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Simple Diagnostic Tool Predicts Individual Risk of Alzheimer’s

May 31, 2021 Uncategorized

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed an algorithm that combines data from a simple blood test and brief memory tests, to predict with great accuracy who will develop Alzheimer’s disease in the future.

Approximately 20-30% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease are wrongly diagnosed within specialist healthcare, and diagnostic work-up is even more difficult in primary care. Accuracy can be significantly improved by measuring the proteins tau and beta-amyloid via a spinal fluid sample, or PET scan. However, those methods are expensive and only available at a relatively few specialized memory clinics worldwide. Early and accurate diagnosis of AD is becoming even more important, as new drugs that slow down the progression of the disease will hopefully soon become available.

A research group led by Professor Oskar Hansson at Lund University have now shown that a combination of relatively easily acccessible tests can be used for early and reliable diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The study examined 340 patients with mild memory impairment in the Swedish BioFINDER Study, and the results were confirmed in a North American study of 543 people.

A combination of a simple blood test (measuring a variant of the tau protein and a risk gene for Alzheimer’s) and three brief cognitive tests that only take 10 minutes to complete, predicted with over 90% certainty which patients would develop Alzheimer’s dementia within four years. This simple prognostic algorithm was significantly more accurate than the clinical predictions by the dementia experts who examined the patients, but did not have access to expensive spinal fluid testing or PET scans, said Oskar Hansson.

”Our algorithm is based on a blood analysis of phosphylated tau and a risk gene for Alzheimer’s, combined with testing of memory and executive function. We have now developed a prototype online tool to estimate the individual risk of a person with mild memory complaints developing Alzheimer’s dementia within four years”, explains Sebastian Palmqvist, first author of the study and associate professor at Lund University.

One clear advantage of the algorithm is that it has been developed for use in clinics without access to advanced diagnostic instruments. In the future, the algorithm might therefore make a major difference in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s within primary healthcare.

“The algorithm has currently only been tested on patients who have been examined in memory clinics. Our hope is that it will also be validated for use in primary healthcare as well as in developing countries with limited resources”, says Sebastian Palmqvist.

Simple diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s could also improve the development of drugs, as it is difficult to recruit the suitable study partcipants for drug trials in a time- and cost-effective manner. ”The algorithm will enable us to recruit people with Alzheimer’s at an early stage, which is when new drugs have a better chance of slowing the course of the disease”, concludes Professor Oskar Hansson.

The findings are published in Nature Medicine.

Source: https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/

Inhaled Nanobodies Effective Against COVID-19

May 28, 2021 Uncategorized

In a paper published today in Science Advances, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine showed that inhalable nanobodies targeting the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus can prevent and treat severe COVID-19 in hamsters. This is the first time the nanobodies–which are similar to monoclonal antibodies but smaller in size, more stable and cheaper to produce–were tested for inhalation treatment against coronavirus infections in a pre-clinical model.

The scientists showed that low doses of an aerosolized nanobody named Pittsburgh inhalable Nanobody-21 (PiN-21) protected hamsters from the dramatic weight loss typically associated with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and reduced the number of infectious virus particles in the animals’ nasal cavities, throats and lungs by a million-fold, compared to placebo treatment with a nanobody that doesn’t neutralize the virus.

“By using an inhalation therapy that can be directly administered to the infection site–the respiratory tract and lungs–we can make treatments more efficient,” said co-senior author Yi Shi, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology at Pitt. “We are very excited and encouraged by our data suggesting that PiN-21 can be highly protective against severe disease and can potentially prevent human-to-human viral transmission.”

Previously, Shi and colleagues discovered a large repertoire of over 8,000 high-affinity SARS-CoV-2 nanobodies. From this repertoire, the scientists selected an ultrapotent nanobody (Nb21) and bioengineered it into a rimeric form to further maximize its antiviral activity. The resulting PiN-21 is by far the most potent antiviral nanobody that has been identified, according to the researchers’ review of published studies.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/

Blue Origin Launches First Space Flight with Tourists on Board Next July

May 27, 2021 Uncategorized

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, will launch a rocket into space with passengers on board for the first time in July, the company said on Wednesday. One seat on the flight, which will carry six astronauts on a short jaunt to the edge of outer space, is up for auction. The first astronaut flight of New Shepard, a suborbital spacecraft, is scheduled for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

“We’ve spent years testing, so we’re ready,” Ariane Cornell, director of astronaut sales for Blue Origin, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, also started Blue Origin in 2000. Like other billionaires who have invested in spaceflight, he has stated broad goals for humanity’s expansion around the solar system, imagining millions of people eventually living and working in space.

