Explore o novo instalador amd64-v3 do Ubuntu 26.10, que traz pacotes otimizados para CPUs modernas para melhor desempenho.
O post Ubuntu 26.10 inclui instalador amd64-v3 para otimização de CPU desde a instalação apareceu primeiro em Blog do Edivaldo - Informações e Notícias sobre Linux.
For seafood lovers, there are few things more appealing than a simple slab of raw tuna — a fish whose fatty, savory, and tender muscle tissue has been a delicacy for thousands of years.
Unfortunately for those foodies, fresh raw fish comes with the distinct possibility of parasitic infection. Off the coasts of southern Brazil, that risk is rising, as hauls of the common skipjack tuna come with the near certainty of parasitic contamination.
That’s not an exaggeration. According to a new report published in the journal Ocean and Costal Research and flagged by ScienceAlert, a whopping 96 percent of a recent load of tuna was infested with gut-busting worms.
Out of 53 skipjack, marine researchers counted over 1,600 worms infesting nearly every organ of every fish hauled in from the ocean. Only the kidneys and hearts of the tuna remained worm-free, the researchers noted. Everything else, including the muscle tissue we humans eat, was festering with flatworms and roundworms.
Though most preparation methods will kill the parasites, the images are pretty off-putting. As the researchers explain, the sheer volume of parasitic infection is alarming.
“These results highlight the importance of sanitary inspection and emphasize the importance of immediate evisceration to avoid the migration of larvae from the viscera to the musculature,” the authors write.
Still, parasitologists say the worms aren’t all bad. Though increased presence of worms also comes with more risk of infection, University of Washington parasitologist Chelsea Wood told ScienceAlert in a prior story that they can actually be a sign that the fish is well-sourced.
“Everyone assumes that worms in your salmon is a sign that things have gone awry,” Wood said. “But the anisakid [roundworm] life cycle integrates many components of the food web. I see their presence as a signal that the fish on your plate came from a healthy ecosystem.”
More on food: Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Edible Cookies Because That’s the Future We Deserve
The post Scientists Find That 96 Percent of Delicious Tuna Is Infected With Parasitic Worms appeared first on Futurism.
After health officials in Pennsylvania found that two young children died from measles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is refusing to count their deaths as being caused by the deadly virus.
“This week’s measles outbreaks update will not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Aug. 25,” the CDC posted on its website, in a high unusual announcement.
It’s a precedent shattering action. The New York Times called it an “extraordinary move for the CDC,” breaking with the agency’s long-standing procedure of accepting data shared by states.
The challenge by the CDC comes amid a political showdown between health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who oversees the CDC, and Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro.
At a news conference last week, Shapiro announced the deaths of the two children from measles and condemned Kennedy for spreading vaccine misinformation, saying that “there’s real life consequences for spreading misinformation.”
RFK Jr responded on social media by accusing Shapiro of taking “giddy delight” in their deaths and even suggested he may even “fabricated” them. The CDC’s own announcement that it would not be counting the deaths as measles related came just days after the public spat.
According to the latest reporting, one of the deceased was a newborn with a ruptured spleen, and the other was a child of unknown age. Both were unvaccinated and tested positive for measles, the Pennsylvania Health Department said, per the NYT. They came from Lancaster County, the center of a measles outbreak where 242 people have been infected with the disease so far, the most in the state.
Conflicting information over the children’s deaths gave rise to the heated controversy.
Though the state’s health department said both deaths were due to measles, Lancaster County coroner Stephen Diamantoni, a Republican, said that his office’s pathologist determined that the newborn — which was born infected with virus which it inherited from its mother — died of a ruptured spleen, not measles.
But some top medical experts have pushed back against Diamontoni. Measles can enlarge a baby’s spleen and make them prone to rupturing during birth, wrote Paul Offit, a renowned vaccine and pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a widely reported essay on Substack. Once the spleen ruptures, it’s difficult to determine if it was enlarged after the fact.
Offit called on Diamontoni to provide more details surrounding the newborn’s death — and that, if it wasn’t measles, to offer an alternative explanation for the baby’s ruptured spleen. Since ruptured spleens in newborns is exceedingly rare and can be caused only by a handful of disorders or infections, he said, if one of those conditions wasn’t found in the child, then the “only obvious cause left would be measles.”
