A study by a Singapore government agency has found that children exposed to high levels of screen time before age two showed brain development changes linked to slower decision-making and higher anxiety in adolescence, adding to concerns about early digital exposure. From a report: The study was conducted by a team within the country's Agency for Science, Technology and Research and the National University of Singapore, and published in The Lancet's eBioMedicine open access journal. It tracked 168 children for more than a decade, and conducted brain scans on them at three time points. Heavier screen exposure among very young children was associated with "accelerated maturation of brain networks" responsible for vision and cognitive control, the study found.

The researchers suggested this may have been the result of "intense sensory stimulation that screens provide." They found that screen time measured at ages three and four, however, did not show the same effects. Those children with "altered brain networks" took longer to make decisions when they were 8.5, and also had higher anxiety symptoms at age 13, the study said.

The AI industry, for all the anxiety about mass unemployment, is quietly minting entirely new job categories that require distinctly human skills -- empathy, judgment, and the ability to calm down a passenger trapped inside a broken-down robotaxi. Data annotators are no longer just low-paid gig workers tagging images. Experts in finance, law, and medicine now train advanced AI models, earning $90 an hour on average through platforms like Mercor, a startup recently valued at $10 billion, according to CEO Brendan Foody.

Forward-deployed engineers, a role pioneered by Palantir, customize AI tools on-site for clients; YCombinator's portfolio companies now have 63 job postings for such roles, up from four last year. The AI Workforce Consortium, a research group led by Cisco that examined 50 IT jobs across wealthy countries, found AI risk-and-governance specialists to be the fastest-growing category -- outpacing even AI programmers.

Goldman Sachs, in a note this week, via India Dispatch: There are various reasons that explains this: (i) A large part of the global education spend goes towards formal education (schools, colleges and universities), which are typically either run by governments or are not-for-profit institutions;

(ii) It is difficult to replicate education quality at scale in our view, since most teachers would have a different pedagogy, and thus standardization is harder to achieve vs that in other internet categories;

(iii) Education is fragmented - it includes various fields (schools, undergrad courses, medicine, engg, management, etc.), each with their own curriculum, and the same being vastly different across countries globally; this makes scalability difficult beyond a few certain specializations and regions.

Additionally, we believe the ability for online education to capture a sizable value share of supplemental education is limited since the perceived value of offline, including that from community, in-person engagement and doubt solving, rigour, etc., is typically higher.

However, we note that before China's double reduction policy in 2021, TAL and EDU had market caps of up to US$50 bn; these companies were mostly domestic focused and on the K-12 tutoring segment, which has large volumes. Similarly in India, Byju's reached a peak valuation of US$20 bn+ (link; again, focused on K-12), before issues around governance etc. impacted the business.

Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), a hard-to-manufacture semiconductor produced by only a handful of companies, is enabling a quiet revolution in medical imaging, science, and security by delivering faster scans, lower radiation doses, and far more precise X-ray and gamma-ray detection. "You get beautiful pictures from this scanner," says Dr Kshama Wechalekar, head of nuclear medicine and PET. "It's an amazing feat of engineering and physics." The BBC reports: Kromek is one of just a few firms in the world that can make CZT. You may never have heard of the stuff but, in Dr Wechalekar's words, it is enabling a "revolution" in medical imaging. This wonder material has many other uses, such as in X-ray telescopes, radiation detectors and airport security scanners. And it is increasingly sought-after. Investigations of patients' lungs performed by Dr Wechalekar and her colleagues involve looking for the presence of many tiny blood clots in people with long Covid, or a larger clot known as a pulmonary embolism, for example.

The 1-million-pound scanner works by detecting gamma rays emitted by a radioactive substance that is injected into patients' bodies. But the scanner's sensitivity means less of this substance is needed than before: "We can reduce doses about 30%," says Dr Wechalekar. While CZT-based scanners are not new in general, large, whole-body scanners such as this one are a relatively recent innovation. CZT itself has been around for decades but it is notoriously difficult to manufacture. "It has taken a long time for it to develop into an industrial-scale production process," says Arnab Basu, founding chief executive of Kromek.

