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Scientists may have accidentally discovered a dementia prevention tool that's been available for years.
A shingles vaccine — originally designed to prevent that painful rash you might get from a dormant childhood virus — appears to cut dementia risk by 20%. And in people already diagnosed with dementia, it seems to slow the disease's progression.
The discovery came from a quirk in Welsh health policy. In 2013, Wales offered the vaccine only to people who were exactly 79 — anyone who had already turned 80 was ineligible. This created a near-perfect natural experiment: two groups of people, virtually identical except for a few weeks of age difference, one vaccinated and one not.
When Stanford Medicine researchers tracked these groups for nine years, the results were striking. Among those vaccinated, dementia diagnoses dropped significantly. Even more surprising: people who already had dementia and got the vaccine were far less likely to die from it.
The effect was strongest in women. Whether this comes from stronger immune responses or something else entirely remains unclear. Scientists don't yet know if the vaccine works by suppressing the virus itself or by generally boosting the immune system.
Would you consider getting the shingles vaccine earlier if these findings hold up in clinical trials? Does it change how you think about the connection between viruses and brain health?
For more details, see the full article from Stanford Medicine: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vaccination-dementia.html
#dementia #vaccines #neuroscience #aging #medicine #science
🤖 When EngineAI’s T800 humanoid went viral, a lot of people were sure the video was just CGI.
So the CEO, Zhao Tongyang, literally stepped into the ring with his own robot — and let it kick him. 🦶
No VFX, no compositing, no AI post-processing — just a full-size humanoid, real-time control, and a CEO who’s very confident in his product. 📷
As humanoids get more powerful (high joint torque, fast reaction times, active cooling), trust and safety are becoming just as important as raw specs. EngineAI decided to demonstrate that trust the hard way.
#robotics #humanoid #AI #China
🧠 Your Mind Can Switch On Your Immune System — Literally
A recent immunology session reminded me of a striking study: participants in VR were shown faces of supposedly “infected” people — and their innate immune biomarkers actually increased.
In other words, both real pathogens and completely virtual ones triggered the same physiological immune response. No microbes needed.
Another paper impressed me even more: tumor growth in mice was suppressed simply through social interaction.
We all know loneliness is harmful, but the effect here was dramatic:
just one hour of daily social contact significantly reduced tumor growth and anxiety-like behavior.
This fits into a growing body of work on how the brain regulates the body — including immunity. If you want a solid overview, Cell has a great review by Ayelet “A.C.” Rolls, with a deep dive into immunoceiving (how the brain senses and modulates immune activity).
The bigger picture?
We’re moving toward a future where maintaining health won’t rely only on pharmaceuticals, but also on managing mental states.
Drugs are easier — you take a pill and don’t have to change yourself.
Mind-body interventions are harder — but potentially just as powerful.
I still hope medicine will more actively tap into the brain–body connection.
🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02008-y
Earth, Jupiter, and Venus as seen from Mars
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Whether we expect a major nuclear war or not, here is a curious set of U.S. actions in deploying strategic weapons:
First, the White House has consistently withdrawn from long-standing arms reduction and limitation treaties. In 2002—from the ABM Treaty; in 2019—from the INF Treaty; in 2020—from the Open Skies Treaty. A potential U.S. refusal to maintain the moratorium on nuclear testing could thus be a logical next step in Washington’s dismantling of the global strategic stability system.
Second, the U.S. is accelerating the modernization of its strategic offensive weapons. Work is underway on the new Sentinel ICBM with a new nuclear warhead and a range of 13,000 km. Development continues on the Columbia-class strategic nuclear submarine to replace the Ohio-class. The new B-21 Raider heavy bomber is in progress. A nuclear-armed cruise missile is under development, and so on. Plans include reactivating 56 launchers on 14 Ohio-class submarines—note: full reactivation—with complete loading of Trident II ballistic missiles. Preparatory measures are in place to reconvert 30 B-52H strategic bombers back into nuclear weapon carriers.
Third, the Americans have begun implementing the “Golden Dome” program, which envisions both missile defense interception and pre-launch strikes against Russian and Chinese missiles.
Fourth, by the end of this year, the U.S. Army plans to adopt the new Dark Eagle intermediate-range missile system with hypersonic missiles capable of a 5,500 km range. Future deployment is foreseen in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Flight time from Germany—where this complex is planned for placement—to targets in central Russia would be about six to seven minutes.
