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Suming Huang & team show the HoxBlin c long non-coding RNA serves as an oncogenic regulator that controls 3D nuclear organization, chromatin accessibility and gene transcription related to leukemogenesis.

The figure shows H&E staining of sternum and spleen from WT and B-ALL HoxBlin c Tg mice.


1Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA.

2Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.

3Genetics Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

The AI landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with recent developments challenging established paradigms. Early in 2025, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek unveiled a new model that sent shockwaves through the AI industry and resulted in a 17% drop in Nvidia’s stock, along with other stocks related to AI data center demand. This market reaction was widely reported to stem from DeepSeek’s apparent ability to deliver high-performance models at a fraction of the cost of rivals in the U.S., sparking discussion about the implications for AI data centers.

To contextualize DeepSeek’s disruption, we think it’s useful to consider a broader shift in the AI landscape being driven by the scarcity of additional training data. Because the major AI labs have now already trained their models on much of the available public data on the internet, data scarcity is slowing further improvements in pre-training. As a result, model providers are looking to “test-time compute” (TTC) where reasoning models (such as Open AI’s “o” series of models) “think” before responding to a question at inference time, as an alternative method to improve overall model performance. The current thinking is that TTC may exhibit scaling-law improvements similar to those that once propelled pre-training, potentially enabling the next wave of transformative AI advancements.

These developments indicate two significant shifts: First, labs operating on smaller (reported) budgets are now capable of releasing state-of-the-art models. The second shift is the focus on TTC as the next potential driver of AI progress. Below we unpack both of these trends and the potential implications for the competitive landscape and broader AI market.

In this Review, Della Valle et al. discuss the role of retrotransposable elements (RTEs) in the onset and progression of ageing and ageing-related disease, including evidence that environmental stressors act through RTEs to shift the trajectory towards unhealthy ageing.

The company was founded to sell automation software. That entire market is being upended by AI, particularly agentic AI, which is supposed to click around on the internet and do things for you.


After stepping down from and returning to the CEO role, Daniel Dines is preparing for the agentic AI era.

IN A NUTSHELL 🌍 China’s dominance in gallium production is reshaping global semiconductor and battery industries. ⚠️ Japan has raised alarms about the strategic implications of China’s control over critical resources like gallium, germanium, and antimony. 🔗 The U.S. sanctions against China have intensified competition for strategic raw materials, leading to trade tensions. 🏭 The

Researchers have pulled off a quantum feat that defies traditional expectations—they’ve created Schrödinger cat states not from ultra-cold ground states, but from warm, thermally excited ones.

Using a superconducting qubit setup, the team demonstrated that quantum superpositions can exist even at higher temperatures, overturning the long-held belief that heat destroys quantum effects. This breakthrough not only validates Schrödinger’s original “hot cat” concept but also paves the way for more practical and accessible quantum technologies.

Schrödinger’s cat and hot quantum states.

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Panpsychism is the theory that consciousness is irreducible and exists fundamentally at the foundations of reality. Panpsychism forms include ‘micropsychism,’ where fundamental particles or fields are in some sense conscious, and ‘Cosmopsychism,’ where the entire universe is in some sense conscious. What are the arguments for and against Panpsychism like the ‘combination problem’?

Closer To Truth is now on BlueSky! Follow us for updates, new videos, musings, and more: https://bsky.app/profile/closertotrut… Kastrup is a Brazilian-born Dutch philosopher and computer scientist best known for his work in the field of consciousness studies, particularly his development of analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism grounded in the analytic philosophical tradition. Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world’s deepest questions: https://closertotruth.com/donate/ Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

Bernardo Kastrup is a Brazilian-born Dutch philosopher and computer scientist best known for his work in the field of consciousness studies, particularly his development of analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism grounded in the analytic philosophical tradition.

Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world’s deepest questions: https://closertotruth.com/donate/

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.