[...] The newly formed CZT, a semiconductor, can detect tiny photon particles in X-rays and gamma rays with incredible precision -- like a highly specialized version of the light-sensing, silicon-based image sensor in your smartphone camera. Whenever a high energy photon strikes the CZT, it mobilizes an electron and this electrical signal can be used to make an image. Earlier scanner technology used a two-step process, which was not as precise. "It's digital," says Dr Basu. "It's a single conversion step. It retains all the important information such as timing, the energy of the X-ray that is hitting the CZT detector -- you can create color, or spectroscopic images."

A major scientific report published Tuesday argues that sending astronauts to Mars is justified by the quest to find life and conduct research that robots alone can't achieve. "We're searching for life on Mars," said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. "The answer to the question 'are we alone' is always going to be 'maybe,' unless it becomes yes." Ars Technica reports: The report, two years in the making and encompassing more than 200 pages, was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Essentially, the committee co-chaired by Newman and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, director of the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, was asked to identify the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars. [...] "There's no turning back," Newman said. "Everyone is inspired by this because it's becoming real. We can get there. Decades ago, we didn't have the technologies. This would have been a study report."

The goal of the report is to help build a case for meaningful science to be done on Mars alongside human exploration. The report outlines 11 top-priority science objectives. [...] The committee also looked at different types of campaigns to determine which would be most effective for completing the science objectives noted above. The campaign most likely to be successful, they found, was an initial human landing that lasts 30 days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery to facilitate a longer 300-day crewed mission on the surface of Mars. All of these missions would take place in a single exploration zone, about 100 km in diameter, that featured ancient lava flows and dust storms.

Notably, the report also addresses the issue of planetary protection, a principle that aims to protect both celestial bodies (i.e., the surface of Mars) and visitors (i.e., astronauts) from biological contamination. [...] In recent years, NASA has been working with the International Committee on Space Research to design a plan in which human landings might occur in some areas of the planet, while other parts of Mars are left in "pristine" condition. The committee said this work should be prioritized to reach a resolution that will further the design of human missions to Mars. "NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life," the report states.

In February, a six-month-old baby named KJ Muldoon became the first person ever to receive a CRISPR gene-editing treatment customized specifically for his unique genetic mutation, a milestone that researchers say marks a turning point in how medicine might approach the thousands of rare diseases that collectively affect 30 million Americans. Muldoon was born with a type of urea-cycle disorder that gives patients roughly a 50% chance of surviving infancy and typically requires a liver transplant; he is now a healthy 1-year-old who recently took his first steps.

The treatment's significance extends beyond one child. Scientists at UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia are now planning clinical trials that would use Muldoon's therapy as a template, tweaking the molecular "address" in the CRISPR system to target different mutations in other children with urea-cycle disorders. Last month, FDA officials Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad announced a new drug pathway designed to accelerate approvals for such personalized treatments -- a framework inspired in large part by Muldoon's case. Current gene-editing delivery mechanisms limit treatments to disorders in the blood and liver. Many families will still go without bespoke therapies.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank calls himself "a highly creative hypochondriac" — who just paid for an expensive MRI scan to locate abnormal spots as tiny as 2 millimeters.

He discusses the pros and cons of its "diffusion-weighted imaging" technology combined with the pattern recognition of AI, which theoretically "has the potential to save our lives by revealing budding cancers, silent aneurysms and other hidden would-be killers before they become deadly. " But the scans cost $2,500 a pop and insurance won't pay. Worse, for every cancer these MRIs find, they produce a slightly greater number of false positives that require a biopsy, with the potential for infection and bleeding and emotional distress. Even when the scans don't produce a false positive, they almost always come up with some vague and disconcerting abnormality.... Will we feel better after viewing our insides? Or will we become anxious about things we hadn't even thought to worry about?

