(NYT) – The United States is reliant on unpaid family caregivers, and millions of adult children are caring for parents who didn’t really care for them.

In the early 2010s, a social-work researcher named Jooyoung Kong, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the proportion of American adults who were caring for older parents (currently around 10 percent) and those who said they were physically or sexually abused as children (more than 20 percent). She theorized that some adults were caring for parents who once harmed them, and she wanted to study them. Her colleagues assumed she would find very few.

Instead, in a 2015 study called “Caring for My Abuser,” which analyzed caregiver data, Kong and her co-author, Sara Moorman, found that of 1,001 adults providing care for aging parents, 18.6 percent reported having experienced verbal, physical or sexual abuse during childhood at the hands of a parent, and that 9.4 percent reported neglect. If the numbers played out at scale, this could be mean millions of Americans. (Read More)

(Undark) – Consumer devices that monitor heart rate, glucose, and sleep cycles need better validation to be clinically useful.

In the 21st century, wearable monitoring has followed two paths: one that includes medical-grade devices, which are designed for clinical use; and another that includes consumer devices made by companies such as Fitbit, Samsung, Garmin, and Oura, which are often marketed as general wellness products. But advances in technology are beginning to blur the line between these categories. (Read More)

(Nature) – Influencers and ultra-rich people looking to extend their lifespan are trading tips and tricks on how to eke out extra years.

Nir Barzilai, president of the Academy of Geroscience and a genetics researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, is torn about the impacts that the biohackers have. Take Johnson’s tinkering with various supplements and drugs, which is usually based on some kind of evidence: “If you’re asking, ‘Is he taking something that doesn’t make sense?’ I would say, no, these things are based on biology but not on clinical evidence,” says Barzilai.

Neither Steele nor Barzilai are cynics. Both say that some of the protocols being tested and touted by Silicon Valley elites could have a meaningful impact on lifespan and healthspan — the time during which people are not affected by chronic disease and disabilities related to ageing. But the evidence isn’t there yet. (Read More)

(NYT) – The oldest known cases, discovered among hunter-gatherers in Siberian graves, contradict the theory that the disease once was mild.

In ancient Siberian graves, scientists have discovered the oldest traces of one of humanity’s greatest enemies. Examining skeletons of hunter-gatherers who lived 5,500 years ago, the researchers have isolated DNA from the bacteria that cause the plague.

The findings suggest that the plague, which would later devastate Europe in the “Black Death,” was already a lethal threat early in human history. That would be a big change from the earlier view of scientists: that these bacteria were originally relatively mild, and only later produced deadly outbreaks. (Read More)

(NYT) – Surveys of over half a million Americans from the last decade and a half revealed an uncomfortable truth: Despite its advantages, remote work has significantly deepened Americans’ isolation and distress. Our estimates, published in Science this month with our collaborator Amanda Pallais, indicate that remote work explains a third of the deterioration in mental health between 2011 and 2024. Our research doesn’t suggest that work can occur only in the office. But it does mean that employees and companies should make a greater effort to prioritize face-to-face time with colleagues. (Read More)

(NBC News) – Tiffany Score and Steven Mills reached a custody agreement with the little girl’s biological parents, court records show.

In a court filing Friday, Mara Hatfield, Score and Mills’ attorney, wrote that her clients and Patient 004 had “come to a mutually devised custody agreement” that recognizes Score and Mills’ rights as the “permanent custodial parents of their daughter.” No additional details were provided.

Rob Marcereau, an attorney representing Shea’s biological parents, said in an email that they “intend to remain a part of this child’s life, while recognizing the impossible situation that both families have been placed in, through no fault of their own.” (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – It’s sin.

For the past few years, I’ve been troubled by a word, and that word is sin. I keep reaching for it, because it seems to be the only term strong enough to describe the new forms of dehumanization that artificial intelligence has introduced—even though calling something a sin sounds embarrassing to me, like throwing salt over your shoulder or stowing a lucky penny in your pocket.

The problem is, I don’t know what else to call it when companies market digital girlfriends to the heartsick and young. Or when they hawk robot companions to the lonely and old. Or when a billionaire explains that he intends to sell intelligence—trained on humanity’s stolen intellectual property—back to us as a utility, like electricity or water. These developments are not just wrong. They feel to me like something deeper and darker. (Read More)

(AFP via Yahoo!) – Rising temperatures caused by human-driven global warming have given mosquitoes — and the many pathogens they spread — “an increasingly vast playing field,” she warned.

According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the world’s population is now at risk of being exposed to one of more infectious diseases that were long considered tropical. 

