A number ofAmericans who are in the Democratic Republic of the Congoare believed to have had exposure to suspected cases in the country’s latest Ebola outbreak, with several deemed to have had high-risk exposures, sources have told STAT. At least one of these individuals may have developed symptoms.
One source said that there are not yet test results for any of the individuals, but the U.S. government is reportedly trying to arrange to transport them out of the DRC to somewhere they can be safely quarantined, and cared for, if they prove to have been infected. It’s not clear if that would be in the United States; there is some discussion of perhaps taking the individuals to an American military base in Germany, a source said.
WASHINGTON — Over a recent breakfast, U.S. officials had a message for the German ambassador: pay more for pharmaceuticals.
The meeting, between U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, chief health department adviser Chris Klomp, and German Ambassador Jens Hanefeld, was part of a larger push from the Trump administration to get other countries to pay more for medications as the U.S. pays less, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
The U.S. officials discussed the possible use of tariffs under Section 301 — which grants the government authority to combat trade practices considered “unfair.” The move would be similar to the tactic of threatening new tariffs to get other countries to pay more for drugs. The ambassador agreed to review the matter with officials in Germany, but no deal was made, the person said.
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood testing is likely to reduce the risk of death from prostate cancer, found a new review published on Thursday by an influential international science research organization — a shift in medical evidence that could encourage wider use.
The Cochrane review’s first author, Juan Franco from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany, said at a press conference that they have “moderate certainty” that the screening test, which identifies high levels of PSA as a potential marker of prostate cancer, leads to a reduction in disease-specific deaths. The benefits are marginal: the review analyzed results from six trials involving 800,000 participants conducted in Europe and North America, and found about two fewer prostate cancer deaths for every 1,000 men screened.
Background: “Keep On Keep Up” (KOKU) is a tablet-based digital program based on the well-validated Otago and Fitness and Mobility Exercise programs for older adults to decrease the risk of falling. Objective: This substudy involved a process evaluation in order to analyze the usage patterns of the KOKU digital program, specifically training frequency, volume, and intensity among older adults over a 3-month self-managed training period. Pre-post changes in physical capacity and real-world walking were examined. Methods: This study is a nested cohort study within the three-armed randomized controlled SMART-AGE trial conducted in Germany (German Clinical Trials Register ID: DRKS00034316). Participants aged 67 years or older with basic digital literacy were included. KOKU provided guided but unsupervised progressive strength and balance training for 3 months. The data on training adherence, engagement, and progression were collected. Instrumented assessments included the Timed Up and Go Test, the 30-Second Chair Rise Test, and real-world walking monitoring using wearable sensors. Results: A total of 113 participants (n=63, 56% female; mean age 74.02, SD 5.36 y) were included in the analysis. During the 3-month period, participants used KOKU for 24 (SD 15) days, that is, 2 to 3 times per week. Over the entire study period, no falls or other adverse events were reported due to KOKU usage. The number of exercises performed per participant ranged from 2 to 213, with a median value of 70. The instrumented Timed Up and Go Test results revealed a prolonged total duration (=0.26; =.009). In the instrumented 30-Second Chair Rise Test, improvements were observed in the number of completed repetitions (=0.21; =.04) and frequency of repetitions (=0.23; =.03). This was mainly due to a reduction in inactive time (=−0.60; <.001). Real-world walking parameters remained unchanged, except for a slower walking speed during walking bouts of less than 30 seconds (=0.49; <.001). All changes did not meet the criteria for minimally important differences. Conclusions: KOKU is a novel digital intervention for older adults, promoting balance and strength exercises. Physical capacity improvements were small. However, the use of instrumented assessments provided further insights into participants’ capacity and mobility that would not have been identifiable with conventional assessments. Future improvements to the program should focus on incorporating more challenging exercises for individuals with varying levels of physical capacity. Trial Registration: German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00034316; https://drks.de/search/en/trial/DRKS00034316
Swiss research shows treatment with an antibody known as NG101 promotes regeneration of damaged spinal cord tissue in some people with spinal cord injury by blocking a protein called Nogo-A that normally suppresses nerve regrowth in the central nervous system.
Compared to placebo, participants treated with the antibody showed faster lesion volume shrinkage and a significantly slower loss of spinal cord tissue, both in terms of size and myelin content, above the injury site.
This study, published in Nature Communications, is an additional analysis of a subset of 106 patients of a Phase IIb study published last year in The Lancet Neurology and carried out by Swiss and German academic researchers as well as the Swiss biotech NovaGo Therapeutics, which is developing the antibody. The original trial population included 126 people. It did not robustly meet its primary endpoint across the full patient population but showed promising signals in some motor-incomplete patients.
The current study specifically looked at people for whom magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data were available. It investigated whether NG101 produced measurable structural changes in the spinal cord over time, whether MRI could detect those changes even in patients without obvious clinical improvement, also whether combining imaging with electrophysiology could better identify likely responders to inform more efficient future trial designs.
