state that they can pass on from bats to people.

“While one of the new viruses in this study appears to be the closest known relative to these highly fatal viruses, there are some genetic differences in the regions of the virus responsible for binding to and entering cells, so we can’t automatically assume that it can cross over to new species.

“We have other examples of close evolutionary cousins to Hendra and Nipah that appear not to be of any concern for spillover, so there will need to be some more laboratory studies on these new viruses to determine the actual risk.

Dr Peel went on: “Importantly, the bats infected with the Hendra-like virus were captured in fruit orchards, highlighting potential opportunities for contact with humans and domestic species.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/health/14553185/new-brain-inflaming-bat-viruses-china-fatal-spillover-humans/

It’s rocking into spiderwebs.

NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped pictures of a long-sought geological structure — dubbed “spiderwebs” — on the Red Planet that indicate a history of flowing water, the space agency announced.

The boxwork ridge structure spans 12 miles across at some points and indicates to experts that groundwater once spread across this section of the Red Planet that had previously only been observed from orbit.

“The images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago,” NASA said in a statement Monday.

“The Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren’t sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today,” NASA said.

Flowing groundwater created the crisscrossing ridges — some just a few inches tall — by leaving behind a trail of minerals that accumulated in cracks and fissures and then hardened as it dried.

“Remarkably, the boxwork patterns show that even in the midst of this drying, water was still present underground, creating changes seen today,” NASA said in its release.

“Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within,” it added.

The formation occurs via a similar mechanism to stalagmites and stalactites here on Earth, experts said.

The “spiderwebs” got their name when researchers observed the arachnid-esque pattern of ridges from orbit.

The pattern stretches across miles of a layer of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall mountain, which is also being studied by researchers on the Curiosity rover team at NASA.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/24/science/nasas-curiosity-rover-snaps-pics-of-mars-spiderwebs-that-indicate-red-planets-watery-past/

What if everything you thought you knew about time was completely wrong? A physicist is now proposing that time itself isn’t the simple, one-way flow we experience, but actually has three separate dimensions. This wild idea might even finally solve some of the biggest mysteries in science.

Gunther Kletetschka from the University of Alaska Fairbanks has developed a mathematical model suggesting that our familiar sense of time ticking forward is like seeing only the tip of an iceberg. Beneath the surface, he argues, time has a hidden three-dimensional structure that could explain everything from why certain particles exist to how the entire universe works.

Right now, physics has a major problem. Scientists have two incredibly successful theories that describe how the universe works, but they contradict each other. Einstein’s relativity explains big things like planets and black holes perfectly. Quantum mechanics explains tiny particles flawlessly. But when scientists try to combine them (like when studying what happens inside a black hole) the math breaks down completely. It’s like having two different instruction manuals for the same machine, and they give you opposite directions.

Kletetschka’s three-dimensional time theory, published in World Scientific Connect, could be the missing piece that makes both instruction manuals work together.

How Three-Dimensional Time Actually Works

Think of time like a braided rope. From far away, it looks like a single strand moving in one direction. But up close, you can see it’s actually made of three separate cords twisted together. That’s essentially what Kletetschka is proposing about time itself.

In his model, time has three different “directions” that operate at completely different scales:

We only experience one dimension of time because the other two only matter at extremes we never encounter in daily life. It’s like living in a house and only noticing the ground floor, while the basement and attic exist but don’t affect your daily routine.

The Theory Makes Stunning Predictions, And They’re Right

Unlike many physics theories that are too abstract to test, Kletetschka’s model makes specific predictions about the real world. When scientists check those predictions against actual measurements, they match almost perfectly.

Take subatomic particles, the building blocks of everything in the universe. These particles come in three distinct “families” or generations, kind of like three different sizes of the same basic tool. Scientists have known about this pattern for decades, but nobody could explain why there are exactly three families, or why their weights follow such specific patterns.

Kletetschka’s theory says this happens because of the three time dimensions. It predicts that particles in these three families should have weight ratios of roughly 1 to 4.5 to 21. Here’s another way to make sense of it: if the lightest particle in a family weighs as much as a paperclip, the middle one should weigh like a smartphone, and the heaviest should weigh like a large textbook.

