The effects of the gut microbiome on our health are far-reaching – research shows that even our lungs are influenced by this community of microbes.

The interaction between the gut and the lungs is enabled by the gut-lung axis. This axis plays a crucial role in our respiratory health – including whether or not a person develops various lung diseases. By better understanding this connection, we may potentially be able to improve treatments for lung diseases and boost respiratory health.

Studies have revealed that people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer often have an imbalanced gut microbiome – a condition known as dysbiosis.

For example, children with asthma often have lower levels of beneficial bacteria – such as Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, which are crucial for maintaining a healthy immune response. Similarly, patients with lung cancer may have lower levels of bacterial strains that help fight inflammation.

The reason an imbalance of gut bacteria can exacerbate lung conditions is because it increases inflammation and allows pathogens to thrive.

Respiratory infections can also alter gut microbiota, creating a vicious cycle that worsens health outcomes. For example, research in mice shows infections by respiratory syncytial virus, the influenza virus and Sars-COV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can all lead to changes in the gut microbiome’s composition.

COVID-19 infections may also lead to gut dysbiosis. And, this dysbiosis may still be present 30 days after being infected by the virus.

On the flip-side, research shows that when the gut microbiome is balanced, it may reduce respiratory symptoms. This is thanks to substances produced by beneficial gut bacteria, called short-chain fatty acids (such as butyrate and propionate). These substances have powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

Short-chain fatty acids have been found to travel through the bloodstream and can reduce inflammation in the lungs. This bolsters our defences against respiratory infections and diseases.

In fact, research shows children who have higher levels of short-chain fatty acids in their gut have a lower risk of developing asthma. Short-chain fatty acids have also been linked to fewer COPD symptoms in adults.

Targeting the gut

Given the important link between the gut and the lungs, researchers are now exploring whether treatments that target the gut microbiome can improve lung health.

The trillions of bacteria living in our gut have an extraordinary effect on our health. They’re in charge of digestion, breaking down the foods we eat and extracting their vitamins and minerals. A healthy, balanced microbiome also helps ward off infections and even lowers risk of certain diseases.

The effects of the gut microbiome on our health are far-reaching – research shows that even our lungs are influenced by this community of microbes.

The interaction between the gut and the lungs is enabled by the gut-lung axis. This axis plays a crucial role in our respiratory health – including whether or not a person develops various lung diseases. By better understanding this connection, we may potentially be able to improve treatments for lung diseases and boost respiratory health.

Studies have revealed that people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer often have an imbalanced gut microbiome – a condition known as dysbiosis.

For example, children with asthma often have lower levels of beneficial bacteria – such as Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, which are crucial for maintaining a healthy immune response. Similarly, patients with lung cancer may have lower levels of bacterial strains that help fight inflammation.

The reason an imbalance of gut bacteria can exacerbate lung conditions is because it increases inflammation and allows pathogens to thrive.

Respiratory infections can also alter gut microbiota, creating a vicious cycle that worsens health outcomes. For example, research in mice shows infections by respiratory syncytial virus, the influenza virus and Sars-COV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can all lead to changes in the gut microbiome’s composition.

COVID-19 infections may also lead to gut dysbiosis. And, this dysbiosis may still be present 30 days after being infected by the virus.

Read more: COVID and your gut: how a healthy microbiome can reduce the severity of infection – and vice versa.

On the flip-side, research shows that when the gut microbiome is balanced, it may reduce respiratory symptoms. This is thanks to substances produced by beneficial gut bacteria, called short-chain fatty acids (such as butyrate and propionate). These substances have powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

Short-chain fatty acids have been found to travel through the bloodstream and can reduce inflammation in the lungs. This bolsters our defences against respiratory infections and diseases.

In fact, research shows children who have higher levels of short-chain fatty acids in their gut have a lower risk of developing asthma. Short-chain fatty acids have also been linked to fewer COPD symptoms in adults.

Targeting the gut

Given the important link between the gut and the lungs, researchers are now exploring whether treatments that target the gut microbiome can improve lung health.

A man holds a probiotic supplement in one hand and presses his stomach with his other hand.

Probiotics may help restore the gut’s balance. Doucefleur/ Shutterstock

One promising approach is the use of probiotics – live, beneficial bacteria that can restore balance to the gut microbiome.

Probiotics containing the bacterial species Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium lactis have shown potential in reducing lung inflammation and improving respiratory health. A study involving asthmatic patients found that those who received probiotic supplements experienced significant improvements in lung function.

One reason probiotics may have this benefit is because they improve the balance of bacteria in the gut. When the bacteria are in balance, they produce short-chain fatty acids that help maintain the integrity of the lung’s outer barrier, preventing pathogens from causing harm. By modulating how the immune system functions, this reduces lung inflammation and improves respiratory health.

Another approach is altering diet. High-fibre diets provide the fuel bacteria need to produce short-chain fatty acids. For instance, feeding mice a diet rich in fibre protected them against influenza by enhancing their immune responses.

Eating more fruits, vegetables and wholegrains (all great sources of fibre) can all support gut bacteria in producing short-chain fatty acids. Limiting processed foods, which often contribute to gut dysbiosis, could also play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy gut-lung axis.

Regular physical activity also promotes a diverse and healthy microbiome, further supporting respiratory health.

Gut-lung axis

Understanding how the gut-lung axis can be manipulated could lead to groundbreaking treatments for the millions of people suffering from some sort of respiratory issue.

By focusing on the gut microbiome, we can potentially prevent and treat lung diseases more effectively by addressing the underlying causes of the condition, reducing inflammation and modulating how the immune system functions. This would offer hope to the millions of people battling chronic lung conditions.

Emerging therapies, such as faecal microbiota transplants – where healthy microbiota from donors are transferred to patients with dysbiosis – have shown promise in early studies. While primarily used for gastrointestinal conditions, research shows it can also be effective in treating respiratory infections – including COPD, emphysema, to modulate dysbiosis in cystic fibrosis and improve lung function in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

There could also be potential for developing other kinds of personalised treatments – such as using probiotics that target the gut microbiome. Such approaches could not only improve respiratory health but also enhance wellbeing more generally.

The gut-lung connection is a powerful reminder of how interconnected our body systems truly are. By nurturing our gut microbiome, we can positively impact our respiratory health and potentially ward off lung diseases.

Source

Research has found that an NHS-recommended liquid diet that involves only consuming 900-calories-a-day could reverse the effects of type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is a common condition where the level of sugar (glucose) in the blood becomes too high.

It happens if the body cannot make enough of, or cannot correctly use, a hormone called insulin, which controls blood sugar.

Some cases are linked to being overweight. That’s because fat can build up in and around the pancreas – the organ that makes insulin.

According to the latest figures from Diabetes UK, 4.4 million people in the UK live with diabetes.

Additionally, 1.2 million people could be living with type 2 diabetes who are yet to be diagnosed.

The soup and shake diet requires a one-year commitment, and dieters must endure 12 weeks of consuming only shakes, soups and meal-replacement bars, before healthy solid foods can be gradually reintroduced.

The good news is the groundbreaking diet is fully funded by the NHS, so there is no cost for the individual.

They get bespoke diet and exercise advice sessions in person or online, as well as support from their GP.

People are eligible if they are aged between 18 and 65, have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last six years and have a body mass index (BMI) over 27 kg/m2 (if from white ethnic groups) or over 25 kg/m2 (if from black, Asian and other ethnic groups).

According to a new report published by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, a third of volunteers who took on the diet shed lots of weight – nearly two-and-a-half stone (16kg) – and put their diabetes into remission.

The new study examined data on 7,540 people who took part in the programme between September 2020 and the end of 2022.

Of these, some 945 completed a full year of the programme and had provided blood samples.

Among this sample, 32 percent had put their condition into remission. In the study, this is defined by average blood sugar levels over a period of time, with an average weight loss of 15.9kg.

And some of those taking part even managed to lose up to 17.4kg.

The programme is now being offered to people around England.

Unmanaged, diabetes can increase the risk of getting other serious health problems and damage the eyes and nerves.

Dr Clare Hambling, NHS national clinical director for diabetes and obesity, said: “Obesity is one of the biggest threats to health in the UK and will be one of the biggest and most costly challenges for health systems globally, so seeing such encouraging outcomes from our programme shows that obesity can be tackled head-on.”

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Peter Jackson clearly remembers the day his GP called as it was the first time any doctor had rung him – and the news was not good.

“I distinctly remember it was 9 April, 2021,” the 68-year-old from Saintfield, County Down, said. “She told me that I was standing on the precipice of type 2 diabetes and they had spoken to me about this twice before; this was basically the last call on the matter.

“That conversation really hit home with me. While I was on the call, the GP also told me that Dundonald Hospital in Belfast were running a pilot scheme for diabetes remission, and would I consider participating in the programme, which could help remove the risk of type 2 diabetes. I didn’t give it a second thought – I wanted to take part.”

At the time, Peter was 19 and a half stone, and knew that he was not leading the healthiest of lifestyles. He had worked in sales for a tobacco company for over 43 years and although retired in 2018, his habits were “eating on the hoof” due to meetings and overnight stays across Northern Ireland.

The GP explained the daily 800-calorie “soups and shakes” diet programme and that, aged 65, Peter was at the age limit to be accepted for a place. The next step was to have an interview with the doctor running the programme at the hospital, as well as a dietitian.

“I was also required to meet with a psychologist, which was important. We had a relaxed chat, just to see if I had the right character and commitment to see the course through. It was expensive for the NHS to support me on the programme, so they needed to know that I was serious.”

Peter Jackson lost 5 stone after signing up for the NHS ‘soups and shakes’ programme and sent his diabetes into remission

Peter describes finding out about his diabetes as “a wake-up call” and as a result he lost a stone in weight through his own volition, by cutting out all his favourite snack foods and fizzy drinks – even beer.

“It was the first time in 15 years that I dropped below 19 stone, which was a huge motivation and a real incentive for me. I began the remission programme in August 2021 at a starting weight of 18 stone 6. My diet consisted of soups and shakes adding up to 800 calories a day for three months. There were 10 of us on the programme, and it was the fourth pilot scheme of its type.

“By the beginning of November, I weighed 14 and a half stone, having lost a total amount of five stone. My routine was a shake in the morning, a soup at lunch time, a shake in the afternoon and then a soup at teatime. I also had to drink two and a half litres of water throughout the day. It was quite strict, and I found drinking all that water the hardest thing to do, having not been much of a water drinker.”

From November, the patients on the programme were gradually weaned back onto real food again by reducing the soups and shakes and building in food – only then were they able to do some exercise.

“This is when I noticed I wasn’t getting the same stiff joints, which was a big bonus, and I wasn’t out of breath walking up the hill to my house. I seemed to benefit in so many ways and this was a real feel-good factor. After three months, I had a check-up and blood test and my HbA1c [hemoglobin] had come right down.

