Whether our nation’s foreign policy is grounded in America First or American exceptionalism, improving global health should be a top policy priority of the United States. The recent hantavirus outbreak and evolving Ebola crisis serve as a reminder to Congress that the well-being of Americans is tied to the well-being of people around the globe.
Two of us, as former U.S. senators, were fortunate to play leading roles in the launch of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, in 2003. Our research at the Bipartisan Policy Center demonstrated that beyond saving 26 million lives and preventing millions of HIV infections, PEPFAR contributed to a positive opinion of the U.S., better socioeconomic indices, and reduced political instability in target countries compared with non-PEPFAR countries. We termed this effect “strategic health diplomacy” — the idea that by addressing global health, America advances its own national strategic interests.
A study led by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) demonstrated a new method of using decellularized cartilage with patient-specific cells to help enlarge the pediatric airways narrowed as a result of severe subglottic stenosis (SGS). The condition is a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords and above the trachea, and affects an estimated 20,000 infants per year.
Researchers demonstrated in a preclinical model that this new method of airway reconstruction was faster, more effective, and able to overcome issues, such as donor site morbidity, insufficient tissue volume and delayed timeline, associated with the current standard grafts used for laryngotracheal reconstruction (LTR).
Riccardo Gottardi, PhD, assistant professor with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the Bioengineering and Biomaterials (Bio2) lab, and Ian Jacobs, MD, medical director of the Center for Pediatric Airway Disorders in the Division of Otolaryngology (ENT) at CHOP, co-led the research, which is reported in Nature Communications, in a paper titled “A translational approach to airway reconstruction leveraging decellularized meniscus and cartilage progenitor cells.” In their paper the team said, “This technology has the potential to revolutionize the field of pediatric LTR.”
Severe subglottic stenosis (SGS) develops in children almost exclusively as a response to intubation, and affects nearly 1.5% of the over 200,000 infants in intensive care units each year in the United States, the authors explained. The most severe cases require laryngotracheal reconstruction (LTR), an open airway surgery that is used to enlarge the airway by implanting cartilage taken from a rib cage. While LTR is used to successfully treat thousands of children with subglottic stenosis, in many cases, young children often lack enough costal cartilage—the cartilage connecting our ribs to the sternum—for these grafts.
As a result, operations often need to be delayed, leaving the child attached to a tracheostomy tube until they are older and grown enough to supply sufficiently sized cartilage for an effective LTR, and there is a higher risk of needing follow-up surgery because the airway is at risk of narrowing again. “In adults, LTR has a 90% success rate with low rates of revision,” the team stated. “However, in children, success rates significantly drop, and the incidence of restenosis requiring revision surgery increases to over 24%.”
To improve this process and reduce the risk of these potential complications, Gottardi and Jacobs and colleagues have been looking at tissue engineering a laryngotracheal graft. Tissue engineering, the team wrote, could provide “an ideal alternative to autologous cartilage grafts to alleviate unnecessary comorbidities as well as reduce surgical time.” However, the complexity of the trachea prevents the use of conventional cartilage engineering techniques for this procedure.
“We needed something that could be equivalent to a piece of cartilage, integrate well with the surrounding tissue, be well tolerated by the patient, behave like native tissues and regrow and be part of the airway,” Gottardi said. “This required quite a bit of creative thinking because of the additional challenges in children who are so small and still growing.”
To overcome the limitations of existing methods, the researchers, led by former Gottardi lab member Paul Gehret, PhD, created a first-of-its-kind scaffold based on porcine meniscal cartilage decellularization (MEND – MENiscus Decellularization). They realized that if the cells, elastin, and blood vessels present in the meniscus are “digested” away, the meniscal cartilage becomes amenable to recellularization and integration while being less likely to provoke an immune response. In their paper the researchers explained, “Building on the strengths of previous decellularized therapies, we established an innovative approach that leverages the selective enzymatic removal of the elastin fibers and blood vessels uniquely present in the fibro-elastic cartilage of the meniscus to create microchannels, which support cellular invasion while substantially preserving native structure.”
Using ear-derived cartilage progenitor cells (eCPCs), which can mature into cartilage-producing chondrocytes, the researchers demonstrated that MEND can be recellularized after the removal of elastin and blood vessels and suitable for implantation in less than a month. “Notably, porcine menisci, such as those used in this study, are a highly abundant cartilage source, being easily available as a waste product of the food industry, which can ensure no shortage of material for surgeons to shape into an ideal implant,” the team noted.