None of this explains why the CDC also refused to count the other child’s death, few details on whom have been released ot the public.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, defended its decision in a statement.
“The two measles-associated deaths announced by Pennsylvania have not been confirmed based on the information currently available to CDC,” it said, per the NYT. “The information currently posted reflects the best available information and our commitment to transparency and telling the American people the truth — a foundational principle of the Trump administration.”
More on viruses: Authorities Alarmed When Person With Measles Spends Entire Day Frolicking Around Universal Studios
The post The CDC Is Now Denying That Specific Children Died From Measles, in a Scandal Potentially Beyond Anything in Its History appeared first on Futurism.
If you’re one of the many people chowing down on melatonin gummies to help get to sleep, you may want to check out this study.
A new piece of research published by the American Heart Association made an alarming discovery about long-term use of melatonin supplements, an over-the-counter sleep aid used by tens of thousands. Basically, those who use melatonin over a year or more had a 90 percent higher risk of developing congestive heart failure over a five-year period.
Before you go flush your gummies down the toilet, there are a few caveats. For starters, the findings weren’t based on a clinical trial, but on data from a large database of anonymous health records. Researchers drew from data on chronic insomniacs, specifically, splitting them into two groups: those who have dosed the sleep-regulating hormone over a period of 12 months or more, and those who suffer without.
Still, the results are clearly worrisome. Overall, the study found that 4.6 percent of the melatonin group went on to develop heart failure, compared to 2.7 percent for the control group.
That wasn’t the only data point suggesting it may be time to wean off the ‘tone. A secondary analysis performed by the researchers found that melatonin users were nearly 3.5 times more likely to be hospitalized for heart failure than those in the other group, with hospitalization rates of 19.0 and 6.6 percent, respectively.
“Melatonin supplements are widely thought of as a safe and ‘natural’ option to support better sleep, so it was striking to see such consistent and significant increases in serious health outcomes, even after balancing for many other risk factors,” Ekenedilichukwu Nnadi, the study’s lead author and chief resident in internal medicine at SUNY Brooklyn, said in a press release.
While more in-depth research is needed to confirm the study’s results, the early findings indicate that melatonin use comes with some serious risks in the long-term.
“Melatonin supplements may not be as harmless as commonly assumed,” as Nnadi explained. “If our study is confirmed, this could affect how doctors counsel patients about sleep aids.”
More on health studies: The Hectic Modern World Is Shredding Your Little Cave Man Brain, Scientists Confirm
The post Melatonin Use Linked to Massively Increased Risk of Heart Failure appeared first on Futurism.
New clues to the formation of our planet’s oldest and largest ice sheet could help resolve a longstanding enigma about the southernmost continent.
Around 34 million years ago, Antarctica’s ice sheet began to take shape during a period when global temperatures were predominantly warmer than they are at present. The exact reason why such a large portion of Earth’s water would be subsumed into a massive ice sheet under such conditions has long perplexed researchers.
Now, a new study published in the journal Science suggests that clues to the mystery may exist beneath the ice itself, according to researchers who point to geological evidence that could help explain what led to the formation of Antarctica’s glaciers during a comparatively warm period in our planet’s history.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) holds enough frozen water that it could raise sea levels around the world by more than 50 meters if a sudden, total melting event were ever to occur. Fortunately, scientists don’t anticipate that happening any time soon, although questions over what caused the formation of the largest mass of ice on our planet have remained one of the most predominant mysteries about Antarctica’s ancient history.
Based on geological evidence and paleo-climatological proxy data, the ice sheet’s formation occurred near the transition between the Eocene and Oligocene eras around 34 million years ago, marking a significant step along our planet’s path toward the cooler conditions that prevail today, even amid anthropogenic factors that contribute to ongoing climate changes.
As far as the causes behind this, scientists have long pointed to a reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide as one potential driver of glaciation in Antarctica. However, this explanation also leads to questions: namely, that if falling CO2 and global cooling are believed to be the main factors behind the formation of Antarctica’s ice, then similar freezing should have occurred close to the North Pole as well.