This pattern shows up consistently across different types of particles, and the theory says it’s not a coincidence. It’s a direct result of how three-dimensional time is structured.

The theory gets the exact measurements right with incredible precision. Scientists measure particle weights using special units called GeV and MeV (think of them like very precise scales for weighing things smaller than atoms). The theory predicted the top quark (the heaviest fundamental particle we know) should weigh 173.21 units. The actual measured weight? 173.2 units.

Even more impressive, it predicted the weight of the muon (a heavier cousin of the electron that makes up atoms) correctly to seven decimal places. In the world of physics, that kind of accuracy really is like hitting a bullseye from miles away.

Why Some Forces Act Weird—And How Time Explains It

The theory also explains one of nature’s strangest behaviors. There’s a force called the weak nuclear force that governs radioactive decay, which is the process that makes some atoms unstable and break apart over time. This force has a bizarre quirk: it only interacts with particles that “spin” in one direction, like a cosmic preference for left-handed screws over right-handed ones.

Scientists call this “parity violation,” and it’s like discovering that all the locks in the universe only turn clockwise, never counterclockwise. Nobody really understood why nature has this preference.

Kletetschka’s model suggests the answer lies in the geometry of three-dimensional time itself. Just like a spiral staircase naturally curves in one direction, the structure of time creates this built-in asymmetry. It’s not an arbitrary rule, but rather a fundamental feature of how time is shaped.

The theory also makes predictions about gravitational waves. These are ripples in space and time caused by massive cosmic events, like when two black holes crash into each other. These waves were only detected for the first time in 2015, confirming one of Einstein’s predictions about gravity.

According to three-dimensional time theory, these waves should travel at slightly different speeds than light, being off by only 1.5 parts in a quadrillion. To put that in perspective, that’s like measuring the distance from New York to Los Angeles and being off by less than the width of a human hair. It’s an incredibly tiny difference, but our most sensitive detectors might be able to measure it.

Testing the Theory: What Scientists Will Look For

The beauty of this theory is that it doesn’t just make vague philosophical claims. It actually tells scientists exactly what to look for in their experiments.

What This Means for Our Understanding of Reality

If this theory proves correct, it would fundamentally change how we think about existence itself. Instead of matter existing within time, the theory suggests that matter is actually made from time.

As Kletetschka puts it in his paper, “what we perceive as mass and energy are manifestations of temporal curvature and dynamics.” In simpler terms, the particles that make up your body, the energy that powers your brain, and even the gravity holding you to Earth might all be different expressions of how time bends and flows in three dimensions.

This is a radically different way of thinking about reality. It’s the kind of paradigm shift that would make every physics textbook obsolete overnight, similar to how Einstein’s relativity overturned Newton’s clockwork universe, or how the discovery that Earth orbits the sun revolutionized astronomy.

The Road Ahead: Proof or Disproof

Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The physics community will rightly demand rigorous proof before accepting such a radical reimagining of time itself.

But unlike many “theories of everything” that make untestable predictions, this one gives scientists a clear roadmap for verification. Over the next decade, experiments will be able to definitively prove whether three-dimensional time is real or just an elegant mathematical fiction.

The Large Hadron Collider’s upcoming high-luminosity upgrade will probe energy ranges where the predicted new particles should appear. Advanced gravitational wave detectors will become sensitive enough to measure the tiny speed variations the theory predicts. Space telescopes will map dark energy’s behavior across cosmic history with unprecedented precision.

Perhaps most importantly, the theory makes specific numerical predictions that leave little room for ambiguity. Either the neutrinos have exactly the masses it predicts, or they don’t. Either the new particles appear at the predicted energies, or they don’t. Either gravitational waves show the predicted speed differences, or they don’t.

In science, theories live or die by their predictions. And this theory has given scientists plenty of targets to aim for.

You’ve built your career, found the right partner, and now you’re ready to start a family at 45. Nearly 5% of Swedish babies are now born to mothers over 40, but a study tracking over 312,000 births has uncovered troubling health risks that increase significantly with each passing year.

Swedish researchers discovered that women who give birth at 45 and older face nearly double the risk of stillbirth compared to those in their late thirties. Their babies are also 82% more likely to develop dangerous low blood sugar levels and 68% more likely to be born prematurely, complications that can affect both mother and child for years.

