Scientists just solved a 40-year-old mystery about quasicrystals
A rare and bewildering intermediate between crystal and glass can be the most stable arrangement…
Should the NHS really use magic mushrooms to treat mental health?
Pallab GhoshScience Correspondent BBC Listen to Pallab Ghosh read this article Larissa Hope truly believes that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, saved her life. Back when she was 17 and starting out as an actress, she was cast in the TV drama Skins, but the new-found fame brought out a previously buried trauma….
Chickenpox vaccines for children on NHS starts across UK
Philippa Roxby and Smitha MundasadHealth reporters Getty Images All young children in the UK can now be offered protection against chickenpox for the first time on the NHS. The vaccine will be combined with the existing MMR jab, given at 12 and 18 months of age, which already helps protect against measles, mumps and rubella….
AI Labor Is Boring. AI Lust Is Big Business
After years of hype about generative AI increasing productivity and making lives easier, 2025 was the year erotic chatbots defined AI’s narrative. Source link
AI-Powered Dating Is All Hype. IRL Cruising Is the Future
I am, admittedly, a big flirt. I love everything about the exchange of getting to know another person. The playful banter. The rush of dopamine. The sexual subtlety and subtext of everything not said. Flirting, to me, remains one of the last human endeavors where people are intentionally trying to find common ground. It’s pure…
Colchester boy given £1.8m drug has new lease of life
Contributed Edward was one of the first children in England to be given the gene therapy Zolgensma through the NHS A five-year-old boy who received the world’s most expensive drug as a baby has made “incredible progress” and can walk independently, his mother said. Edward, from Colchester, has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) which means he…
Newport woman felt ‘so guilty’ having skin cancer while pregnant
A woman says she felt “so guilty” for having skin cancer while pregnant with her son. Emma Giannuzzi, 36, from Rogerstone, Newport, used sunbeds regularly in her late teens and was diagnosed with melanoma twice – first at 23, and again during pregnancy after noticing a mole on her stomach, with tests after giving birth…
The ascent of the AI therapist
AI therapists could flatten humanity into patterns of prediction, and so sacrifice the intimate, individualized care that is expected of traditional human therapists. “The logic of PAI leads to a future where we may all find ourselves patients in an algorithmic asylum administered by digital wardens,” Oberhaus writes. “In the algorithmic asylum there is no…
What is the ultimate hangover cure?
The Food Chain’s Ruth Alexander on what helps – and what doesn’t – if you’ve overindulged. Source link
The Great Big Power Play
Take yourself back to 2017. Get Out and The Shape of Water were playing in theaters, Zohran Mamdani was still known as rapper Young Cardamom, and the Trump administration, freshly in power, was eager to prop up its favored energy sources. That year, the administration introduced a series of subsidies for struggling coal-fired power plants…
Google AI announcements from December
We announced a new experiment to improve browsing and manage complex online tasks. We’ve all felt the friction of juggling dozens of tabs to research a topic or plan a trip. Enter Disco, a new browsing experience from Google Labs designed to tame that complexity. Disco features GenTabs, an experiment that proactively synthesizes your open…