“I was fortunate that during the programme we were supplied with NHS scales, a blood pressure monitor, and a kit for checking your blood glucose levels at home, which was really handy to keep across your progress. The other big win for me was my blood pressure tablets were reduced, which I’ve maintained.”

Given how well he felt both physically and mentally after losing all the weight and sending his diabetes into remission, Peter’s only regret was not addressing his weight many years ago.

“We had moved from England back to Northern Ireland and my excuse was bringing up the kids and not having the best lifestyle in terms of work.

“When I lost that initial stone that was a huge lightbulb moment, as well as the feeling of not being breathless when walking. The target I wanted to achieve after three months on the programme was 15 per cent weight loss. Both myself and a couple of other people had reached our 15 per cent weight loss with about three weeks to go, but were encouraged to keep going until the end of the 12 weeks.

“I think being part of the programme and in a team environment was really motivating. There were so many different characters, which worked really well for me.”

Peter ended up well under his target weight of 15 stone 3, coming down to 14 stone 5, so much that locals in his village thought he was seriously ill. “I would have to tell people not to worry and that I was on a managed NHS programme and feeling great.”

He also got great support and encouragement from his wife, three children, their partners and all the grandchildren.

“Once a week I would text them all and share my progress, and they were each so supportive and equally inspired, too. When the grandchildren visited, they would say, ‘Papa you’re looking great, keep it going,’ so that was wonderful to hear and another incentive.”

Research published this week found almost one in three people on the groundbreaking NHS scheme permanently wiped out their diabetes. Currently, 10,000 people a year in England can access the scheme but “brilliant” results showing “life-changing benefits” among participants have prompted NHS leaders to consider expanding the programme across the UK.

Throughout the programme, Diabetes UK facilitated regular online Zoom meetings which proved motivational

Almost a third put their type 2 diabetes in remission, according to a paper published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal.

Peter also credits the professional support from Diabetes UK which he described as “invaluable” in helping him keep focused and his remission on track. Throughout the programme, Diabetes UK facilitated regular online Zoom meetings which proved motivational.

“I thrive on having that ongoing contact when someone is really interested in me and my well-being. I have continued to receive support from Diabetes UK on a once-a-month basis at my local community centre, with the local team organising for podiatrists, ophthalmologists, and various clinicians to pop along and see us at the centre.

“Just being able to chat, and share our experiences and any concerns, as well as find out about other aspects of diabetes, is so beneficial and serves as a place for constant learning, so having that support is great.”

Peter remains in remission and currently weighs just over 17 stone, but his personal target is 16 stone 7, which he feels will be his optimum weight.

“That’s a goal for me to aim for but it’s ongoing and I just need to keep chipping away at it. The positive is that I’m still a couple of stone lighter than I was previously. It’s also about changing habits. I was never a person that would go out walking but now with having the dogs, I do a lot of walking – they’re a great incentive to be out and about.

“I feel really proud about making these changes. I also feel very privileged to have been given that lifeline, and just from how people respond to meeting me in the street, they could see the effort and change that I’ve made and say how good I look for it… the benefits at the end are so great and worth all the challenges.

“For me it has not been about just escaping type 2 diabetes; remission comes with so many other benefits, like coming off your diabetes medication and not feeling joint and back pain. Just having a healthier outlook on life and your well-being.

“My advice is to go in all guns blazing and then slowly but surely chip away at it making a real effort along the way. Instead of going for coffee and scones, I now just have a coffee. Find out what motivates you. Someone like me needed to be pushed, even my family saying I should try and lose some weight didn’t have the impact. For me, it took my GP taking the trouble to phone and say, ‘get yourself sorted’ that did it.”

Source

ick numbers in Scotland could almost double by 2080 due to climate change if temperatures rise by 4C, researchers have warned.

Mathematicians at the University of Stirling’s Faculty of Natural Sciences have developed a new model that predicts tick density under varying climate change scenarios and produced maps showing which areas of Scotland will be worst affected.

Ticks are small arachnid parasites that are found in grassy, woodland areas, often favouring heather in Scotland, and are known to spread viral and bacterial infections such as Lyme disease.

Lyme disease can last for months, or in some cases, years, and symptoms include facial paralysis, arrythmia in the heart, and other symptoms similar to meningitis.

Researchers say that if global temperatures increase by 1C by 2080, the number of ticks in Scotland will increase by 26 per cent. Should global temperatures increase by 4C, ticks will almost double, with a 99 per cent increase predicted by 2080.

World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C to help avoid the most damaging effects.

Professor Rachel Norman, who led the study, said: “The model predicted an increase in tick densities and a spread of tick distribution over Scotland for all climate warming scenarios by 2080. The strength of these predicted increases in tick density varied depending on the habitat.

“While woodland habitats were predicted to experience the highest absolute increases, the largest proportional increases were predicted for the slopes of mountains, known as montane habitats.

“Many of these areas that were predicted to be tick-free under recent climatic conditions were predicted to become warm enough to allow sustained tick populations by 2080.”

Prof Norman and her team developed a powerful tool that is dynamic and mechanistic, yet mathematically relatively simple so it can be adopted by non-specialists. In the future, it could be adapted to predict disease risk.

The researchers found only the highest peaks in Scotland will remain too cold for maintaining tick populations if temperatures rise by 4C.

Prof Norman said: “Scotland is an ideal country for pioneering this approach as the issue of ticks and tick-borne disease risk is of increasing concern with reported increases in tick abundance and Lyme disease incidence.

“This modelling has allowed us to identify which geographic areas and habitats might be particularly vulnerable to increased tick densities owing to climate warming.

“While we developed the approach to predict tick densities over Scotland, it could be easily used for other areas and other vector species, and pathogens could be added to the model, enabling predictions of disease risk.

“Indeed, this methodology could be used more broadly to understand the dynamic response of populations over time to a variety of environmental changes and provides a neat new method in the modelling toolbox for researchers to choose from.”

The paper, titled, GIS-ODE: linking dynamic population models with GIS to predict pathogen vector abundance across a country under climate change scenarios, was published in Interface, a journal of the Royal Society.

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Humans love to ferment food and drinks – think kimchi, kombucha and beer – and we’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years.

Yogurt is a fermented favorite. Conventional yogurts are produced by fermenting milk using a standard ‘starter culture’ of Lactobacillus and Streptococcus bacterial species; probiotic yogurts supplement the starter culture with probiotic strains such as Bifidobacterium animalis.

There’s growing evidence that consuming probiotics positively affects mood and gut health. Given that honey is commonly added to yogurt, a source of probiotics, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examined the effect that adding honey to yogurt had on the gut microbiome across two studies.

“We were interested in the culinary pairing of yogurt and honey, which is common in the Mediterranean diet, and how it impacts the gastrointestinal microbiome,” said Hannah Holscher, associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, part of the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois, and the corresponding author of both studies.

In the first study, the researchers examined whether adding one of four varieties of honey – alfalfa, buckwheat, clover, and orange blossom – to a commercial yogurt (Activia) containing B. animalis affected the survivability of probiotics in the yogurt during digestion. They added 42 g (two tablespoons) of honey to 170 g (two-thirds of a cup) of yogurt and exposed the mixture to solutions in the lab that mimicked digestion in the mouth, stomach, and intestines.

“The enzymes in our mouth, stomach, and intestines help with digestion and facilitate nutrient absorption, but they also reduce the viability of microbes,” Holscher said. “That’s great when it’s pathogens but not necessarily when it comes to beneficial bacteria. We wanted to see if honey could help probiotic bacteria survive in the gut.”

For the mouth and stomach solutions, the researchers observed no difference in B. animalis survival between the different honey varieties and control versions (yogurt mixed with sugar or water). However, yogurt with honey – particularly clover honey – helped probiotic survival in the intestinal phase of digestion.

Then, the researchers tested their findings from the first study in a clinical study. Sixty-six healthy adults were randomly assigned to two groups: the control group ate 170 g of commercial pasteurized yogurt with B. animalis twice daily for two weeks, and the treatment group ate the same amount of the same yogurt plus 21 g of clover honey for the same amount of time. After two weeks, and following a four-week washout period, the treatment and control groups swapped. Participants were asked not to consume supplemental or dietary probiotics, fermented dairy products and fermented foods. They provided fecal samples and information about their bowel movements, as well as completed questionnaires to evaluate their mood, cognition, and overall well-being.

“Our findings showed that pairing honey with yogurt supported the survival of the yogurt’s probiotic bacteria in the gut, so the lab study results did translate to real-world application in humans,” Holscher said.

However, the researchers found that adding clover honey to yogurt did not affect how long food took to travel through the gut, frequency of bowel movements, mood, or cognition. Holscher attributes this to the participants being healthy to start with.

A small follow-up study was conducted wherein 36 participants consumed yogurt with sugar. Comparing the results of all three study conditions, the researchers found that combining yogurt and honey preserved the most probiotics, but there was no effect on the other health factors measured.

“We found that one tablespoon of honey in a serving of yogurt helps support probiotic survival,” said Holscher. “However, we have to keep in mind that honey is an added sugar, and most Americans need to be cognizant of the amount of sugar in their diet to maintain a healthy body weight. But adding a little bit of honey to unsweetened yogurt is a nice culinary pairing to incorporate into your menu rotation.”

Both the first and second studies were published in The Journal of Nutrition. The research was supported by the National Honey Board.

Source

The analysis considers the health data of more than 23 million US patients, born between 1920 and 1990, who were later diagnosed with cancer from 2000 to 2019.

Compared to baby boomers, researchers found Gen Xers and millennials are at a higher risk of developing 17 out of 34 considered cancers, including leukemia, breast cancer, and gastric cancer.

Millennials born in 1990 were two to three times more likely to develop pancreatic, kidney, or small intestinal cancer than baby boomers born in 1955. Female millennials also face an increased risk of liver and bile duct cancer.

What's more, nine cancers, for which incidence rates have mostly fallen in the older generations, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, testicular cancer, and anal cancer, are on the rise in younger people.

Uterine cancer alone is 169 percent more likely to impact a person born in the 1990s than people born in the 1930s.

The risk of death from these cancers is also increasing.

That's never a good sign, and it suggests there has been a quiet, generational shift in cancer risk over the past century or so.

Researchers suspect this is partly because younger generations, under the age of 50, are increasingly exposed to carcinogens in early life or young adulthood. These risky exposures, however, have "yet to be elucidated".

Ten of the 17 cancers increasing in incidence among millennials and Gen Xers are related to obesity, which could also play a role in the generational disparity.

"As the elevated risk in younger generations is carried over as individuals age, an overall increase in cancer burden could occur in the future, halting or reversing decades of progress against the disease," says cancer epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal of ACS.