In the Phase IIb study the antibody was delivered directly into the spinal canal to 106 participants with acute cervical spinal cord injury within weeks of injury. Over a six month follow up period, the team measured lesion volume, spinal cord cross-sectional area, and myelin integrity.
The patients treated with NG101 showed a slowing of damage and faster injury improvement than those in the placebo group. The researchers believe this suggests the drug either slows post-injury neurodegeneration or actively promotes nerve fiber sprouting.
“Our data suggest that NG101 antibody treatment demonstrates both focal and remote structural preservation following cervical spinal cord injury, consistent with regenerative mechanisms seen in preclinical models,” write lead author Patrick Freund, MD, PhD, a professor and researcher at the University of Zurich and Balgrist University Hospital, and colleagues.
“These changes are detectable even in participants without overt functional improvement, underscoring the value of quantitative MRI in revealing treatment effects that may be missed by clinical scores alone.”
Emergency Medical Services personnel (EMS) are confronted with potentially highly stressful and traumatic occupational experiences, placing them at high-risk for mental disorders. Avoidant coping mechanisms, internalized and occupational stigma not only impede disclosure of and processing the incident-related stress but also weaken the overall resilience of the EMS. Effective interventions are needed that operate both at the individual and group level. The aim of this study was to investigate the expected usefulness and willingness to participate in a trauma-informed intervention (Facts derived from Narrative Exposure Therapy, NETfacts). A total of 256 German EMS (67.19% men, 32.81% women) participated in the online survey. We assessed the expected usefulness and willingness to participate in NETfacts, critical incident-related stress (EMS Critical Incident Inventory EMS-CII), burnout symptoms (Professional Quality of Life ProQOL), age and work experience. Overall, about half of the EMS expected NETfacts to be at least somewhat useful, and reported a generally willingness to participate. Expected usefulness was neither associated with critical incident-related stress nor burnout symptoms. Younger participants (<35 years) showed a generally higher willingness to participate than older participants. However, the willingness is across both age groups positively associated with higher levels of critical incident-related stress. Nevertheless, burnout symptoms and the willingness are negatively associated among participants age 35 and older, while remaining stable among their younger colleagues. Early, trauma-informed and age-sensitive prevention programs are needed to mitigate the adverse effects of critical incidents among EMS. Our study presents EMS preferred circumstances to enhance employees’ uptake of such a program.
In a new study published in Cell titled, “RegVelo: gene-regulatory-informed dynamics of single cells,” researchers from Stowers Institute of Medical Research have developed a new AI model that connects two areas of single-cell biology that have often remained separate: estimating how cells change over time and inferring the gene regulatory networks controlling those changes.
“You can imagine if you had a very early set of cells, having a particular set of instructions could allow you to reproduce, in vitro, some of these cell types in a very natural way. These cells could then be used in cell therapies in regenerative medicine,” said Tatjana Sauka-Spengler, PhD, Stowers Institute Investigator and co-senior author of the study.
While development is often described as a series of static snapshots of cell states, RegVelo models how these fate decisions are encoded in gene regulatory networks over time and space, and what drives cell state transitions. In zebrafish neural crest development, RegVelo identified an early driver of pigment cell formation (tfec) and revealed a previously unknown regulator of pigment cell fate (elf1). The neural crest is a developmental system that gives rise to many different cell types, including pigment cells, craniofacial tissues, and parts of the peripheral nervous system.
CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout and single-cell Perturb-seq supported predictions, showing that the model could do more than describe developmental changes and generate biologically meaningful hypotheses that held up in living systems.
Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, PhD, Stowers President and chief scientific officer says RegVelo’s value “extends well beyond” neural crest cells and is applicable to any system in which cells change over time, from basic developmental biology to modeling tumor trajectories and the cellular outcomes that may inform treatment.
“Sauka-Spengler and her collaborators have developed a meaningfully different way to process this kind of data,” said Sánchez Alvarado. “It allows us to infer the most likely path of each component through space and time, and to use deep learning to predict those dynamics and test them experimentally.”
Single-cell biology research has made it possible to build increasingly detailed maps of development. RNA velocity methods can help researchers estimate how cells move through developmental landscapes, while gene regulatory network approaches can identify relationships among genes. However, these methods have typically been used in parallel rather than together.
“For a long time, cellular dynamics and gene regulation have largely been modeled separately,” said Fabian Theis, PhD, the study’s co-senior author and director of the institute of computational biology at Helmholtz Munich. “RegVelo brings those pieces together, allowing us to ask not only how cells are changing, but which regulatory interactions are helping drive those changes.”
The framework jointly models splicing kinetics and gene regulatory relationships, allowing researchers to map the hidden timeline of cell development, predict how cells shift from one state to another, and test what might happen when specific regulators are perturbed.
The framework can incorporate additional regulatory layers, including chromatin, protein activity, and other multimodal measurements. While the study’s limitations include simplifying assumptions around latent time, regulatory interactions, and computational cost, the results demonstrate a compelling proof of principle.