Curiously, evidence suggests that glaciation in Earth’s northernmost regions didn’t begin catching up to its southern counterpart for another 20 to 25 million years. But what might account for this?
The new research, led by scientists at the University of Southampton in collaboration with an international team of researchers from Durham University and several other institutions, points to Antarctica’s changing landscape as a likely missing piece to this ancient puzzle.
“Antarctica’s land surface was gradually lifted to the point where ice could gain a permanent foothold, even while the surrounding polar oceans as well as global temperatures remained surprisingly warm,” said Thomas Gernon, a Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton and the study’s lead author.
By employing models that helped the team map the evolution of the Antarctic landscape, they were able to successfully reconstruct the ancient geological processes going all the way back to the original breakup between Africa and Antarctica that reshaped East Antarctica. This continental breakup led to the formation of a coastal escarpment in the region identified today as Dronning Maud Land, where an elevated plateau rose to nearly two kilometers, and extended close to 2,000 kilometers inland.
Over the 100 million years that followed, a wave of uplift and erosion gradually migrated inland toward Antarctica’s Gamburtsev Mountains, a process which would recur again during the Eocene, further elevating the region and increasing the amount of ancient Antarctica’s landmass that was above the permanent snow line, all of which occurred roughly 15 million years before mass-scale glaciation would begin on the continent.
Based on the team’s models, these major changes to the landscape shifted East Antarctica above the threshold where ice-sheet growth could begin occurring, the onset of which began around 45 million years ago.
Another factor the team identified involves how the large-scale glaciation also caused more sunlight to be reflected away from Earth due to the icy surface’s light coloration, a process known as albedo feedback. The team believes this reflected sunlight may have contributed to as much as an additional degree Celsius of total global cooling.
That cooling alone, the researchers note, would not have been enough to cause widespread glaciation across the Northern Hemisphere, which generally features lower elevations.
Overall, the findings do indicate that Earth’s transition into an icehouse wasn’t something that was driven solely by climate. Instead, what seems most likely is that slow geological transformations occurring over many millions of years were likely to have been a primary contributor to this process, raising Antarctica’s landscape enough to facilitate ice sheet formation, and revealing how the evolution of landscapes can ultimately reshape the climate of an entire planet.
The recent study, “Continental breakup–driven uplift instigated East Antarctic Ice Sheet formation,” appeared in the journal Science.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
It’s no secret that doctors across the world are using AI tools to do stuff from taking notes to looking up questions. But what about the next generation of doctors still in training? According to two medical professionals on the ground, the situation is looking pretty alarming.
With AI being used by med students, “the danger is not just deskilling but never-skilling,” write Simar Bajaj, a journalist and med student at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon and executive vice-chair of surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in an essay for The Guardian.
“Although a doctor who has forgotten how to reason is recoverable,” they added, “one who never learned how may not be.”
Bajaj and Sakran point to two alarming recent findings.
One is internal data showing that around two thirds of doctors in the US are using OpenEvidence, an AI chatbot specifically designed for clinicians. The technology is already prevalent and deeply woven into how medical professionals carry out their jobs.
The next is a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine that evaluated the reliability of these medical-specific large language models. Shockingly, the clinical AI tools performed worse at answering medical queries than general purpose chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude did, the work found. According to the authors, it performed about on par to Google’s AI Overviews, which are notorious for being wonky and inaccurate.
Even if AI tools may be handy for research — and putting aside the major questions over their reliability — they’re no substitute for relying on your brain, as fallible as it might be, because when you’re learning, “the struggle is the point.”
“For example, trainees once asked to build a list of potential diagnoses might struggle and offer an incomplete set, learning what they missed, sometimes painfully,” Bajaj and Sakran wrote. “Now, trainees can simply ask OpenEvidence and get a nearly perfect answer, complete with possibilities they might have never considered and none of the embarrassment of having overlooked them.”
Where AI is different from medical advances in the past is that it’s “not just expanding what doctors can see,” they wrote, “but inserting itself into the cognitive machinery that training is meant to build.”
