Toggle light / dark theme

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

The Power and Responsibility of Sam Altman

This week, Laurie Segall sits down exclusively with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for his first interview since shutting down the Disney-partnered Sora and making the Department of War deal. From power to parenthood, tech addiction and AI acceleration, Laurie interviews Altman about AI’s human impact and the weight of OpenAI’s influence. In a wide ranging interview, Altman describes a near-term future where automated AI researchers could compress a decade of scientific discovery into a single year, fundamentally reshaping society and an era of AI abundance, where solo-founders can build billion-dollar companies with AI agents. But that innovation sits against a complex backdrop with fundamental human questions at stake. Altman addresses concerns over AI-related job loss and reveals what he thinks are AI-proof jobs. Altman, who is also a father, discusses parenting in the age of AI, when he plans to introduce his own product to his child, and how he believes AI could benefit kids in the long run. This is a conversation with Sam Altman you’re not going to hear anywhere else, where the tech titan answers some fundamental questions about control, innovation, consequences, and the world we’ll leave behind for our children.

If you have thoughts or questions for Laurie about this episode or anything Mostly Human, email us at hello@mostlyhuman.com

Engineered Living Systems With Self‐Organizing Neural Networks: From Anatomy to Behavior and Gene Expression

Ectodermal tissue excised from Xenopus embryos self-organizes into a three-dimensional mucociliary organoid. Here, we generate a neural variant, termed neurobot, by implanting neural precursor cells…

Cuproptosis in cancer: emerging mechanism and therapeutic opportunities

Cuproptosis mechanism in cancer!

As a copper-dependent regulated form of cell death, cuproptosis is critically important for developing targeted cancer therapies and overcoming drug resistance.

A multidimensional framework deciphers the physiological regulation of copper homeostasis, including hepatocentric organ-level regulation, organelle-specific cellular storage and transport, and iron– copper–zinc ion crosstalk.

Cuproptosis is mainly regulated by core cuproptosis proteins, mitochondrial respiratory function, and cellular copper homeostasis.

By depleting glutathione (GSH), alleviating hypoxia, modulating immunity, and enabling multimodal synergy, innovative copper-based nanomaterials enhance copper ion delivery and cytotoxicity, resulting in potent antitumor effects. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Cuproptosis-in-cancer


Cuproptosis is a mitochondria-and copper-dependent regulated form of cell death that has attracted growing interest as a therapeutic strategy in oncology. Its core mechanism involves the aggregation of lipoylated proteins in the tricarboxylic acid cycle to trigger proteotoxic stress and the destabilization of iron–sulfur cluster proteins, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction. These two effects synergize to initiate this regulated form of cell death. Recent studies have expanded this framework, revealing multilayered regulation through the core proteins of cuproptosis, mitochondrial respiratory function, and cellular copper homeostasis. Translational efforts have led to the development of copper-based therapeutics, including ionophores and nanomaterials. The utilization of smart-responsive nanomaterials also offers improved precision in tumor delivery and resistance circumvention.

3 Billionaires Are (Quietly) Deciding Our Future

Max Tegmark explains why the race to superintelligence is not inevitable, why most people don’t want it, and what we can do about it. He covers the three superpowers of AI, why tool AI can solve our biggest problems without replacing us, and the case for regulating AI like we regulate drugs and airplanes.

00:00 The Race.
00:25 Superintelligence.
01:48 The cage.
03:03 Three superpowers.
05:16 Sandwiches.
11:14 Consciousness.
13:04 Life 3.

Produced by:
https://zeino.tv/

Specific Gravity Made Easy | Float, Sink & Hydrometer Explained

In this Easy Peasy Chemistry lesson, we break down Specific Gravity in a simple and clear way!

After learning about density, it’s time to understand how substances compare to water. Why do some objects float while others sink? What does a hydrometer reading like 1.25 actually mean?

In this video, you’ll learn:

• What specific gravity really means
• How it is different from density
• Why water is used as the reference
• How floating and sinking are related
• How a hydrometer measures specific gravity
• Why specific gravity has no units.

This lesson is perfect for high school, college, pre-med, nursing, and engineering students.

Watch till the end to fully understand how scientists measure and compare densities in the lab.

Life on Mars May Be Hiding or Sleeping

Life on Mars may be hiding or dormant. See my new blog on Big Think discussing various options how life on Mars may adapt to the challenging environment. Link through my website Searchforlifeintheuniverse:

(https://www.searchforlifeintheuniverse.com/post/life-in-mars…r-sleeping)


Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch argues that even if Mars’s surface is uninhabitable, life could persist underground, inside salt crusts, or locked in a dormant state.

Street green space can help cool cities, but it will not be enough on its own

A new IIASA-led study finds that expanding street green space can reduce urban heat stress in cities worldwide, but even ambitious greening efforts are unlikely to offset a significant share of the additional heat expected under climate change. Instead, the research shows that street greenery should be part of a broader portfolio of urban adaptation measures.

Cities are on the front line of climate change, with rising temperatures and heat stress posing growing risks to health, productivity, and livability. Street green space, such as trees and vegetation along streets, is often promoted as a practical nature-based solution because it can provide shade, cooling, and other positive benefits, for example, improving the mental health of citizens. Yet, evidence on how much cooling street greenery can deliver, to which extent the amount of vegetation can be increased, and how much cooling can be expected in future climates has remained limited, particularly when taking a global view across very different urban forms and climate zones.

In the new study published in Environmental Research Letters, a team of researchers from IIASA and VITO Belgium combined high-resolution street greenery data with 100-meter urban microclimate model outputs for 133 cities worldwide, providing a neighborhood-scale assessment with global coverage. Rather than relying on satellite-based surface temperature alone, the team assessed how street green space relates to air temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature —a measure that captures heat stress more appropriately than temperature alone because it accounts for humidity, wind, and radiation.

Non-producing oil and gas wells may emit microbial methane at rates 1,000 times higher than previously estimated

Microbial methane leaking from non-producing oil and gas wells is being emitted at rates about 1,000 times higher than previously estimated, according to a new study led by McGill University researchers. “Origins of Subsurface Methane Leaking from Nonproducing Oil and Gas Wells in Canada,” by Gianni Micucci and Mary Kang, is published in Environmental Science and Technology.

“Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas when released into the atmosphere, regardless of its origin. In particular, this study implies that non-producing oil and gas wells could continue to emit microbial methane long after the targeted formation has been fully depleted,” said Kang, study co-author and Associate Professor of Civil Engineering.

“However, the exact source of this methane is often unclear because the subsurface is a complex system with multiple gas-bearing formations,” she said.

/* */