Importantly, the new method needed to work in a clinically relevant timeframe. In a real-world scenario, clinicians may only have one or two months to be able to perform the procedure when it can still benefit the patient. Harvesting seed cells within days and creating a scaffold within three to four weeks is significantly less time than the six months that was typically needed for engineered cartilage. “Here we demonstrate that MEND can be fully recellularized in three days with ear-derived cartilage progenitor cells and reaches structural and functional maturation suitable for implant within three weeks of chondrogenic differentiation, a time frame compatible with clinical translation,” the authors stated.
They validated their technology in a preclinical rabbit in vivo model, and demonstrated better performance than costal cartilage, the standard of care, with no instances of adverse events reported. “Our results demonstrate airway expansion, graft reepithelialization, neocartilage formation, and integration with adjacent native laryngotracheal cartilage at three months,” the team stated. “Notably, MEND implants perform better in all outcomes than autologous costal cartilage, the standard of care.”
These findings will be further validated prior to proposing the procedure for patients suffering from severe subglottic stenosis. “These results demonstrate the feasibility of our translational tissue engineering approach to laryngotracheal reconstruction and could overcome the autograft-associated limitations in pediatric patients, decreasing the need for invasive revision surgery,” the investigators concluded.
“This research shows really promising data that suggests this novel approach could overcome the autograft-associated limitations we sometimes encounter when attempting laryngotracheal reconstruction in infants,” Jacobs said. “With more research, we expect this could decrease the need for invasive surgery, and we may be able to apply the technology to other conditions that require a cartilage graft.”
GLP-1 drugs could act upon impulsive behavior that leads to violence and criminal acts, research suggests.
The study adds to evidence suggesting that these drugs could have benefits outside their widely used action on diabetes and obesity.
Specifically, it suggests that GLP-1 drugs could act upon impulse control and stress-reward systems in the brain relating to substance and alcohol misuse.
“As GLP-1 medications become increasingly widespread, understanding their broader behavioral effects becomes an important public health and criminological question that requires careful study,” said researcher Daniel Semenza, PhD, from Rutgers University.
Recent research has suggested that GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) such as exenatide, liraglutide, semaglutide, and dulaglutide have benefits beyond glycemic control and weight loss.
These include reducing the risk of multiple psychiatric and neurocognitive conditions and improving impulse control.
Semenza and Christopher Thomas, also from Rutgers, examined the relationship between the use of GLP-1 drugs and violent behavior using recent survey data from 821 U.S. adults in a 2025 nationally representative survey who had used these medications at some point in their lives. Of these, 597 were current users and 224 were former users.
Given established connections between aggression, alcohol use, and impulsivity, they also investigated whether current GLP-1 use was associated with a lower risk of violence by moderating the associations of impulsivity and alcohol use with violent crime.
The team found that impulsivity and alcohol use were strongly associated with committing violent crime. Each standard deviation increase in impulsivity was associated with a 1.9-fold increase in violence, and each unit increase in an alcohol use index was associated with a 1.8-fold increase.
However, current GLP-1 receptor agonist use was associated with significantly weaker associations between either impulsivity or alcohol use and violent crime compared with former GLP-1 drug use, attenuating these by approximately 62% and 52%, respectively.
This meant that even when users of GLP-1 receptor agonists drank alcohol or acted impulsively, it would be less likely to lead to violent crime.
The relationship was particularly strong relating to impulsivity and less so with alcohol use.
“Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms by which GLP-1 receptor signaling may moderate impulsivity-related risk pathways represents an important research opportunity,” the researchers concluded.
“Given the rapidly expanding use of GLP-1 receptor agonists throughout the United States and the rest of the world, this pattern of reduced violence risk warrants ongoing attention from both researchers and policymakers.”
The Federal Trade Commission and four state attorneys general have sued the main professional organization for gender-affirming care clinicians, alleging it made false claims to sell medical services to kids.
The lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), filed Wednesday in a federal court in Texas, is part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to end gender-affirming care for minors.
NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione plans to assert a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial, claiming he was suffering from extreme emotional disturbance when he gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a judge said Wednesday. It wouldn’t absolve him of the Dec. 4, 2024, killing, but could free him from prison sooner.