Fifth, Washington regularly conducts exercises of its strategic offensive forces. The latest, Global Thunder 2025—which practiced, I emphasize, preemptive nuclear missile strikes on Russian territory—took place in October of this year.
Overall, this is a unified complex of measures, including potential U.S. plans for nuclear tests, which significantly heighten the military threat level to Russia.
AI-powered parking never looked like this in my head.
A 35-kg Unitree G1 running BAAI’s THOR whole-body control just dragged a 1.4-ton car — ~40× its own weight. It’s a stunt, but it shows how fast balance, traction, and whole-body control are improving. Next stop: factory logistics, recovery, and precision vehicle positioning.
#Unitree #BAAI #THOR #Robotics #AI #Humanoids
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Cyberpunk remote work, IRL.
Operators in the Philippines—paid about $250/month—are remotely piloting shelf-stocking robots in Japanese stores.
Today it’s teleoperation; tomorrow it’s training data. The real question: how fast until the robots learn enough to cut humans out of the loop?
#robots #teleoperation #retailtech #AI #futureofwork #science
☀️ A massive explosion erupted last night on the far side of the Sun (IKI RAS).
The bright ejection you see in the footage is plasma being hurled away from the Sun — fortunately, in the opposite direction from Earth.
The dark circle and stripe in the frame aren’t mysterious objects — they mark the blind zones of the coronagraph’s optics, used to block direct sunlight and make solar activity visible.
Even though the blast happened on the far side, it shows just how restless our star remains — constantly storing and releasing titanic amounts of magnetic energy.
#Sun #Space #Astronomy #SolarFlare
🤖 A robot that feels touch with its whole body
German Aerospace Center (DLR) engineers have created SARA — a robot that can sense touch across its entire surface — without any external tactile skin or sensors.
How it works:
SARA uses only the force sensors built into its joints plus clever math.
When a person touches the robot’s body, the system calculates where and how strongly it was touched by analyzing subtle mechanical changes in the joints.
What it can do:
✍️ Recognize letters or numbers traced on its body — with 90–95% accuracy
🔘 Create “virtual buttons” anywhere — place a sticky note and the robot will remember that spot
🎚 Adjust settings — swipe across its arm like a slider to change speed or grip strength
Why it matters:
Traditional tactile robots rely on expensive, fragile “electronic skin.”
SARA skips that — turning its entire body into an interactive surface, like a smartphone screen.
Limitations:
Currently it can detect only two simultaneous touches, and sensitivity is lower than dedicated sensors.
But for most human–robot collaboration tasks, this minimalist design is a breakthrough.
#robotics #AI #DLR #innovation #HRI #sensors
🚀 Jeff Bezos: AI Data Centers Will Move to Space
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos believes that within the next 10–20 years, massive data centers for training AI models will be built in outer space.
Why? 🌌
In space, there’s unlimited solar energy available 24/7, no atmospheric interference, and natural cooling conditions — perfect for large-scale computing infrastructure.
Bezos envisions space as the next extension of Earth’s industrial and technological ecosystem, where humanity can build, power, and scale its most energy-intensive systems without harming the planet.
#AI #Space #Bezos #FutureTech #Science
🚨 China surpasses the world in robot installations!
According to the latest report by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), China installed nearly 300,000 industrial robots in 2024 — more than the rest of the world combined. 🤖🌏
🔹 Total operational robots in China now exceed 2,027,000 units.
🔹 China’s share of global installations has reached 54%.
🔹 It took just 3 years for China to go from 1 million to 2 million robots on its factory floors.
🔹 For comparison: the U.S. installed about 34,000 robots in 2024, while Japan added around 44,000.
China’s rapid automation is reshaping global manufacturing and accelerating the future of smart factories.
#robotics #China #automation #industry40 #science
Tensegrity: The Art and Science of Balance
Tensegrity is a fascinating design principle where rigid rods carry compression while cables handle tension. What makes it truly striking is that the rods never touch each other — instead, they seem to “float” in space, held together only by the balance of stretched cables.
This concept began to take shape in the early 20th century. American architect Buckminster Fuller coined the term “tensegrity”, and it quickly became a symbol of futuristic design and structural innovation.
In the video, you’ll see a famous example — the so-called floating table, a mesmerizing object that brings this principle to life. 🛋️✨
@science
🌿 In the wild, gray langurs and spotted deer share a remarkable partnership.
