May 29, 2024
(NPR) – Antibiotics cannot cure COVID. They don’t help a bit. And yet, new data shows that, during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics – a lot of antibiotics. That’s bad because the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs … Read More
May 29, 2024
(NBC News) – Latin America is experiencing its worst dengue fever outbreak on record. Case numbers in the first 4 ½ months of 2024 are already 238% higher than they were by this time last year, which itself ended with … Read More
May 28, 2024
(Associated Press) – Member countries kicked off the World Health Organization’s annual assembly on Monday with hopes of improving global readiness for deadly outbreaks like COVID-19, after an ambitious “pandemic treaty” ran aground last week. Health officials are racing to … Read More
May 24, 2024
(Wired) – Thousands of law enforcement officials and people applying to be police officers in India have had their personal information leaked online—including fingerprints, facial scan images, signatures, and details of tattoos and scars on their bodies. If that wasn’t … Read More
May 24, 2024
(Associated Press) – Extreme weather events have hit parts of Africa relentlessly in the last three years, with tropical storms, floods and drought causing crises of hunger and displacement. They leave another deadly threat behind them: some of the continent’s … Read More
May 22, 2024
(Wired) – AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers … Read More
May 20, 2024
(The Guardian) – More than 55% of sperm samples from a French infertility clinic contained high levels of glyphosate, the world’s most common weedkiller, raising further questions about the chemical’s impact on reproductive health and overall safety, a new study … Read More
May 15, 2024
(Axios) – Lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Wednesday are expected to set in motion a massive reordering of how U.S. pharmaceuticals are developed and made, by advancing a contracting ban on five key Chinese research firms. Why it … Read More
May 14, 2024
May 13, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened. Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women … Read More
May 13, 2024
(Reuters) – Talks to draw up a global pact to help fight future pandemics have ended without a draft agreement by the expected deadline, but progress has been made, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Negotiators from the World … Read More
May 13, 2024
(NPR) – At one of the last functioning hospitals in Rafah, scenes of horror are conveyed in clinical descriptions as U.S. medical volunteers grapple with the effects of Israeli military operations and border closures after seven months of war in … Read More
May 10, 2024
(Undark) – For centuries, people have dreamed of a world without disease. The myriad medical breakthroughs in the 20th century — which included antibiotics and modern vaccines — made that utopian ideal feel tantalizingly close. Vaccination led to the global … Read More
May 10, 2024
(CNN) – The US Food and Drug Administration is considering a requirement for blood banks to use a new test that can detect the parasites that cause malaria in certain donors’ blood, and it’s seeking the opinion of its independent … Read More
May 10, 2024
(STAT News) – Twenty-seven years ago today, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed a sore throat, spiked a fever, and started to cough. Six days later, he was hospitalized; six days after that, he died of acute respiratory distress … Read More
May 10, 2024
May 8, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – There are plenty of people like Sun who want to use AI to preserve, animate, and interact with lost loved ones as they mourn and try to heal. The market is particularly strong in China, where … Read More
May 7, 2024
(NPR) – While countries routinely collect child mortality data, very little is known about the lives — and premature deaths — of sex workers’ children. Sometimes there are no records of these kids’ births or deaths. “They could be born … Read More
May 7, 2024
(Axios) – A new report calls on all levels of government to strengthen U.S. biodefense measures and urges policymakers to codify parts of a national strategy to address an array of biological threats. Why it matters: Threats in the form … Read More
May 3, 2024
(Axios) – China leads the U.S. as a top producer of research in more than half of AI’s hottest fields, according to new data from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) shared first with Axios. Why it … Read More
May 1, 2024
(Associated Press) – The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post … Read More
April 29, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Almost all keyboard apps used by Chinese people around the world share a security loophole that makes it possible to spy on what users are typing. The vulnerability, which allows the keystroke data that these apps … Read More
April 26, 2024
(Associated Press) – Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries suffered from acute hunger in 2023, with war-torn Gaza as the territory with the largest number of people facing famine, according to the Global Report on Food Crises released Wednesday. … Read More
April 24, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The frenzy to build data centers to serve the exploding demand for artificial intelligence is causing a shortage of the parts, property and power that the sprawling warehouses of supercomputers require. The lead time to get … Read More
April 23, 2024
(Nature) – In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, video footage has shown drones penetrating deep into Russian territory, more than 1,000 kilometres from the border, and destroying oil and gas infrastructure. It’s likely, experts say, that artificial intelligence (AI) … Read More