If a jury accepts that defense, the panel would convict Mangione of manslaughter and he would face up to 25 years in prison. Alternatively, the jury could reject the extreme emotional disturbance defense and convict him of murder, which carries a potential life sentence. That defense isn’t available in his federal case.
A vibrating capsule that assesses how nerve signals from the stomach are registered by the brain could help identify patients with anorexia at risk of relapse, a clinical trial suggests.
The findings, in JAMA Psychiatry, offers an insight into how the eating disorder affects the nervous system as well as a way to personalize and assess the success of treatment.
The results suggest that disruptions in gastrointestinal (GI) interoception—involving the detection, transmission, and processing of signals in the digestive tract—can increase the risk of anorexia returning, even if weight has normalized.
Gastric signals could therefore act as scalable biomarkers to identify who is at increased risk of relapse and track whether treatment is improving gut-brain signaling.
“People with anorexia nervosa do not simply ignore signals from the body,” explained researcher Sahib Khalsa, PhD, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Rather, their nervous system may process gut sensations differently, making those signals harder to detect, trust and learn from. Over time, that may contribute to the persistence of symptoms even after weight is restored.”
Khalsa and co-workers asked 62 girls and women with anorexia nervosa whose weight had been restored to healthy levels to swallow the vibrating capsule in their crossover trial.
The capsule could be remotely controlled by the researchers to produce mechanosensory stimulation of different intensities in the stomach.
Participants were asked to press a button upon sensing a vibration, with 54 patients followed up at six months after discharge from hospital and their results compared with 57 healthy control individuals.
Computational modeling was used to estimate how strongly participants anticipated feeling sensations in their stomachs, how heavily their brains depended on body signals, and how quickly they adjusted their expectations as to the presence or absence of signals.
The researchers found that participants with anorexia had abnormal GI interoception across behavioral and computational domains compared with healthy participants, despite having intact neural and physiological responses.
Participants with anorexia were less able to detect subtle stomach sensations and were more likely than others to believe there were no sensations when the pill was vibrating. They were also less likely to update those expectations when gastric signals occurred.
Patients who were more likely to ignore the stomach signals were also at increased likelihood of relapsing to the eating disorder.
“One of the most striking findings was that these differences persisted even after weight restoration,” said Khalsa.
“Recovery from anorexia nervosa isn’t just about restoring body weight. The underlying brain–body communication problems may remain and could contribute to relapse.”
The researchers conclude that their results support the use of ingestible mechanosensory probes and computer modeling as scalable tools to monitor treatment response and guide relapse prevention in eating disorders.
In preclinical models, the administration of KPT-330 (selinexor) prevented export of R-loops and led to significant improvement in inflammation, liver damage, fat gain, muscle loss and overall lifespan.
“Chronic, widespread inflammation is a driving factor in many age-related diseases, including cancer, and our research has discovered one reason why this happens,” said Rugang Zhang, PhD, professor and chair of Experimental Therapeutics at UT MD Anderson and corresponding author on the study. “Understanding the cause is the first step toward developing treatments. We saw encouraging results using a drug that has already been tested in humans, paving the way for potential clinical use to alleviate age-related conditions.”
Cells begin releasing signals that contribute to chronic inflammation once they enter senescence and stop dividing. Researchers have now pinpointed R-loops as a key component to modulating these inflammatory signals.
An R-loop is a temporary cellular structure created during transcription, when a double strand of RNA and DNA becomes tangled with a third displaced single strand of DNA. While R-loops are traditionally confined to the cell nucleus, the study found that cells in senescence increasingly export R-loops into the cytoplasm. These R-loops attach to fragments of DNA debris to trigger chronic inflammation.
This study identified the two proteins involved in exporting R-loops, DDX1 and XPO1. DDX1 attaches to the R-loop inside the nucleus to facilitate export. XPO1 allows the R-loops to be transported into the cytoplasm by forming a complex with DDX1.
Researchers administered KPT-330, a FDA-approved drug for treating multiple myeloma that blocks nuclear export. The R-loops remain trapped inside the nucleus and could not trigger an inflammatory response.
The study showed that shutting down nuclear export by blocking XPO1 in preclinical mouse models suppressed inflammaging, reduced liver fibrosis, lowered systemic inflammatory markers, and reversed age-related body composition changes.