"The data highlights the critical need to identify and address underlying risk factors in Gen X and Millennial populations to inform prevention strategies."

The results of the current analysis expand on previous research, which found cancer rates in people under 50 have surged by almost 80 percent in 30 years.

If trends continue, the World Health Organization warns that by 2050 cancer cases could jump by a further 77 percent. Officials blame tobacco, alcohol, obesity, and air pollution as key factors.

Other exposures, such as poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, or sleep disturbances, could also play a role in cancer incidence, although these factors "remain poorly understood", researchers note.

There is, however, some good news hiding in the recent analysis from ACS.

An "accelerated downturn" in young people with cervical cancer "shows the effectiveness of HPV vaccination, particularly in women born in approximately 1990", who were just the right age when the vaccine was approved in the US.

Previous studies have shown cervical cancer cases have dropped 90 percent since the advent of this vaccine.

Additionally, cancers related to smoking, such as lung and throat cancer, are also declining in younger birth cohorts.

"These findings add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer generations," says cancer epidemiologist Hyuna Sung of ACS.

"Although we have identified cancer trends associated with birth years, we don't yet have a clear explanation for why these rates are rising."

The study was published in The Lancet Public Health.

Source

On July 19, Jonathan Cardi and his family watched as the departures board at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, turned from green to a sea of red. “Oh my gosh, it was insane,” says Cardi. “Delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed.”

Cardi, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a member of the American Law Institute, was due to fly with Delta Airlines to a conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. With thousands of other travelers, he spent the day lining up as staff kept telling people that flights “would be taking off any minute,” he recalls. But when it became clear that planes were going nowhere, he made the 11-hour journey by rental car instead. Others heading to the conference slept at the airport, Cardi later found out.

The chaos was the result of a software update released by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which contained a defect that crashed millions of Microsoft Windows computers. The IT outage, which disrupted airlines, financial services, and various other industries, is estimated to have caused more than $5 billion in financial losses. “Because there was so much money lost, there is going to be legal action,” says Cardi, who specializes in the field of law concerned with civil liability for losses or harm.

That legal wrangling is already beginning.

On July 29, Delta informed CrowdStrike and Microsoft of its intent to sue over the $500 million it claims to have lost as a result of the outage. A class action lawsuit has been filed by law firm Labaton Keller Sucharow on behalf of CrowdStrike shareholders, claiming they were misled over the company’s software testing practices. Another law firm, Gibbs Law Group, has announced it is looking into bringing a class action on behalf of small businesses affected by the outage.

In response to WIRED’s inquiry about the shareholder class action, CrowdStrike says, “We believe this case lacks merit, and we will vigorously defend the company.” In a letter to Delta’s legal counsel seen by WIRED, a legal representative for CrowdStrike said that the company “strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct.” Microsoft declined to comment. Delta’s legal counsel declined an interview request.

Those hoping to recover financial losses will need to find creative ways to frame their cases against CrowdStrike, which is insulated to a great extent by clauses typical of software contracts that limit its liability, Cardi says. Though it may seem intuitive that CrowdStrike be on the hook for its mistake, the company is likely to be “pretty well-guarded” by the fine print, he adds.

Limitation Clause

Despite CrowdStrike conceding responsibility for the outage, neither direct customers nor businesses disrupted by proximity—i.e., the customers of CrowdStrike customers—will find it easy to recover their losses. The first question will be: What specifically would they be suing CrowdStrike for? There are a handful of theoretical options—breach of contract, negligence, or fraud—but none of them are straightforward.

Although customers may argue that CrowdStrike breached its contract in some way, “the amount of money they could recover is likely to be severely limited by the limitation clause,” says Paul MacMahon, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The purpose of any such clause is to act as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, limiting the amount of money a software vendor has to pay out. The specific contents of the contracts entered into by CrowdStrike and its customers will differ from case to case, but the general terms and conditions limit CrowdStrike’s liability to only the amount its customers pay for its services.

In the letter to Delta’s counsel, CrowdStrike’s representative claims the company’s liability is capped at the “single-digit millions,” far short of the $500 million the airline claims to have lost. To recover a more handsome sum, says MacMahon, Delta and other customers would have to convince a court that the clause is inherently unfair and therefore unenforceable, or otherwise argue that CrowdStrike had in some way committed fraud.

“It’s going to hinge on the peculiarities of the individual contractual arrangements that one business has with another,” says Colm McGrath, senior lecturer in law at King’s College London and co-editor of the Journal of Professional Negligence. But when dealing with “big boy commercial entities,” says McGrath, courts are typically inclined to uphold the terms of any agreements that result from “hard-nosed negotiations with one another in clear understanding of the risks.”

Rosemary Rivas, a partner at Gibbs Law Group leading the investigation into bringing a class action on behalf of small businesses—both CrowdStrike customers and those affected by the outage indirectly—declined to comment on the challenges posed by the CrowdStrike terms and conditions, saying only that the firm is “speaking to a wide range of businesses” as part of its investigation.

Businesses without a direct contractual relationship with CrowdStrike, meanwhile, though unaffected by any limitation clause, “probably won’t have a claim in the first place,” MacMahon says. They will not be able to sue for breach of contract, because there isn’t one. Neither could they sue for negligence, because the relevant laws apply only to personal injury or property damage, not economic loss.

The situation in which CrowdStrike finds itself, says MacMahon, is similar to that of the company whose container ship destroyed a bridge in Baltimore in March. Although the collapse will have been costly for any business that might otherwise have used the bridge, the losses are purely financial—and likewise for businesses disrupted by the IT outage in July. “They have no claim, I’m sure,” says MacMahon.

However, the various barriers will not prevent legal cases from being brought against CrowdStrike, experts say, given the extent of the financial losses involved. There have been few landmark lawsuits that put to the test the kinds of liability limitations included in software contracts, says Brian Fox, CTO at software supply chain company Sonatype, creating an opening for CrowdStrike customers to challenge them. “This could be a watershed moment,” he says.

“The fun and challenge of law is that you and I could negotiate a contract in which I exclude [from liability] everything under the sun, but you don’t know if that’s going to work until you find out in court,” McGrath says. “It could well be that the court decides that what you agreed in the contract is simply not permitted within the bounds of the law in a given jurisdiction.”

There are also separate reasons for which an organization might pursue legal action. In the very public back-and-forth between Delta and CrowdStrike, for example, there may be an element of posturing, McGrath says. “Whatever game you are playing through litigation, sometimes it’s about making sure you get the legal remedy you think is due. But sometimes, it’s about PR and publicity. In big commercial entities, I suspect there is a careful discussion about which of two imperatives is the more pressing.”

In its letter to Delta, CrowdStrike points to the length of time it took Delta to recover from the outage in comparison to other airlines that restored operations far more quickly. “Delta’s public threat of litigation … has contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage,” CrowdStrike’s representative wrote. The letter also includes forceful rhetoric warning of CrowdStrike’s willingness to defend itself: “While litigation would be unfortunate, CrowdStrike will respond aggressively, if forced to do so, in order to protect its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders.”

In a statement provided to WIRED, Kevin Benacci, senior director of corporate communications at CrowdStrike, said that the company has expressed regret and apologized to all of its customers already, and suggested that Delta’s legal threats should be seen as “public posturing” that “is not constructive to any party.” “We hope that Delta will agree to work cooperatively to find a resolution,” says Benacci.

The reality may ultimately be that, though CrowdStrike has conceded to causing the outage, and billions of dollars’ worth of damage was incurred, the cost will be borne predominantly by its customers and other affected businesses. Especially so if only a fraction of the costs are covered by cyber insurance, as has been reported.

Members of the IT industry, like Fox, are calling for regulatory reform to prevent software providers from shifting liability for coding blunders onto customers and, in turn, the businesses that depend on them. “Until this point, it’s been a little bit inside baseball; only people seeing the unintended consequences up close really cared,” Fox says. “Reform around liability is probably the only thing that is going to make businesses sit up and pay attention to things that engineers have been highlighting forever: We need to do a better job with architecture, testing, and security.”

But for the time being, says McGrath, “the blunt, practical reality is that litigants, whether consumers or big businesses, have to work within the legal system they are operating in.”

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Ahead of the US elections, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has used the platform as his own personal political bullhorn.

On July 26, Musk posted a video of vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in which a deepfake of her voice appears to make her say that she is the “ultimate DEI hire” and a “deep-state puppet.” The post now bears a community note indicating that it is a parody. But many alleged that, shared without appropriate context, the video could have violated X’s policies on synthetic, or AI-altered, media.

This was the culmination of Musk’s recent political rhetoric. Over the past month, Musk, after officially endorsing former president Donald Trump, has also boosted baseless conspiracies of a “coup” following Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and insinuated that the Trump assassination attempt might have been the result of an intentional failure on the part of the Secret Service. After endorsing Trump, Musk announced that he was starting a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC), and initially committed to donate $45 million a month, before backtracking.

Former Twitter trust and safety employees say that Musk’s increasingly partisan behavior around the US elections and other major events is a sign that he is doing exactly what he accused the company’s former leadership of doing: playing politics.

“It’s staggering hypocrisy,” says one former Twitter employee. “Musk is smart enough to know social media is media, and it’s a way to control the narrative.”

Three former employees, who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, expressed concern that Musk presents a new kind of actor—someone who seeks to actively use a platform to reshape politics in both the US and abroad, and is willing to endure regulatory fines and declining advertising revenue to do so.

“He is consolidating power and has systematically dismantled all markers of credibility at the company,” the former employee says.

“However, I think it takes on additional significance when the person he is targeting is a presidential candidate.”

Authorities appear to agree. Earlier this week, secretaries of state from Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Mexico sent a letter to X demanding changes to Grok, the platform’s generative AI search tool, after it returned false information claiming Harris had missed the deadline to be on the presidential ballot in nine states.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk has been ramping up to this moment for years. When he purchased Twitter in 2022, he promised free-speech absolutism. After taking over, Musk immediately fired the majority of the company’s policy and trust and safety staff, who were responsible for keeping hateful and misinformative content off the platform. This included those responsible for guiding the platform through contentious elections. As the former employees noted, there is now no one at the company to deal with a flood of election-related misinformation, let alone what Musk himself might spread.

“There’s almost no one left,” the former employee says.

Disinformation and hate speech on X have ballooned on the site, and a recent Pew Research study found that X has taken on a partisan tilt. Since Musk’s takeover, it’s become more popular with Republican users and less popular with Democrats, who are less likely than Republicans to say their views are welcomed at the site.

The actual composition of the site’s user base has changed, with people who had been kicked off the platform for violating Twitter’s community standards being let back on under Musk. Trump himself was famously unbanned, but a wide array of avowed white supremacists, conspiracists, and neo-Nazis also flooded back onto the platform, including far-right pundit Nick Fuentes, QAnon proponent Liz Crokin, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and election denier Mike Lindell.