While severe outcomes remain relatively rare, the research, published in Acta Paediatrica, shows that each additional year of maternal age incrementally raises the odds of problems with lasting consequences.

Examining Over 300,000 Births

Researchers at Uppsala University examined Sweden’s comprehensive Medical Birth Register, analyzing every singleton birth to mothers aged 35 and older between 2010 and 2022. They divided women into three groups: ages 35–39 (the comparison group), 40–44 (advanced maternal age), and 45 and older (very advanced maternal age).

Sweden’s healthcare system meticulously tracks pregnancy outcomes, giving researchers access to detailed information on more than 312,000 births, representing nearly a quarter of all singleton births in the country during that period. Of these births, 81% were to women aged 35–39, 18% to women aged 40–44, and just over 1% to women 45 and older. Remarkably, 6% of women in the oldest group were actually 50 or older when they gave birth.

Health Risks Climb Sharply After 45

Women in the oldest age group faced significantly higher rates of pregnancy complications. Beyond the increased stillbirth risk, babies born to mothers 45 and older were 46% more likely to be small for gestational age, a condition that can cause immediate problems like difficulty maintaining body temperature and blood sugar, plus long-term developmental issues.

Low Apgar scores, which measure a newborn’s condition immediately after birth, were more common among babies born to older mothers in the 40–44 age group. However, the most concerning finding was the dramatic spike in hypoglycaemia, or dangerously low blood sugar, among newborns of the oldest mothers. Without quick treatment, this condition can cause seizures and brain damage.

Mothers themselves showed distinct patterns as well. Women in the oldest age groups were more likely to be shorter, have higher body weights, and suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure. They were also far more likely to have used fertility treatments—18% of women 45 and older compared to just 6.7% of women in their late thirties.

Nearly half of the oldest mothers (46%) delivered via cesarean section, compared to less than 23% of women aged 35–39, reflecting both increased complications and more cautious medical approaches.

Implications for Family Planning

The research doesn’t suggest women should panic about delaying childbirth, but it does provide important context for family planning decisions. Understanding these risks allows women and their healthcare providers to make informed choices and potentially take steps to minimize complications.

For women who do conceive later in life, the study underscores the importance of excellent prenatal care and close monitoring throughout pregnancy. Many complications can be managed effectively when caught early.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/pregnancy-over-45-elevated-risks/

Safe quantum communication requires enabling a sender and receiver to get ‘quantum keys’, which are made of streams of photons — the carriers of light

India could be technologically capable of “quantum communication” using satellites in the “next half a decade” Professor Bhaskar Kanseri of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, whose team recently reported an instance of quantum key distribution one kilometre apart — the farthest such transmission in India, without any connecting cables — told The Hindu in an interview.

This, however, would require large teams of well-funded multidisciplinary experts and the involvement of start-ups which are specifically geared towards such ends, Prof. Kanseri said.

Safe quantum communication requires enabling a sender and receiver to get “quantum keys”, which are made of streams of photons — the carriers of light. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) employs principles of quantum mechanics: the incompletely understood principles underlying the behaviour of atomic and sub-atomic particles, including photons.

While there are a couple of approaches in using QKD, one of them — said to be the most secure but technically harder to implement — uses quantum entanglement. Pairs of photons are naturally ‘entangled’, in a way that a change in one instantaneously reflects in the other. Applying this to encryption means that even the mere attempt by a potential hacker into a QKD-secured transmission of information becomes apparent to those communicating, thus allowing preventive measures.

While generating such secure keys can be done through physical networks, including fibre optic cables, the goal is to be able to do it in ‘free-space’ or without such intervening wires. This is because the cost of such transmissions using cables rapidly rises once the sender and receiver are hundreds of kilometres apart. Thus the ideal step would be to involve satellites, which can act as an intermediary between any two points even if they are thousands of kilometres apart.

However, using fibre optic cables provides a stable channel for quantum communication which free-space channels do not. Atmospheric disturbances such as turbulence, air flow, pollution, etc., particularly in a city such as the Delhi National Capital Region, made it more “challenging” to demonstrate free-space quantum communication. “The photon beam of quantum channel diverges and wanders due to these disturbances and results in more errors. Owing to these reasons, the error rates are generally higher than the fibre ones. However, with better beam control and optimisation, there is a scope to reduce these errors,” Prof. Kanseri said.