For now, most of Blue Origin’s business has stayed closer to Earth. It builds and sells rocket engines to another rocket company, United Launch Alliance. A rocket that would lift cargo to orbit is not expected to be ready for years, and the company recently lost a competition with SpaceX for a contract to build a moon lander for NASA’s astronauts (it has protested the award). Customers have also paid to fly science experiments for NASA and private scientists during test flights of the New Shepard spacecraft.

It has been preparing for years for the start of its space tourism program, which would offer suborbital trips to what is considered the boundary of outer space, 62 miles above Earth. A competitor,Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, also plans to fly space tourists on suborbital jaunts. Virgin Galactic’s space plane, known as SpaceShipTwo, is flown by two pilots, so it has carried people to space on test flights, but no paying passengers yet. Blue Origin’s tourist rocket is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space. It has undergone 15 test flights, none of which had passengers aboard. Ahead of the latest test, in April, a crew rehearsed boarding and exiting the capsule.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/

Rejuvenating the brain

May 26, 2021 Uncategorized

Alzheimer’s disease is the main cause of dementia and current therapeutic strategies cannot prevent, slow down or cure the pathology. The disease is characterized by memory loss, caused by the degeneration and death of neuronal cells in several regions of the brain, including the hippocampus, which is where memories are initially formed. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) have identified a small molecule that can be used to rejuvenate the brain and counteract the memory loss.

The presence of adult-born cells in the hippocampus of old people was recently demonstrated in scientific studies. It suggests that, generally speaking, the so-called process of adult neurogenesis is sustained throughout adulthood. Adult neurogenesis is linked to several aspects of cognition and memory in both animal models and humans, and it was reported to sharply decrease in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers also found that higher levels of adult neurogenesis in these patients seem to correlate with better cognitive performance before death.

“This could suggest that the adult-born neurons in our brain may contribute to a sort of cognitive reserve that could later on provide higher resilience to memory loss,” says Evgenia Salta, group leader at the NIN. Therefore, researchers from the NIN investigated if giving a boost to adult neurogenesis could help prevent or improve dementia in Alzheimer’s disease.

Salta: “Seven years ago, while studying a small RNA molecule that is expressed in our brain, called microRNA-132, we came across a rather unexpected observation. This molecule, which we had previously found to be decreased in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients, seemed to regulate homeostasis of neural stem cells in the central nervous system.” Back then, Alzheimer’s was thought to be a disease affecting only mature neuronal cells, so at first glance this finding did not seem to explain a possible role of microRNA-132 in the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Source: https://nin.nl/

The Global Death Toll From Working Too Much on the Rise

May 25, 2021 Uncategorized

“Take it easy. Stop working so hard. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. I’m really worried about you.” At one point in your career, you may have heard this from a loved one.

You probably met this concern with excuses and rationalizations saying things like, “The company is depending on me. I’m close to getting a raise and promotion if I keep this up!” You don’t think of the toll taken on your emotional, mental and physical health. It’s all about building and growing your career, in an attempt to climb the corporate ladder.

It’s easy to believe that you can keep putting in the long hours and endure the unrelenting stress without repercussions. There is a feeling of invincibility. “Bad things happen to other people,” you tell yourself. “I’m relatively young and healthy,” you believe. “These are my prime earning years and I have to hustle.”

