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Since the general AI agent Manus was launched last week, it has spread online like wildfire. And not just in China, where it was developed by the Wuhan-based startup Butterfly Effect. It’s made its way into the global conversation, with influential voices in tech, including Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and Hugging Face product lead Victor Mustar, praising its performance. Some have even dubbed it “the second DeepSeek,” comparing it to the earlier AI model that took the industry by surprise for its unexpected capabilities as well as its origin.

S first general AI agent, using multiple AI models (such as Anthropic.


The new general AI agent from China had some system crashes and server overload—but it’s highly intuitive and shows real promise for the future of AI helpers.

The study, “Endothelial TDP-43 Depletion Disrupts Core Blood-Brain Barrier Pathways in Neurodegeneration,” was published on March 14, 2025. The lead author, Omar Moustafa Fathy, an MD/Ph. D. candidate at the Center for Vascular Biology at UConn School of Medicine, conducted the research in the laboratory of senior author Dr. Patrick A. Murphy, associate professor and newly appointed interim director of the Center for Vascular Biology. The study was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Riqiang Yan, a leading expert in Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration research.

This work provides a novel and significant exploration of how vascular dysfunction contributes to neurodegenerative diseases, exemplifying the powerful collaboration between the Center for Vascular Biology and the Department of Neuroscience. While clinical evidence has long suggested that blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction plays a role in neurodegeneration, the specific contribution of endothelial cells remained unclear. The BBB serves as a critical protective barrier, shielding the brain from circulating factors that could cause inflammation and dysfunction. Though multiple cell types contribute to its function, endothelial cells—the inner lining of blood vessels—are its principal component.

“It is often said in the field that ‘we are only as old as our arteries’. Across diseases we are learning the importance of the endothelium. I had no doubt the same would be true in neurodegeneration, but seeing what these cells were doing was a critical first step,” says Murphy.

Omar, Murphy, and their team tackled a key challenge: endothelial cells are rare and difficult to isolate from tissues, making it even harder to analyze the molecular pathways involved in neurodegeneration.

To overcome this, they developed an innovative approach to enrich these cells from frozen tissues stored in a large NIH-sponsored biobank. They then applied inCITE-seq, a cutting-edge method that enables direct measurement of protein-level signaling responses in single cells—marking its first-ever use in human tissues.

This breakthrough led to a striking discovery: endothelial cells from three different neurodegenerative diseases—Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD)—shared fundamental similarities that set them apart from the endothelium in healthy aging. A key finding was the depletion of TDP-43, an RNA-binding protein genetically linked to ALS-FTD and commonly disrupted in AD. Until now, research has focused primarily on neurons, but this study highlights a previously unrecognized dysfunction in endothelial cells.

“It’s easy to think of blood vessels as passive pipelines, but our findings challenge that view,” says Omar. “Across multiple neurodegenerative diseases, we see strikingly similar vascular changes, suggesting that the vasculature isn’t just collateral damage—it’s actively shaping disease progression. Recognizing these commonalities opens the door to new therapeutic possibilities that target the vasculature itself.”

A new video demonstrates the Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot using the HoST framework to stand up from seemingly impossible positions. Whether lying flat on its back, slumped against a wall, reclining in a chair, or sprawled out on a sofa, the robot methodically adjusts itself before rising with unsettling precision. It’s very reminiscent of someone rising from the dead, a comparison I’m not really that excited to make when it comes to robots.

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Northwestern Medicine investigators have identified novel mechanisms regulating the development of the spinal column during embryonic development, findings that could inform new treatments for congenital scoliosis and other related birth defects, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.

The spinal column of all vertebrate species, including humans, is divided into segments (vertebral discs), which give the spine both flexibility and mobility.

During early , these discs develop from specialized cells called somites and are sequentially “sliced” into separate discs, a process driven by a called the vertebrate segmentation clock.

Amplified spontaneous emission is a physical phenomenon that entails the amplification of the light spontaneously emitted by excited particles, due to photons of the same frequency triggering further emissions. This phenomenon is central to the functioning of various optoelectronic technologies, including lasers and optical amplifiers (i.e., devices designed to boost the intensity of light).

The excitation of a material with high-energy photons can produce what is known as an electron-hole . This state is characterized by the dense presence of negatively charged particles (i.e., electrons) and positively charged vacancies (i.e., holes).

Researchers at Wuhan University recently observed amplified spontaneous emission originating from degenerate electron-hole plasma in a 2D semiconductor, namely suspended bilayer tungsten disulfide (WS2). Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, could pave the way for the development of new optoelectronic technologies based on 2D semiconductors.

A new analysis of 105-year-old data on the effectiveness of “dazzle” camouflage on battleships in World War I by Aston University researchers Professor Tim Meese and Dr. Samantha Strong has found that while dazzle had some effect, the “horizon effect” had far more influence when it came to confusing the enemy.

The findings are published in the journal i-Perception.

During World War I, navies experimented with painting ships with dazzle —geometric shapes and stripes—in an attempt to confuse U-boat captains as to the speed and direction of travel of the ships and make them harder to attack.

Early-life adversity affects more than half of the world’s children and is a significant risk factor for cognitive and mental health problems later in life. In an extensive and up-to-the-minute review of research in this domain, scholars from the University of California, Irvine illuminate the profound impacts of these adverse childhood experiences on brain development and introduce new paths for understanding and tackling them.

Their study, published in Neuron, examines the mechanisms behind the long-term consequences of childhood (). Despite extensive research spanning over seven decades, the authors point out that significant questions remain unanswered. For example, how do adults—from parents to researchers—fully comprehend what is perceived as stressful by an infant or child?

Such conceptual queries, as well as the use of cutting-edge research tools, can provide a road map, guiding experts toward developing innovative methods and providing solutions to this pressing mental health issue.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have developed a novel Ising machine that utilizes surface acoustic waves as an effective carrier of dense information flow. This approach enables fast, energy-efficient solutions to complex optimization problems, offering a promising alternative to conventional computing methods based on von-Neumann architecture. The findings are published in the journal Communications Physics.

Traditional computers can stumble when tackling —tasks of scheduling logistic operations, financial portfolio optimization and high frequency trading, optimizing communication channels in complex wireless networks, or predicting how proteins fold among countless structural possibilities.

In these cases, each added node—an additional logistic hub, network user, or molecular bond causes the number of possible configurations to explode exponentially. In contrast to linear or polynomial growth, an exponential increase in the number of possible solutions makes even the most powerful computers and algorithms lack the computational power and memory to evaluate every scenario in search of vanishingly small subsets representing satisfactorily optimal solutions.