China had demonstrated satellite-based quantum communication nearly one decade ago, as they had a head start in quantum communication activities since the early 2000s, he surmised. “I strongly believe that India, which started quite recently (in the 2020s), will achieve it in next half-a-decade or so, as under the National Quantum Mission (NQM), a strong focus is to develop satellite-based long distance quantum communication,” Prof. Kanseri, who is currently in the U.S., said in an email.

As an academic institute, IIT-Delhi’s experiments in quantum communication so far were “proof of concept (POC) nature” conducted with a small team of four to five students, explained Prof Kanseri. “Satellite based quantum communication would be one of the biggest projects and require not only adequate funds but also a large, dedicated team of multidisciplinary skilled experts for developing several types of enabling technologies. Quantum startups, mentored by researchers working in quantum technologies, if funded adequately, can contribute immensely in translation of technologies from lab to market, and in prototyping quantum technologies in a focussed and faster manner. In addition, indigenous development of needed equipment and components is also required,” Prof. Kanseri said.

In 2017 and 2020, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, during multiple instances, generated quantum keys involving a satellite (500 km above the ground) and ground stations 1,000 and 1,700-km apart.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/with-money-and-manpower-india-could-achieve-quantum-satellite-communication-by-2030-says-expert/article69724357.ece

The radio pulse was blasted from a defunct satellite, Relay 2, which was an experimental communications satellite launched in 1964.

Scientists received a mysterious radio pulse that came from a satellite that had been dead for decades. The signal was so powerful that for a moment it outshone all other objects in the sky, New Scientist reported.

The radio pulse was blasted from a defunct satellite, Relay 2, which was a NASA experimental communications satellite launched in 1964.

It was part of the Relay programme, which consisted of two satellites, Relay 1 and Relay 2, designed to test communications in medium Earth orbit. Both satellites were funded by NASA.

The US-based space agency stopped using it in 1965, and the technical and electronic devices stopped working altogether by 1967.

Last year on June 13, scientists using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) detected a small but powerful flash that lasted less than 30 nanoseconds.

Clancy James at Curtin University in Australia and his colleagues were shocked as the signal came from our galaxy.

“If it’s nearby, we can study it through optical telescopes really easily, so we got all excited, thinking maybe we’d discovered a new pulsar or some other object,” says Clancy as quoted by New Scientist.

“This was an incredibly powerful radio pulse that vastly outshone everything else in the sky for a very short amount of time,” Clancy added.

Scientists studied the source and found that the signal came from within 20,000km of Earth. After comparing it with the locations of known satellites, they found that the pulse came from the Relay 2 satellite.

As the satellite has been dead for nearly six decades, scientists believe that the signal must have come from an external factor, such as an electrostatic discharge or a micrometeorite.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/science/mysterious-dead-satellite-sends-powerful-signal-to-earth-after-decades-8731647

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), Google faced a potential setback on Thursday as an adviser to Europe’s highest court sided with EU antitrust regulators in the company’s fight against a record 4.34 billion euro ($4.98 billion) fine levied seven years ago.
The European Commission in its 2018 decision said Google had used its Android mobile operating system to block rivals. A lower tribunal endorsed the EU finding in 2022 but trimmed the fine to 4.1 billion euros, prompting Google to appeal to Europe’s top court.

Advocate-General at the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Juliane Kokott, in her non-binding opinion, advised the court to dismiss Google’s appeal and confirm the reduced fine set by the lower tribunal.
“The legal arguments put forward by Google are ineffective,” she said.
Kokott dismissed Google’s argument that regulators should compare Google with a rival in assessing the situation.
“It is not realistic, in the present case, to compare the situation of Google with that of a hypothetical as-efficient competitor. Google held a dominant position in several markets of the Android-ecosystem and thus benefited from network effects that enabled it to ensure that users used Google Search,” she said.

Judges, who usually follow four out of five such non-binding opinions, will rule in the coming months.

