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Category: Health

Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

The New York Times reports: The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported on Wednesday. In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people…

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Palantir AI is making a mess of nurses’ schedules. They say it’s a safety issue

Palantir AI is making a mess of nurses’ schedules. They say it’s a safety issue

Wired reports: Over the past four months, Amber Retzloff, a critical care nurse in Florida, requested to work 50 specific 12-hour shifts. But over half the time, she says her hospital’s Palantir-powered scheduling software assigned her to different shifts, often putting her on back-to-back-to-back days and leaving her mentally drained. Retzloff doesn’t expect to always get the slots she wants, but by her count the tool does a far worse job honoring her preferences than managers did when they assigned…

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A human gene lurks in a virus that causes skin infections

A human gene lurks in a virus that causes skin infections

The New York Times reports: Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago. And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us. Previous studies have demonstrated that viruses can pick up genes from their hosts. But the new discovery, reported Thursday in the journal Science, may be the first known instance of a virus with a human gene acquired in recent evolutionary…

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AI is pushing medical costs higher

AI is pushing medical costs higher

The New York Times reports: In the latest sign that artificial intelligence is fueling higher health care costs, a group of insurers released a report Thursday claiming that hospitals’ use of A.I. was responsible for nearly $1 billion in additional expenses over two years. Using codes for various medical conditions, hospitals submitted claims for tens of thousands of patients that described their illnesses as more complex in 2024 and 2025 than in 2023. Despite the added conditions, there was no…

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Death by AI data centers

Death by AI data centers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang compared the impacts of AI data centers to having a surgery. "They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that." pic.twitter.com/9jer8muLeJ — Pubity (@pubity) September 25, 2026 Dorothy Slater writes: My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a…

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AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

The Financial Times reports: Staff at world-leading AI companies and institutions are increasingly suffering from the mental strain of working on systems they fear could cause serious harm to society. Multiple staff at the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute, the global leader in the independent testing of frontier AI models, have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The tight schedules for testing unreleased AI models and alarm over…

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Meta has accepted, for the first time, that much of its business model is unacceptable for children

Meta has accepted, for the first time, that much of its business model is unacceptable for children

Nathaniel Lubin writes: For almost two decades, social-media companies have avoided legal consequences for the negative effects of exposure to their products. Damage to users’ mental health, the facilitation of crimes including sexual abuse—outcomes like these have been the subject of public protest, but were never successfully challenged through legal action. Then, about four years ago, prosecutors across America began to focus on companies’ business and design decisions, rather than, as they had in the past, on companies’ promotion of…

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RFK Jr lied in Senate confirmation hearings, newly revealed documents indicate

RFK Jr lied in Senate confirmation hearings, newly revealed documents indicate

The Guardian reports: Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”. Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps…

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Aging brains maintain robust language networks despite cognitive decline

Aging brains maintain robust language networks despite cognitive decline

Neuroscience News reports: As human beings age, many cognitive functions naturally decline. Brain scans have consistently shown age-related deterioration in neural networks responsible for executive functions, working memory, and problem-solving. But when it comes to language, the aging brain tells a completely different, highly resilient story. Barring neurological conditions such as stroke or dementia, most older adults retain excellent language skills. In fact, many individuals experience linguistic improvement as they accumulate a richer vocabulary throughout their lives. A newly published…

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Trump admin has deleted or altered nearly 400 datasets, endangering public health, education and more

Trump admin has deleted or altered nearly 400 datasets, endangering public health, education and more

The Guardian reports: A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world. These are among the hundreds of federal datasets that the Trump administration has taken down or altered as part of its aggressive campaign to wipe all mentions of data findings that do not align with the administration’s priorities. Over the past year…

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Biden brought down drug prices, then Trump tried to take the credit

Biden brought down drug prices, then Trump tried to take the credit

The Guardian reports: The White House flooded social media on Saturday with an image of Donald Trump showing off the recent Washington Post headline “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, but failed to mention that experts cited in the article actually attributed the price drop to Joe Biden, not Trump. On its official accounts, the White House triumphantly captioned the photograph of Trump: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary,…

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Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises

Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises

Science Daily reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may already be influencing human biology. New research has identified long-term changes in blood chemistry that appear to track rising atmospheric CO2, raising concerns that an important blood marker could approach the upper end of its healthy range within the next several decades. The findings may be particularly important for children and teenagers. Because their bodies are still developing, younger generations are expected to experience the greatest lifetime exposure…

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Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia

Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia

The Guardian reports: In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving. A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven. “It’s not just one or two fields like this. How can I even put it into…

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Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

  Fortune reports: A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next…

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AI just created viable viruses that don’t exist in nature

AI just created viable viruses that don’t exist in nature

Carl Zimmer reports: For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens. Synthesizing viruses from scratch is hardly new. Researchers long ago learned how to manufacture viral genomes; they are used to investigate antiviral drugs and vaccines, as well as to learn how viruses work. But the new study, published Thursday in…

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The Americans ignored by Trump: ‘Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it’

The Americans ignored by Trump: ‘Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it’

Nicholas Kristof writes: After a 1,000-mile road trip across a swath of America, I can’t get one person out of my mind: Trinity Goodman, a cheerful, chatty woman in Oklahoma City who had a bandage on her arm. The reason for the bandage? Goodman, 44, survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. She had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and six pennies in her piggy bank. “That’s my full…

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