The problem is, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), “Long working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000.” The substantial number of strokes and heart disease resulted from working “at least 55 hours a week.” The study by the WHO and ILO concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with a higher risk of a stroke and dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35 to 40 hours a week. There is heightened concern that people are working increasingly longer hours, which puts more people at risk of an “early death.” They are literally working themselves to death.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/

Unhackable

May 24, 2021 Uncategorized

An “unhackable” computer chip lived up to its name in its first bug bounty competition, foiling over 500 cybersecurity researchers who were offered tens of thousands of dollars to analyze it and three other secure processor technologies for vulnerabilities. MORPHEUS, developed by computer science researchers at the University of Michigan, weathered the three-month virtual program DARPA dubbed the Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering—or FETT—Bug Bounty without a single successful attack. In bug bounty programs, organizations or software developers offer compensation or other incentives to individuals who can find and report bugs or vulnerabilities.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, partnered with the Department of Defense’s Defense Digital Service and Synack, a crowdsourced security platform, to conduct FETT, which ran from June through August 2020. It also tested technologies from MIT, Cambridge University, Lockheed Martin and nonprofit tech institute SRI International. The U-M team achieved its results by abandoning a cornerstone of traditional computer security—finding and eliminating software bugs, says team leader Todd Austin, the S. Jack Hu Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. MORPHEUS works by reconfiguring key bits of its code and data dozens of times per second, turning any vulnerabilities into dead ends for hackers.

MORPHEUS blocks potential attacks by encrypting and randomly reshuffling key bits of its own code and data twenty times per second.

“Imagine trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube that rearranges itself every time you blink,” Austin said. “That’s what hackers are up against with MORPHEUS. It makes the computer an unsolvable puzzle.”

MORPHEUS has previously proven itself in the lab, but the FETT Bug Bounty marks the first time that it was exposed to a group of skilled cybersecurity researchers from around the globe. Austin says its success is further proof that computer security needs to move away from its traditional bugs-and-patches paradigm. “Today’s approach of eliminating security bugs one by one is a losing game,” he said. “Developers are constantly writing code, and as long as there is new code, there will be new bugs and security vulnerabilities. With MORPHEUS, even if a hacker finds a bug, the information needed to exploit it vanishes within milliseconds. It’s perhaps the closest thing to a future-proof secure system.”

For FETT, the MORPHEUS architecture was built into a computer system that housed a mock medical database. Computer experts were invited to try to breach it remotely. MORPHEUS was the second-most popular target of the seven processors evaluated.

Source: https://news.umich.edu/

Great Wall to Sell Hydrogen SUV

May 21, 2021 Uncategorized

https://www.autonews.com/

How to Track the Brain as it Generates an Antonym

May 20, 2021 Uncategorized

A study using epilepsy patients undergoing surgery has given neuroscientists an opportunity to track in unprecedented detail the movement of a thought through the human brain, all the way from inspiration to response. The findings, published in 2018, confirmed the role of the prefrontal cortex as the coordinator of complex interactions between different regions, linking our perception with action and serving as what can be considered the “glue of cognition“.

Previous efforts to measure the passing of information from one area to the other have relied on processes such as electroencephalography (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which, while non-invasive, offer less than perfect resolution. The study led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, recorded the electrical activity of neurons using a precise technique called electrocorticograhy (ECoG). This required hundreds of tiny electrodes to be placed right up against the cortex, providing more spatial detail than EEG and improving the resolution in time of fMRI. While this poses an unethical level of risk for your average volunteer, patients undergoing surgery for epilepsy have their brain activity monitored in this very way, giving the researchers a perfect chance to conduct a few tests.

Each of the 16 test subjects performed a number of tasks varied to suit their individual arrangement of electrodes, all while having their neural activity monitored and tracked. Participants were required to listen to a stimulus and respond, or watch images of faces or animals on a screen and asked to perform an action. Some tasks were more complex than others; for example, a simple action involved simply repeating a word, while a more complex version was to think of its antonym.

Researchers monitored the split-second movement of electrical activity from one area – such as areas associated with interpreting auditory stimuli – to the prefrontal cortex, to areas required to shape an action, such as the motor cortex.

Tracking the Brain as it Generates an Antonym. Click on the image to enjoy the video.

While none of this threw up any surprises, the results clearly emphasized the role of the prefrontal cortex in directing activity.

For some tasks its input was fairly limited. In others the area was required to work hard, managing signals from multiple parts of the brain to coordinate the recognition of words, possibly dredging up memories before setting to work a bunch of muscles to provide a novel answer. “These very selective studies have found that the frontal cortex is the orchestrator, linking things together for a final output,” neuroscientist Robert Knight from UC Berkeley said at the time. “It’s the glue of cognition.”