“Android has created more choice for everyone and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world,” a Google spokesperson said on Thursday.
“We are disappointed with the Opinion which, if it were followed by the Court, would discourage investment in open platforms and harm Android users, partners and app developers.”
Regulators said Google’s illegal practices dated back to 2011, as it required manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and its Chrome browser together with its Google Play app store on their Android devices. It paid them to pre-install only Google Search and blocked them from using rival Android systems.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/eu-court-adviser-sides-with-regulators-googles-fight-against-eu-antitrust-fine-2025-06-19/

SpaceX’s massive Starship spacecraft exploded into a dramatic fireball during testing in Texas late on Wednesday, the latest in a series of setbacks for billionaire Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.
The explosion occurred around 11 p.m. local time while Starship was on a test stand at its Brownsville, Texas Starbase while preparing for the tenth test flight, SpaceX said in a post on Musk’s social-media platform X.

The company attributed it to a “major anomaly” and said all personnel were safe. Its engineering teams were investigating the incident, and it was coordinating with local, state and federal agencies regarding environmental and safety impacts, the company said.
“Preliminary data suggests that a nitrogen COPV in the payload bay failed below its proof pressure,” Musk said in a post on X, in a reference to a nitrogen gas storage unit known as a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel. “If further investigation confirms that this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design,” he continued.

The Starship rocket appeared to experience at least two explosions in quick succession, lighting up the night sky and sending debris flying, according to video capturing the moment it exploded.

The 400-foot (122-meter) tall Starship rocket system is at the core of Musk’s goal of sending humans to Mars. But it has been beset by a string of failures this year.
In late May, SpaceX’s Starship rocket spun out of control about halfway through a flight without achieving some of its most important testing goals. The Starship lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas, launch site, flying beyond the point of two previous explosive attempts earlier this year that sent debris streaking over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course.
Two months earlier, the spacecraft exploded in space minutes after lifting off from Texas, prompting the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to halt air traffic in parts of Florida.

Videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near South Florida and the Bahamas after Starship broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed. Musk called that explosion “a minor setback.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/science/spacex-starship-rocket-explodes-setback-musks-mars-mission-2025-06-19/

NETFLIX is adopting broadcast channels for the first time after nearly all but killing off traditional linear TV.

The streaming giant is picking up channels from TF1 Group, France’s biggest commercial broadcaster, as part of a recently inked deal.

Viewers will be able to watch all five TF1 live channels, the Financial Times reported.

The deal will reportedly bring an additional 30,000 hours worth of telly to Netflix next summer.

TF1 offers scripted dramas, live sports and reality shows like The Voice.

Only Netflix subscribers in France will be able to tune into the bonus content, the FT noted.

However, if the partnership is successful, more linear channels may jump to streaming services in other parts of Europe and the US in future.

Netflix will first wait to see how the TF1 deal fares before cutting any more broadcasting deals, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said in a statement.

The companies did not reveal how much the deal was worth.

Peters added that the partnership would help boost subscriber engagement.

Netflix has further turned its attention to engagement, after pivoting away from sharing subscriber counts.

“By teaming up with France’s leading broadcaster, we will provide French consumers with even more reasons to come to Netflix every day and to stay with us for all their entertainment,” Peters said.

The deal also means TF1 gets more eyeballs on the adverts it airs between shows.

“As viewing habits shift toward on-demand consumption and audience fragmentation increases, this unprecedented alliance will enable our premium content to reach unparalleled audiences and unlock new reach for advertisers within an ecosystem that perfectly complements our TF1+ [streaming] platform,” Rodolphe Belmer, CEO of TF1 Group, said in a statement.

It comes as streaming overtakes traditional TV for the first time in terms of viewership numbers.

The milestone marks a steady shift towards internet-based telly, which has seen a near-doubling of streaming viewership since 2021 when it made up 26 per cent of TV use.

Today that percentage stands at nearly 45 per cent, according to the latest figures released by Nielsen earlier this week.

“It’s a credit to media companies,” said Karthik Rao, boss of data specialist Nielsen, which launched its Gauge report on viewing statistics in May 2021.

“They have deftly adapted their programming strategies to meet their viewers where they are watching TV, whether it’s on streaming or linear platforms.”

Netflix claims to have “over” 300million subscribers.

The deal would also allow Netflix to grow its audience in France.

As of 2022, Netflix had 10million French subscribers, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at the time.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14518724/netflix-getting-broadcast-linear-channels-first-time-app-makeover/