These diseases kill more than a million people a year, most of them children, according to the UN agency. (Read More)

(Washington Post) – A new study pinpoints how many minutes per week of strength training might help people avoid death from conditions including heart attacks and Alzheimer’s.

The links were especially strong for cardiovascular disease and neurological conditions. The data showed that people who lifted weights, no matter how infrequently, were less likely to die from heart attacks or Alzheimer’s disease compared with people who did no resistance training.

But the scientists also zeroed in on the “Goldilocks” level of weekly lifting — the number of minutes per week that isn’t too little or too much, but just right — associated with the greatest longevity benefit overall, whether people also exercised aerobically or not. (Read More)

(Washington Post) – A new study finds the vaccine was linked with nearly 40 percent lower risk of events like heart attack and stroke

The coronavirus vaccine reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events linked to covid-19 — strokes, heart attacks, and hospitalization from heart disease — by about 40 percent, according to a new study. The findings, the latest in a growing body of research about the vaccine’s benefits for heart health, suggest such benefits observed in earlier studies have persisted for years.

The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, also suggested the vaccine has a broader public health benefit. The vaccine modestly reduced cardiovascular conditions, hospitalizations and deaths of all causes, including those not linked to covid, researchers said. (Read More)

(New Scientist) – IVF could be done inside the body using a revolutionary technique that reduces the invasiveness of the traditional fertility treatment

Embryos have been formed from sperm that have been made magnetic to allow remote guidance towards an egg. The technique may allow IVF to be performed inside the body so it involves fewer invasive procedures and potentially has better success rates.

“Our ultimate idea is to do assisted reproduction in vivo, taking advantage of the body as a natural incubator,” says Mariana Medina-Sánchez at nanoscience institute CIC nanoGUNE in Spain. (Read More)

(Futurism) – Humanoid robots are, by definition, pretty extreme. Requiring top-of-the-line batteries, a high-degree of mobility, and a very accurate visual interface, there are few more instantly-recognizable feats of human engineering.

It makes sense, then, that one of their main use cases would be in drumming up spectacle. Humanoids have already taken part in underground fight clubs, long-distance marathons, and gnarly kung fu films.

Now, a humanoid is even “training” to complete one of the most daring spectacles ever conceived: scaling to the top of Mount Everest. (Read More)

(The Dispatch) – Since doctors told Sasse six months ago that he had three to four months left to live due to Stage IV metastatic pancreatic cancer, the former senator and college president has become something of an expert on gallows humor.

The reason he says he feels like he has a “new lease on life” is because he has just finished puking in the hotel lobby bathroom—a side effect of chemotherapy—and he’s feeling more energetic after his latest wave of nausea has subsided.

Watching Sasse sip a whiskey drink also seems a bit like watching him laugh at death. (Read More)

(Wired) – Devices that monitor seniors for safety are appealing to worried loved ones and underresourced home care agencies.

My dad was initially resistant to Sensi because of his own privacy concerns—who can blame him?—but after a little cajoling from my sister and me, he finally agreed to have the device installed. At some point, Sensi flagged my father as someone with a “possible high risk of falls” and began listening for words indicating he was unsteady on his feet. When Sensi’s microphone overheard him saying the word “fall,” it automatically sent the private exchange to his caregivers.

Weeks later, out of curiosity, I requested the transcripts of everything Sensi was recording in my father’s home. Reading his personal conversations, I suddenly felt like a spy, with the device as my silent conspirator. I’d pushed for the thing in the first place, but now I felt uneasy about it. My father, meanwhile, didn’t remember being told that Sensi was eavesdropping on his conversations. (Read More)

(404 Media) – A tiny snippet of user-generated text as short as 13 words long is often enough to manipulate the AI agents that power tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search, new research shows. The study suggests that it is trivially easy for brands to inject promotional content on sites like Reddit, Quora, and Wikipedia with the end goal of poisoning or manipulating the output of AI tools. (Read More)

(Nature) – The device has helped a man with motor neuron disease communicate and control his computer for nearly two years.

The brain–computer interface (BCI) has given 48-year-old study participant Casey Harrell, who was diagnosed with a type of motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis six years ago, the ability to communicate with an average speed of 56 words per minute. It translates neural activity into text that appears on a computer screen and allows him to operate a computer, send text messages and e-mails and continue his job working in climate advocacy.

It is “nothing short of revolutionary”, says Harrell, who is based in Oakland, California. “This has allowed me to keep working and earn money and insurance for my family. This is reconnecting me with friends and family who are too shy or too afraid to come over and not be able to understand me.” (Read More)

(Wired) – A decade ago, kratom advocates fought a surprisingly successful campaign against a proposed Drug Enforcement Administration ban that claimed the obscure Southeast Asian plant posed “an imminent hazard to public safety.”