The prefrontal cortex was seen to remain active throughout most of the thought process, as would be expected for a multitasking region of the brain. The quicker the handoff from one area to the other, the faster people responded to a stimulus. “fMRI studies often find that when a task gets progressively harder, we see more activity in the brain, and the prefrontal cortex in particular,” said the study’s lead author, neuroscientist Avgusta Shestyuk. “Here, we are able to see that this is not because the neurons are working really, really hard and firing all the time, but rather, more areas of the cortex are getting recruited.”

What did come as something of a surprise were details on the precise timing of each area. Some of the responding areas lit up remarkably early, often during the stimulus, suggesting that even before we have a complete response handy, our brain is already getting those parts of the cortex ready for action. “This might explain why people sometimes say things before they think,” suggests Shestyuk.

This research was published in Nature Human Behaviour.

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/

Junk food linked to gut inflammation

May 19, 2021 Uncategorized

Eating a Western diet impairs the immune system in the gut in ways that could increase risk of infection and inflammatory bowel disease, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cleveland Clinic.

The study, in mice and people, showed that a diet high in sugar and fat causes damage to Paneth cells, immune cells in the gut that help keep inflammation in check. When Paneth cells aren’t functioning properly, the gut immune system is excessively prone to inflammation, putting people at risk of inflammatory bowel disease and undermining effective control of disease-causing microbes. The findings, published in Cell Host & Microbe, open up new approaches to regulating gut immunity by restoring normal Paneth cell function.

A tiny, 3D model of the intestines formed from anti-inflammatory cells known as Paneth cells (green and red) and other intestinal cells (blue) is seen in the image above. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cleveland Clinic used such models, called organoids, to understand why a Western-style diet rich in fat and sugar damages Paneth cells and disrupts the gut immune system

“Inflammatory bowel disease has historically been a problem primarily in Western countries such as the U.S., but it’s becoming more common globally as more and more people adopt Western lifestyles,” said lead author Ta-Chiang Liu, MD, PhD, an associate professor of pathology & immunology at Washington University. “Our research showed that long-term consumption of a Western-style diet high in fat and sugar impairs the function of immune cells in the gut in ways that could promote inflammatory bowel disease or increase the risk of intestinal infections.”

Paneth cell impairment is a key feature of inflammatory bowel disease. For example, people with Crohn’s disease, a kind of inflammatory bowel disease characterized by abdominal pain, diarrhea, anemia and fatigue, often have Paneth cells that have stopped working.

Source: https://medicine.wustl.edu/

Hunting for the Coronavirus’s Origin

May 18, 2021 Uncategorized

More than a year after Covid-19 touched off the worst pandemic in more than a century, scientists have yet to determine its origins. The closest related viruses to SARS-CoV-2 were found in bats over 1,000 miles from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease erupted in late 2019. Initially, cases were tied to a fresh food market and possibly the wildlife sold there. An investigation in early 2021 has highlighted the possibility that they acted as a vector, transferring the virus from bats to humans. More politically charged theories allege the virus accidentally escaped from a nearby research laboratory, or entered China from another country via imported frozen food. Amid all the posturing, governments and scientists agree that deciphering the creation story.

Three closely related viruses to SARS-CoV-2 that had been collected during the previous 15 years. The closest, about 96% identical, was isolated from a species of horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus affinis, in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 2013. Some researchers have linked that particular virus to a mineshaft in Mojiang county there, where six men contracted a pneumonia-like disease in 2012 that killed three of them. Although they may share a common ancestor, the two are not similar enough to indicate SARS-CoV-2 was derived from the Yunnan virus. Sampling of bats in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, haven’t found any positive for the pandemic strain. Coronaviruses sharing genetic features with SARS-CoV-2 have been found in other bat species and pangolins, a scaly, ant-eating mammal, elsewhere in Asia, highlighting the broad distribution that may have contributed to its evolution.

