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Weighing 600 million buildings to help construct a more efficient future

A new study helps show how builders and city planners can minimize the materials needed to accommodate the planet’s future population.

“How we plan cities today will shape their material demand for decades,” said Jinchao Song, the first author of the new study and a U-M research fellow with the School for Environment and Sustainability, or SEAS. “Using materials more efficiently can help cities accommodate future population growth while reducing the emissions associated with construction. If we use less material, we will have less energy consumption and carbon emissions.”

In the study, published in the journal Nature Cities, Song and colleagues combined high-resolution satellite imagery and other geospatial data with building material information to calculate the weight of 606 million buildings around the world. Working with experts from China, Denmark and the Netherlands, she then analyzed how economic conditions, population density and characteristics of the built environment, including urban form, were associated with material-use efficiency across cities.

Continuous video of black hole radio observations challenges shock wave theory

For years, scientists have relied primarily on radio imaging from techniques like very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) to study jets from the active galactic nuclei of supermassive black holes. This allows for the detection of broad, unresolved features, called components, moving at what appear to be faster-than-light speeds. However, traditional imaging has poor resolution and treats each observation as a separate snapshot in time, limiting information about how the features move.

Astronomers have overcome this issue, but only to a degree, by reconstructing unknown aspects with the help of algorithms. Newer modeling methods can sharpen static radio images, but dynamic imaging has remained difficult, especially across large monitoring datasets. But now, a team of researchers has developed an AI-based method that turns scattered radio observations into a continuous, polarized video.

Their new study, published in Nature, applies this method to blazar 3C 345, a type of energetic active galactic nucleus, and the results have upended their understanding of the blazar.

Scientists create mice with part-human brains

Researchers have created mice with half-human brains in an effort to understand and develop new treatments for disorders such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and rare forms of dementia.

The scientists transplanted lab-grown human brain cells into animals that were engineered to be born without a cortex or hippocampus. This made space for the human tissue to grow inside the rodents’ skulls.

The procedure means scientists can now take cells from patients with brain disorders, turn them into brain tissue in the laboratory, and grow that tissue in living animals. The animals can then be studied to see how the disorder takes hold in human brain tissue, and how drugs might treat the conditions.

Anderon, an IBM Company, Finalizes Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce for a $1 Billion CHIPS Award to Accelerate R&D for U.S.-Based Pure-Play Quantum Foundry

Anderon announced the finalization of a $1 billion award under the CHIPS and Science Act with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The award will accelerate Anderon’s R&D efforts to advance the nation’s quantum wafer manufacturing capabilities.

Schrödinger’s blunder created the quantum measurement problem

Quantum mechanics is seen as challenging the idea that science provides objective descriptions of reality outside of our minds. The “measurement problem” seems to suggest that the act of observation creates the outcome that is observed. But physicist Antony Valentini, whose Beyond the Quantum was hailed by Lee Smolin as “the best book written this century” on quantum mechanics, argues that this picture rests on an enormous blunder by Erwin Schrödinger. After Louis de Broglie predicted the wave-like trajectories of particles, Schrödinger found the equation describing this. But whereas de Broglie envisaged particles riding on waves, Schrödinger kept the waves and threw away the particles. That single decision birthed the measurement problem—and it was completely unnecessary. Resurrect de Broglie’s original particle-based theory, Valentini argues, and we can dispel quantum mystery.

Antony Valentini will debate Sabine Hossenfelder and Philip Ball live at HowTheLightGetsIn Festival on September 19th, alongside hundreds of other debates, talks, music and comedy. Book your place now.

Reality and the quantum.

Tech Unemployment: The Future of Labor in an AI-Driven Economy

For most of history, capital needed labor. That was the deal.

Capital needed workers to turn investment into returns. Workers needed capital to earn a living. The balance shifted back and forth, and in the 1970s productivity and wages started drifting apart, but the basic dependence never broke.

A few years ago I argued it would. My reason was that, for the first time, capital can create labor instead of hiring it.

That changes the whole deal. It also changes who needs to be paid, and that includes more than workers. Throughout history, the people enforcing order also had to be paid.

I later turned the essay into a podcast op-ed. Last November I added a short update about two economic signals that tracked each other for twenty years and then split apart in 2023. You can probably guess what launched just before that.

Harari warned of a “useless class.” I think there is another possible outcome, one we have never had the option of before. Which one we get is not a technology question.

Continue reading “Tech Unemployment: The Future of Labor in an AI-Driven Economy” | >

Ferroptosis in cancer toward molecular insights and clinical translation in pancreatic cancer

Ferroptosis is a regulated form of cell death driven by iron accumulation and lipid peroxidation. Since its recognition as a modality of regulated cell death, ferroptosis has attracted increasing attention in cancer research for its distinct metabolic and redox dependencies. Recent evidence suggests that ferroptosis arises from systems-level regulation integrating metabolic reprogramming, gene and RNA control, and inter-organelle communication, while simultaneously influencing immune remodeling and the tumor microenvironment. These processes collectively determine ferroptosis susceptibility and therapeutic response. Ferroptosis-related genes and pathways have also emerged as potential biomarkers for risk stratification, treatment prediction, and imaging-based assessment. Moreover, small-molecule inducers, targeted inhibitors, and delivery systems capable of modulating ferroptosis demonstrate translational potential to overcome therapeutic resistance across multiple malignancies, including pancreatic cancer. This review synthesizes recent mechanistic and translational advances, highlighting ferroptosis as a conceptual bridge between cellular metabolism and tumor therapy, and outlining perspectives for precision diagnostics and personalized interventions.

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