The platform’s new blue check system, which allows anyone willing to purchase a subscription to get a marker that previously confirmed they were who they claimed to be next to their name, has also contributed to the growing misinformation problem. While the system used to be free and reserved for verified public figures, politicians, and journalists, anonymous accounts like @Sprinter99800 and @ShadowofEzra are now able to use the algorithmic boost offered by the subscription model to spread misinformation about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, respectively. Blue check accounts are, further, incentivized to spread outrageous claims because they can be paid based on how much engagement their posts get.

“He has a very obvious political agenda,” says one former member of Twitter’s policy team. Looking back at the last few years, they referred to Musk’s release of what he dubbed the “Twitter Files,” a cache of internal documents. The documents, according to Musk, revealed the political biases of the platform’s previous leaders—according to others, they showed mundane interactions with researchers and government employees—but also led to the doxing and harassment of former trust and safety employees and misinformation researchers.

Musk has also used the platform to put his thumb on the scale of politics outside the United States.

Last year, after Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection, his supporters stormed the country’s legislature, in an echo of January 6, 2021. In April, Musk defied an order from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court to remove the accounts of far-right actors who, the court said, violated the country’s laws by undermining confidence in the country’s electoral processes. X then released the court’s confidential orders to the Congressional Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which then made them public. Experts and government officials at the time said the move was a deliberate attempt by a foreign billionaire to undermine the country’s democratic institutions.

While Musk has repeatedly asserted that he took over Twitter to preserve its commitment to free speech, the company has complied with censorship from right-leaning governments. Last year, the company complied with an order from Turkey’s authoritarian government to censor content ahead of the country’s elections and blocked a BBC documentary about India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi.

Instances like this, the first former employee tells WIRED, show that Musk is an entirely different actor than other tech CEOs, unbothered by the kinds of laws or norms that could be used to reign in another company. Musk doesn’t appear to be cowed by penalties like fines for spreading misinformation that are meant to keep billionaires and companies in check to protect the public interest.

“Regulation is not written for overtly malicious actors,” says the first former employee. “We don't have good regulation anywhere in the world that thinks about corporate entities like that … and it’s certainly not how we are used to treating a man who owns multiple companies.”

Because Musk’s own politics and priorities appear so clear, even decisions made seemingly without a political agenda can be interpreted as part of one. Last week, the X account for White Dudes for Harris was booted from the platform, causing many supporters of the vice president to wonder if this was Musk’s own political preferences playing out on X in real time. But a third former Twitter trust and safety employee who spoke with WIRED says it appears to be a pretty standard suspension that can happen when someone who has been banned from the platform in the past makes a new account. “Whoever set up the account most likely had an email address, IP address, or phone number that matched an account that had previously been banned on the platform. That would automatically be a penalty.”

The former employee says that the fact that people could not be sure if it was the result of Musk’s politics, or just a good old-fashioned moderation snafu is the real problem: “The fact that we have to ask those questions just shows the trust is gone. The misinformation has won.”

In an interview with the Atlantic, Musk said he would accept the results of the election should Harris win. But whether that will hold true in November is still cause for concern. Last week, after the Venezuelan elections wrapped in what experts said appeared to be a stolen victory for the country’s current president Nicolás Maduro, Musk railed against Maduro on X, even challenging him to a physical fight.

“What does it look like if this same sort of advocacy happens come November or December, in which he really believes that the election has been stolen or the vote counts aren't there?” the former employee says. It’s the same type of question that the former trust and safety teams were asking themselves about Trump during the 2020 presidential election. “It's very eerily kind of the same situation, except it’s the CEO and owner of the platform making those decisions, who also has the final say in content moderation decisions.”

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The issue with flying taxis is that most of them are simply modified helicopters. For instance, the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft from Applied eVTOL Concept can fly, but their unique design means they can’t function as regular cars. That’s what makes the Pegasus-E from the Australian company Aerospace Corp so remarkable.

The Pegasus-E is a hybrid multimodal vehicle and one of the first of its kind to be put into practice. The Pegasus project began in 2009, and after several successful tests, the company presented its new design in 2021. Finally, last year, the Melbourne Police decided to adopt them and create a police version of this flying car.

Aerospace’s vehicle is an electric car with a range of 300 miles and the ability to reach a speed of up to 75 mph, enough to be driven on the road normally.

It also has propellers that enable it to take off and fly at a maximum speed of 100 mph. It has a range of about three hours, a cruising speed of approximately 80 mph, and can reach a maximum altitude of 6,000 feet. In comparison, most VTOLs, being electric, only offer a range of around 35 minutes.

Recharging the vehicle is also convenient. As a hybrid car, it can be charged electrically for ground travel and refilled with gas for the tank used during flights.

Interestingly, the design of the Pegasus-E allows it to be parked in a regular parking lot, like any other car. In a traffic jam, drivers could use the Pegasus-E  to fly and avoid it altogether.

Currently, the Pegasus-E isn’t yet available for purchase because it requires a pilot's license in addition to a driver’s license.

However, it’s not just a prototype. The Pegasus-E is a real car that has been licensed by the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority and is currently seeking approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Aerospace’s plan is to have the vehicle ready for sale by the end of 2024 after successful piloting with local police.

The Pegasus-E is a single-seat vehicle, but the company is also developing a similar model with four seats, set to be revealed later this year. The car is 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) long and 6 feet (1.9 meters) tall. It weighs about 584 pounds 265 kg (265 kg) and can carry a maximum weight of 223 pounds (101 kg).

Aerospace’s flying car fulfills many of the expectations we have for VTOLs. The company will announce its future plans at the upcoming CES 2025 in Las Vegas.

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An AI robot completed the typically two-and-a-half-hour dental crown procedure on a human volunteer in only 15 minutes.

Perceptive, a company based in Boston backed by Edward Zuckerberg, father of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, trialed its technology through an in-house human test, and has shared a video of the procedure.

Perceptive announced the first completion of the automated dental procedure on a human using its robotic system on July 30.

Dr. Chris Ciriello, CEO and founder of Perceptive, told Newsweek, "The crown was made off a scan at the exam appointment. From that scan we simulate the cut and in the case of the crown make the crown restoration before cutting the tooth. When the patient returns, the tooth is cut and the crown is cemented in 15 minutes. Our aim was for accuracy, to enable this level of precision as well as timing."

Perceptive's AI robotic system uses optical coherence tomography (OCT). Perceptive hope their system will reduce the time of dental procedures and reduce the likelihood of human error. Perceptive/Perceptive © Perceptive/Perceptive

According to a press release from Perceptive, Zuckerberg, a pioneer in the integration of technology in the dental clinic, said, "The robotics system has been designed and rigorously tested to ensure that dentists can perform treatments safely, even in conditions where patient movement is prevalent. This commitment to safety is core to Perceptive's dedication to providing reliable and effective dental care solutions using state-of-the art technology."

German Galluicci, chairman of restorative dentistry at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, was quoted by the release as saying that the technology achieves "over a 90% accuracy rate for detecting caries without the radiation associated with traditional X-rays and CBCT scanners."

The 15-minute procedure has not been verified for testing with patients.

Traditionally, a crown dental procedure involves a one-and-a-half preparation appointment followed by a 30-minute restoration and then a cementation visit. Perceptive's system is able to cut this time down to a fractional 15 minutes because the system can simulate the preparation geometry prior to the prepping of the tooth, so the restoration can be manufactured before the preparation of the tooth.

The system uses optical coherence tomography (OCT), which has an accuracy in detecting interproximal caries of 87% sensitivity and 86% specificity for enamel caries, and 85% sensitivity and 97% specificity for dentin caries, according to the company. They say these accuracies alongside the automation of the procedure aims to reduce the likelihood of human error.

Perceptive has said that their advanced optical coherence tomography (OCT), AI programming, and robotics will one day dramatically reduce the time of many standard teeth treatments. They also intend on offering more accurate health assessments than traditionally used X-ray screenings.

They also intend to provide technology, currently still in the prototype stages, for underserved communities.

Perceptive has raised $30 million in funding to date, with leading investors including PDS Health, Dr. Ed Zuckerberg, Innospark Ventures, KdT Ventures, Primavera Capital, Plaisance Capital, Y Combinator, and others.

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In their study, published on the open-access site Cell Reports Medicine, volunteers went on a ketogenic diet for a month so the researchers could study its impact on their bodies.

A ketogenic diet consists of a drastic reduction in consumption of carbohydrates, replacing them with fats from meat, dairy, cheese, eggs and other foods such as avocados. Prior research has shown that those adhering to the rules do lose weight, but also that the diet may cause other health problems such as nutrition deficiencies, digestive problems, kidney stones and, over the long term, bone problems.

In this new effort, the research team suspected that the diet may also lead to increases in LDL cholesterol levels and possibly other problems. To find out if that might be the case, they conducted a randomized controlled trial by recruiting volunteers to go on the diet for a month and then to undergo a medical evaluation to determine changes.

The trial involved 53 non-obese adults. A third of them went on a ketogenic diet, another third went on a low-sugar diet and the remaining third ate what the researchers describe as a moderate diet to serve as a control.

After one month, all the volunteers were tested. The research team found that those volunteers on the ketogenic diet had lost on average 1.6 kg of fat. They also had 16% higher levels of LDL cholesterol in their blood than the control group and 26% higher levels of apolipoprotein B, a protein known to clog arteries. Those on the low-sugar diet lost on average of 1 kg of fat and had 10% lower levels of LDL cholesterol in their blood samples and no change in apolipoprotein B levels.

The researchers noted that those volunteers who had been on the ketogenic diet also had reduced levels of a type of gut bacteria known to be involved in promoting a strong immune system and also in the production of vitamin B.

Source

Dr. Luo was seated in the Shanghai Chest Hospital on China’s Pacific Coast, while the patient was anesthetized on a bed inside a hospital in Kashgar, Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

The Chinese-made 5G Medbot allowed Luo to transmit his precision and decades of experience instantaneously across three time zones, ushering in an era of telesurgery that may save thousands in rural areas where lack of expert medical staff may have been a death sentence in previous years.

According to Shanghai Daily, the Shanghai Chest Hospital is the nation’s first medical facility carrying out robot-assisted surgery, and it is also the facility carrying out the largest quantity of such surgeries in China.

The global shortage of specialist surgeons is a major impediment to medical advancements in low and middle-income countries. With just over 1.1 million surgeons, but only half as many anesthesiologists, there really are shortages in high-income countries as well, but one review from the Lancet calculated that for every 100,000 people in low and middle-income countries, there are just 0.7 specialist surgeons, compared to 5.5 in high-income countries.