https://www.bloomberg.com/

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- When the Bison Come Back, Will the Ecosystem Follow?
  An effort to bring wild buffalo to the Great Plains aims to restore one of the world’s most endangered landscapes and increase climate resilience.
- A New Way to Understand the Brain's Intricate Rhythm
  Researchers have found evidence in humans that individual neurons time their firing to a deeper beat. But there’s a mystery: What does it mean?
- How Risky Is It to Send Jeff Bezos to the Edge of Space?
  Today's commercial spacecraft have a safety advantage, thanks to simpler designs and suborbital missions. But with rockets, nothing is certain.
- How to Protect Species and Save the Planet—at Once
  A major new report calls on humanity to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises simultaneously. Here's what that might look like.
- Watch Drones Fly Through a Fake Forest Without Crashing
  Each copter doesn’t just track where the others are. It constantly predicts where they’ll go.
- Could Brain Training Help Address Police Brutality?
  New neuroscience-based technologies aim to improve decisionmaking under pressure. But solving systemic problems will take a lot more than that.
- Your Clothes Spew Microfibers Before They’re Even Clothes
  The clothing supply chain releases some 265 million pounds of microfibers that wash into the environment each year.
- A New Way to Shape Metal Nanoparticles—With a Magnetic Field
  Making the tiny nanoparticles used in everything from electronics to paint isn't easy. But a new experiment creates order out of chaos.
- Will a Volcanic Eruption Be a Burp or a Blast?
  Scientists have begun to decipher the seismic signals that reveal how explosive a volcanic eruption is going to be.
- The Drought Is Making the Klamath River’s Baby Salmon Sick
  Dry conditions are worsening a warm-water disease that’s sweeping through juvenile fish. Their deaths will create a future crisis for both fish and human populations.
- New Vaccine Incentives, Surplus Dose Shipments, and More News
  Catch up on the most important updates from this week.
- You Need to Weigh Some Water. All You’ve Got Is a Paper Clip
  OK, so you might need a couple other supplies, but your best option is to do what MacGyver would do: Turn it into a scale.
- The Sneaky, Lying Flower That Pretends to Be a Rotting Beetle
  Aristolochia microstoma finds love by smelling like death. Coffin flies can’t resist.
- Wait, Vaccine Lotteries Actually Work?
  Ooh, the behavioral economists are going to be so smug about this.
- The UK Has a Plan for a New ‘Pandemic Radar’ System
  Disease surveillance schemes to catch the next rising virus already exist—they’re just not communicating with each other.
- Peanut the Waiter Robot Is Proof That Your Job Is Safe
  Restaurants are struggling to hire people, so one Jersey Shore grill employed a machine. It confirms that humans remain indispensable.
- This Dam Acts Like a Water Cannon. Let’s Do Some Physics!
  Like a giant bucket with a hole, the Funil Hydropower Plant sprays out an enormous jet of water. We can use its speed to calculate the depth of the reservoir.
- Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof
  Some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved long before centralized nervous systems.