A bevy of research on the “cognitive offloading” that AI encourages, in which users naturally begin to outsource a lot of their thinking onto the tools, backs this diagnosis. Some studies have suggested AI impairs critical thinking, and leads to lower brain activity during cognitive tasks.
It’s a conundrum gripping the medical world. Earlier this year, doctors from top medical schools proposed a stricter framework on how medical students should use AI tools.
“The process of deliberately crafting the note forces us to use our brains to really wrestle with what’s happening,” Jaideep Talwalkar, associate dean of educational technology and innovation at Yale School of Medicine, told Stat News. “There’s an importance in doing that with great repetition.”
Bajaj and Sakran have a few suggestions for how to deal with this. One is requiring trainees to periodically work through cases without any AI help, similar to how the Federal Aviation Administration advises aviators to periodically disengage autopilot and fly by hand. Of course, another powerful deterrent could be shame. A recent John Hopkins student found that doctors who used AI are viewed with scorn and skepticism by their peers.
More on AI: AI Model Invents Completely New Viruses Unknown to Nature
The post Doctors Warn That Med Students Are Surrendering Their Brains to Medical AIs That Are Even Worse than Regular Chatbots appeared first on Futurism.
Uma pesquisa da Omdia revelou que donos de iPhones costumam gastar mais por aplicativos de microdramas (as novelas verticais) que donos de smartphones com Android — inclusive em países como o Brasil.
Por aqui, 48% dos usuários do iPhone pagam por esse tipo de conteúdo, contra 39% do Android. Na Alemanha, as porcentagens são de 49% contra 44%, enquanto na Coreia do Sul elas são de 59% contra 45%.
Posts relacionados
Nos Estados Unidos, a situação é um pouco mais equilibrada. Por lá, 69% dos usuários do iPhone disseram pagar por conteúdos, enquanto no Android o número caiu apenas um ponto percentual, mais especificamente para 68%.
O relatório também concluiu que usuários do iPhone gastam aproximadamente US$14 por semana nesses apps, enquanto no caso de donos de smartphones com Android o gasto é de cerca de US$10 por semana.
A Omdia destaca que esse resultado vai de encontro a suposições que geralmente relacionam o consumo de novelas verticais a um público com menos poder aquisitivo, que geralmente é mais associado ao Android.
No entanto, é importante ressaltar que ela leva em consideração não apenas o consumo, e sim a compra de conteúdos — que costuma ser mais frequente no iOS em praticamente qualquer tipo de aplicativo.
A detective who helped jail a paedophile for 23 years has been sacked and placed on the same blacklist as rapists and murderers for criticising trans strip-search rules.
The post Female Detective Who Helped Jail Prolific Paedophile Sacked for Describing Transwomen as ‘Cocks in Frocks’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Descubra como a Take-Two encara a controvérsia sindical e segue confiante no lançamento do GTA 6.
O post Take-Two despreocupa com polêmica sindical e mira sucesso do GTA 6 apareceu primeiro em Blog do Edivaldo - Informações e Notícias sobre Linux.
Talk about homework: a large class of undergraduates at an unnamed university in Utah became the unfortunate subject of a severe public health response after an extraordinary bungle in a science lab.
In September of last year, the group of lab students were tasked with identifying a bacterium known as P. shigelloides, a relatively harmless pathogen known to cause diarrhea when ingested. But as lab results came in, students were alarmed to find the specimens handed out in class were actually the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, a potentially deadly pathogen that causes meningitis.
Unlike P. shigelloides, the bacterium N. meningitidis calls for high-security practices, like double gloves, disposable clothes, and fit-tested N95 masks, as the bare minimum. (In one unfortunate case from 2012, a 25-year old microbiologist whose lab was ill equipped to handle N. meningitidis died mere hours after exposure to the aerosolized microbe.)
According to People, Utah public health authorities soon raided the Utah stockroom, finding samples labeled “N. meningitidis.” That discovery prompted a recommendation that all 33 of the exposed students begin a cautionary antibiotic regimen, especially given that the lab participants were only wearing gloves and lab coats at the time of exposure.