A surgeon in China successfully removed a lung tumor from a patient while being 5000 km away. The doctor operated the machine remotely from his office in Shanghai, while the patient was in Kashgar, located on the opposite side of the country. The entire operation was completed in… pic.twitter.com/8VQrpnvtS0

    — Naresh Nambisan | നരേഷ് (@nareshbahrain) August 2, 2024

48% of the world’s population enjoys the service of just 20% of the global surgical workforce, the paper continues.

MORE MEDICAL MIRACLES:

It takes over a decade to become a trained surgeon, but a robot can be shipped and installed in just a few months, allowing surgeons in richer countries to perform certain surgeries in poorer countries, or surgeons in richer areas to perform operations in poorer areas in the same country. In either case it’s a truly revolutionary development.

Source

Scientists have recently found a simple and effective means of removing them from water.

A team from Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University in China ran tests on both soft water and hard tap water (which is richer in minerals), adding in nanoplastics and microplastics (NMPs) before boiling the liquid and then filtering out any precipitates.

In some cases, up to 90 percent of the NMPs were removed by the boiling and filtering process, though the effectiveness varied based on the type of water. Of course the big benefit is that most people can do it using what they already have in their kitchen.

Extra microplastics were added to determine the effectiveness of the boiling and filtering process. (Yu et al., Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2024)

"This simple boiling water strategy can 'decontaminate' NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption," write the researchers in their paper, published in February.

A greater concentration of NMPs was removed from samples of hard tap water, which naturally forms a build-up of limescale (or calcium carbonate) as it is heated. Commonly seen inside kitchen kettles, the chalky substance forms on the plastic's surface as changes in temperature force the calcium carbonate out of solution, effectively trapping the plastic fragments in a crust.

Even in soft water, where less calcium carbonate is dissolved, roughly a quarter of the NMPs were snagged from the water. Any bits of lime-encrusted plastic could then be removed through a simple filter like the stainless steel mesh used to strain tea, the researchers say.

Past studies have measured fragments of polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyethylene terephthalate in potable tap water, which we're consuming daily in varying quantities. To put the strategy to the ultimate test, the researchers added even more nanoplastic particles, which were effectively reduced in number.

"Drinking boiled water apparently is a viable long-term strategy for reducing global exposure to NMPs," write the researchers. "Drinking boiled water, however, is often regarded as a local tradition and prevails only in a few regions."

The research team hopes that drinking boiled water might become a more widespread practice as plastics continue to take over the world.

While it's still not certain exactly how damaging this plastic is to our bodies, it's clearly not the healthiest of snacks. Plastics have already been linked to changes in the gut microbiome and the body's antibiotic resistance.

The team behind this latest study wants to see more research into how boiled water could keep artificial materials out of our bodies – and perhaps counter some of the alarming effects of microplastics that are emerging.

"Our results have ratified a highly feasible strategy to reduce human NMP exposure and established the foundation for further investigations with a much larger number of samples," write the authors.

Source

X today filed a lawsuit against a group of major advertisers for allegedly conspiring to withhold advertising dollars from the social media platform, which, since Elon Musk’s takeover, has been seen as more amenable to hosting controversial content.

The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, says dozens of advertisers followed the recommendation of a key advertising coalition, Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), to boycott buying ads on X since Musk bought the company. The suit says this turn of events cost the company billions of dollars in revenue. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for violation of US antitrust law.

The right-wing video site Rumble, founded more than 10 years ago as an alternative to YouTube and positioned as a platform “immune to cancel culture,” announced on Tuesday that it had filed a similar lawsuit. “GARM was a conspiracy to perpetrate an advertiser boycott of Rumble and others, and that's illegal,” the company posted on its X account.

The US House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and has expressed concern about censorship of right-wing views on social media, has been investigating GARM. In a preliminary report in July, the committee found that “the extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms.” X’s lawsuit draws heavily from internal GARM emails reviewed by the congressional panel.

In a video shared to X, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said she was “shocked” by the evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee that there had been a “systematic illegal boycott against X.” Yaccarino attempted to rally X users with references to free speech in her statement. While pointing directly at the camera, she alleged that the advertisers were “targeting our company, and you, our users,” and “threatening your global town square.”

“People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted,” Yaccarino said.

The Brussels-based World Federation of Advertisers, which oversees GARM, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuits. X’s lawsuit also names Unilever, Mars, CVS, and a Danish energy company as defendants, while Rumble’s suit additionally targets the ad agency WPP. None of the companies immediately responded to requests for comment.

X’s lawsuit contends that advertisers in the past had to individually strike deals with social media companies to set boundaries around what types of content they would sponsor. Through GARM, advertisers have been able to aggregate their power, establish industry standards for content moderation, and enforce them. In X’s view, GARM now has too much say over the content social media platforms may allow.

“In a competitive market, each social media platform would set the brand safety standards that are optimal for that platform and for its users, and advertisers would unilaterally select the platforms on which they advertise,” the complaint states. “But collective action among competing advertisers to dictate brand safety standards to be applied by social media platforms shortcuts the competitive process and allows the collective views of a group of advertisers with market power to override the interests of consumers.”

X’s fraught relationship with advertisers dates back as far as Musk’s buyout of the company formerly known as Twitter. The new lawsuit alleges that GARM, via a public letter to Musk, triggered a boycott of Twitter ads immediately following his purchase of the company in October 2022. Over the next two months, at least 18 GARM-member advertisers, including Mars and Unilever, stopped buying Twitter ads, according to the lawsuit. Dozens more members cut back their spending.

In November 2023, the nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters published a report that showed how pro-Nazi content on X had been appearing alongside advertising from reputable brands. As a result, entities like IBM, Disney, Lionsgate, the European Union, and, reportedly, Apple, pulled their ads from X. Later that month, speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Musk told those brands “Go fuck yourself,” and aimed some of his remarks specifically at “Bob,” Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger.

X alleges that GARM has yet to rescind its boycott. “By refraining from purchasing advertising from X, boycotting advertisers are forgoing a valuable opportunity to purchase low-priced advertising inventory on a platform with brand safety that meets or exceeds industry standards,” the complaint states.

In a preview of advertisers’ potential defense to the new lawsuits, Sarah Kay Wiley, director of policy at the advertising watchdog group Check My Ads, says in an emailed statement that advertisers have a right under the First Amendment to choose with whom and what they want to associate.

“Advertisers should not have to subsidize viewpoints they don’t agree with—in fact requiring so would be un-American and unconstitutional,” Wiley writes. “Elon Musk and X executives have the right, protected by the First Amendment, to say what they want online, even when it's inaccurate, and advertisers have the right to keep their ads away from it. It’s as simple as that.”

Alleging unfair competition isn’t a new tactic for smaller social media companies. In May, Rumble sued Google’s advertising business also alleging antitrust violations. Google last week filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on the basis that Rumble lacked standing to sue because it wasn’t using or competing with Google’s offerings. “Rumble does not belong in the current melee over Google’s advertising technology,” Google’s attorneys wrote. A hearing is scheduled for January.

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A potential remedy for Google to avoid antitrust actions could involve terminating the agreement, which makes its search engine a default on Apple devices, Wall Street analysts said on Tuesday.

Google pays Apple $20 billion annually, or about 36% of what it earns from search advertising made through the Safari browser, for the privilege, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

If the deal is undone, the iPhone maker could take a 4-6% hit to its profit, the analysts estimated.

The pact runs until at least September 2026 and Apple has the right to unilaterally extend it for another two years, according to media reports in May that cited a document filed by the Department of Justice in the antitrust case.

"The most likely outcome now is the judge rules Google must no longer pay for default placement or that companies like Apple must proactively prompt users to select their search engine rather than setting a default and allowing consumers to make changes in settings if they wish," Evercore ISI analysts said.

Apple's shares were trading flat on Tuesday, underperforming a recovery in the broader market after Monday's global selloff. Alphabet was little changed, after falling 4.5% in the previous session.

"The message here is that if you've got a dominant market position with a product, you'd better avoid the use of exclusive agreements and make sure any agreement you make gives the buyer free choice to substitute away," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania.

To be sure, the "remedy" phase could be lengthy, followed by potential appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the District of Columbia Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal wrangling could play out into 2026.

AI TILT

Still, if the tie-up is scrapped, Apple will have several options including offering customers alternatives such as Microsoft Bing to customers, or potentially a new search product powered by OpenAI.

Analysts agree that the ruling will speed up Apple's move towards AI-powered search services. It recently announced that it would bring OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to its devices.

In a shift away from exclusive deals that would help Apple ward off regulatory scrutiny, the company has said it is also in talks with Google to add the Gemini chatbot and plans to add other AI models as well.

Apple is also revamping Siri with AI technology, giving it more control to handle tasks that had proven tricky in the past such as writing emails and interacting with messages.

While those efforts are expected to make little money in the coming years, they could help capitalize on the new technology.

"Apple could see this as a temporary setback, especially since it earns a lot from the Google search deal, but it is also an opportunity for them to pivot to AI solutions for search," said Gadjo Sevilla, analyst at Emarketer.

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The parasites, which spread infections including Lyme disease, are likely to rise in prevalence across the country even if temperatures increase below the long-term target limit of 1.5C.

But researchers from the University of Stirling have warned a global rise in temperatures could lead to some currently tick-free habitats sustaining populations by 2080.

They said a rise in the number of people catching diseases carried by the arachnids was of “increasing concern”.

Mathematicians from the university’s faculty of natural sciences said ticks will increase in number by 99% by 2080 if the global temperature rise hits 4C, according to a paper published in the Interface journal.

A new model developed by the research team, lead by Prof Rachel Norman, found that number fell to 26% if temperatures were kept to a 1C rise.

World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C to help avoid the most damaging effects.

But Prof Norman said that would not be confined to the tick’s natural woodland habitat.

She said: “The strength of these predicted increases in tick density varied depending on the habitat.

"While woodland habitats were predicted to experience the highest absolute increases, the largest proportional increases were predicted for the slopes of mountains, known as montane habitats.

"Many of these areas that were predicted to be tick-free under recent climatic conditions were predicted to become warm enough to allow sustained tick populations by 2080."

What is Lyme Disease?

Lyme disease has likely infected about one in 10 people across the globe, according to a British Medical Journal (BMJ) global health review.

However, there are issues with identifying and treating the bacterial infection, which can only be passed to humans by infected ticks.

The infection, which can cause facial paralysis, memory loss and heart arrythmia, is often misdiagnosed as meningitis.

A bite from an infected tick can often, but not always, create a “bullseye” rash on the recipient.

It can be treated with a course of antibiotics, but symptoms can sometimes persist for months or even years after treatment.

Blood tests are able to identify certain strains of the disease, but not all.

And not all ticks carry the disease.

