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The quest to keep organs alive outside the body

Another way to prolong the lifespan of an organ is to use a machine that perfuses it with nutrients, mimicking what happens inside the body. Machine perfusion devices have become more commonly used over the last decade or so and are typically used to maintain livers and kidneys for up to about 24 hours.

Researchers are now adapting this protocol for a growing list of organs, even eyeballs —a recent feat that might enable whole-eye transplants. In March, I went to visit scientists in Valencia who had developed a perfusion system for uteruses. They had used their device—which they nicknamed “Mother”—to keep a human uterus alive for a day.

It’s an exciting time for organ preservation. Keep an eye out for more coverage from MIT Technology Review in the coming weeks.

The Divergent Effects of Nicotinamide Riboside and High‐Intensity Exercise Training on Skeletal Muscle Epigenetic Aging

This study investigated the effects of nicotinamide riboside supplementation and high-intensity interval training on skeletal muscle epigenetic aging. Our findings reveal that both interventions may…

How Meta’s AI Models Are Powering the First Wave of Genesis Mission Projects

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — one of the US Department of Energy’s premier research laboratories, known for Nobel Prize-winning work in physics, chemistry, and materials science — operates some of the most advanced scientific facilities on the planet. Among them is the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a football field-sized facility that produces intensely bright beams of X-ray light, allowing researchers to study materials from the atomic and molecular scale all the way to plants. The ALS’s instruments, known as beamlines, generate enormous quantities of data — and as recent facility upgrades have dramatically increased their resolution and speed, the volume of data has exploded beyond what scientists can keep up with.

The heart has a ‘little brain’ protects against stress

We often think of the brain in our head as the sole commander of our body, but your heart actually has its own mini nervous system embedded directly within its tissues — often referred to by neuroscientists as the heart’s “little brain.”

How the Heart’s “Little Brain” Works.

A subset of cardiac neurons keep the heart from malfunctioning in stressed mice.

Did Eating Too Many Sardines Increase Homocysteine?

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Terence Tao on AI summary

A curated summary of Terence Tao’s current thinking on AI, with practical guidance and links to source material. Positions are distilled from ~70 Mastodon posts, some sixteen interviews and talks, six long-form essays and lectures, ~55 of his own blog comments, and a direct interview; not everything he has said appears here, by design — omission is editorial. Voice is third person; scope is confined to what is obviously about AI.

Latest: his ICM 2026 public lecture “Mathematics in the age of AI” (July 24, 2026) gathers much of this into one argument — the slides are linked here now, and its content will be folded into this summary once the recording is available.

How this page was made. This summary was compiled and drafted by an AI assistant (Claude) from Terence Tao’s public writing, talks, and interviews, then reviewed and corrected by him; the companion interview was conducted by that assistant, with his answers reproduced verbatim (lightly edited). It is a living document, revised as his views develop. Like the rest of tao-web, it is maintained with AI assistance.

Excess tubulin disrupts tissue organization and cell survival

A UNIGE study shows that even a slight overproduction of tubulin, a protein essential for cell structure, is enough to disrupt tissue organization, highlighting the need for tight regulation of protein levels.

For cells to function properly, they must produce the right amount of each protein. It is a delicate balance: both too little and too much can compromise essential cellular functions. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has now shown that even a modest excess of tubulin – the protein that assembles into microtubules, the cell’s internal scaffolding – is enough to disrupt tissue architecture and reduce cell viability. Published in Nature Communications, the study demonstrates that the quantity of a protein is just as important as its function.

Microtubules, built from tubulin, form the cell’s internal skeleton. They help cells maintain their shape, transport molecules, divide, and remain firmly attached to neighboring cells. Rather than being rigid structures, microtubules are constantly assembled and disassembled to adapt to the cell’s changing needs. This dynamic behavior depends directly on the amount of tubulin available.

Vernor Vinge: We Can Surpass the Wildest Dreams of Optimism

Fifteen years ago, I spent an hour with the man who gave us the word.

Vernor Vinge coined “technological singularity.” In his 1993 paper for NASA, he put a clock on it: within thirty years we would have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, he wrote, the human era would end.

That deadline came and went. Vinge died in March 2024, past his own due date, which means he never got to grade his own paper. The rest of us are holding the pencil now.

The title of our conversation was his line, not mine:

We can surpass the wildest dreams of optimism.

From most people, that would be marketing. From a hard #ScienceFiction writer who spent thirty years teaching math and computer science, it was a hypothesis with conditions attached, and he was just as specific about what happens when the conditions are not met.

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