🤖 “Hand-motion farms” are real — and they’re training robot hands.

In parts of India, workers strap a small camera to their forehead and spend hours doing simple, tactile tasks: folding towels, packing boxes, sorting everyday objects.
The POV videos go to U.S. labs, where neural networks study exactly how human fingers grip, pull, twist, and place—so robots can learn to copy the same motions.

Why this matters:
• Dexterity is the bottleneck. Vision models are great, but robots still struggle with cloth, cables, zipper pulls, and irregular objects. Human POV data captures the micro-moves that simulators miss.
• Imitation learning at scale. Hour after hour of clean, labeled hand maneuvers becomes training fuel for policies that generalize to new objects and tasks.
• Societal twist. It’s efficient—and a little dystopian: people meticulously teach the fine motor skills that may one day automate their own work.

Humans teaching their replacements, one folded towel at a time.

#AI #robots #imitationlearning #India #futureofwork

Whether we expect a major nuclear war or not, here is a curious set of U.S. actions in deploying strategic weapons:


First, the White House has consistently withdrawn from long-standing arms reduction and limitation treaties. In 2002—from the ABM Treaty; in 2019—from the INF Treaty; in 2020—from the Open Skies Treaty. A potential U.S. refusal to maintain the moratorium on nuclear testing could thus be a logical next step in Washington’s dismantling of the global strategic stability system.
Second, the U.S. is accelerating the modernization of its strategic offensive weapons. Work is underway on the new Sentinel ICBM with a new nuclear warhead and a range of 13,000 km. Development continues on the Columbia-class strategic nuclear submarine to replace the Ohio-class. The new B-21 Raider heavy bomber is in progress. A nuclear-armed cruise missile is under development, and so on. Plans include reactivating 56 launchers on 14 Ohio-class submarines—note: full reactivation—with complete loading of Trident II ballistic missiles. Preparatory measures are in place to reconvert 30 B-52H strategic bombers back into nuclear weapon carriers.
Third, the Americans have begun implementing the “Golden Dome” program, which envisions both missile defense interception and pre-launch strikes against Russian and Chinese missiles.
Fourth, by the end of this year, the U.S. Army plans to adopt the new Dark Eagle intermediate-range missile system with hypersonic missiles capable of a 5,500 km range. Future deployment is foreseen in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Flight time from Germany—where this complex is planned for placement—to targets in central Russia would be about six to seven minutes.
Fifth, Washington regularly conducts exercises of its strategic offensive forces. The latest, Global Thunder 2025—which practiced, I emphasize, preemptive nuclear missile strikes on Russian territory—took place in October of this year.
Overall, this is a unified complex of measures, including potential U.S. plans for nuclear tests, which significantly heighten the military threat level to Russia.

“Feels like the uncanny valley just got crossed.”

Prompt: “Photorealistic interview with an 8-year-old child speaking sadly. The child knows they are AI-generated, feels sorrow about it, and answers the interviewer’s question — ‘What is it like to be an AI?’ — wisely yet child-like. Dark-blue background.”

Result: natural eye contact, micro-movements, believable pacing; emotion reads instantly.
Takeaway: the uncanny-valley threshold in Gen-Video has shifted.

Stack to try: Sora 2, Kling, Nano Banana, Krea, Artlist, Resolve.

#AI #GenerativeVideo #UncannyValley #PromptEngineering

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus as seen from Mars

💊 A once-daily pill that slashes “bad” cholesterol by ~58%

High LDL (“bad”) cholesterol is a slow-motion killer: it silently damages arteries and drives heart attacks and strokes. For people with familial hypercholesterolemia (roughly 1 in 250 adults), LDL is dangerously high from birth.

A new clinical trial just tested an experimental pill called enlicitide decanoate, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor:
• 293 adults with inherited high cholesterol
• all already on statins, but still with elevated LDL
• randomized to enlicitide once a day vs placebo for 24 weeks

📉 Result:
Those on the pill saw LDL drop by 58.2% on average, while the placebo group actually had a slight increase in LDL. The effect stayed strong over a full year, and side effects were similar to placebo.

PCSK9 inhibitors already exist as injections; this one is a tablet that basically lets the liver vacuum more LDL out of the blood. If longer-term studies confirm it reduces heart attacks and strokes, millions of high-risk patients could swap some injections for a daily pill.

Question:
If you had very high LDL, would you take a daily PCSK9 pill on top of statins?

#medicine #cholesterol #cardiology #pharma

🧠 Your Mind Can Switch On Your Immune System — Literally

A recent immunology session reminded me of a striking study: participants in VR were shown faces of supposedly “infected” people — and their innate immune biomarkers actually increased.
In other words, both real pathogens and completely virtual ones triggered the same physiological immune response. No microbes needed.

Another paper impressed me even more: tumor growth in mice was suppressed simply through social interaction.
We all know loneliness is harmful, but the effect here was dramatic:
just one hour of daily social contact significantly reduced tumor growth and anxiety-like behavior.

This fits into a growing body of work on how the brain regulates the body — including immunity. If you want a solid overview, Cell has a great review by Ayelet “A.C.” Rolls, with a deep dive into immunoceiving (how the brain senses and modulates immune activity).

The bigger picture?
We’re moving toward a future where maintaining health won’t rely only on pharmaceuticals, but also on managing mental states.
Drugs are easier — you take a pill and don’t have to change yourself.
Mind-body interventions are harder — but potentially just as powerful.

I still hope medicine will more actively tap into the brain–body connection.

🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02008-y

China just rolled out its own T-800. And no, this is not CGI.

🤖 Chinese company EngineAI (Zhòngqíng) has unveiled a full-size humanoid robot called T800 — the promo stresses: “All real footage – no CGI, no AI, no video acceleration.”

Key specs:
• Height: 173 cm
• 29 degrees of freedom (not counting the hands)
• Peak joint torque: up to 450 N·m

Capabilities:
• 360° surround vision system
• Active cooling for the leg joints (so it doesn’t overheat while walking/running)
• Battery life: ≈ 4–5 hours of operation on a single charge

Humanoids are rapidly moving from flashy concept videos to more practical platforms: with this level of torque, sensing and runtime, robots like T800 are getting closer to tasks in logistics, manufacturing, and hazardous environments — not just lab demos.

#robotics #AI #humanoid #China

🤖 When EngineAI’s T800 humanoid went viral, a lot of people were sure the video was just CGI.

So the CEO, Zhao Tongyang, literally stepped into the ring with his own robot — and let it kick him. 🦶

No VFX, no compositing, no AI post-processing — just a full-size humanoid, real-time control, and a CEO who’s very confident in his product. 📷

As humanoids get more powerful (high joint torque, fast reaction times, active cooling), trust and safety are becoming just as important as raw specs. EngineAI decided to demonstrate that trust the hard way.

#robotics #humanoid #AI #China

Imagine your liver biopsy being scored not by a panel of pathologists, but by an AI that regulators officially treat as a “lab tool” for drug trials. That just became real.

PathAI has announced that its AIM-MASH AI Assist system is the first AI-powered pathology tool ever qualified by the US FDA (and already by the European Medicines Agency) for use in clinical trials of MASH — a common, fatty liver disease that can progress to cirrhosis and cancer. Instead of three experts arguing over how bad the damage looks on a slide, the model helps a single pathologist assign consistent scores.

Why this matters: drug trials for liver disease live and die on tiny changes in biopsy scores. Human reads are slow, expensive and notoriously variable. An AI that gives the same answer every time for the same slide can make trials faster, cheaper and statistically cleaner — which may mean more liver drugs actually making it to market.

Important caveat: this AI is cleared only as a biomarker tool for trials, not for diagnosing individual patients. But if regulators are starting to trust models as part of the evidence pipeline, how long until similar systems sit inside routine hospital workflows?

Would you be comfortable knowing an AI scored your tissue sample in a drug trial? Should this kind of model stay in research, or gradually move into everyday diagnostics?

Full story from PathAI’s press release: https://www.pathai.com/news/pathais-aim-mash-ai-assist-becomes-first-ai-powered-pathology-tool-to-receive-fda-qualification-for-mash-clinical-trials

#AI #medicine #pathology #liverdisease #clinicaltrials #FDA #biotech

Scientists may have accidentally discovered a dementia prevention tool that's been available for years.

A shingles vaccine — originally designed to prevent that painful rash you might get from a dormant childhood virus — appears to cut dementia risk by 20%. And in people already diagnosed with dementia, it seems to slow the disease's progression.

The discovery came from a quirk in Welsh health policy. In 2013, Wales offered the vaccine only to people who were exactly 79 — anyone who had already turned 80 was ineligible. This created a near-perfect natural experiment: two groups of people, virtually identical except for a few weeks of age difference, one vaccinated and one not.

When Stanford Medicine researchers tracked these groups for nine years, the results were striking. Among those vaccinated, dementia diagnoses dropped significantly. Even more surprising: people who already had dementia and got the vaccine were far less likely to die from it.

The effect was strongest in women. Whether this comes from stronger immune responses or something else entirely remains unclear. Scientists don't yet know if the vaccine works by suppressing the virus itself or by generally boosting the immune system.

Would you consider getting the shingles vaccine earlier if these findings hold up in clinical trials? Does it change how you think about the connection between viruses and brain health?

For more details, see the full article from Stanford Medicine: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vaccination-dementia.html

#dementia #vaccines #neuroscience #aging #medicine #science

This is Guizhou Province, China — mountains completely covered with solar panels.

The scale is so massive that drones don’t have enough battery to capture the entire mountain range in a single flight. Just endless ridges of photovoltaics stretching to the horizon.

By turning rugged, hard-to-use terrain into energy infrastructure, China is effectively farming millions of kilowatt-hours every month.

Guizhou has become a symbol of China’s renewable strategy:
• use land with low alternative economic value
• build at industrial scale, not pilot projects
• integrate renewables directly into national energy planning

While others debate whether such transitions are realistic, China simply builds them.

The greenest country?
At the very least — the most scalable one.

@science

How inflation is rising in the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Swiss franc.
@science

🧠🦠 Your gut may be shaping your mind more than you think

A new peer-reviewed study adds to the growing evidence that the gut microbiome plays a direct role in brain function, behavior, and mental health — far beyond digestion.

Researchers show that changes in gut bacteria can influence:
• 🧩 cognitive performance
• 😌 stress and anxiety levels
• 🧠 neuroinflammation and brain signaling
• 🔄 the gut–brain communication loop via immune and neural pathways

What’s especially striking is that the effects are bidirectional:
your mental state alters the microbiome, and the microbiome, in turn, alters your mental state.

This reinforces a major shift in neuroscience and medicine:

The brain is not an isolated organ — it’s deeply integrated with the immune system, metabolism, and trillions of microbes living inside us.

Implications range from mental health treatments to personalized nutrition, probiotics, and even preventive psychiatry.

📄 Source (open access):
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2599562