(Wired) – From granola to guacamole, a wide variety of foods have been recalled lately over salmonella risks. Experts say common-sense precautions go a long way.

Just as the US’s explosive diarrhea situation is starting to improve, there seem to be fresh new food risks to worry about. Jalapeño peppers, eggs, granola, and even dog food are being recalled because of possible contamination with salmonella bacteria.

A growing outbreak related to contaminated jalapeños is responsible for 431 illnesses in 32 states, with 57 people requiring hospitalization, according to an August 19 update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has identified jalapeños from Sinaloa, Mexico, and distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors as the source of the outbreak. (Read More)

(NYT) – The artificial intelligence start-up announced a chatbot mode that will automatically limit some conversations to better protect young users.

OpenAI announced on Tuesday “ChatGPT for Teens,” a new mode in which the chatbot automatically limits some conversations to better protect young users, as scrutiny grows over the harmful effects of artificial intelligence.

Many features of the new mode deal with safety, the company said in a blog post. The chatbot will limit high-risk conversations that involve self-harm, violence, eating disorders, and explicit sexual and graphic content. In some cases, ChatGPT will alert adults who have opted in to parental controls and notifications. And the mode will strengthen protections that prevent the chatbot from suggesting it has personal feelings. (Read More)

(Reuters) – A former adviser to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci pleaded ‌guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Morens, who had worked under Fauci as a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during ​the pandemic, entered his plea, opens new tab to a conspiracy charge during a hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, ​Maryland. (Read More)

(Reuters) – Karen Morad went blind five years ago, yet on holiday in Kenya in June, the 16-year-old Cairo schoolgirl felt like she could suddenly see again thanks to an app developed ​by her brother that described the safari in audiovisual.

Using the AI-assisted app inserted into Meta glasses, ‌Karen enjoyed a running commentary on details of the animals around, their distance from her and what they were doing, giving her a full picture to imagine the scenes and sense the atmosphere. (Read More)

(Nature) – Proponents argue that the current system creates a false sense of precision, but critics fear that the change could increase political interference.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed overhauling how it decides which research projects to fund, and how it reports the outcome of those deliberations. For the past five decades, the agency reported to researchers the precise numerical scores assigned to their project proposals by peer reviewers. The new plan would instead see the agency report whether projects were ranked in one of three broad categories — a top, middle and bottom — based on their merit.

The scheme, which was announced on Friday, is part of a shift away from relying on scientific peer review in favour of greater discretion to award funds based on agency priorities. (Read More)

(NYT) – Wispr Flow is supposed to make writing effortless and magical. So I “wrote” this column with it.

I’m looking at the paragraphs above and I’m really itching to edit them. A lot of these sentences are bad. But the whole point of Wispr Flow is that you don’t edit. You speak naturally and organically. You CAN double back in your speech. For instance, you can say to Wispr Flow, “Delete that last word,” and it will do it for you pretty seamlessly. But you can’t tell it to take this sentence and put it there, or to go back and change that preposition above, or to reorder some of your paragraphs so that the argument has a more logical flow. You can’t tell it to make you sound smarter, or at least not yet. (Note from this story’s editor: The magazine has made light tweaks out of pity for the reader and writer alike. Also, our writers do not use A.I. tools to write articles except when specifically testing them for articles about such technology.) (Read More)

(NYT) – To meet the growing needs of his congregation, Justin Lester created an A.I. duplicate of himself. Every day he sees more people using it.

Lester pulled up a video of the newest member of his congregation as a few people in the audience started to record on their phones. It was his face on the screen, his voice, his mind. But it wasn’t him. “That’s my digital twin,” he said.

