MIRA, an autonomous AI agent tested in a sandboxed electronic health record, diagnosed 574 real emergency department cases with 88.9% accuracy and outperformed physicians in a matched 311-case comparison. The system ordered tests, generated medication plans, and made admission decisions in simulation, but the authors stress that prospective validation, governance, and physician oversight are still essential.
For some time, researchers have used optical tweezers to manipulate tiny objects with incredible precision, using carefully controlled beams of laser light. So far, however, this technique has always come with strict limits on how much force it can exert.
Through new research published in Nature, a team led by Dong Wu at Anhui University, China, has unveiled an improved design: a miniature mechanical gripper controlled by light signals through an optical fiber.
Combining the precision of light-based tools with the gripping strength of mechanical devices, the device could make it far easier for researchers to manipulate and assemble objects at the microscale.
Luo et al. characterize a comprehensive molecular portrait of neurotransmitter receptor genes across 33 cancer types using multidimensional omics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and other independent cohorts. They identify clinically relevant neuroregulatory subtypes with distinct molecular features, advancing the emerging field of cancer neuroscience.
“Don’t Wait For The Singularity.”
That was Tracy R. Atkins’ message when I sat down with him 14 years ago, and it lands harder now than it did then.
While almost every story about #ArtificialIntelligence was busy imagining the apocalypse, Tracy wrote a novel that flatly refused to. Aeternum Ray is unapologetically utopian: a series of letters from a 240-year-old father to his newborn son, looking back across centuries of love, loss, and a world watched over by an AI named Ray.
In our conversation, we get into what the #Singularity actually means to him, why he chose to write utopia when dystopia sells, whether humanity’s future is digital or whether biology still matters, and the uncomfortable question of whether we even survive the road to get there.
Fourteen years on, the technology has caught up to much of what we talked about. The harder question is whether our reasons for building it have, and that is the part I keep coming back to.
So is openly imagining a good future naive, or is it the most radical thing a #futurist can do? Watch the interview and decide for yourself.
GOLDEN, Colorado – Scientists are engaged in research with an eye toward transforming the cold climes of Mars into a far more humane place for Earthlings in the future.
One notion proposed is dispersion of an aerosol meant to motivate the warming of Mars’s atmosphere. The idea is projected to be a first step toward terraforming the Red Planet.
Emerging recently as a new field of study is “applied astrobiology” – to appraise what would be needed to create sustainable habitats and biospheres beyond Earth.
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SpaceX may have just dropped its biggest hint yet about what comes after Starship Flight 13. Indeed, FINALLY! Starship’s Next Giant Leap may be here as the new filings point toward an Orbital Return Demo that could mark the next major milestone on the road to full reusability. With that work continues at Starbase on Pads 1 and 2, the Gigabay, and future launch infrastructure. Elsewhere this week, we cover Falcon 9 launches carrying BlueBird satellites, Starlink, and another classified NRO mission, Cargo Dragon’s return from the International Space Station, Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander preparing for launch, Ariane 6’s impressive upgraded debut with its heaviest payload yet, and the dramatic demolition of historic structures at Space Launch Complex 6.
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The first human clinical trial of a universal Sarbeco coronavirus vaccine, developed by the University of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax (DVX) Ltd, has shown that the vaccine is safe and has no significant side effects.
The trial, involving 39 healthy volunteers, tested a vaccine designed to provide protection against multiple Sarbeco coronaviruses—the large group of viruses that occur in nature including SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID pandemic.
The vaccine triggered immune responses in the volunteers not only to SARS-CoV-2 and SARS, but to related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.
What if memory isn’t storage at all — but a message from your past self that has to be interpreted?
In this episode, biologist Michael Levin and cognitive neuroscientist Katrina Schleisman join me to take apart one of the most quietly broken ideas in science and AI: that memory works like a hard drive. It doesn’t. And once you see why, a lot of assumptions about minds, machines, and what it means to \.
Scientists have identified a reversal of the long-standing Flynn effect—the roughly 200-year trend of rising average intelligence (measured via IQ and cognitive tests) across generations. For the first time in modern recorded history, Generation Z (born roughly 1997–2012) shows lower performance than previous generations in key cognitive domains, including attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, problem-solving, and general IQ—despite spending more years in formal education than ever before. Neuroscientist and educator Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 15, 2026, highlighting this shift. In his written testimony, he stated that cognitive development in children across much of the developed world has stalled or reversed over the past two decades, with declines evident in international assessments (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) and other large-scale data starting around the mid-2000s and accelerating post-2010. Horvath attributes the primary driver not to reduced schooling, but to the widespread integration of digital screens and educational technology (EdTech) in classrooms. He argues that human brains evolved for deep, focused learning through face-to-face interaction and sustained attention, not fragmented skimming or constant task-switching encouraged by devices. Key points from his testimony include: — Teens now spend over half their waking hours on screens, with significant portions in school involving computers or tablets—often leading to off-task behavior and shallower processing. — Evidence from meta-analyses and national/international studies shows a consistent pattern: higher classroom screen exposure correlates with weaker outcomes in reading, math, science, and higher-order reasoning. — Digital tools may aid narrow, repetitive skill practice in controlled settings, but in core academic contexts, they tend to reduce depth of understanding, retention, and critical thinking. Horvath describes this as a “structural mismatch” between human cognition and how digital platforms are designed (to capture and fragment attention), warning that unchecked EdTech adoption risks long-term harm to workforce skills, innovation, and societal reasoning. [Horvath, J. C. (2026). Written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. U.S. Senate]