On top of the antibiotics dose, at least two people sought medical attention due to possible exposure symptoms, which included a painful and invasive spinal tap.
It was only after the frenzy that further professional lab tests identified the offending pathogen as Neisseria sicca, a bacterium “commonly found in the upper respiratory tract” that is “nonpathogenic in immunocompetent persons,” according to a recently-filed Center for Disease Control study of the Utah lab incident.
Student misidentification notwithstanding, the event underscores the importance of accurately labeling microbial cultures — lest aspiring biologists become victims of their own studies.
More on pathogens: Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Leaking Deadly Bacteria Into Water Town Uses for Irrigation
The post 33 Students Treated for Deadly Bacteria Exposure When Classroom Experiment Goes Horribly Wrong appeared first on Futurism.
Even notorious anti-vaxxer and US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr had to urge families to vaccinate their children against measles last week.
Despite being an entirely preventable disease thanks to a highly effective vaccine that has been widely available since the 1960s, cases of measles have skyrocketed in recent years, facilitated by a White House that’s declared war on scientific research, made a mess of childhood vaccine mandates, and furthered dangerous misinformation.
As of last week, the US had recorded 2,465 confirmed infections so far this year, already more than the 2,289 total cases in 2025. The last two years saw more total infections than the rest of the 21st century combined, as The Guardian reports, with 2026’s tally beating a 35-year record.
Now, in the midst of all that crisis crisis, a character has stumbled into the narrative who perfectly illustrates how it’s gotten so bad. As the LA Times reports, a measles-infected individual spent a whopping 11 hours at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park last month, potentially exposing countless other visitors.
The Los Angeles County Public Health Department was forced to issue a stark warning: anybody who visited the amusement park on July 26 during teh hours between 10am and 9pm may have been exposed and should monitor for symptoms including fever, cough, or rash — and stay vigilant until August 16.
The virus is contagious up to four days before the characteristic rash appears on the skin, and up to four days after that.
Measles can easily spread through the air through just via talking or breathing, and can persist on surfaces for hours at a time.
The vaccine against it, available as part of the measles, mumps, and rubella combination (MMR) shot, is extremely worthwhile. Two doses are 97 percent effective in preventing a measles infection.
The department also urged “everyone to confirm their immunity and get the vaccine if needed, especially before traveling and attending crowded events.”
California has been hit particularly hard, recording at least three localized measles outbreaks this year so far. However, according to the state’s health department, all three outbreaks have ended.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 38 new outbreaks in 2026 across the country so far this year, with several thousand cases spanning 47 states.
The danger to one’s health is substantial — especially to the unvaccinated. According to the CDC, roughly one in five unvaccinated people in the US who get measles are hospitalized. One out of 20 children with measles develop pneumonia. and one to three of every 1,000 children who become infected die from respiratory and neurologic complications.
More on infectious diseases: This Measles Outbreak at a Detention Center Perfectly Encapsulates America Right Now
The post Authorities Alarmed When Person With Measles Spends Entire Day Frolicking Around Universal Studios appeared first on Futurism.
In case you weren’t already feeling paranoid about how AI is shaping our future, scientists for the first time have used an AI model to create new and viable viruses that have never been seen in nature.
Before you panic, the work, detailed in a study published in the journal Science, involved creating viruses that only target bacteria and are harmless to humans. Bacteriophages, as they’re called, are an important medical intervention for targeting drug-resistant pathogens.
“This is an important milestone,” Patrick Cai, a synthetic biologist at the University of Manchester who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times.
Still, it’s an alarming testament to AI’s power and trajectory. The researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute trained an AI model to recognize patterns of genetic structure in nature to create new DNA molecules. These molecules were inserted into bacteria that, over time, turned into wholly new viruses, at the expense of killing their hosts.
In their research, which first gained attention last year but has now been peer-reviewed, the scientists used an AI model called Evo. Unlike a general purpose large language model, Evo is trained on billions of lines of genetic sequences, and for this work in particular, millions of bacteriophage genomes. But it still functions like an LLM, predicting what DNA building blocks — nucleotides — should follow each other like a chatbot predicts what words to spit out to finish a sentence.