In a separate experiment, the same inflammatory alarm enabled the immune system to find and eliminate precancerous cells. The authors state that future studies could explore blocking DDX1 specifically, instead of shutting down all nuclear export, to mitigate side effects.
Jonathan D. Grinstein, PhD, North American Editor of Inside Precision Medicine, hosts a new series called Behind the Breakthroughs that features the people shaping the future of medicine. With each episode, Jonathan gives listeners access to his guests’ motivational tales and visions for this emerging, game-changing field.
Philippe Pouletty, MD, is one of Europe’s most accomplished life sciences entrepreneurs, with a track record of creating category-leading companies in both biotechnology and medical technology. Over more than three decades, he has repeatedly identified breakthrough scientific innovations, assembled world-class teams, and scaled businesses from inception to global prominence.
His most celebrated success is Abivax, the biotechnology company he founded and led as chairman for a decade. Under his leadership, Abivax evolved into a global biotechnology powerhouse, achieving an approximately $10 billion market capitalization after positive Phase III results in 2025. In 2025, the company delivered the strongest stock market performance of any European company across all sectors.
Philippe Pouletty, MD, Co-founder and CEO of Truffle Capital and Co-founder of Abivax and Carvolix. [Truffle Capital]
Today, Philippe Pouletty is applying the same entrepreneurial playbook to Carvolix, a next-generation cardiovascular MedTech company focused on heart valve disease and stroke. Carvolix is built on the strategic combination of breakthrough implant technologies, AI-powered software, and autonomous mini-robotics. The vision follows the successful Abivax model: bring together differentiated technologies, speed up industrialization, build clinical leadership, and create a company that can transform patient outcomes while attracting significant strategic and public-market value.
A physician, scientist, inventor, and venture capitalist, Philippe has founded or co-founded numerous successful life sciences companies and holds dozens of patents, including one of Stanford University’s highest-revenue-generating life sciences inventions. With Abivax and now Carvolix, he has demonstrated a rare ability to build transformative healthcare companies that combine scientific innovation, commercial scale, and lasting impact for patients worldwide.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
IPM: Having spent time in both Silicon Valley and Europe, what cultural or structural differences have you discovered that have given Europe an advantage in deep tech and life sciences or that may be holding it back when compared to companies in the United States?
Pouletty: In California, financial resources are virtually limitless as long as you have a company with a great mission that addresses large medical needs and markets. Unfortunately, Europe is behind. France is an excellent place to begin, with companies to hire, good engineers, management, and so on. However, raising more than €50 or €60 million is often difficult when compared to the United States. So, things have improved over the last two decades, and there are some good grants and tax breaks available to help businesses raise capital.
However, the stock market in France and Europe is not as competitive as the Nasdaq. So, while I love the United States, many French and European companies must list on Nasdaq in order to grow, remain independent, and eventually reach the commercial stage. Then it becomes an American company, often a large pharmaceutical company or one with significant innovation. Wonderful small company. Let us buy it. So that’s great for the United States and big pharmaceutical companies. However, Europe’s prospects for the next 20 years do not look promising. The challenge for Europe is that competition will primarily come from the United States, China, and, most likely, India.
Europe faces a difficult task in catching up. But, because I’m still a crazy entrepreneur who is interested in European policies, it’s time for France and Europe to do the right thing and establish independent companies. I believe what is of interest is to do things that have an impact on patients. And if you have a positive impact on patients, you will increase shareholder value; however, you should not always focus on doing an IPO or selling the company as soon as possible. What matters is developing completely novel, radical innovation that will change or prolong the lives of patients while also benefiting the environment.
IPM: As one of Europe’s standout biotech success stories, what set Abivax apart from the many biotech companies that never scale beyond promising science in Europe before venturing out west?
Pouletty: What we like to do at Abivax and Carvolix is build businesses by merging two or three of our biotech companies when much of the R&D is completed in order to reach critical mass and have several product candidates available. So if one fails, the company is not doomed. To be able to attract extremely experienced management. There are too many very small businesses in Europe. For example, the president, Emmanuel Macron, likes to refer to France as the “startup nation.” The goal should not be to become the startup nation. The goal should be to develop world leaders similar to those in the United States, regardless of sector.