Tick bites often cause a "bullseye" rash on the recipient

Some of Scotland’s higher peaks will be too cold to experience the same rise in tick numbers.

It is hoped the statistical model developed by Prof Norman and her team could be adapted to predict the risk of increases in other diseases.

"While we developed the approach to predict tick densities over Scotland, it could be easily used for other areas and other vector species, and pathogens could be added to the model, enabling predictions of disease risk," she said.

"Indeed, this methodology could be used more broadly to understand the dynamic response of populations over time to a variety of environmental changes and provides a neat new method in the modelling toolbox for researchers to choose from."

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SEOUL – Steam, sizzle, scorch and boil.

As South Korea swelters under summer heat that looks set to break records, newspaper headlines are using words mostly reserved for describing high-heat culinary techniques.

“The nation sizzles on a rest day, steaming in cauldron heat,” said one on Aug 4. Another noted: “Nation continues to scorch as heatwave and tropical nights continue.”

Since the summer monsoon season ended on July 24, South Korea has been baking under a heatwave, with advisories issued for the entire country except for its highest point, Mount Hallasan in Jeju.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) issues such advisories when there are at least two consecutive days with daytime temperatures of above 33 deg C.

On Aug 4, the temperature rose to 40 deg C in Yeoju city, two hours’ drive from Seoul. It was the first time since August 2018 that the mercury breached the 40 deg C mark.

South Korea’s hottest summer was in 2018, when a temperature of 41 deg C was logged in Hongcheon city, one hour’s drive east of Seoul.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported five heat-related deaths over the Aug 3, 2024, weekend, and the total number of such deaths recorded since May 20 has risen to 14 as at Aug 6. Nearly 1,700 heat-related illnesses were reported in the same period.

Even livestock were not spared, with nearly 303,000 deaths reported, mostly of poultry. Large numbers of pigs, which are vulnerable to heat, have also died.

In Jeju, where more than 800 pigs have died in the past month, livestock authorities in charge of the prized black pig species native to Jeju have been checking the animals’ temperature twice daily and cooling them down with fans and air-conditioners.

As temperatures soared over Aug 3 and 4, there were reports of power outages and water supply disruptions as people sought to cool themselves.

On Aug 2, a professional league baseball game in Ulsan city, in the southern part of South Korea, had to be cancelled for the first time in the league’s 42-year history, as “feels like” temperatures on the artificial grass pitch rose to more than 50 deg C.

In Seoul, parasols offering shade to pedestrians are commonly found at traffic junctions. This photo was taken near Sungnyemun gate at Namdaemun market in Seoul on the evening of Aug 1. ST PHOTO: WENDY TEO

Another baseball game in Seoul that had proceeded in the heat on Aug 3 saw five spectators rushed to hospital for heat-related reasons.

The KMA has forecast that the ongoing heatwave, with daytime temperatures nearing 40 deg C, is likely to continue until Aug 14.

Over in China, CCTV News reported that last month’s raging temperatures made it the hottest July in history. Cities in the east suffered the most as Shanghai experienced temperatures of over 37 deg C while the mercury soared past 40 deg C in Zhejiang province.

A Shanghai woman surnamed Wu told Global Times that she went to a park on Aug 4 after breakfast for exercise and had heatstroke within an hour.

In Japan, where the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) also recorded the hottest July temperatures since 1898, there have been 59 reported deaths from heatstroke since April. The JMA and Japan’s Environment Ministry have issued heatstroke alerts for 26 out of 47 prefectures, including Tokyo, Osaka and Kagoshima.

In North Korea, it was reported that summer holidays for elementary school students started one month early, on July 1 instead of Aug 1, because of the extreme summer heat.

A North Korean source based in Sinuiju city, which faces Dandong in China’s Liaoning province, told the Daily NK news organisation that the Education Ministry issued the directive to prevent students from collapsing. Classrooms there do not have air-conditioners or fans.

Children cooling off in the water feature at Gwanghwamun Plaza in Seoul on Aug 1. ST PHOTO: WENDY TEO

The heatwave affecting the Korean peninsula is a result of the convergence of Tibetan and North Pacific high-pressure systems over the area. These weather systems have higher pressure than the surrounding air, causing high surface temperatures in summer months, as the high pressure pushes warm air towards the ground.

Mr Kim Seung-bae, director of the Korea Natural Disaster Association, who has been appearing on South Korean TV news channels to explain the heatwave crisis, likened the situation to being trapped under two thick blankets.

“There is already the summer heat from solar radiation, and the North Pacific high-pressure system adds a layer to this, making the air hotter. On top of that, there is still the Tibetan high-pressure system, adding yet another thick blanket,” he said.

“This is called coupling of the high-pressure systems, and when this happens, we inevitably experience even higher temperatures.”

Mr Kim said there needs to be a release in either of the high-pressure systems for temperatures to start falling, which he thinks may happen as soon as later this week.

To prevent more heat-related illnesses and deaths, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has directed the Interior Ministry to take charge of inter-ministry heatwave efforts.

On Aug 1, the ministry announced a 15 billion won (S$14.5 million) budget for heatwave countermeasures, such as the distribution of umbrellas, electric fans and salt supplements. It upgraded its crisis response posture to the highest level on Aug 1, designating the heatwave as “serious”. It has also dispatched on-site crisis response teams across the nation.

Children on their summer school break enjoying the water feature at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. ST PHOTO: WENDY TEO

The elderly and outdoor labourers have been identified as the groups most vulnerable. Special care packages will be distributed to the elderly, while the Labour Ministry has issued advisories in various languages to keep foreign workers informed.

Tea farmer Gu Hye-jin, 57, ended up in hospital on Aug 3, after working in 35 deg C heat that day.

He had been out in the fields for a few days in a row to weed his 13,000 sq m tea estate in South Korea’s southern county of Hadong, given the abundant growth of weeds in summer. Lamenting that he should have done his chores in moderation and was now “paying the price” of his folly, he said in an Instagram post that he is resting at home after receiving treatment.

Office worker Park Sun-mi, 40, who was in Singapore on vacation and returned to Seoul on Aug 3, said she was shocked by the heat and humidity that hit her the moment she landed at Incheon International Airport.

“It made me feel so much hotter and sweatier than I was in Singapore, which was funny, because people were warning me about Singapore’s tropical climate before I left on my trip,” she said.

Source

Robots have been working in car factories for decades now, starting with machines performing some welds on a General Motors production line back in 1961. Now, robots work alongside people on production lines, excelling at tasks like manipulating parts too heavy for humans to easily lift or welding or bonding with more precision than we can manage.

 

Those robots mostly look like big multi-axis arms, but a new breed of two-armed, two-legged robots is being tested in car factories. BMW is the latest automaker to try them at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

 

Unlike Tesla, which hopes to develop its own bipedal 'bot to work on its production line sometime next year, BMW has brought in a robot from Figure AI. The Figure 02 robot has hands with sixteen degrees of freedom and human-equivalent strength.

 

"We are excited to unveil Figure 02, our second-generation humanoid robot, which recently completed successful testing at the BMW Group Plant Spartanburg. Figure 02 has significant technical advancements, which enable the robot to perform a wide range of complex tasks fully autonomously," said Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI.

BMW wanted to test how to integrate a humanoid robot into its production process—how to have the robot communicate with the production line software and human workers and determine what requirements would be necessary to add robots to the mix.

 

The Figure robot was given the job of inserting sheet metal parts into fixtures as part of the process of making a chassis. BMW says this required particular dexterity and that it's an ergonomically awkward and tiring task for humans.

 

Now that the trial is over, Figure's robot is no longer working at Spartanburg, and BMW says it has "no definite timetable established" to add humanoid robots to its production lines. "The developments in the field of robotics are very promising. With an early-test operation, we are now determining possible applications for humanoid robots in production. We want to accompany this technology from development to industrialization," said Milan Nedeljković, BMW's board member responsible for production.

 

Source

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A month later, for the third year in a row, his government ordered some coal plants to run at full capacity to meet high electricity demand during the increasingly hot summer months.

Even though India has been significantly increasing its renewable energy capacity in recent years, when demand for electricity surges, it still goes back to its most trusted source of power: coal.

For the first six months of this year, India has responded to major energy demand from its growing population and greater cooling needs because of extreme heat, in part due to climate change, by relying on its coal-fired plants. The country also plans to add more coal plants.

India's coal demand rose nearly 10% in 2023, or about 105 million metric tons, in the biggest jump by percentage for any country, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand in China rose 6%.

“We know the Indian government is serious about its climate commitments,” said Carlos Fernández Alvarez, the lead author of the IEA report. But he acknowledged the “huge need to ensure people have electricity” in India, and added: “We don’t believe that India will be a front runner in the coal transition."

More than 70% of India’s electricity needs are still met by coal even though renewable energy such as wind and solar power is growing.

India last year became the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people. Electricity demand is projected to grow by at least 6% annually for the next few years, according to the IEA.

Why coal still rules in India

India has millions of people mired in poverty, but millions more who are being lifted from poverty as the country's economy develops. And many of those will be able to afford some relief.

“Even if someone gets a fan or an air cooler to make their life a little more comfortable, cumulatively you will see the need for a lot more electricity," said Charith Konda, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. He said 7% growth in annual demand “is the bare minimum” he expects.

While renewables are growing, India needs to add a lot of battery storage so that power can replace coal for nighttime needs, Konda said.

Electricity demand isn't the only force guaranteeing coal's durability in India. Konda pointed to millions of jobs in coal, including allied sectors such as the railways that control the trains used for transporting coal. One indicator of coal's heft: At the height of summer in 2022, the government canceled nearly 2,000 passenger trains so coal freight trains could reach power plants faster.

What is needed for clean power to become the mainstay in India

India grew its renewable energy capacity by 25 times over the past decade, and now has 195 gigawatts of wind and solar power installed.

But it needs to grow faster still. Peak electricity demand reached an all-time high of 250 gigawatts in May, according to a report by the India Energy and Climate Center at the University of California, Berkeley. That demand could go past 300 gigawatts in the next three years, according to the report, which said that would mean power shortages at night.

The country has set an ambitious clean energy goal of 500 gigawatts by the end of this decade.

“In 2015-16, we saw a few years of really good growth of renewable power. Since then, it’s kind of plateaued,” said Ashish Fernandes of the think tank Climate Risk Horizons.

Fernandes and other experts say India needs to install at least 50 to 60 gigawatts of clean power each year to meet growing demand. In the last two years, due to a mix of policy decisions, politics and supply chain issue s, less than 15 gigawatts of wind and solar have been installed annually.

And storage has to be integrated into the system, said Konda, the energy analyst. India has a little less than 4 gigawatts of storage. The government last year announced a $452 million plan to support companies installing more.

“Battery storage is becoming so cheap and is a growth sector globally,” said Fernandes, who said India needs to invest while prices are low.