The researchers chose to focus on a E. coli-killing virus called Phi X-174, a variant that’s so well studied that it serves as the equivalent of a lab rat in virology. Viruses in general are simple compared to complex cellular life, making them an ideal platform to test AI’s capabilities.
They used Evo to create new viruses based on Phi X-174, and it generated 700,000 candidates. They then narrowed it down to just 300 that they would recreate in the lab. Of those 300, 16 proved to be viable, infecting and killing their bacterial hosts.
There’s clear medical merit to using AI to create bacteria-slaying viruses, but there’s already fears that the technology could be abused to crank out pathogens that are deadly to humans.
“Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not,” warned Tom Inglesby and Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in a perspective article.
Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London who was not involved in the research, acknowledged this threat, but told The Guardian that it would be much harder to create more complex genomes and that controlling access to genetic data could stymy the threat.
And if someone were to deliberately engineer deadly viruses, he added, doing it by hand would probably be more practical.
“But honestly, the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat,” he said.
More on pathogens: America Getting Lesson in Consequences of Trump’s War on Public Health as Rare Disease Outbreaks Ravage the Country
The post AI Model Invents Completely New Viruses Unknown to Nature appeared first on Futurism.
Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have long garnered a reputation for allowing users to make all kinds of ethically dubious bets, from the outcomes of deadly conflicts to mass famine.
As the New York Times reports, Kalshi will now even allow users to bet on whether clinical trials for potentially lifesaving drugs will succeed.
To critics, the move will effectively allow betting on the lives of patients trying a final intervention in the face of a lethal diagnosis. There’s even risk that those enrolled in these trials could choose to drop out if the market were to bet against a positive outcome.
“Turning loose a betting market in an ongoing randomized clinical trial really is a breach of scientific conduct,” Robert Califf, who served as FDA commissioner in the Biden administration, told the NYT.
Kalshi first announced its “biotech prediction markets pilot program” last month, the same day president Donald Trump’s teleprompter guy was busted for winning more than $100,000 on Kalshi by betting on what he would say.
The company argued in the announcement that a “publicly listed contract on a trial or regulatory outcome produces a continuously updated, public probability that reflects the weight of the evidence rather than the preferred messaging of the trial sponsor.”
In a statement to the NYT, spokesperson Jack Such argued that these bets wouldn’t undermine research integrity, but instead cut through the hype surrounding biotech companies and the drugs they’re working on.
Kalshi says it will prohibit betting by patients enrolled in a trial, as well as by employees of the company conducting it or its competitors, per the NYT. It will also ban betting on trials that “exclusively enroll minors,” at least at first.
But those enrolled in drug trials were left appalled by the news.
“We’re literally trying to stay alive,” metastatic pancreatic cancer patient Walter Ingaharro Jr told the NYT. “It’s not a game. The introduction of gambling into the process really creates an ethical mess.”
In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Boston University humanities professor Joshua Pederson talked about how his 12-year-old son has a “very aggressive tumor growing inches below his heart.”
“If Kalshi has its way, you could soon be able to bet on health treatments that could be essential to his survival,” Pederson argued.
While choosing a trial for his son’s cancer was a “terrifying experiment for which we feel ill-prepared,” turning to a prediction market instead of “our extremely qualified team of oncologists” feels “preposterous,” Pederson argued.
In short, it’s yet another example of prediction markets crossing a moral boundary by gamifying things with real-world consequences.
“The possibility that somebody out there might be wagering against my son, hoping that the treatment fails so they can make money, is enraging,” Pederson wrote. “How is this not just another type of ‘death market’ — like markets for war or assassination — that even Kalshi says it won’t abide?”
The headline of this story was updated to specify that the program would bet on the outcomes of clinical trials, and the piece was updated to more specifically refer to controversies around prediction markets like Kalshi, writ large, and to add details about Kalshi’s response.
More on prediction markets: In Case You Still Think Insider Trading on Prediction Markets Isn’t Real, Trump’s Teleprompter Guy Just Got Busted for Getting Rich on Betting What He Would Say
The post Kalshi Defends Plan to Bet on Outcomes of Clinical Trials appeared first on Futurism.
