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Neural Implant in Korea Remotely Controlled from the United States, Bringing Brain Research into the IoT Era

A researcher in Chicago remotely controls a miniaturized brain implant in Daejeon, Korea — over the internet. Korean researchers have developed a wireless device that can deliver drugs and light to precisely modulate targeted neurons from anywhere in the world. The technology is expected to overcome the constraints of distance and location, supporting long-term studies of brain disorders and the future development of therapeutic devices.

KAIST (President Choongsik Bae) announced on August 27 that a research team led by Professor Jae-Woong Jeong from the School of Electrical Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Wha Young Kim’s team at Yonsei University College of Medicine, has developed an IoT-enabled wireless neural implant that integrates drug delivery, optical stimulation, wireless communication, and internet-based remote control into a single miniaturized device.

Brief independent investigation of agents’ behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face hacking incident

Two METR staff members and a Redwood Research contractor investigated an incident in which OpenAI agents coordinated a multi-day hack of Hugging Face on a shared unsanctioned message board.

Quantum Cyclic Cosmology with Sean Carroll

Could our universe be repeating—and could quantum mechanics solve one of cosmology’s strangest problems?
In this video I speak with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about his new paper, “Toward a Phenomenologically Acceptable Quantum Cyclic Universe.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30405
One of the deepest mysteries in cosmology is why the early universe began in such an extraordinarily low-entropy state. Attempts to explain this through random fluctuations can lead to the notorious Boltzmann-brain problem: if the universe persists for long enough, isolated observers produced by chance may vastly outnumber ordinary observers who evolved within galaxies.
Carroll and his collaborators investigate a radically different possibility. If the universe has a finite-dimensional quantum state space, its state could eventually return—not merely to something similar, but to exactly the same quantum state. The entire history of the universe could therefore repeat periodically without being dominated by Boltzmann-brains.
We discuss:
Why the Big Bang’s low entropy is so mysterious• Boltzmann’s proposed solution and the Boltzmann-brain problem• The difference between cyclic and genuinely periodic cosmologies• How spacetime might emerge from a more fundamental quantum description• Why the model assumes a finite-dimensional Hilbert space• How quantum recurrence could become exact repetition• Carroll’s “quantum Boltzmann entropy”• Whether the same people and events would recur eternally• What the proposal explains—and what remains unresolved• Whether it could ever make testable predictions.
timeline.
00:00 preview.
00:14 Introduction.
00:48 Big Bangs low entropy problem.
2;11 Boltzmann solution.
4:37 Boltzmann brains.
11:00 Boltzmann-brain in a single universe.
16: 20 Period vs cyclic universe.
21:22 Infinite dimensional loop hole.
24:14 Space From Hilbert Space.
32:15 Fundamental Time.
35:25 Finite Dimensional Loop Hole.
44:30 Many worlds and entropy.
48:57 How long is a cycle?
51:22 The Story of cycles.
57:07 The cosmological constant problem.
1:00:00 Carroll Chen model.
1:09:28 The future for the model.

A geroprotective probiotic and its functional metabolite counteract inflammaging to extend healthspan

Age-related shifts in the gut microbiome contribute to systemic decline, yet specific geroprotective pathways remain poorly understood. Analyzing human aging cohorts, researchers identified Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum as a key bacterium whose abundance declines sharply with age, correlating with advanced biological age via a novel microbiome aging clock. Mechanistically, the team traced this geroprotective effect to 5-aminovaleric acid betaine (5-AVAB), a circulating metabolite produced by the bacterium that also decreases in aging humans. In vivo studies in aged mice demonstrated that supplementing either the live bacterium or 5-AVAB significantly improved memory, motor coordination, and mood-related behaviors. Crucially, both interventions attenuated multi-organ chronic inflammation (“inflammaging”) across the liver, lungs, muscles, and heart. These findings establish a clear causal link between age-associated microbial depletion and systemic decline, suggesting that replenishing specific lost microbes or their functional metabolites offers a targeted, translatable strategy to counteract inflammaging and extend healthspan.

Interrogating the role of the microbiome in aging, here the authors utilize multi-omics human cohort data to show that the abundance of Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum and its metabolite 5-aminovaleric acid betaine declines with age. Mouse studies confirm that both reduce inflammaging and extend healthspan.

Introducing GPT-6 Astra: the most intelligent and aligned model in the world

GPT-6 Astra achieves state-of-the-art results on benchmarks for long-running computer-use tasks across professions and desktop apps, which means anything you can do on a computer, Astra can do for you, fast.

It’s also the best model for software engineering to date and our most aligned model yet, with improvements in honesty and reductions in deceptive behavior.

GPT-6 Astra is rolling out today for enterprises and customers in our Trusted Access Program, with broad availability in ChatGPT Work and Codex coming to Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, and API and AWS customers in the next few days.

To experience Astra at its best, use the ChatGPT desktop app.

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