The Indian government has also said developed nations should provide more support, including money and technological support, to India and other Global South nations working toward a clean energy transition.

In Dipka, a coal town in central India that has seen nearly a century of mining, life without coal is hard to fathom.

“In this region, everything is connected to coal,” said Ramadhar Yadav, 45, whose family was among villagers in the region who sold their fertile land decades ago to coal mining companies and is now among several hundred residents pressing for jobs in the industry in a legal dispute.

"At least for the next 20 years our region and maybe India as a whole will depend on coal, I’m sure of it,” he said.

Source

Company lawyers defended the business from accusations leveled by the airline, which said it aimed to seek damages from both Microsoft and CrowdStrike for a massive outage that cost it $500 million.

Last month, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike pushed out an update that caused blue screen of death error screens on millions of Windows systems.

Delta had to manually reset 40,000 servers, CEO Ed Bastian said. During this downtime, it canceled some 5,000 flights.

Other airlines were also disrupted - as were trains, banks, and healthcare providers - but Delta took far longer to recover. The CrowdStrike issue led to other problems arising, with Delta's IT systems unable to update with new flight changes.

With the company the worst hit by the update failure, the US Department of Transportation has opened an investigation into what happened.

Bastian told staff that Delta was “planning to pursue legal claims” from both Microsoft and CrowdStrike because of the outage.

Michael Carlinsky, CrowdStrike’s lawyer and co-managing partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, on Sunday wrote to the company to say that the threats “contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage," CNBC reports.

Carlinsky claimed that CEO George Kurtz also reached out to Bastian to “offer onsite assistance, but received no response.”

He added: “Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions - swiftly, transparently, and constructively - while Delta did not."

Microsoft is being represented by Mark Cheffo, who told Delta that the company's "comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation."

Cheffo noted that Delta does not use Microsoft Azure or Windows cloud services. Instead, the company announced a multi-year deal with IBM in 2021 and another deal with Amazon Web Services in 2022.

“It is rapidly becoming apparent that Delta likely refused Microsoft’s help because the IT system it was most having trouble restoring - its crew-tracking and scheduling system - was being serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM, because it runs on those providers’ systems, and not Microsoft Windows or Azure," Cheffo said.

Instead, he called on the company to disclose how it used IBM and AWS.

“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants," he said.

Source

A research team from the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong has developed an AI-powered mobile application that turns smartphones into a stethoscope to spot symptoms of heart diseases.

WHAT IT DOES

Called Vitogram, the app uses AI to analyse heart sounds, which are collected by placing the mobile phone on a user's chest.

"Analysing heart sounds provides important health data comparable to that obtained by a doctor using a stethoscope," explained HKUMed associate professor Joshua Ho Wing-kei.

Based on a clinical study at a public hospital in late 2023, the AI achieved an 81% accuracy in detecting valvular heart disease in approximately 363 study participants. Researchers now plan to expand their study to a larger, more diverse cohort and cover more heart disease symptoms.

Meanwhile, Vitome, a spin-off company created to commercialise Vitogram, is preparing to launch their mobile stethoscope app overseas – particularly in Singapore and Malaysia – by partnerning with healthcare organisations.

WHY IT MATTERS

As of 2020, heart diseases rank third among common causes of death in Hong Kong.

During the pandemic, many cases were said to be missed as people were restricted from getting in-person checkups. This inspired initial research at HKUMed to turn mobile phones into stethoscopes, enabling communities to conveniently spot heart diseases early.

"This breakthrough technology has the potential to discover hidden valvular heart disease patients in the community, alerting them to seek early medical care," added Dr Wong Chun-ka, a cardiologist and a clinical assistant professor at HKUMed.

By enabling regular self-checks, the app is also expected to help people take more control of their heart health and further prevent the potential progression of their existing heart conditions.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

A similar AI-enabled innovation in Singapore is a wearable stethoscope by Aevice Health. The device called AeviceMD detects and records chest sounds, which are screened for abnormalities related to respiratory diseases. Cleared in both Singapore and the United States, the smart stethoscope has been made available in Southeast Asia, enabled by Aevice Health's fund raise from East Ventures last year.

Source

• Liver injuries tied to the use of botanical supplements are rising among U.S. adults

• Turmeric, green tea extract, black cohosh and other botanicals are soaring in popularity and can be overused, researchers warn

• Claims to help ease pain or arthritis, or aid in weight gain, are often unfounded

MONDAY, Aug. 5, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Botanicals like turmeric, green tea and black cohosh may seem benign, but their overuse is being increasingly linked to liver injury.

New research suggests that 7% of U.S. adults are using at least one of the six leading botanicals, the equivalent of 15.6 million people.

Many are ending up in hospitals for liver toxicity, researchers report.

Because there's almost no regulatory oversight over botanicals, chemical tests of products linked to liver crises "show frequent discrepancies between product labels and detected ingredients," noted a team led by Dr. Alisa Likhitsup. She's an assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The researchers focused on the use of six of the most popular botanicals: Turmeric, green tea extract, the Garcinia cambodgia plant, black cohosh, red yeast rice and ashwagandha.

Perusing 2017-2021 data on almost 9,700 adults in a federal health database, they found high rates of botanical use.

For example, Likhitsup's group estimated that more than 11 million adults regularly take turmeric supplements, often with the notion that it can ease pain or arthritis. That's not too far below the approximately 14.8 million who take an NSAID pain reliever for much the same reasons.

Unfortunately, "multiple randomized clinical trials have failed to demonstrate any efficacy of turmeric-containing products in osteoarthritis," and overdoing it on turmeric has been linked to serious liver toxicity, the researchers said.

Likewise, over 3 million adults are estimated to be taking another potential liver toxin, green tea extract, usually to help boost energy and aid in weight loss.

But again, "multiple studies have failed to demonstrate any objective evidence of weight loss and sustained improvement in mood or energy levels" with products containing the active ingredients in green tea extract, the Michigan team noted.

Other claims, many unfounded, are made for other botanicals: Garcinia cambodgia is touted for weight loss, black cohosh for easing hot flashes and ashwagandha to help build muscle.

But Likhitsup and colleagues noted that consumers may be overdosing on botanicals, or getting misled by labels that don't reflect the actual ingredients in their supplements. That may be leading to more users ending up in the ER.

According to a national database, cases of liver toxicity linked to botanical use, some severe or even fatal, nearly tripled between 2004 and 2014 -- from 7% of cases to 20%. Use of turmeric, green tea extract, Garcinia cambodgia were often implicated. Another study found such cases rising from 12.5% of liver toxicity cases in 2007 to 21.1% by 2015.

Who's using these botanicals? According to the new study, the most common consumer is an older (average age about 52) white (75% of users) female (57%), who was typically well-off.

People taking botanicals were more likely to be battling some kind of chronic illness, such as arthritis, thyroid disorders or cancer, compared to folks not using the supplements.

In two-thirds of cases, people took a botanical while also taking a prescription medicine, the study found. Because of the danger of drug interactions and the threat to liver health, it's crucial that botanical users inform their doctors, Likhitsup's group said.

When botanicals are overused, the damage to the liver "can not only be severe, leading to hepatocellular [liver] injury with jaundice, but also fatal, leading to death or liver transplantation," the research team warned.

A prior study found that the number of liver transplants required due to botanical overuse has jumped by 70% between 2009 and 2020.

The Michigan team believe better regulation and oversight are needed to protect consumers.

"Considering widespread and growing popularity of botanical products, we urge government authorities to consider increasing the regulatory oversight on how botanicals are produced, marketed, tested and monitored in the general population," they wrote.

The study was published Aug. 5 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Source

Employees in San Francisco reportedly will be moved to new locations in the Bay Area, “including the existing office in San Jose and a new engineering focused shared space with [xAI, Musk’s AI startup] in Palo Alto,” the note said. The company’s executive team is said to be working on “transportation options” for staff. X did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

The official announcement comes a few weeks after Musk said in a post on X that he planned to move X and SpaceX headquarters to Texas. X would move to Austin, specifically, Musk said at the time. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that X had already been staffing up a trust and safety team for X based in Austin.

While the state of Texas is known to be more business-friendly than California—it has one of the lowest tax burdens in the US—Musk’s publicly stated reasoning for the move to Texas was more ideological than financial. He said at the time that the “final straw” was a new California law that aims to protect the privacy of transgender children, which he perceived to be “attacking both families and companies.” He also said that he’s “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.”

The latest update from Yaccarino suggests it’s the San Francisco office, specifically, that is the thorn in X’s side. And it’s an about-face for Musk, who tweeted a year ago that, despite incentives to move out of San Francisco, X would not move its HQ out of the city. “You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down,” he waxed poetically on X. “San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”

The shuttering of the X office marks the end of an era for the company formerly known as Twitter, and for the historic Mid-Market neighborhood that in the 2010s managed to lure in burgeoning tech companies like Twitter, Uber, Spotify, and Square.

Twitter’s earliest offices were in SoMa, or the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, until 2011, when then mayor Ed Lee instituted a controversial tax break for tech companies. The ruling erased the 1.5 percent payroll tax for companies that moved into certain Mid-Market buildings. Twitter jumped at the opportunity.

The company was considered an anchor tenant in a densely populated neighborhood marked by homelessness and open drug use. Suddenly an airy, high-end food market, a Blue Bottle Coffee shop, and tech workers with MacBooks and overpriced sneakers dotted Market Street, alongside people in various states of distress camped out in front of still-vacant storefronts.

The end results of Lee’s tax breaks and revitalization plans for the neighborhood are a topic of debate, and the pandemic has been a hugely complicating factor, with reports suggesting that San Francisco’s office spaces are more than a third vacant on average.

Musk, now famously, carried a sink into the Twitter offices just after he closed the deal to buy the platform in October 2022, tweeting, “Let that sink in!” After changing the company name to X in summer 2023, Musk erected a giant, blinking X atop the offices, only to be compelled to take it down days later when the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection received dozens of complaints about the flashing lights and concerns about the sign’s structural safety.

X also was allegedly a poor tenant in the Musk era: Its landlord, SRI Nine Market Square, in early 2023 filed a suit against X for more than $3 million in unpaid rent. SRI Nine Market sought to extend Twitter’s line of credit to $10 million as an assurance that future rent would be paid. Other vendors also have sued X for failing to pay its bills.

But in January of this year, SRI Nine Market dropped the case, Reuters reported. It’s unclear why. SRI Nine Market did not respond to an inquiry on the current state of X’s lease and whether the company would be breaking said lease by vacating its office space in the coming weeks.

Source

A team from Caristo Daignostics, an Oxford University spinout company, has developed an AI tech that has the ability to identifiy individuals at risk of a heart attack within the next decade.

