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Fintech’s New Power Couple: AI And Trust

At Money20/20 I learned that Fintech has a new power couple, AI and Trust.

The combination of the two is the payment protocol of tomorrow. Come along with me as I share my findings from the world’s #1 fintech show.

There is bunch of interviews and images forthcoming from the event.

Thanks again to Tedd Huff of Fintech Confidential for inviting me to participate in the event. It allowed me to share My Instant AI with event attendees.

(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fintechs-new-power-couple-ai-…urke-eirte)

Tedd Huff asked me to be a confidential informant in Las Vegas recently. But, wait before you go down conspiracy theory rabbit hole, please let me explain.

Continue reading “Fintech’s New Power Couple: AI And Trust” | >

What Is a Manifold?

Standing in the middle of a field, we can easily forget that we live on a round planet. We’re so small in comparison to the Earth that from our point of view, it looks flat.

The world is full of such shapes — ones that look flat to an ant living on them, even though they might have a more complicated global structure. Mathematicians call these shapes manifolds. Introduced by Bernhard Riemann in the mid-19th century, manifolds transformed how mathematicians think about space. It was no longer just a physical setting for other mathematical objects, but rather an abstract, well-defined object worth studying in its own right.

This new perspective allowed mathematicians to rigorously explore higher-dimensional spaces — leading to the birth of modern topology, a field dedicated to the study of mathematical spaces like manifolds. Manifolds have also come to occupy a central role in fields such as geometry, dynamical systems, data analysis and physics.

Pan-immunotherapy biomarker for treatment monitoring

The ability of immune cells—particularly CD8+ T cells—to launch a rapid burst of proliferation inside tumors is key to the success of modern day cancer immunotherapies. However, the factors and mechanisms that drive this burst in proliferation remain poorly understood, making it difficult to predict which patients will benefit from treatment. A deeper understanding of this T cell burst could also guide the development of new therapies that enhance T cell proliferation and improve treatment outcomes.

To tackle this challenge, an international team of researchers developed a novel approach to monitor CD8 ⁺ T cell activity over time. Their findings, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, sheds new light on how T cells expand in the tumor—and how their expansion can be predicted, and ultimately, therapeutically reactivated.

“The development of immunotherapies has been hindered by our inability to comprehensively monitor their effects on immune cells—particularly cancer-fighting T cells—over time,” explainsthe author. “Building on our previous work, we developed a method to track these cells longitudinally in the tumor, allowing us to gain deeper insights into the burst of proliferation that drives effective anti-tumor responses.”

Mycobacterium tuberculosis biology, pathogenicity and interaction with the host

In this Review, Warner, Barczak, Gutierrez and Mizrahi explore essential aspects of Mycobacterium tuberculosis physiology and biology, present recent advances related to its pathogenesis, metabolism and immune evasion mechanisms, and propose future directions for research.

How a tiny RNA molecule in the kidney triggers a deadly autoimmune disease

Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have discovered how a small, naturally occurring RNA molecule in the kidney activates a mutated immune receptor, triggering a chain reaction.

In cooperation with Nanyang Technological University Singapore and the University Hospital Würzburg, among others, the study provides an explanation of how a in the immune receptor RIG-I transforms the body’s defense system into a self-destructive force and causes severe organ-specific autoimmune diseases.

The results have been published in the journal Science Immunology.

Consistent Adherence to Physical Activity Guidelines and Digestive System Cancer Risk and Mortality

This cohort study using data from 3 large US prospective cohorts assesses whether adherence to the recommended physical activity level measured in metabolic equivalent task over time is associated with lower digestive system cancer risk.

Why we used to sleep in two segments — and how the modern shift changed our sense of time

From the article:

“In multi-week sleep studies that simulate long winter nights in darkness and remove clocks or evening light, people in lab studies often end up adopting two sleeps with a calm waking interval. A 2017 study of a Madagascan agricultural community without electricity found people still mostly slept in two segments, rising at about midnight.”

There’s a reason you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night.

Mindscape 334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/03/334-…by-aliens/

The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it’s out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, and the language with which we talk about it, is extremely human-dependent. Does that mean that aliens would do science differently, and even think differently about physics, even if we all live in the same universe? Physicist Daniel Whiteson has teamed with cartoonist Andy Warner to investigate these questions in their new book Do Aliens Speak Physics?

Daniel Whiteson received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of an Emmy nomination. He is the author of several books, often with co-author Jorge Cham. He is the co-host (with Kelly Weinersmith) of the podcast Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe.

Mindscape Podcast playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxY_fRExpDXr87tzRbPCaA5x.
Sean Carroll channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/seancarroll.

#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

Topographical sparse mapping: A neuro-inspired sparse training framework for deep learning models

AI models have been expanding dramatically in size and the number of trainable parameters. This rapid growth has introduced many challenges, including increased computational costs and inefficiencies. Dynamic sparse training has emerged as a novel approach to address overparameterization and achieve energy-efficient artificial neural network (ANN) architectures. The highly efficient neuro-inspired sparse design remains underexplored compared to the significant focus on random topology searches. We propose the Topographical Sparse Mapping (TSM) method, inspired by the vertebrate visual system and convergent units. TSM introduces a sparse input layer for MLPs, significantly reducing the number of parameters.

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