Geek Culture
- I Treated My Unhealthy Gaming Obsession ... With More Games
  The root issue had less to do with the hobby and more to do with me.
- Pokémon Cards Are Surging. So Is Hate Toward Graders
  The business of grading Pokémon cards can be lucrative, time-consuming, and rife with furious, virulent abuse.
- We Asked Giant-Robot Experts to Critique Video Game Mecha
  How realistic are Metal Gears and Titans anyway? WIRED asked industrial design and robotics pros how they'd operate.
- Why Do People Love UFOs So Much?
  Sci-fi author F. Brett Cox loves stories with mysterious spacecraft but is a firm skeptic when it comes to actual alien visitors.
- Loki and the Return of Appointment Television
  Not since Game of Thrones have audiences really cared about watching something right when it airs. Thanks to a recent spate of streaming hits, that seems to be changing.
- Games Are Reimagining the Road Trip for a Modern Era
  Developers are using procedural generation, resource management, and dialog choices to create memorable and powerful journeys.
- Remember When Multiplayer Gaming Needed Envelopes and Stamps?
  The history of play-by-mail includes bribes, forgeries, and games that took years to finish.
- The Joy and Misery of Hunting for Video Game Trophies
  For some, relentlessly unlocking achievements is a lifestyle. For others, it's a headache.
- How to Celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month—IRL or Online
  With the ongoing pandemic, here are a variety of ways you can join in at home, or anywhere.
- The Best Made-Up Worlds Are Made Up of Real Parts
  Helene Wecker’s The Hidden Palace brings magic to 20th century Manhattan. Turns out that’s easier than putting the wrong stormtroopers into Star Wars Land.
- How Roblox Became a Playground for Virtual Fascists
  Thousands of players flocked to a digital world filled with draconian rules, slavery, and anti-Semitism—and tested how far “just a game” can go.
- The Case for Putting Down the Video Game Controller
  If gaming isn’t as fulfilling as it used to be, it’s OK to walk away and go do something else.
- What It Takes to Turn a Video Game Into a Tabletop One
  How do developers take open worlds and condense them into a form that fits on your coffee table? It's not easy, but when it works, it's incredible.
- Deathloop and the Radical Necessity of 2 Black Leads
  Building games that reflect the diversity of the real world is nothing new to the team at Arkane Studios. But this project presented unique challenges.
- Going Medieval Is a Great Entry Point Into Colony Sims
  The game lets you build a new post-plague civilization in 14th-century England, and it’s been topping Steam charts—for good reason.
- The Incredible, Absurd World of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
  The update has been a long time coming, and if you haven't played, now's the time. We asked Robert Kurvitz, the game's designer, if he’s finally satisfied with it.
- Why Are Writers Fleeing Substack for Ghost?
  The publishing platform is gaining traction as a Substack substitute. But the comparison isn't so simple.
- A Love Letter to Grand Theft Auto's Best Side Stories
  The often-overlooked Liberty City and Vice City Stories have some of the best character development and the most cinematic moments in the franchise.
- Twitch Turns 10, and the Creator Economy Is in Its Debt
  The livestreaming platform for gamers helped pioneer the patronage systems that prop up so much of the internet today.
- Why Are There So Few Women in Wargaming?
  A combination of a high barrier to entry and outdated, misogynistic attitudes keep women out of a hobby where they could thrive.

Latest News

BUSINESS
- How Some Americans Are Breaking Out of Political Bubbles
  A growing number of people are seeking a wider diversity of news sources or opinions contrary to their own to combat information silos within social media.
- Jeff Bezos Risks It All for His Space Dream
  Plus: The origins of Blue Origin, Apple's annoying error messages, and a Kardashian plot twist.
- VC Pledged to 'Do Better' on Diversity. It's Barely Changed
  The Black Lives Matter protests drew sympathetic public statements from investors in 2020. One year later, signs of progress are harder to find.
- Help! How Do I Make Work Friends When Everyone's Remote?
  Guest columnist Alan Henry offers advice for putting yourself out there online.
- The Pandemic Put an End to Rush Hour. What Happens Now?
  Remote work generally reduces driving. But the travel behavior of telecommuters isn’t as straightforward as it might seem.
- What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru
  She was a star engineer who warned that messy AI can spread racism. Google brought her in. Then it forced her out. Can Big Tech take criticism from within?
- China's Quiet Ecommerce Giant Thrives on Fresh Produce
  Pinduoduo, which recently passed Alibaba as the shopping site with the most customers, connects 12 million farmers to more than 800 million users.
- Covid Brings Automation to the Workplace, Killing Some Jobs
  Unable to find enough workers, employers are turning to technology to perform tasks—and women are likely to be the hardest hit.
- Google Hopes AI Can Turn Search Into a Conversation
  The tech giant wants its core product to infer meaning from human language, answer multipart questions—and look more like Google Assistant sounds.
- China Has Triggered a Bitcoin Mining Exodus
  The promise of a crackdown is sending the country's crypterati scrambling for the exit.
- Admit It: The Facebook Oversight Board Is Kind of Working
  Facebook has agreed to follow some of the board’s nonbinding recommendations regarding the Donald Trump suspension. That’s progress.
- A Google Alum Wants to Make Search Pure Again
  Plus: A lesson in macro Googlenomics, an audio jamming dream, and high-stakes cheesesteaks.
- Don't End Up on This Artificial Intelligence Hall of Shame
  A list of incidents that caused, or nearly caused, harm aims to prompt developers to think more carefully about the tech they create.
- They Rage-Quit the School System—and They're Not Going Back
  The pandemic created a new, more diverse, more connected crop of homeschoolers. They could help shape what learning looks like for everyone.
- The All-Seeing Eyes of New York’s 15,000 Surveillance Cameras
  Video from the cameras is often used in facial-recognition searches. A report finds they are most common in neighborhoods with large nonwhite populations.
- Help! Must We With the Virtual Meeting Small Talk?
  Megan weighs in on the value of idle chatter.
- Inside Silicon Valley’s Mayo Marketing Madness
  The war on eggs started back in the ’70s, not with the company formerly known as Hampton Creek but with a little café-grocery store in Los Angeles.
- The Mayor of Reno Is Betting Big on the Blockchain
  Hillary Schieve invests in cryptocurrencies herself, and she sees the technology as a way to improve government services.
- This Arcane Manual Could Lead to More Human-Friendly Cities
  For decades, the federal government has issued a guide for designing streets. Activists want to make it better for pedestrians and cyclists.
- How a Chaos Monkey Caused an Apple Uprising
  Plus: A review of the book from 2016, the accessibility potential for AR, and a few too many sinking ships.

