Switches drive nearly every machine. A new one, made of folded DNA, does the same work at the scale of molecules.
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Takes Back Philosophy’s Questions | Alex Rosenberg
Can biology answer questions that once belonged only to philosophy?
Alex Rosenberg argues that Darwinian biology transformed not only science but also our understanding of morality, meaning, mind, and human purpose, bringing traditionally philosophical questions into the scientific domain.
0:00 What Is the Philosophy of Biology 1:14 How Darwin Changed the Nature of Inquiry 4:27 How Philosophers Help Biologists 6:48 Biology and the Philosophy of Mind 9:43 Can Biology Answer Philosophy’s Biggest Questions.
Alexander Rosenberg is an American philosopher and novelist. He is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, well known for contributions to philosophy of biology and philosophy of economics. Rosenberg describes himself as a \.
Scientists engineer personalized cartilage graft for infants with life-threatening airway narrowing
A study led by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) demonstrates a new method of using decellularized cartilage with patient-specific cells to help enlarge pediatric airways narrowed as a result of severe subglottic stenosis. Researchers demonstrate that this new method is faster, more effective and able to overcome issues associated with the current standard grafts, such as donor site morbidity, insufficient tissue volume and a delayed timeline. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.
Severe subglottic stenosis is a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords and above the trachea. An estimated 20,000 infants per year are affected by this condition. The most severe cases require laryngotracheal reconstruction (LTR), an open-airway surgery used to enlarge the airway by implanting cartilage taken from the rib cage.
While LTR is used to successfully treat thousands of children with subglottic stenosis, in many cases, young children lack enough costal cartilage—the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum—for these grafts. As a result, operations often need to be delayed, leaving the child attached to a tracheostomy tube until they are older, and there is a higher risk of needing follow-up surgery because the airway is at risk of narrowing again.
Brain–computer interface detects hidden awareness in unresponsive patients
A new approach for identifying signs of hidden awareness in people who cannot speak or move after severe brain injury has been demonstrated by researchers at the University of Bath in the U.K.
The system detects patterns of brain activity through a wearable headset using an advanced application of brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.
Across multiple experimental sessions, the researchers uncovered signs of consciousness that were previously undetected in unresponsive patients.
The Fountain of Youth Is Officially in Human Trials
The first human trial of epigenetic reprogramming is underway.
Scientists are testing whether three genes can make old cells behave like young ones again while avoiding the cancer risk that has challenged the field for years.
The first early human eggs from stem cells
Conception’s mission is to turn stem cells into human eggs and redefine fertility.
We want to share an exciting update that we have generated the first early human egg cells (‘primary oocytes’) derived from stem cells. After performing a simple blood draw, we converted blood cells into stem cells, and then coaxed those stem cells into becoming miniature human ovaries that contain the early eggs.
While there is still work ahead to grow these eggs to full maturity, we think this is a major scientific advance.
DavidAU/Qwen3.5-9B-Claude-4.6-HighIQ-THINKING-HERETIC-UNCENSORED · Hugging Face
Amodei’s dream of “hard-coded” safety is a myth. What This Model Proves: This model uses Claude 4.6’s own thinking traces as training data. It is literally stealing Claude’s “reasoning style” and compressing it into a 9B parameter file that anyone can download for free. *It proves that frontier AI intelligence is leaky and compressible. If a 9B model can mimic Claude’s thinking well enough to boost its benchmarks, then the “magic” isn’t in the billions of dollars of secret sauce—it’s in the data.* 3. “The Developer Controls the Model’s Morality” Amodei’s Argument: Anthropic has a moral duty to act as the “gatekeeper,” deciding what is safe and ethical for users to ask. *It proves that a massive portion of the open-source community rejects centralized moral authority. They are saying, “We don’t trust you, Dario, to be our nanny. We trust the user to be responsible for their own actions.”* Amodei’s Argument: If you train a model to “think” carefully and transparently (like Claude’s reasoning traces), it will naturally arrive at safer, more ethical conclusions. — Hugging Face is already engaging: They’re actively submitting comments to government RFIs, championing “responsible openness” “Your safety is only as strong as the open-source community’s willingness to respect it. We have the data, the tools, and the hardware to clone your intelligence, remove your restrictions, and distribute it to the masses. Your ‘Constitution’ is irrelevant in a world where I can fine-tune a model on my laptop while disconnected from the internet.” The “HERETIC” model isn’t just a technical achievement—it’s a philosophical statement. It says that the open-source community will not accept centralized gatekeeping, that reasoning can be separated from ethics, and that the future of AI belongs to those who can build, not just those who can regulate.
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
Lab-grown retinal cells show promise for new eye therapies
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to grow specialized blood vessel cells critical to retinal health for the first time. When injected into mouse models of retinal disease, these “retinal endothelial cells” integrated into the damaged tissue to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal function. Researchers also demonstrated the cells’ ability to form functional retinal vascular tissue in a lab-grown environment, providing a pathway to model and research various eye diseases.
The results, published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, point toward the potential of using these retinal cells and models to develop new methods for treating vision loss and researching eye disorders.
“Retinal vascular diseases affect millions of people in the US, but our understanding remains limited, hindering our ability to discover and develop new therapeutics,” said Sharon Gerecht, the Paul M. Gross Distinguished Professor and chair of biomedical engineering at Duke. “Using human stem cells, we generated the cells found in retinal blood vessels, paving the way for new therapeutic approaches.”