Part of living has always been in the mystery, in not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Now, because of sophisticated imaging, genome sequencing and other revolutionary screening tools, we can have predictability, or at least the illusion of it. But do we want that? The American College of Radiology says we do not. Its still-current 2023 statement says there is not "sufficient evidence" to recommend full-body screening, cautioning that the scan could lead to needless testing and expense. But David Larson, chair of ACR's Commission on Quality and Safety, told me that could change as more data comes in. "When people ask me, 'Would you recommend it?' I would say it depends on your tolerance for ambiguity," he said, giving the example of somebody found to have a borderline aortic aneurysm who is advised to wait and monitor it. If "that won't keep you up at night, then I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it...."

About 1 in 20 gets that dreaded call. A study Prenuvo presented earlier this year of 1,011 participants found that 4.9 percent of scans required a follow-up biopsy. Of those, 2.2 percent were actually cancer, and the other 2.7 percent were false positives. Of the 22 cancers the scans caught, 86 percent of patients had no specific symptoms. But if finding something truly awful is rare, finding something abnormal is almost guaranteed. [Vikash Modi, Prenuvo's senior medical director of preventative medicine] said only 1 in 20 scans come back completely clean. The vast majority of patients wind up in the ambiguous realm where something may look suspicious but doesn't require urgent follow-up.
He opted for the cheaper $1,000 torso scan, which the senior medical director calls "our bread-and-butter area," since 17 of the 22 cancers detected in one Prenuvo study were in that area and is where they often find cancers that wouldn't be discovered until they were incurable like "that scary pancreatic stuff...."

Milbank's scan found 12 "abnormalities" included "a 2.5 mm pulmonary nodule in the right lower lobe" and "a 4.6 mm intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm in the pancreatic tail" — but with 10 abnormalities labeled "minor" (and six being musculoskeletal wear-and-tear problems "I already knew about from the usual aches and pains".) Even the two "moderate" findings didn't sound that grim when I read on. The "indeterminant lesion" in my lung requires no follow-up, while the thing in my pancreas is "low-risk."... The "most interesting" finding was the pancreatic cyst, because, at this size and location, there's a 3 percent chance it will become cancerous in the next five years. But if annual follow-up scans of my pancreas (covered by insurance) show it's getting bigger, the cyst can be removed before it becomes cancer. For me, this made the MRI worthwhile. Sure, there was a 97 percent likelihood the cyst never would develop into a problem even if I hadn't learned about it. But now, with minimal inconvenience, I can eliminate that 3 percent risk of getting pancreatic cancer, the most lethal of major malignancies.

Despite predictions that AI would replace radiologists, healthcare systems worldwide are hiring more of them because AI tools enhance their work, create new oversight tasks, and increase imaging volumes rather than reducing workloads. "Put all that together with the context of an aging population and growing demand for imaging of all kinds, and you can see why Offiah and the Royal College of Radiologists are concerned about a shortage of radiologists, not their displacement," writes Financial Times authors John Burn-Murdoch and Sarah O'Connor. Amaka Offiah, who is a consultant pediatric radiologist and a professor in pediatric musculoskeletal imaging at the University of Sheffield in the UK, makes a prediction of her own: "AI will assist radiologists, but will not replace them. I could even dare to say: will never replace them." From the report: [A]lmost all of the AI tools in use by healthcare providers today are being used by radiologists, not instead of them. The tools keep getting better, and now match or outperform experienced radiologists even after factoring in false positives or negatives, but the fact that both human and AI remain fallible means it makes far more sense to pair them up than for one to replace the other. Two pairs of eyes can come to a quicker and more accurate judgment, one spotting or correcting something the other missed. And in high-stakes settings where the costs of a mistake can be astronomical, the downside risk from an error by a fully autonomous AI radiologist is huge. "I find this a fascinating demonstration of why even if AI really can do some of the most high-value parts of someone's job, it doesn't mean displacement (even of those few tasks let alone the job as a whole) is inevitable," concludes John. "Though I also can't help noticing a parallel to driverless cars, which were simply too risky to ever go fully autonomous until they weren't."