Described as "game-changing" by scientists, this model detects heart inflammation that is not visible on CT scans, which use a combination of X-rays and computer technology.

Supported by NHS England, a pilot project is underway at five hospital trusts in Oxford, Milton Keynes, Leicester, Liverpool, and Wolverhampton. A decision on its implementation within the NHS is expected in the coming months.

The technology is also being adapted to prevent diabetes and strokes. Professor Keith Channon from the University of Oxford said: "This technology is transformative and game-changing because, for the first time, we can detect the biological processes that are invisible to the human eye, which precedes the development of narrowings and blockages [within the heart]."

In the pilot, patients with chest pain referred for a routine CT scan have their scans analysed by Caristo Diagnostics' CaRi-Heart AI platform. An algorithm that detects coronary inflammation and plaque is then verified by trained operators.

Research has linked increased inflammation to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and fatal heart attacks.

According to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), approximately 7.6 million people in the UK live with heart disease, costing the NHS in England £7.4bn annually. About 350,000 cardiac CT scans are performed each year in the UK.

The Orfan study (Oxford Risk Factors and Non-invasive Imaging), involving 40,000 patients and published in the Lancet, revealed that 80% of people were sent back to primary care without a defined prevention or treatment plan.

Researchers found that patients with inflammation in their coronary arteries had a 20 to 30 times higher risk of dying from a cardiac event over the next 10 years. Using this AI technology, 45% of these patients were prescribed medication or encouraged to make lifestyle changes to prevent future heart attacks.

Source

It's long been a hotly debated open question regarding how the great pyramids of Egypt were built, given the sheer size and weight of the limestone blocks used for the construction. Numerous speculative (and controversial) hypotheses have been proposed, including the use of ramps, levers, cranes, winches, hoists, pivots, or any combination thereof. Now we can add the possible use of a hydraulic lift to those speculative scenarios. According to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, ancient Egyptians during the Third Dynasty may have at least partly relied on hydraulics to build the Step Pyramid of Djoser.

 

"Many theories on pyramid construction suggest that pure human strength, possibly aided by basic mechanical devices like levers and ramps, was utilized," co-author Xavier Landreau, of Paleotechnic in Paris and Universite Grenoble Alpes, told Ars. "Our analysis led us to the utilization of water as a means of raising stones. We are skeptical that the largest pyramids were built using only known ramp and lever methods."

 

The Step Pyramid was built around 2680 BCE, part of a funerary complex for the Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser. It's located in the Saqqara necropolis and was the first pyramid to be built, almost a "proto-pyramid" that originally stood some 205 feet high. (The Great Pyramid of Giza, by contrast, stood 481 feet high and was the tallest human-made structure for nearly 4,000 years.) Previous monuments were made of mud brick, but Djoser's Step Pyramid is made of stone (specifically limestone); it's widely thought that Djoser's vizier, Imhotep, designed and built the complex. The third century BCE historian Manetho once described Imhotep as the "inventor of building in stone." As such, the Djoser Pyramid influenced the construction of later, larger pyramids during the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties.

 

Using limestone was a much more labor-intensive process than constructing mud-brick monuments. Unfortunately, there just aren't many historical sources from this period to shed light on how these pyramids were built. Herodotus in the fifth century BCE—centuries after the great pyramids were built—described the use of a machine consisting of one or more levers to raise blocks of limestone. In the first century BCE, Diodorus Siculus mentioned the use of earthen ramps, claiming that "machines for lifting had not yet been invented in those days."

 

Archaeologists have found evidence for the use of small ramps and inclined causeways at the Great Pyramid of Giza, among others, but it's likely other supplementary methods or devices were used, with levering believed to be among the strongest candidates.

 

Perhaps most controversially, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin constructed an archetypal model of the Great Pyramid of Giza to demonstrate how an external ramp could have been used to build the first 30 percent of the structure, before switching to an internal ramp to move stones higher up. He explained the lack of evidence for such ramps by suggesting that the external ramp stones had been recycled to build the upper levels. (The 2017 video game Assassin's Creed Origins incorporates Houdin's controversial theory in its virtual tour of the Great Pyramid.) It's worth noting that Egyptologist David Jeffreys of University College London once dismissed Houdin's hypothesis as "far-fetched and horribly complicated," and it remains unproven.

A water elevator?

According to Laundreau, at the outset, his interdisciplinary team of hydrologists, limnologists, geologists, satellite imagery specialists, and so forth wasn’t looking for evidence of a hydraulic system within the Djoser pyramid. They just set out to map the watersheds to the west of the Saqqara plateau. Four years of intensive research led them to the discovery of structures they believe constituted a dam, a water treatment facility, and a possible internal hydraulic lift system within the pyramid as part of the complex. “It was by following the thread of the water that we gradually understood the meaning of those structures and built up an understanding of the whole,” he said.

 

For instance, they concluded that the massive Gisr el-Mudir enclosure has all the requisite features of a check dam, capable of trapping sediment and water. There is topographical evidence of a possible lake just west of the Djoser complex and evidence of possible water flow in the "dry moat" surrounding it. That moat has a 410-meter-long channel called the Deep Trench in the inner south section that Laundreau et al. suggest has all the technical requirements for a water treatment facility, namely a settling basin, a retention basin, and a purification system.

 

Ancient Egyptians certainly used hydraulics in the canals they built for irrigation and for barges to transport stones. There is evidence that the region had more water resources available at the time the Step Pyramid was built—more of a savannah environment than the dry desert clime of today. So those waterways could once have been actively used to channel runoff from heavy rainfall.

 

The biggest stretch in Landreau et al.'s theory is the existence of a floating wooden elevator inside the pyramid as it was being constructed, relying on the aforementioned water flows to lift the platform up a central vertical shaft. The pyramid's inner structure features at least 13 shafts, most notably two twin shafts at the north and south of the complex, per the authors. Their ground-penetrating radar images revealed that these two shafts are connected by a 200-meter-long tunnel. At least two shafts on the east side are connected to the supposed eastern section of the dry moat by two 80-meter-long pipes.

 

Prior excavations in the 1930s removed most of the materials that filled the twin shafts, apart from two granite boxes, one at the bottom of each, so the authors had to rely on those archaeological reports for information about the internal layout of the shafts. They found evidence of a removable plug system they believe could have allowed the shafts to fill with water when it was opened, lifting a floating wooden elevator platform laden with limestone blocks. Closing the plug and draining the shafts would lower the platform for the next load. Landreau et al. estimate that Egyptian builders could have captured between 4 million and 54 million cubic meters of water over the two or three decades it took to complete the Step Pyramid.

 

There might have been periods where there simply would not have been enough water to operate such a hydraulic lift system, so the authors do acknowledge that such a device might have complemented other construction methods. "In accordance with other studies, we cannot assert that only one exclusive technique was used," said Landreau. "We estimate the beginning of the pyramid building could be performed using ramps prolonging the path from the local quarry. Furthermore it does seem logical to consider that the pyramid's architects and overseers employed various construction techniques at their disposal, including ramps, lifting cranes, or animal force. These different techniques would have allowed for the versatility of construction and adaptability to the various constraints of the site."

 

Landreau pointed out that there were later pyramids that were as tall and heavy as the Step Pyramid, but they were not built with large cut stones—instead, the builders used smaller stones and bricks that turned to rubble over the ensuing millennia—so they did not have the same longevity. In fact, “Not a single Pharaoh from the Middle and late Old Kingdom, or the Middle Kingdom, managed to build another wonder like those from the 4th dynasty,” he said. “While there are valid historical arguments for this, it's also possible that the lack of the energy source, which aided the ancient builders, played a role. The climate during the early Old Kingdom was wetter, but it became drier with time. As the hydraulic force from the wadis diminished, the later Pharaohs may have struggled to replicate the massive pyramids of earlier dynasties using only human strength.”

 

Landreau and his team are already contemplating possible next steps to bolster their hydraulic lift hypothesis. For instance, there should be more detailed research into the water resources of ancient Egypt to crosscheck what he admits are his team’s “crude computations,” given how the region shifted from a savannah to a desert environment. New geophysical surveys and coring of the wadi would shed more light on the hydrological aspects of the area, while other surveys might reveal where the eastward tunnels of the pyramid lead.

 

Furthermore, excavations around Gisr el-Mudir and the Deep Trench could clarify whether they had hydraulic uses, especially if any evidence of a water imprint were found, along with conduits and tunnels between the compartments, such as between the Deep Trench and the south shaft. Perhaps muon tomography could be used to explore the upper part of the north shaft. Looking for evidence of internal structures like shafts in other pyramids might prove informative as well.

The skeptics weigh in

This is not the first time someone has suggested that hydraulic methods might have been used to build Egyptian pyramids, according to John Baines of Oxford University. Baines told Ars that he was “agnostic to skeptical” about the hydraulic lift hypothesis presented by Landreau et al., although he felt it was more solid than prior, shakier claims. “But it’s another matter whether it’s plausible,” he said. “Using ramps is known to work and there is archaeological evidence for them from other sites.”

 

"The paper is certainly very thorough and the hydrographic arguments may be compatible with recent work on higher levels of rainfall in the relevant period and different patterns of the Nile, for example," Baines added. "There is also the Sadd el-Kafara dam ("Dam of the Infidels") not very far away and from the same general period, though the original 1950s report on that said it failed at the first hurdle."

 

He finds Landreau et al.'s arguments about water filtration and water quality more problematic. "Can one point to anything beyond preference for well water or flowing water over standing water before quite modern times?" he said. "I also wonder about how far levels could have been surveyed with the necessary accuracy in the early third millennium."

 

Judith Bunbury of the University of Cambridge told Ars that there is evidence that Egyptians used other kinds of hydraulic technologies around that time, but there is no evidence of any kind of hydraulic lift system.

 

"While information from this period is sparse, it is not absent, and it is surprising when so many other details of daily life and technologies are recorded in the Old Kingdom tomb scenes and texts like the Red Sea Scrolls, that this type of device is omitted if it were in use," she said. "For example, at Gebel al-Asr, in the time of Khufu, loading ramps were in use, moving large statue blocks. There are still some large statue blocks in situ with remains that show that they were moved by a lever and chock method, still used by Egyptian workmen today. In this context, it would be surprising if a powerful technology, like a hydraulic lift, was used and then so quickly forgotten."

 

That’s why Bunbury would like to see other evidence in support of Landreau et al.'s hypothesis, most notably images of such a device or historical texts referring to the use of a hydraulic lift. Remains of other examples of such a lift would also be convincing, although Bunbury cautioned that "wells and Nilometers also required vertical shafts, and deep vertical shafts were common for burials—even those with no super-structure." So it would be challenging to convincingly argue for a hydraulic purpose for such shafts over other possible uses.

 

PLoS ONE, 2024. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306690  (About DOIs).

 

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