🐒 The langurs often drop fruits from tall trees, providing food for the deer.
🦌 In return, the deer act as an early warning system, alerting the monkeys to approaching predators.
This fascinating example of mutualism shows how different species can cooperate for survival.
📷 hrishiwild
🚨 Have you ever wondered how smartwatches know when you’re asleep?
It’s not magic — it’s @science!
Modern devices like Apple Watch or Fitbit analyze your heart rate, breathing, and even micro-movements of your body. When your heartbeat becomes steady and slow — you’re asleep. Sudden changes? They signal that you’re awake.
⚡ But the technology has gone much further:
• In 2023, MIT introduced algorithms that can track not only sleep but also emotions — for example, detecting stress through subtle heart rate changes.
• In 2024, researchers showed how AI-powered smartwatches could predict sleep quality by considering stress levels, daytime activity, and even room lighting.
• And in 2025, the first clinical trials revealed that wearables can detect early signs of sleep apnea and arrhythmia — long before a person visits a doctor.
🌍 Why does this matter? Because watches are no longer just gadgets — they’re turning into real medical assistants, spotting health problems before you even notice them yourself.
😄 Who knows, maybe soon they’ll not only tell you to go to bed, but also remind you when it’s time to take a vacation?
#Science #AI #Technology #Health
🚀 Chinese scientists have created a DNA cassette tape with a staggering 36 petabytes of storage!
Instead of magnetic tape, this breakthrough uses synthetic DNA molecules to encode digital data through sequences of A, T, C, and G — the letters of life itself.
Highlights:
• Up to 1,570 addressable sections per second
• Rewind & fast-forward functions, just like classic cassettes 🎶
• Built-in error correction with Reed–Solomon codes for data integrity
• Market forecast: from $93M in 2024 to $3B by 2030
The future of storage may fit inside a strand of DNA — and yes, one day our smartphones might carry genetic labs just to keep all our memes safe. 🧬💾
#DNA #Storage
🔗 Read more
@science
Imagine your liver biopsy being scored not by a panel of pathologists, but by an AI that regulators officially treat as a “lab tool” for drug trials. That just became real.
PathAI has announced that its AIM-MASH AI Assist system is the first AI-powered pathology tool ever qualified by the US FDA (and already by the European Medicines Agency) for use in clinical trials of MASH — a common, fatty liver disease that can progress to cirrhosis and cancer. Instead of three experts arguing over how bad the damage looks on a slide, the model helps a single pathologist assign consistent scores.
Why this matters: drug trials for liver disease live and die on tiny changes in biopsy scores. Human reads are slow, expensive and notoriously variable. An AI that gives the same answer every time for the same slide can make trials faster, cheaper and statistically cleaner — which may mean more liver drugs actually making it to market.
Important caveat: this AI is cleared only as a biomarker tool for trials, not for diagnosing individual patients. But if regulators are starting to trust models as part of the evidence pipeline, how long until similar systems sit inside routine hospital workflows?
Would you be comfortable knowing an AI scored your tissue sample in a drug trial? Should this kind of model stay in research, or gradually move into everyday diagnostics?
Full story from PathAI’s press release: https://www.pathai.com/news/pathais-aim-mash-ai-assist-becomes-first-ai-powered-pathology-tool-to-receive-fda-qualification-for-mash-clinical-trials
#AI #medicine #pathology #liverdisease #clinicaltrials #FDA #biotech
China just rolled out its own T-800. And no, this is not CGI.
🤖 Chinese company EngineAI (Zhòngqíng) has unveiled a full-size humanoid robot called T800 — the promo stresses: “All real footage – no CGI, no AI, no video acceleration.”
Key specs:
• Height: 173 cm
• 29 degrees of freedom (not counting the hands)
• Peak joint torque: up to 450 N·m
Capabilities:
• 360° surround vision system
• Active cooling for the leg joints (so it doesn’t overheat while walking/running)
• Battery life: ≈ 4–5 hours of operation on a single charge
Humanoids are rapidly moving from flashy concept videos to more practical platforms: with this level of torque, sensing and runtime, robots like T800 are getting closer to tasks in logistics, manufacturing, and hazardous environments — not just lab demos.