IDEAS
- To Fight Online Misinformation, Criminalize Voter Suppression
  Congress should salvage a provision buried in the rubble of HR1 that would hold platforms liable for election misinformation.
- Political and Urban-Rural Divides Prolong The Digital Divide
  Democrats and Republicans alike need to be honest about how much broadband for all will cost. And they can make Big Tech help pay for it.
- Facial Verification Won't Fight Fraud
  Unemployment fraud is a real problem, and biased software only makes it worse. States need privacy-preserving alternatives.
- Crypto Isn’t About Money. It’s About Fandom
  And that’s why we will fight about it forever.
- Trump's Failed Blog Proves He Was Just Howling Into the Void
  Without the algorithmic boosts of Twitter and Facebook, there are few “active” internet users to be found.
- Oximeters Used to Be Designed for Equity. What Happened?
  The pandemic drew attention to the racial bias built into pulse oxes. But calls to create a fairer device are missing one thing: It once existed.
- Changing Minds About Why Doctors Change Their Minds
  After Covid, being open with patients about uncertainty may be the surest way to build trust in medicine.
- More Content Moderation Is Not Always Better
  Simply erasing things from the internet comes at a cost. It might not be worth it.
- I'm a Cicada. You're a Horny Human. We Are Not the Same
  People preparing for a post-vax summer are likening themselves to the emerging insects. WIRED commissioned one cicada for its take.
- Dumbed Down AI Rhetoric Harms Everyone
  By ignorance or malice, policymakers use sweeping platitudes to regulate artificial intelligence, which may persecute citizens more than protect them.
- VR Trainings Are Not Going to Fix Corporate Racism
  HR departments are deploying virtual-reality platforms to foster racial empathy. But building inclusive workplaces will take more than that.
- STEM’s Racial Reckoning Just Entered Its Most Crucial Phase
  One year after George Floyd’s murder, science and technology institutions continue to evolve. The most radical and necessary step remains.
- In Apple’s War On Developers, Users Are the Biggest Losers
  The App Store’s draconian demands prevent app creators from making changes that would help consumers, or from making helpful apps in the first place.
- One-Size-Fits-All Mask Guidance Isn't Going to Work Anymore
  The "choose your own adventure" phase of the pandemic calls for better alternatives. Time for policies to reflect that.
- The World Loses Under Bill Gates’ Vaccine Colonialism
  As many countries wait for Covid vaccines, the world needs a patent-free “People’s Vaccine”—not more of Gates’ intellectual property stubbornness.
- The Case for Using MDMA to Help Heal Victims of Trauma
  A psychiatrist explores how a drug often associated with Burning Man could be a breakthrough in treating PTSD.
- Online Dating Apps Are Actually Kind of a Disaster
  The multibillion-dollar industry—which has surged during the pandemic—puts many individuals at risk, and nothing’s being done about it.
- To Observe the Muon Is to Experience Hints of Immortality
  Attempting to model the universe as precisely as possible is to try to see the one thing that even the strictest atheist agrees is everlasting.
- Why Humans Are So Bad at Seeing the Future
  People tend to make predictions while looking through their own narrow lens. The real vision lies in seeing connections.
- In Defense of Snow Days
  Virtual school after a snowstorm is yet another kind of techno-solutionist slush that should be plowed away.

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