“When dynamic cell-state modeling is linked directly to gene regulation, it becomes possible to move closer to mechanism and then discovery,” Sauka-Spengler said.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Here’s what you need to know about the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak
Last week, eight passengers aboard a Dutch-flagged cruise ship contracted a type of hantavirus transmitted by rats. Three have since died. But health experts stress that this situation is nothing like the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.
The Andes virus is known to spread between people, and there are no specific antiviral treatments or vaccines. Yet transmission appears to require a specific form of contact that the cruise ship fostered.
This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.
Musk v. Altman week 2: OpenAI fires back, and Shivon Zilis reveals that Musk tried to poach Sam Altman
In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk’s motivations for bringing the suit came under intense scrutiny.
OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified that Musk had pushed for the company to create a for-profit entity, while Shivon Zilis, a former board member, revealed that the Tesla tycoon had sought to lure Sam Altman to a new AI venture.
The courtroom also heard about Brockman’s private journals, Musk’s abandoned plans for a rival AI lab, and the moment he stormed out of a pivotal meeting carrying a painting of a Tesla.
Michelle Kim, who’s also a lawyer, has been in court on each day of the Musk v. Altman trial. To keep up with her ongoing coverage of their legal showdown, follow @techreview or @michelletomkim on X.
How LLMs could supercharge mass surveillance in the US: 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now
There are pieces of your life scattered all over the internet, and some of them are for sale. Data brokers collect web searches, financial records, and location data from millions of people and sell them to various clients, including the US government.
While gathering that data has become easier in the smartphone era, making use of it at scale has remained difficult. But researchers are beginning to show that LLM agents can connect anonymized data to real people quickly, cheaply, and at a massive scale.
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Meta’s embrace of AI is making employees miserable Workers feel pressured to use the tech while fearing AI-driven layoffs. (NYT $) + They’re also unhappy about Meta tracking them to train AI. (The Verge) + AI’s rise has been described as “the most joyless tech revolution ever.” (WSJ $) + Gen-Z is particularly fed up with it. (NYT $) + We’ve entered the era of AI malaise. (MIT Technology Review)
2 South Korea’s military wants robots to fill gaps in troop numbers It’s in talks with Hyundai to bring robotics to the front lines. (Bloomberg $) + They could include Boston Dynamics’ Spot and a new exoskeleton. (SCMP) + South Korea’s military has shrunk by 20% over six years. (BBC)
3 OpenAI is being sued over ChatGPT’s alleged role in guiding a mass shooter A lawsuit claims the bot said targeting children would bring more attention. (NBC) + Florida’s AG has opened a criminal investigation into the case. (NPR) + Does AI cause or amplify delusions? (MIT Technology Review)
4 The Canvas hack was the biggest-ever student data privacy disaster It exposes the risks of centralizing the data of millions of students. (404 Media) + While the platform is back online, the hack disrupted university exams. (NPR) + The breach is part of a trend of edtech vulnerabilities. (WP $)
5 Alibaba has joined China’s “chat to buy” shopping craze By integrating AI assistant Qwen into its e-commerce platforms. (Reuters $) + Companies are betting that chat is the future of online shopping. (SCMP) + OpenClaw is a driving force behind the trend. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Cybercrime increasingly comes with threats of physical violence In the US, the physical threats rose more than twofold last year. (BBC)
7 AI’s next phase plays into TSMC’s hands Taiwan’s chip-making giant stands to gain from the supply squeeze. (WSJ $)
8 Europe is confronting life without American tech Dependence on Silicon Valley is a growing geopolitical concern. (FT $)
9 The US, UK, and China top new rankings for AI in life sciences Switzerland and Germany follow in the AI Competitiveness Index. (SCMP)
10 The Pentagon has released a massive trove of declassified UFO files Including newly declassified documents, images and footage. (New Scientist) + The files contain reports of “orbs,” “saucers,” and lunar “flashes.” (Wired $) + Here’s how to spot an alien. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“There’s a real sense where ‘safety’ isn’t a bad word anymore.”
—Nathan Calvin, general counsel at Encode, a nonprofit AI advocacy group, tells the Washington Post that Anthropic’s Mythos has forced a White House reset on AI safety.
One More Thing
This computer-generated image of Mars was built with laser altimeter data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which operated for nine years in orbit around the planet.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible
As NASA’s InSight lander descended to Mars in November 2018, two tiny spacecraft tracked its progress. InSight had touched down, they reported, and survived its treacherous journey.
The mission offered a pathway to cheaper space exploration, with small, low-cost probes launching far more often than multibillion-dollar flagship missions. But there’s a catch: miniaturization can only go so far before it collides with the hard limits of physics.
NASA still hopes small sats could transform planetary exploration. But first, scientists and engineers have to figure out what these tiny spacecraft can realistically do.