#robotics #AI #humanoid #China
💊 A once-daily pill that slashes “bad” cholesterol by ~58%
High LDL (“bad”) cholesterol is a slow-motion killer: it silently damages arteries and drives heart attacks and strokes. For people with familial hypercholesterolemia (roughly 1 in 250 adults), LDL is dangerously high from birth.
A new clinical trial just tested an experimental pill called enlicitide decanoate, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor:
• 293 adults with inherited high cholesterol
• all already on statins, but still with elevated LDL
• randomized to enlicitide once a day vs placebo for 24 weeks
📉 Result:
Those on the pill saw LDL drop by 58.2% on average, while the placebo group actually had a slight increase in LDL. The effect stayed strong over a full year, and side effects were similar to placebo.
PCSK9 inhibitors already exist as injections; this one is a tablet that basically lets the liver vacuum more LDL out of the blood. If longer-term studies confirm it reduces heart attacks and strokes, millions of high-risk patients could swap some injections for a daily pill.
Question:
If you had very high LDL, would you take a daily PCSK9 pill on top of statins?
#medicine #cholesterol #cardiology #pharma
“Feels like the uncanny valley just got crossed.”
Prompt: “Photorealistic interview with an 8-year-old child speaking sadly. The child knows they are AI-generated, feels sorrow about it, and answers the interviewer’s question — ‘What is it like to be an AI?’ — wisely yet child-like. Dark-blue background.”
Result: natural eye contact, micro-movements, believable pacing; emotion reads instantly.
Takeaway: the uncanny-valley threshold in Gen-Video has shifted.
Stack to try: Sora 2, Kling, Nano Banana, Krea, Artlist, Resolve.
#AI #GenerativeVideo #UncannyValley #PromptEngineering
🤖 “Hand-motion farms” are real — and they’re training robot hands.
In parts of India, workers strap a small camera to their forehead and spend hours doing simple, tactile tasks: folding towels, packing boxes, sorting everyday objects.
The POV videos go to U.S. labs, where neural networks study exactly how human fingers grip, pull, twist, and place—so robots can learn to copy the same motions.
Why this matters:
• Dexterity is the bottleneck. Vision models are great, but robots still struggle with cloth, cables, zipper pulls, and irregular objects. Human POV data captures the micro-moves that simulators miss.
• Imitation learning at scale. Hour after hour of clean, labeled hand maneuvers becomes training fuel for policies that generalize to new objects and tasks.
• Societal twist. It’s efficient—and a little dystopian: people meticulously teach the fine motor skills that may one day automate their own work.
Humans teaching their replacements, one folded towel at a time.
#AI #robots #imitationlearning #India #futureofwork
🚀 Starcloud wants a 4-km, 5-GW GPU data center… in space
NVIDIA-backed startup Starcloud is about to put a data-center-class GPU in orbit: their Starcloud-1 satellite launches in November with an NVIDIA H100 onboard — roughly 100× more GPU compute than any prior space system. The 60-kg, fridge-sized sat is a first step toward orbital GPU clouds.
Why it matters: today, satellites downlink raw data to Earth for processing. With an H100 upstairs, AI runs where data is born — cutting response times from hours to minutes. That’s big for sensors like SAR, which can spit out ~10 GB/s; instead of shipping it all home, the model can filter, segment, and alert in orbit.
Power & cooling: sunlight is (nearly) constant in orbit and space is an “infinite heat sink” via radiators, so no water-hungry chillers. Starcloud’s roadmap sketches a ~5 GW orbital data center fed by solar + radiator panels about 4 km × 4 km. Future birds aim to integrate Blackwell GPUs for up to 10× more performance versus Hopper.
Biz timeline: Crusoe (the “energy-first” cloud) plans to deploy capacity on Starcloud’s platform from 2026–27. Starcloud projects ~10× lower energy cost than Earth data centers long-term. A white paper even models a 40 MW cluster with a ~$8.2M launch cost — if Starship-class launch prices fall to ~$30/kg (a big if).
CEO Philip Johnston’s bet: within 10 years, most new data centers get built in space. Gamers, rejoice — astronauts might finally run DOOM at ultra.
#Starcloud #H100 #Blackwell #OrbitalCompute #SpaceDatacenter #SAR #EdgeAI
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@science
🚀 The first color footage of a FUSION REACTOR in action!
Tokamak Energy has just released incredible high-speed video — shot at 16,000 frames per second — showing the birth of plasma inside their fusion reactor.