Sarah added: "I think the story of radiologists should be a reminder to technologists not to make sweeping assertions about the future of professions they don't intimately understand. If we had indeed stopped training radiologists in 2016, we'd be in a real mess today."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Almost three in 10 GPs in the UK are using AI tools such as ChatGPT in consultations with patients, even though it could lead to them making mistakes and being sued, a study reveals. The rapid adoption of AI to ease workloads is happening alongside a "wild west" lack of regulation of the technology, which is leaving GPs unaware which tools are safe to use. That is the conclusion of research by the Nuffield Trust thinktank, based on a survey of 2,108 family doctors by the Royal College of GPs about AI and on focus groups of GPs.

Ministers hope that AI can help reduce the delays patients face in seeing a GP. The study found that more and more GPs were using AI to produce summaries of appointments with patients, assisting their diagnosis of the patient's condition and routine administrative tasks. In all, 598 (28%) of the 2,108 survey respondents said they were already using AI. More male (33%) than female (25%) GPs have used it and far more use it in well-off than in poorer areas.

It is moving quickly into more widespread use. However, large majorities of GPs, whether they use it or not, worry that practices that adopt it could face "professional liability and medico-legal issues," and "risks of clinical errors" and problems of "patient privacy and data security" as a result, the Nuffield Trust's report says. [...] In a blow to ministerial hopes, the survey also found that GPs use the time it saves them to recover from the stresses of their busy days rather than to see more patients. "While policymakers hope that this saved time will be used to offer more appointments, GPs reported using it primarily for self-care and rest, including reducing overtime working hours to prevent burnout," the report adds.

Bruce66423 shares a report from the Los Angeles Times: Tattoo ink doesn't just sit inertly in the skin. New research shows it moves rapidly into the lymphatic system, where it can persist for months, kill immune cells, and even disrupt how the body responds to vaccines. Scientists in Switzerland used a mouse model to trace what happens after tattooing. Pigments drained into nearby lymph nodes within minutes and continued to accumulate for two months, triggering immune-cell death and sustained inflammation. The ink also weakened the antibody response to Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE's COVID vaccine when the shot was administered in tattooed skin. In contrast, the same inflammation appeared to boost responses to an inactivated flu vaccine. "This work represents the most extensive study to date regarding the effect of tattoo ink on the immune response and raises serious health concerns associated with the tattooing practice," the researchers said. "Our work underscores the need for further research to inform public health policies and regulatory frameworks regarding the safety of tattoo inks."

The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The San Francisco city attorney filed on Tuesday the nation's first government lawsuit against food manufacturers over ultraprocessed fare (source may be paywalled; alternative source), arguing that cities and counties have been burdened with the costs of treating diseases that stem from the companies' products. David Chiu, the city attorney, sued 10 corporations that make some of the country's most popular food and drinks. Ultraprocessed products now comprise 70 percent of the American food supply and fill grocery store shelves with a kaleidoscope of colorful packages. Think Slim Jim meat sticks and Cool Ranch Doritos. But also aisles of breads, sauces and granola bars marketed as natural or healthy.

It is a rare issue on which the liberal leaders in San Francisco City Hall are fully aligned with the Trump administration, which has targeted ultraprocessed foods as part of its Make America Healthy Again mantra. Mr. Chiu's lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of the State of California, seeks unspecified damages for the costs that local governments bear for treating residents whose health has been harmed by ultraprocessed food. The city accuses the companies of "unfair and deceptive acts" in how they market and sell their foods, arguing that such practices violate the state's Unfair Competition Law and public nuisance statute. The city also argues the companies knew that their food made people sick but sold it anyway.