They won bipartisan allies from Bernie Sanders to Rand Paul, and helped create a billion-dollar industry out of kratom, which has pain-relieving effects they said could help fight the opioid epidemic as a far safer, natural alternative to pills.

Now, many of those same pro-kratom activists are calling for a ban on products containing concentrates of one of kratom’s active components: 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, an ultra-potent extract with opioid-like effects. And it’s causing major friction amongst consumers, sellers, and advocates of both substances. (Read More)

(Wired) – A joint congressional report describes a spam operation that turned tens of thousands of fake podcasts into search-engine bait for illegal pharmacy and scam sites.

For the past year, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of thousands of podcasts that advertised illegal online pharmacies. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, faults the company for acting only after news outlets exposed the content and her office spent nearly a year pressing for answers.

None of what it removed was sent to law enforcement, the report says. (Read More)

(NYT) – In the age of A.I., Hany Farid is struggling to prove what’s real before the internet decides for itself.

For more than two decades, Farid, 60, had been the world’s leading expert in the field of digital forensics, but in the last six months he’d stopped trusting his own eyes. He’d made a career of differentiating visual reality from deepfakes as he fielded requests each day from governments, human rights organizations, journalists, law enforcement and thousands of others who were increasingly confused and deceived by the online world. Farid’s own research had proven that most people could no longer distinguish a real photograph from a digital creation, a real voice from an A.I. clone, a real video clip from a wholesale fabrication. Lately, he was failing his own tests. (Read More)

(News 18) – A Gurugram couple’s IVF journey took an unexpected turn after DNA tests allegedly showed no biological link between them and their twins, prompting strong reactions online

The incident involves a couple who claim that DNA tests revealed that the twins they had through IVF share no biological connection with either parent. As details of the case spread online, social media users expressed shock, sympathy and concern over how such an alleged mix-up could happen. (Read More)

(Wired) – The ruling holds that a company that designs, trains, operates, and manages an AI system must assume legal liability for any damages caused by the responses it generates.

A local court in Germany has issued a ruling that could reshape the operation of search engines and artificial-intelligence-based chatbots worldwide. The Munich Regional Court preliminarily ruled that Google is liable for a series of false statements generated by its AI Overviews feature, requiring the company to prevent the dissemination of erroneous or inaccurate claims through its search engine. (Read More)

(Nature) – The shot reduced insulin use for people with type 1 diabetes and another autoimmune condition.

A century-old vaccine against tuberculosis helps to regulate blood sugar in people with certain types of diabetes, such that they can reduce their insulin use, according to the results of a phase II clinical trial. The finding adds support for the once-controversial hypothesis that vaccines made with living but weakened pathogens can protect against both their target disease and off-target ones. (Read More)

(NYT) – Thanks to new treatments, some patients with the disease are living longer — leaving them in limbo for years.

Twenty years ago, the words “Stage 4” almost invariably meant “end of life.” A cancer had spread far from where it formed, attacking distant parts of the body and often making treatment impossible. For some, that remains true today. But for a growing number of people, a Stage 4 diagnosis is not the immediate death sentence it once was.

New therapies that target specific genes and parts of the immune system, as well as new regimens of existing cancer drugs, have given many patients far longer than the handful of months they might have once hoped for. More than a third of people diagnosed with metastatic disease now live for at least five years, compared with 17 percent in the 1990s, according to the American Cancer Society. (Read More)

(Data & Society) – Messaging from Silicon Valley about the omnipresence of AI in everything from our jobs to our personal decisions tells us it’s only a matter of time before AI agents supplant thinking itself. This insistence has pushed people to hop on the “AI train” out of the fear of being left behind, and with little clarity on where their participation will take them. Meanwhile, Big Tech’s aggressive push for an AI-driven world also serves to limit our autonomy and inhibit our ability to challenge their vision. Amid all of this, what does meaningful consent look like? And what would it look like to meaningfully opt out? 

In human subjects research, the informed consent model offers some insight into these questions. (Read More)

(CT) – As GLP-1s become widely used for weight loss, Christians are split on whether they’re useful medications or spiritual shortcuts.

The wellness industry and influencer world are shifting emphases and tactics in response to the GLP-1 boom, and Christian wellness influencers are no exception. Their reactions vary widely: Some caution against the use of drugs to lose weight, urging followers to build discipline and self-control. Others have embraced the potential of GLP-1 to help people (especially women) achieve the body size and shape they desire. (Read More)