For a president who upholds “Make America Healthy Again” as a load-bearing narrative pillar, Donald Trump has gone to remarkable lengths to make the US a breeding ground for a widening range of viruses, bacterium, and parasites — and no, we’re not talking about his cabinet.
Early into his second tenure as commander-in-chief, Trump and his cronies set to rapidly dismantling offices doing critical work on public health. His appointments were a one-two punch on longstanding institutions safeguarding the US from the ravages of disease: Elon Musk’s DOGE cut the government’s capacity to identify and track public health problems, while Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Department of Health and Human Services limited what the government was willing to do about them.
Case in point: the Centre for Disease Control has lost nearly a quarter of its workforce since January 2025, while those who remain have watched in horror as the CDC’s acting director cut the number of universally recommended childhood vaccines from 17 down to 11.
Examples of those kinds of policy faceplants abound, and the cumulative consequences will surely be felt for decades to come. And nowhere are the consequences of the Trump administration’s war on public health more obvious than in the diseases we’d previously had under control, but which are now surging back after a year and a half of MAHA.
There’s the cyclospora outbreak, of course, spreading from tainted lettuce to over 18,000 victims across 45 states. And those are just the ones we know about — the true extent may be far worse, as reporting delays create a major lag in fresh data. And while cyclospora flare ups come and go, it’s hard to overlook the fact that Trump officials made reporting of the parasite optional for the CDC in 2025, right before the largest known outbreak in modern history.
Separately, a nation-wide salmonella outbreak prompted officials to recall millions of cartons of eggs as at least 100 cases were reported throughout the country. Though salmonella reporting is still mandatory for the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration under Trump has delayed the implementation of a food traceability rule, designed to speed up the tracking of food borne illnesses back to their source.
The reason for the delay? Budget cuts.
Beyond foodborne illnesses, there are even more nasty bugs spreading around the country under Trump’s watch.
The formerly-eradicated measles is back, with over 2,300 American infected in 2026 alone, the highest number since 1992, Vox reported. Flesh-eating screwworms are ravaging livestock, as staffing cuts and mandatory budget reviews at the US Department of Agriculture slowed government containment efforts. Even the nightmarish botulism toxin has made it into the headlines, entering the food supply via contaminated infant formula after the Trump administration disbanded the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods — coincidentally right as the group was about to release a report on infant formula.
We could go on. While some will surely shoot back that these diseases are always hanging over us regardless of who sits in the Oval Office, that’s exactly the point.
Public health isn’t a game of checkers, where enemy pieces leave the board once they’re conquered. It’s more like a game of whack-a-mole, demanding quick reflexes, a mallet, and someone to wield them with unending focus. Under Trump, the mallet has been sold off to the highest bidder, while the player has wandered off, convinced the moles are a hoax.
More on MAHA: RFK Jr Wants to Waste $5 Billion in the Worst Way Imaginable
The post America Getting Lesson in Consequences of Trump’s War on Public Health as Rare Disease Outbreaks Ravage the Country appeared first on Futurism.
Tradicionalmente, as abas dos navegadores da web são dispostas na horizontal.
Para facilitar a navegação para alguns usuários (e dar mais uma opção de personalização), o Mozilla Firefox permite habilitar um ajuste que deixa as suas abas abertas na vertical.
Veja como fazer isso no seu Mac! 👨💻
Posts relacionados
Abra as configurações do Firefox, seguindo um dos procedimentos:
Selecione “Abas e navegação” (na barra lateral esquerda) e, na seção “Disposição do navegador”, habilite “Abas na vertical”.
Alternativamente, também é possível clicar com o botão direito na área vazia na extremidade direita das abas e selecionar “Ativar abas na vertical”.
For only the second time in its history, the American Red Cross has declared a “national blood supply crisis,” after donations fell to a four-year summer low.
The hotter summer months conventionally trigger blood shortages because people are more likely to injure themselves while spending time outdoors.
And this summer has been particularly extreme. According to the Red Cross, extreme heat, poor air quality, and widespread foodborne illnesses have compounded into blood donations dropping precipitously, causing supply levels to plummet to a historic low.