Psychology Today reports: In a study conducted in Milan, Italy, and published in November 2025, the sight of a person dressed as Batman led to a nearly doubled rate of people giving up their seat to a pregnant woman. Over the course of 138 subway rides, researchers found that people who saw "Batman" standing near the pregnant woman were far more altruistic than those who did not.

Researchers are calling this the "Batman effect," suggesting a form of "involuntary" mindfulness may be at play. Noticing these subtle social cues appears to shift people's typical, automatic reactions. Most interestingly, 44 percent of the people questioned reported they did not even consciously register Batman's presence... The superhero costume serves as a visual nudge, pulling us out of our default, self-focused mode and into a more generous, attentive state.
More from Futurism: Batman showing up is just one — albeit striking — way of promoting what's called "prosocial behavior," or the act of helping others around you, via introducing an unexpected event, the researchers write. "Our findings are similar to those of previous research linking present-moment awareness (mindfulness) to greater prosociality," said study lead author Francesco Pagnini, a professor of clinical psychology at the Università Cattolica in Milan, in a statement about the work. "This may create a context in which individuals become more attuned to social cues."
Thanks to Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) for sharing the article.

Black fungus found growing inside Chernobyl's destroyed reactor may be feeding on radiation, and researchers have tested samples of the same species aboard the International Space Station to explore whether it could eventually shield astronauts from cosmic rays. Ukrainian scientist Nelli Zhdanova first discovered the melanin-rich mould colonizing the walls and ceilings of the exploded reactor building during a May 1997 survey. Her research indicated that the fungal hyphae were actually growing toward sources of ionizing radiation rather than merely tolerating it.

In 2007, nuclear scientist Ekaterina Dadachova at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that melanised fungi grew 10% faster when exposed to radioactive caesium compared to control samples, leading her to propose "radiosynthesis" -- a process where organisms convert radiation into metabolic energy. The same strain, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, traveled to the ISS in December 2018 and grew an average of 1.21 times faster over 26 days compared to Earth-based controls. Nils Averesch, a biochemist at the University of Florida and co-author of that study, remains cautious about attributing the growth boost to radiation harvesting since zero gravity could also be responsible.

China's pharmaceutical industry has quietly evolved from a hub for generics and clinical trials into something more ambitious -- a genuine competitor in drug discovery that Western giants are now courting to fill gaps left by looming patent expirations worth over $300 billion by 2030. In the first half of 2025, nearly a third of global licensing agreements signed by big pharma involved Chinese firms, Economist reports, four times the share from 2021. Pfizer agreed in May to pay $1.25 billion to 3SBio for an experimental cancer drug, and GlaxoSmithKline followed in June with a deal valued at up to $12 billion with Hengrui. Chinese companies now run about a third of the world's clinical trials, up from 5% a decade ago.

Drug maker Novo Nordisk says semaglutide, the active ingredient for the weight loss jab Wegovy, does not slow Alzheimer's -- despite initial hopes that it might help against dementia. From a report: Researchers began two large trials involving more than 3,800 people after reports the medicine was having an impact in the real world. But the studies showed the GLP-1 drug, which is already used to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity, made no difference compared to a dummy drug. The disappointing results are due to be presented at an Alzheimer's disease conference next month and are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

For nearly three years OpenAI has touted ChatGPT as a "revolutionary" (and work-transforming) productivity tool, reports the Washington Post.

But after analyzing 47,000 ChatGPT conversations, the Post found that users "are overwhelmingly turning to the chatbot for advice and companionship, not productivity tasks." The Post analyzed a collection of thousands of publicly shared ChatGPT conversations from June 2024 to August 2025. While ChatGPT conversations are private by default, the conversations analyzed were made public by users who created shareable links to their chats that were later preserved in the Internet Archive and downloaded by The Post. It is possible that some people didn't know their conversations would become publicly preserved online. This unique data gives us a glimpse into an otherwise black box...