In the last year, Lester and hundreds of others have brought A.I. into its most human form yet by transferring their thoughts into data and building online replicas of themselves. The digital twins can answer in the real person’s voice and apply their thinking on demand for anyone who wants to chat online or call. (Read More)

(Science) – New study is among the first to quantify and explain slavery’s influence in contemporary U.S. health disparities

Black people in the U.S. are already well-known to have a lower life expectancy at birth than white people, but the new analysis finds that between 2010 and ’20, they had significantly increased mortality rates in U.S. counties that relied the most on slavery just before the Civil War. Indeed, the gap between Black and white mortality rates during that decade was 20 times greater in those counties compared with ones with no slavery recorded in the 1860 U.S. census. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Moderna got a shot in the arm Wednesday after reporting that its personalized melanoma vaccine succeeded, in a large late-stage trial, at preventing cancer from coming back in high-risk patients. Investors cheered, as the company’s stock soared 177%. But that’s nothing next to the returns to cancer patients from an mRNA breakthrough.

Moderna has been working on its experimental cancer vaccines with Merck for a decade. Because of those efforts, it was able during the pandemic to adapt its mRNA platform quickly to develop a Covid shot. The Food and Drug Administration has approved Moderna’s mRNA vaccines for the flu and RSV as well. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Results from a Merck-Moderna partnership validate years of research into a new approach to cancer treatment

An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday, paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment for the thousands of people diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer each year.

Moderna shares more than doubled Wednesday, while Merck’s stock hit an all-time high. (Read More)

(WSJ) – In some markets, the retailer’s insurance products will integrate pharmacy, vision and hearing benefits

The warehouse chain plans a limited rollout of Costco-branded Medicare plans, working with SCAN Group, a nonprofit insurer. Nationally, Medicare is a more than $600 billion business for insurers, but the two companies said they would start by selling their jointly named Medicare Advantage products in two states, and a Medicare supplement in a third. (Read More)

(Independent) – AI has been used to uncover microscopic patterns within breast cancer tumours by scientists

A newly developed artificial intelligence platform is uncovering previously unseen microscopic patterns within breast cancer tumours, allowing medical professionals to better forecast the progression of the condition.

The innovation could additionally lead to more tailored therapies for patients. (Read More)

(Futurism) – “If writing is thinking, then any part of the struggle that is outsourced to technology amounts to relinquishing some freedom to perceive.”

Students across the country are using AI models to complete assignments and write entire essays. Some of this constitutes cheating, but in many cases schools are allowing students to make some use of AI tools.

This is a slippery slop[e]. As some experts argue, any intrusion of automation into the writing process isn’t just threatening students’ composition skills, but their entire ability to think. (Read More)

(KERA) – The child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome — a rare congenital heart defect where the left side of the heart doesn’t develop fully about 20 weeks into the pregnancy. After learning about the diagnosis, the couple allegedly demanded West “undergo an abortion,” according to a statement from Texas Attorney Ken Paxton. Paxton’s office said she refused and came to Texas for “protection.”

Arthur Caplan, a professor emeritus of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said there are so many ethical issues at the center of this case, he could spend a semester long course on just it. (Read More)

(NYT) – All of this was done outside high containment, two rungs short of the sort of precautions reserved for the deadliest pathogens. Leading virologists rang the alarm, saying that the level of safety was inadequate for a new virus potentially capable of infecting people through the air.

When Cell drew criticism for publishing the study, a spokesperson for the journal said that biosafety decisions like these rest with a study’s lead scientist and its institution and that the researchers “did not break any rules or policies of the journal.” Cell was right. In China and in the United States there are surprisingly few constraints on this type of research. Scientists can still gather novel coronaviruses, enhance them in the lab under relatively low biosafety conditions and even accidentally cause an outbreak — without breaking any rules. (Read More)

(NYT) – The tech mogul is trying to design the blueprint for defying death.

For my final episode as host of “Interesting Times,” I wanted a fitting finale — a conversation that encapsulates the ambition of this show: examining how seemingly radical ideas are steadily entering the mainstream of American politics, technology and culture. Few ideas are as radical as the hope of dramatic life extension and the quest to live forever.

My guest today thinks he can outrun death. (Read More)

(Wired) – People with schizophrenia face a perfect storm of dangers on a hotter planet.

The root cause of these deaths isn’t just the stigma, social isolation, and lack of decent housing that often accompany life with schizophrenia; nor is it merely the disorganized thinking, altered perceptions, and paranoia that can be symptoms of the disorder.