Abivax emerged in 2013. Three of our biotech companies were able to complete a Euronext IPO, which remains the largest biotech IPO on Euronext. We had raised €58 million at the time. Surprisingly, the most advanced product candidate, a drug candidate, failed following the IPO in phase two. So it was unpleasant but not disastrous because the second product candidate, which was only in phase one at the time, is now assembled, has a $7 to $10 billion valuation, and has had excellent results in phase three in treating ulcerative colitis patients.
So, it appears to be a straightforward business plan. It’s not correct. You must stay focused on your mission. Disappointment can occur during pre-clinical R&D and clinical development. Of course, this happens to the majority of biotech companies. And this is why, for example, when sailing across the Atlantic or Pacific, you must keep in mind that reaching the other side requires a strong team; sometimes we change the team and the CEO.
But we are very proud to say that the above acts would not exist without Truffle Capital, and I was chairman of the board for ten years and was very pleased. it looks like the drug should be approved. In the last few days the stock dropped because the long-term maintenance clinical results showed great efficacy and there were very few cancers, which is typical in this kind of patient population with a dysfunctional immune system.
So to me, it’s a little hiccup, but I’m very confident it will change and improve the lives of the patients with ulcerative colitis. Now, maybe the little drop in valuation will boost the M&A appetite of some big pharma companies. And I can send that because, well, not any more shareholders are involved in the epilogue. It’s my personal opinion, of course, about the future. I could be wrong.
IPM: How do emerging European companies like Carvolix or Abivax compete with American or Chinese companies? Do you try to establish a market in Europe first, then expand internationally, or do you try to do everything at once? What’s your strategy there?
Pouletty: When Carvolix first launched in the United States, the largest market was heart valve software. So, while launching in the United States with a very concentrated focus team, step by step with specialized centers and then with the market, research based on this successful launch will expand. We may later hire a partner for the United States, or agents or a single partner.
We want our products to be agnostic, regardless of whether the valve is Abivax, Medtronic, or Abbott, so that hospital clinicians can choose which valve system to use for their patients with our software and robot. We will continue to conduct direct sales in Europe, as we have in the past. If you have a highly innovative product, you will need a small, highly technical sales force that can visit clinics, hospitals, and clinicians to be successful in Asia.
IPM: How do you get clinicians and hospitals to buy into something like this, which isn’t really an upgrade of their system, but rather the introduction of a whole new line?
Pouletty: At first, we assumed that top-tier cardiologists who treat hundreds or thousands of patients would not require our services. And it will primarily benefit younger, less-trained cardiologists. However, we conducted studies in France with data from the world’s leading cardiologist for aortic valve replacement, as well as in Australia with highly trained cardiologists. They said, “That’s great because I’m less stressed during the implantation.” I may not need a second cardiologist in the room, as is frequently required, and I may see more patients during the day.
It’s somewhat similar to cars. You could argue that autonomous cars will not meet the needs of taxi drivers. But yes, taxi drivers will say, “Great.” I can drive more miles, transport more passengers, and feel more relaxed at the end of the day. I have no doubt that it will become the norm in medium and small hospitals over the next few years. Place special patients in the care of an expert cardiologist. Now for given special patients in the hands of an expert cardiologist, we don’t pretend it will do better. But many more patients who have not the chance, whether it’s hardware replacement or brain stroke treatment to healthcare… will if we are successful.
It is critical to ensure that introducing AI and robotics does not prolong the procedure. It takes roughly the same amount of time or appears to be shorter. However, it is always under clinical supervision. We can take over and stop the procedure, just like on a plane, and carry it out manually. However, after some initial training with a few patients, the clinician will most likely allow the procedure to be completed autonomously while closely monitoring the screen to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
IPM: How do European healthcare systems differ in their ability to adopt new biotech and medtech innovations?
Pouletty: No system is perfect. I do a very simple comparison in France and Europe. even patients who do not work will be treated in the hospital at no cost. In the U.S., you’d better have a plan. You’re working in the company to be covered. There is no perfect system. Certainly, pricing of drugs and medical devices in the U.S. is higher, which means that there is an incentive for investors and companies to do high-cost R&D to recoup their investment through high pricing. In France and Europe, there is a tendency to have to push for low pricing and low reimbursement, which is why for oncology drugs more are available and reimbursed in the U.S. today than for non-college products.
But there is not enough emphasis on the long-term impact of innovation. And pioneers often looked at the shorter impact and said, oh, that’s two weeks, let’s say. I’ll give you one example. In oncology, pancreatic cancer is tough because the diagnosis is very often very late when you have big tumors.
