February 2, 2024
(Nature) – A row over a building once used by chemist Marie Sk?odowska-Curie has been resolved following negotiations between the French culture ministry and a group of scientists who want to demolish the site to build a leading cancer-research centre. … Read More
January 31, 2024
January 30, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – TikTok said it has spent $1.5 billion building an operation intended to convince U.S. lawmakers that the popular video-sharing app is safe. TikTok executives publicly promised to voluntarily wall-off American user data and bring in engineers … Read More
January 29, 2024
(Reuters) – China has approved more than 40 artificial intelligence (AI) models for public use in the first six months since authorities began the approval process, as the country strives to catch up to the U.S. in AI development, according … Read More
January 29, 2024
January 26, 2024
(Associated Press) – Guinea worm disease remains on the cusp of being eradicated, with the global number of cases in 2023 holding steady at 13, according to a provisional account released by The Carter Center. A final count will be … Read More
January 26, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The International Court of Justice declined a plea to order Israel to cease military operations in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks but required the Jewish state to enable humanitarian aid to the enclave’s civilian … Read More
January 25, 2024
(Associated Press) – Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, about 245,000 Jewish survivors are still living across more than 90 countries, a new report revealed Tuesday. Nearly half of them, or 49%, are living in Israel; 18% are in Western … Read More
January 24, 2024
(New York Times) – Maximila Imali, a top Kenyan sprinter, did not lose her eligibility to compete in the Paris Olympics because she cheated. She did not fail a doping test. She broke no rules. Instead, she is set to … Read More
January 24, 2024
(NPR) – The rollout of malaria vaccines in Africa – the world’s first routine immunization program against this mosquito-borne disease – has raised excitement for a surprising reason. The vaccine reduces all kinds of deaths among children – not just … Read More
January 24, 2024
(Undark) – Once again, the task was to assess mortality — this time in the Central African Republic, a land-locked country the size of France, just north of the Congo. Violence perpetrated by armed groups, national soldiers, and the Russian … Read More
January 23, 2024
(New York Times) – Aissam Dam, an 11-year-old boy, grew up in a world of profound silence. He was born deaf and had never heard anything. While living in a poor community in Morocco, he expressed himself with a sign … Read More
January 23, 2024
(NPR) – It had been over 30 years since the last case of diphtheria was seen in Guinea. So when patients began showing up six months ago with what looked like flu symptoms — fever, cough and sore throat – … Read More
January 22, 2024
(NPR) – Back then, says Handley, the elders in the community had made a request that’s almost never demanded of researchers: “They said, ‘We will only allow this if you promise to return and tell us what it is that … Read More
January 22, 2024
(Knowable Magazine) – The fact that warfarin is riskier in some populations than others isn’t a surprise. Different geographic regions tend to host people with slightly different genetic makeups, and sometimes those genetic differences lead to radically different reactions to … Read More
January 22, 2024
(STAT News) – Starting Monday, a new, highly effective malaria vaccine will be rolled out for the first time, as an immunization campaign for children kicks off in Cameroon — a day that global health officials say marked a historic … Read More
January 19, 2024
(World Health Organization) – The World Health Organization (WHO) is releasing new guidance on the ethics and governance of large multi-modal models (LMMs) – a type of fast growing generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology with applications across health care. The … Read More
January 19, 2024
(New York Times) – For decades, Uganda’s campaign against H.I.V. was exemplary, slashing the country’s death rate by nearly 90 percent from 1990 to 2019. Now a sweeping law enacted last year, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, threatens to renew the epidemic … Read More
January 17, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19 in late December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world, congressional investigators said, raising questions anew about … Read More
January 16, 2024
(BBC) – Chinese researchers have cloned the first rhesus monkey, a species which is widely used in medical research because its physiology is similar to humans. They say they could speed up drug testing, as genetically identical animals give like-for-like … Read More
January 12, 2024
(ProPublica) – According to the latest UNICEF report, the U.S. was worse than 151 countries in reducing its stillbirth rate between 2000 and 2021, cutting it by just 0.9%. That figure lands the U.S. in the company of South Sudan … Read More
January 11, 2024
(New York Times) – The number of people facing possible starvation in the Gaza Strip in the coming weeks is the largest share of a population at risk of famine identified anywhere since a United Nations-affiliated panel created the current … Read More
January 11, 2024
January 10, 2024
(The Guardian) – Guatemala is often cited as the worst-case scenario for what can go wrong when adoptions are commercialised and children are sent from poorer countries to wealthier ones. Outright kidnappings like Preat’s were rare, but other abuses were … Read More
January 10, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Although AI is by no means a new technology there have been massive and rapid investments in it and large language models. However, the high-performance computing that powers these rapidly growing AI tools — and enables … Read More