It’s all of those things—plus an invisible, less popularly understood set of physiological factors that have little to do with behavior.

The bodies of people with schizophrenia, especially those on medication, simply regulate temperature very differently than others do. (Read More)

(The Conversation) – My research suggests that this framing misses what is actually happening. I conducted 68 in-depth interviews with adults who went no-contact with a parent, sibling, grandparent or other relative. (All participant names, including Luna’s, are pseudonyms used to protect their privacy.)

I found that estrangement is less a story of trauma or selfishness, and more a clash between competing expectations: an insistence on loyalty, duty and forgiveness on one hand, and the longing for respect, emotional safety and personal growth on the other. (Read More)

(Wired) – Researchers found that a metabolite produced by gut bacteria can weaken the barrier that protects the brain and promote changes associated with the cognitive disease.

For years, scientists have known that the gut microbiome of people with Alzheimer’s differs from that of healthy people. What remains unclear is whether these differences are a consequence of the disease, contribute to it, or simply accompany it. It is possible that part of the puzzle lies not in the gut bacteria themselves but in the molecules they produce, which end up circulating throughout the body.

A team of scientists believes it has found one such molecule. In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers identified imidazole propionate (ImP)—a compound produced by certain gut bacteria—as a possible link between the microbiome and Alzheimer’s disease. (Read More)

(NYT) – A June heat wave in Belgium and neighboring countries exposed a lethal lack of readiness. That’s a risk as another wave hits Europe.

Seniors died in stifling apartments. Emergency calls were left on hold. Doctors treated an onslaught of people sick from heat, sometimes in wards without air-conditioning.

These are scenes that played out in Belgium, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, on a recent summer weekend. They are also a warning to Europe.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, yet large parts remain ill prepared. (Read More)

(Wired) – Z.ai’s latest AI model release could help companies secure their systems—or find its way into the hands of hackers.

It’s now even easier to find—and exploit—vulnerabilities in computer systems using AI.

Last Friday, the Chinese AI company Z.ai announced a powerful open-weight model that it says is capable of automating cutting-edge coding and cybersecurity tasks almost as well as the best publicly available models from Anthropic and OpenAI.

The new model, GLM 5.3, could be a gift for companies looking to secure their systems against attacks, providing a cheaper way to scan for hidden bugs and other weaknesses. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – Technology may shape how and what we learn, but the act of learning itself is deeply human.

Children still learn long division even though calculators exist, and many people continue to study languages even as AI translation becomes faster and more accurate. Is there a deeper purpose for learning that technology will never touch?

In this episode of How to Touch Grass, the co-hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck hear from Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University who studies technology and learning. She explains that although the changing tides of tech may shape what and how we learn, as humans we still have the autonomy to build the minds we want. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they were using it. We were also listening for concerns that were less kid-specific, like deepfakes or job destruction. But what we actually heard when we asked kids aged 10 to 18 about AI had tons of nuance. 

Many of the same kids who can go on and on about music, rock climbing, or soccer met our questions with words like “bruh” and “meh”—or were so deeply against AI or uninterested in making it part of their lives that they didn’t want to talk about it at all. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Sitting in Xander’s room watching Moxie and Xander talk, I too could believe in the potential Scassellati sees. But Xander isn’t getting the therapy Moxie was initially meant to deliver, and though we didn’t know it that afternoon, she wouldn’t have lived to see his progress anyway. Moxie was going to die, and soon. 

Her story reveals some of the failures that plague all these devices—failures that are arguably even more acute when they befall a particularly vulnerable community of kids. It also highlights the pitfalls that critics say will inevitably see these bots dumped in basements or closets or landfills, just like countless generations of faddish toys before them.  (Read More)

(TIME) – Luigi Mangione on Friday pleaded guilty to both federal stalking charges against him in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, admitting in court that he shot the healthcare executive in 2024.

Mangione pleaded guilty to two charges that each carry a possible life sentence: interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death. The judge accepted his plea…(Read More)