The news comes amidst record-breaking temperatures this summer, devastating heatwaves that have killed at least 25 people in the US. Public health officials are also battling an outbreak of an explosive diarrhea-causing parasite that’s has spread to 45 states.
As a result of plummeting donations, the Red Cross, which is the largest single provider of blood products, has “less than a one-day national supply of type O positive blood.” Type O positive is the most commonly transfused blood type, and highly valued because can safely be used to treat over 80 percent of the population.
The Red Cross declared its first-ever national blood crisis in January 2022, triggered by a previous low in donor turnout due to ongoing COVID-19 surge disruptions.
“Every donation has the potential to help save lives, and we urgently need everyone who is eligible to make an appointment to give blood as soon as possible,” said Red Cross Biomedical Services president Chris Hrouda in a statement.
The risks of an extremely limited blood supply are considerable.
“There’s always the possibility, when the blood supply dips like it has, that patients won’t be able to get the blood products they need, when they need,” Red Cross spokesperson Matt Trotter told NPR affiliate KOSU.
By mid-July, the Red Cross was already ringing the alarm bells, warning that donations had fallen by about 25 percent in June.
To get back on track doesn’t require drastic action, either. The organization says that just “three more donors at each blood drive this summer can end this crisis and stabilize the blood supply.”
“One donation can help save multiple lives, so if you’ve got an hour you can spare, you can do a lot of good with it,” Trotter told KOSU. “Many people who think they are ineligible actually can donate blood.”
If you or a loved one wants to donate blood, this site run by the Red Cross can help find a blood drive nearby.
Updated to correctly identify blood types.
More on blood: Immortality-Obsessed Tech Guy Trying New Technique That Involves Removing “All Blood From Body”
The post The United States Is Rapidly Running Out of Blood appeared first on Futurism.
Zillionaire eccentric Bryan Johnson, fresh off of being diagnosed with an incurable disease, says he just “cloned” himself “as a newborn.” Yep, you heard that right.
The immortality influencer shared in an X update that he has a “baby” version of himself growing in a petri dish that he says will allow him to become his “own blood boy” — doesn’t he already have a son who does that for him? — and potentially even “grow organs for transplantation.”
“This may be scary to some people… a dystopian future,” Johnson wrote. “But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.”
In case this is all starting to sound like the grim sci-fi plot of a certain Michael Bay movie or Kazuo Ishiguro novel, it’s not a literal, living breathing clone. (Although by posting an infamous picture of himself edited to look like a baby, Johnson’s certainly playing into that impression.)
Instead, Johnson’s created his own pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells can self-renew and develop into any type of cell in the body, making them invaluable for repairing damaged tissue.
Where Johnson’s claims of cloning himself as a “newborn” come in is the fact that these highly versatile stem cells normally only exist when we’re still an embryo. But in recent decades scientists have developed techniques to reprogram regular adult cells into an embryonic pluripotent state, which are called induced pluripotent stem cells.
Johnson is confident that by having his own store of stem cells on hand he can “rebuild” his body, repairing everything from damaged lungs to eyesight.
“This technology gives us a path to reverse aging,” he declares.
His optimism is admirable, but many of these stem cell applications he’s touting haven’t been proven yet. Johnson claims his baby clone will let him grow organs, for example, but scientists still haven’t developed a reliable technique for creating organs derived from someone’s own stem cells. One promising technique involves growing an organ in the body of another animal like a pig before transplanting it into a human, but these attempts have stopped when the organ was still in an embryo, and no transplantation has been attempted.
An alternative that doesn’t involve stem cells, xenotransplantation, harvests organs from a genetically modified animal pig, but has only been demonstrated in human recipients who were braindead, with the transplanted organ slowly rejected over the course of several days.
All that’s to say is that we should be skeptical about Johnson’s longevity advice, though we will certainly keep rubbernecking to see how his quixotic quest is going.
More on health: Trump Is Having a Major Problem With Diarrhea
The post Bryan Johnson Says He’s Cloned Himself “As a Newborn” to “Grow Organs for Transplantation,” Which Is a Preposterous Exaggeration appeared first on Futurism.
Login