With AI interpreting lab results for a growing number of patients, clinicians must provide context and caution and prepare for the real deluge soon.
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Why does AI being good at math matter?
This is the second time in recent months that the AI world has got all excited about math. The rumor mill went into overdrive last November, when there were reports that the boardroom drama at OpenAI, which saw CEO Sam Altman temporarily ousted, was caused by a new powerful AI breakthrough. It was reported that the AI system in question was called Q* and could solve complex math calculations. (The company has not commented on Q*, and we still don’t know if there was any link to the Altman ouster or not.) I unpacked the drama and hype in this story.
You don’t need to be really into math to see why this stuff is potentially very exciting. Math is really, really hard for AI models. Complex math, such as geometry, requires sophisticated reasoning skills, and many AI researchers believe that the ability to crack it could herald more powerful and intelligent systems. Innovations like AlphaGeometry show that we are edging closer to machines with more human-like reasoning skills. This could allow us to build more powerful AI tools that could be used to help mathematicians solve equations and perhaps come up with better tutoring tools.
Detecting single-electron qubits: Microwaves could probe quantum states above liquid helium
One intriguing method that could be used to form the qubits needed for quantum computers involves electrons hovering above liquid helium. But it wasn’t clear how data in this form could be read easily.
Now RIKEN researchers may have found a solution. Their work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Lymph Node Dissection Guidelines and Survival in Lung Adenocarcinoma
Guideline-adherent lymph node dissection provided a small survival benefit for patients with high-grade or no lepidic pattern LungAdenocarcinoma, but not for those with lepidic pattern alone.
Importance Lymph node dissection for early-stage lung adenocarcinoma is controversial. Histologic pattern subtyping reveals heterogeneity of lung adenocarcinoma, yet its association with lymph node involvement and dissection is understudied.
Objective To assess the association between guideline-adherent lymph node dissection, histologic pattern subtyping, and overall survival in patients with clinical T1N0M0 lung adenocarcinoma.
Design, Setting, and Participants This multicenter cohort study used data from the National Cancer Center LungReal database, a multicenter, electronic health records-based database for patients undergoing surgery for lung cancer, from January 2014 to December 2021, with the last follow-up in December 2022. Patients were categorized based on histologic pattern of adenocarcinoma into 2 groups: lepidic without high-grade pattern, and high-grade or no lepidic pattern. The data analysis was performed from April to November 2025.
Distinct kinematics and micromorphology for symmetrical rowing and sliding on water in ripple bugs and water striders
Bang, S.Y., Kim, W., Lee, J. et al. Sci Rep 15, 44,777 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-28453-0
Immune-targeting vaccine shows promise intercepting cancer in patients with Lynch Syndrome
The investigational cancer vaccine, NOUS-209, was found to safely stimulate the immune system to target precancerous and cancerous cells in individuals with Lynch Syndrome (LS), according to a study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The results of a Phase Ib/II clinical trial, published today in Nature Medicine, provide early evidence that immune-based approaches, such as NOUS-209, may be able to intercept cancer before it develops, offering a potential new avenue for preventive care for high-risk individuals.
“Current management strategies for Lynch Syndrome patients—frequent screenings or elective preventive surgery—are life-changing interventions that help prevent cancer development but can significantly affect quality of life,” said principal investigator Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez, M.D., Ph.D., chair ad interim of Clinical Cancer Prevention. “By teaching the immune system to recognize and attack abnormal cells, this therapy offers a promising new approach to this patient population, who face a significantly higher risk of colorectal, endometrial, urothelial and other cancers.”
What immune differences distinguish latent autoimmune diabetes in adults from type 1 diabetes?
Ivan I. Golodnikov & team report a calmer immune response in slower autoimmune diabetes, offering insight into why some patients lose insulin production more gradually:
The figure shows an atlas of PBMC from healthy donors and patients with latent autoimmune diabetes mellitus (LADA) and Type1 Diabetes (T1D).
Address correspondence to: Ivan I. Golodnikov, 11 Dm. Ulyanova Street, 117,036 Moscow, Russian. Phone: 7.985.352.05.75; Email: [email protected].
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1Endocrinology Research Centre, Moscow, Russia.
New Mega-Analysis Reveals Why Memory Declines With Age
A landmark international study that pooled brain scans and memory tests from thousands of adults has shed new light on how structural brain changes are tied to memory decline as people age.
The findings — based on more than 10,000 MRI scans and over 13,000 memory assessments from 3,700 cognitively healthy adults across 13 studies — show that the connection between shrinking brain tissue and declining memory is nonlinear, stronger in older adults, and not solely driven by known Alzheimer’s-associated genes like APOE ε4. This suggests that brain aging is more complex than previously thought, and that memory vulnerability reflects broad structural changes across multiple regions, not just isolated pathology.
Published in Nature Communications, the study, “Vulnerability to memory decline in aging revealed by a mega-analysis of structural brain change,” found that structural brain change associated with memory decline is widespread, rather than confined to a single region. While the hippocampus showed the strongest association between volume loss and declining memory performance, many other cortical and subcortical regions also demonstrated significant relationships. This suggests that cognitive decline in aging reflects a distributed macrostructural brain vulnerability, rather than deterioration in a few specific brain regions. The pattern across regions formed a gradient, with the hippocampus at the high end and progressively smaller but still meaningful effects across large portions of the brain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-66354-y
Genetic risk for Alzheimer’s and widespread brain shrinkage linked to greater memory loss — even in otherwise healthy adults.