In the clip, you can see a mesmerizing bright pink glow at the plasma’s edge — that’s light emitted as the superheated gas interacts with the reactor walls. The core itself remains invisible, simply because it’s millions of degrees hot — far beyond what any camera can capture.
This is what the future of clean, limitless energy looks like — contained in a magnetic field.
🎥 Full video here: watch the fusion magic
#fusion #energy #tokamak #plasma #science
🚢 While Ford’s CEO warns that the West is losing the tech race to China, the evidence is hard to ignore.
Chinese vehicles, he admits, already outperform Western ones in quality, technology, and production cost. And the gap keeps widening.
🎥 Just look at the fully automated Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shanghai — one of the most advanced logistics hubs in the world.
Here, autonomous electric trucks move containers guided by GPS and LiDAR, while self-navigating ships operate in the harbor. The entire terminal runs under a single digital control system that requires almost no human intervention.
China isn’t just catching up — it’s building the blueprint for the next industrial era.
#technology #China #automation #AI #logistics #future
☀️ A giant solar prominence has just broken away from the Sun — one of the largest this year, according to Russia’s Space Research Institute (IKI RAS).
This time, we got lucky. Scientists say that if it had happened a day later, Earth would have been grazed by the edge of the blast — and if two days later, we’d have taken a direct hit.
Fortunately, the plasma cloud is heading safely into deep space, missing all planets.
Still, the spectacle was breathtaking — a fiery arch of superheated plasma tens of thousands of kilometers high, briefly suspended above the solar surface before being hurled away into the void.
#Space #Sun #SolarStorm #Science
🚨 Magnetic Storms Linked to Heart Attacks — Especially in Women
The Earth is shielded by its magnetosphere, which constantly shifts in response to solar activity. When powerful disturbances occur — known as geomagnetic storms — they don’t just disrupt satellites and power grids, but also our bodies.
A team of Brazilian researchers analyzed hospital data on myocardial infarction (heart attacks) over several years, comparing the frequency of cases and deaths during periods of strong geomagnetic activity with calm days.
🔬 Their findings:
• Using the planetary K-index to track geomagnetic storms, the scientists discovered a clear trend:
• Women showed a significant increase in both hospitalizations and mortality during solar storm days.
• Men, despite making up the majority of patients overall, showed no comparable effect.
💡 Why does this happen?
The heart relies on finely tuned electrical impulses to maintain rhythm. Intense external magnetic fields may interfere with this system, especially in people with pre-existing cardiovascular issues, triggering critical events.
🌍 This research suggests that space weather isn’t just a cosmic curiosity — it may directly affect human health.
#Science #SpaceWeather #Medicine #SolarStorms
🤖 Robots don’t have to look like clunky metal machines — and soon, they won’t.
Meet the AI-powered robotic head from Chinese company AheadForm. Its facial expressions are driven by a dedicated artificial intelligence, making interactions far more natural.
And here’s the twist: a robot’s “intelligence” doesn’t even need to live inside its head. In many cases, robots are controlled directly from the cloud, tapping into vast computing power far beyond what fits in hardware.
The future of robotics may look — and think — very different from what sci-fi once imagined.
🚉 Guangzhou South Railway Station — a true giant of modern transport.
Opened in early 2010 in Guangdong Province, China, it long held the title of the largest railway station in Asia by area. Today it remains one of the country’s four major passenger hubs.
⚡ Facts:
• 15 platforms operating simultaneously
• Serves hundreds of high-speed trains daily
• Handles tens of millions of passengers each year
It’s not just a station — it’s a gateway to China’s high-speed rail revolution.
@science
🐒🎥 A Chinese zoo has banned visitors from showing short videos (reels) to a chimpanzee named Ding-Ding.
Ding-Ding became an internet star because of his love for watching short clips on visitors’ phones. But the staff raised concerns: constant screen time could harm his eyesight.
The case sparked discussions online about digital addiction — and whether it’s really unique to humans.
Of course, primates are on a different evolutionary step, so for people the risk isn’t quite the same. Still, maybe it’s a reminder for us too: clean your glasses and enjoy the view of the real world every once in a while. 👓🌍
#Science #Animals #Psychology #Technology
Unique NASA Images of Solar Flares
NASA has released rare, high-resolution images of solar flares with unprecedented detail. ☀️🔭
@science