Overall, about 10 percent of the chats appeared to show people talking about their emotions, role-playing, or seeking social interactions with the chatbot. Some users shared highly private and sensitive information with the chatbot, such as information about their family in the course of seeking legal advice. People also sent ChatGPT hundreds of unique email addresses and dozens of phone numbers in the conversations... Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, said that it appears ChatGPT "is trained to further or deepen the relationship." In some of the conversations analyzed, the chatbot matched users' viewpoints and created a personalized echo chamber, sometimes endorsing falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
Four of ChatGPT's answers about health problems got a failing score from a chair of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, the Post points out. But four other answers earned a perfect score.

The Washington Post reports: Scientists in Switzerland have created a robot the size of a grain of sand that is controlled by magnets and can deliver drugs to a precise location in the human body, a breakthrough aimed at reducing the severe side effects that stop many medicines from advancing in clinical trials... "I think surgeons are going to look at this," [said Bradley J. Nelson, an author of the paper in Science describing the discovery and a professor of robotics and intelligent systems at ETH Zurich]. I'm sure they're going to have a lot of ideas on how to use" the microrobot. The capsule, which is steered by magnets, might also be useful in treating aneurysms, very aggressive brain cancers, and abnormal connections between arteries and veins known as arteriovenous malformations, Nelson said. The capsules have been tested successfully in pigs, which have similar vasculature to humans, and in silicone models of the blood vessels in humans and animals... Nelson said drug-ferrying microrobots of this kind may be three to five years from being tested in clinical trials. The problem faced by many drugs under development is that they spread throughout the body instead of going only to the area in need... A major cause of side effects in patients is medications traveling to parts of the body that don't need them. The capsules developed in Switzerland, however, can be maneuvered into precise locations by a surgeon using a tool not that different from a PlayStation controller. The navigation system involves six electromagnetic coils positioned around the patient, each about 8 to 10 inches in diameter... The capsules are made of materials that have been found safe for people in other medical tools...

When the capsule reaches its destination in the body, "we can trigger the capsule to dissolve," Nelson said.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don't cause autism now says they might. WSJ: The contents of the webpage came up during Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Senate confirmation process. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) in February said Kennedy had assured him that, if he was confirmed, the CDC would "not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism."

The revised webpage says: "The claim 'vaccines do not cause autism' is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities." The new text posted Wednesday also notes that the Department of Health and Human Services has launched "a comprehensive assessment" to probe the causes of autism.

A new treatment for tuberculosis could boost cure rates and shorten the time needed to treat the disease by months, trial results suggest. The Guardian: Globally, an estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB last year and 1.23 million died from it. In its annual report on tuberculosis, launched last week, the World Health Organization said it remained a "major global public-health problem" and the leading infectious cause of death. [...] Sorfequiline, a new antibiotic, showed stronger action against the deadly bacteria than existing treatments, with a comparable safety profile, researchers from the TB Alliance told the Union Conference on Lung Health in Copenhagen on Wednesday.

The trial involved 309 people across 22 sites in South Africa, the Philippines, Georgia, Tanzania and Uganda, with different dose regimens. All participants had "drug-sensitive" tuberculosis, meaning a standard cocktail of drugs can safely treat them but researchers believe TB infections that are resistant to standard treatment could also be helped. The trial suggested a sorfequiline-based regimen could be used for anyone testing positive, said Dr Maria Beumont, vice-president of TB Alliance.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Federal health officials have linked two massive US measles outbreaks, confirming that the country is about two months away from losing its measles elimination status, according to a report by The New York Times. The Times obtained a recording of a call during which officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to state health departments that the ongoing measles outbreak at the border of Arizona and Utah is a continuation of the explosive outbreak in West Texas that began in mid- to late-January. That is, the two massive outbreaks are being caused by the same subtype of measles virus.

This is a significant link that hasn't previously been reported despite persistent questions from journalists and concerns from health experts, particularly in light of Canada losing its elimination status last week. The loss of an elimination status means that measles will once again be considered endemic to the US, an embarrassing public health backslide for a vaccine-preventable disease.