It’s very clear that if it were up to me, we would do imaging every two years. We would catch very small, tiny tumors very early on because an anatomical change in our cells within two years could indicate that you need to go and see if you should remove this little tiny one. But that’s not common in practice because it would be expensive to do an MRI every two years on everyone after 50 years old.
So beyond drugs and medical devices and the practice of medicine, how do you do? Preventative medicine needs to be greatly improved, and governments are not very good at looking at these approaches to improve healthcare. So, I went into politics. I would turn on that. I decided 25 years ago I would not run for any elected office and focus more on starting companies.
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.
Hacking the atmosphere: geoengineering gets a reality check
Solar geoengineering, the controversial idea that we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming, is moving beyond computer simulations and into the practical engineering challenges required to make it real.
Researchers are now working on aircraft, materials, and other systems for solar geoengineering. But as they delve into these details, they’re finding that even early deployment would require significant new infrastructure, time, and investment.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: inside interoception, the hidden sense of how you feel inside
Scientists have a word for how we sense ourselves from the inside: interoception. Today, thanks to a 2021 Nobel Prize and new tools that can map internal signaling across the body, research into interoception is taking off.
This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 SpaceX is now valued higher than Amazon Its market value hit $2.659 trillion yesterday. (Axios) + A post-IPO stock surge also briefly pushed it above Microsoft’s. (Quartz) + It’s now the world’s fifth most valuable company. (Guardian) + SpaceX is acquiring AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion. (CNBC)
2 G7 leaders want access to top US AI models They’re pushing to escape restrictions on the likes of Fable 5. (Reuters $) + The Mythos shutdown has sparked a global scramble for sovereign AI. (Fortune) + The world is looking to ditch US AI models. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Trump’s AI export strategy has run into Trump’s export controls His administration risks undermining its own AI plans. (Axios) + It now effectively has a licensing regime for frontier AI. (Fortune) + Here’s how a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Huawei’s big comeback has exposed the limits of US chip controls It’s overcome restrictions on advanced chipmaking gear. (Financial Times $) + The AI boom has ignited Asia’s chip companies. (NYT $)
5 AI fears are pushing Silicon Valley toward gene-editing startups They want smarter babies to counter superintelligent AI. (Mother Jones) + The pursuit of perfect babies is an ethical mess.(MIT Technology Review)
6 A brain implant has enabled a speechless ALS patient to work full-time The system translates his brain activity into speech. (The Register) + He’s become the first “power user” of a BCI. (MIT Technology Review)
7 A leak has revealed details of Peter Thiel’s secret society Its program ranges from cult-building to prepping for World War III. (Wired $)
8 ChatGPT’s market share has slipped below 50% for the first time Thanks to the rise of Gemini and Claude. (TechCrunch)
9 A quantum state that lasts forever may finally be within our grasp Experiments suggest that quantum “eternity” is possible. (New Scientist $)
10 Commodore has made a digital detox phone that isn’t dumb The Callback combines gadget nostalgia with modern needs. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“The Entity List is like whack-a-mole and you’ve got to keep whacking the moles.”
—Philip Luck, who studies global supply chains at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells Reuters that a lack of new blacklistings is likely leading American innovations to adversaries who could use them against the US.
One More Thing
COURTESY OF DEEPMIND
This is the reason Demis Hassabis started DeepMind
Watching DeepMind’s AI master the ancient board game Go, Demis Hassabis realized that his company was ready to take on one of the most important and complicated puzzles in biology: predicting the structure of proteins.
The result was AlphaFold2, an AI that could predict the shape of proteins down to the nearest atom. “It’s the most complex thing we’ve ever done,” Hassabis told MIT Technology Review.
Taking on scientific problems is the culmination of what Hassabis set out to achieve, and it’s what he wants to be known for. “This is the reason I started DeepMind,” he says. “In fact, it’s why I’ve worked my whole career in AI.”
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ This mesmerising footage of wind rolling through grass looks like CGI. + The glorious early days of internet discovery have been revived by the return of StumbleUpon. + A German subway entrance has been delightfully designed as an old tram car crashing into the pavement. + The Last Museum lets you search across 5.8 million museum artworks spanning from 3000 BC to the present day.
