Animal testing has shaped modern drug development for decades, but its limitations become especially visible when scientists evaluate cancer immunotherapies. These treatments are designed to stimulate the immune system to recognize and destroy malignant cells, yet the same powerful immune activation can trigger life-threatening complications in patients. Researchers at the University of Rochester are developing a human-cell-based alternative: miniature tissue models known as organs-on-a-chip that could help predict these toxicities before experimental medicines reach clinical trials.

The work is being led through the university’s Translational Center for Barrier Microphysiological Systems, or TraCe-bMPS. The center is building drug-development tools around modular µSiM tissue chips, devices that contain ultrathin membranes populated with human cells. Unlike conventional laboratory cultures, these systems are engineered to reproduce key features of biological barriers, including the physical separation between tissues, controlled exposure to drugs, and measurable inflammatory responses. Their modular construction also allows the devices to be manufactured in large quantities with consistent dimensions and materials.

The platform is based primarily on acrylic components and incorporates membranes designed to mimic interfaces found in the human body. Such barriers regulate the movement of molecules and immune cells between compartments, making them central to drug absorption, toxicity, and inflammation. By assembling reproducible chips with human cells, researchers can study how a therapy affects a tissue under conditions that more closely approximate human biology than many animal models. The design also makes it possible to modify individual components for different organs or disease settings.

A major feature of the Rochester system is the integration of sensors directly into the chips. Developed in part through the work of biomedical engineering professor Benjamin Miller, these sensors can track barrier function and inflammatory signaling in real time. Instead of waiting until the end of an experiment to examine damaged cells, researchers can observe how a tissue responds as a drug is introduced. Changes in electrical or molecular signals may reveal that a barrier is becoming more permeable or that inflammatory pathways are being activated, providing an early warning of toxicity.

The immediate focus is on two severe complications associated with some cancer immunotherapies. Cytokine release syndrome, commonly called CRS, occurs when activated immune cells release large quantities of signaling proteins known as cytokines. The resulting systemic inflammation can cause fever, low blood pressure, breathing difficulties, and, in the most serious cases, organ failure. Immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, or ICANS, can affect the nervous system, producing confusion, seizures, impaired speech, or other neurological symptoms. Both conditions are difficult to predict reliably with animal testing because species differ in immune signaling networks and cell-surface receptors.

“The goal is to predict these toxicities from human cells on a chip, before a drug ever reaches a patient, and to do it without relying on animal models that have repeatedly failed to predict CRS in people,” says James McGrath, director of TraCe-bMPS and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Biomedical Engineering. The approach does not simply attempt to reproduce a whole human body in miniature. Instead, it focuses on specific biological barriers and immune interactions that are directly relevant to the safety question being studied.

The project has now reached an important regulatory stage. The team was accepted into the US Food and Drug Administration’s Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs, or ISTAND, pilot program. ISTAND is intended to help evaluate emerging methods that could improve drug development and eventually support regulatory decisions. Acceptance does not mean that the tissue-chip platform has already been approved for routine use, but it creates a formal pathway for the researchers to work with the FDA on defining the evidence needed for qualification.

The Rochester group is preparing a detailed qualification plan that will describe clinical considerations, timelines, data-sharing procedures, and statistical methods for evaluating the technology. If the platform ultimately receives FDA qualification, pharmaceutical companies could use its results as part of the evidence submitted in support of new drug applications. Such recognition would represent a significant step for organs-on-a-chip research, which has expanded rapidly but has only rarely progressed into formal regulatory programs.

The effort comes as US regulators seek alternatives to animal testing in preclinical safety studies. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, enacted in 2022, opened the door for non-animal methods, while the agency’s 2025 roadmap outlined further efforts to reduce reliance on animal models. Researchers say pharmaceutical companies are showing strong interest because many immunotherapies are already in clinical development and carry risks of CRS or ICANS. The Rochester team collaborated with Graham Marsh of the Critical Path Institute and consulted with scientists at Pfizer about how the tool could fit into real-world drug development. If successful, the technology could give researchers a more human-relevant way to identify dangerous immune reactions early, helping developers eliminate unsafe candidates and refine promising treatments before patients are exposed.

Subject of Research: Human-cell tissue chips for predicting cancer immunotherapy toxicities.

Web References: University of Rochester; Translational Center for Barrier Microphysiological Systems; University of Rochester Biomedical Engineering; FDA ISTAND pilot program; FDA Modernization Act 2.0.

Image Credits: URochester photo / J. Adam Fenster.

Keywords: Drug discovery, tissue chips, organs-on-a-chip, cancer immunotherapy, cytokine release syndrome, CRS, ICANS, neurotoxicity, animal testing alternatives, biomedical engineering, microphysiological systems, human-cell models.

A tiny microscope weighing just five grams could give neuroscientists an unprecedented view of how individual brain cells control behavior while animals move naturally. Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a head-mounted device that can both record neural activity and selectively activate individual neurons during movement. The technology could help scientists investigate how brain circuits generate behavior and how those circuits become disrupted in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

The device, called Opto2P-FCM, combines two powerful techniques that have traditionally been difficult to use together in a freely moving animal. Two-photon microscopy provides detailed images of living brain tissue at cellular resolution, while optogenetics uses light-sensitive proteins to control selected neurons. By integrating both capabilities into a miniature instrument, the researchers can observe specific cells as they become active and then stimulate chosen neurons to test how they influence the surrounding network.

“These miniature microscopes have been increasingly used to study the neural basis of behavior in freely moving animals,” said Emily Gibson, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering at CU Anschutz and the study’s senior author. “This new microscope allows deeper penetration and higher resolution images in the brain. Importantly, it can also excite select neurons using optogenetics.”

For decades, conventional two-photon microscopes have been regarded as the gold standard for imaging neurons in living brains. These systems use infrared laser light to produce high-resolution images deep within tissue, allowing researchers to track calcium signals and other indicators of neural activity. However, conventional microscopes are generally large, stationary instruments. Animals must often remain immobilized beneath the objective, making it difficult to study brain activity during walking, exploration, social interaction or other natural behaviors.

Miniature microscopes have helped overcome that limitation by moving the imaging system onto the animal’s head. Yet reducing the size and weight of the equipment has often required compromises. Some compact systems provide lower-resolution images, while others can record neural activity but cannot stimulate precisely selected cells. The Colorado team designed Opto2P-FCM to address both problems through a dual-path optical architecture that separates imaging from stimulation.

In the imaging pathway, infrared light is directed through the brain to generate two-photon signals from fluorescent markers inside neurons. These markers can report changes in calcium concentration, which occur when neurons fire. The resulting signals are collected to create detailed images of neural activity at the level of individual cells. A separate optical pathway delivers patterned light for optogenetic stimulation, allowing researchers to activate specific neurons without disrupting the imaging beam or overwhelming the detectors.

This separation is technically important because imaging and stimulation place different demands on an optical system. High-resolution imaging requires precise focusing, efficient light collection and minimal optical distortion. Optogenetic activation, by contrast, requires intense, accurately positioned light capable of reaching the light-sensitive proteins expressed by selected neurons. Designing both functions into a device small enough to be carried by an animal required careful control of the alignment, geometry and weight of every optical component.

“This microscope is a game changer,” said Juliet Gopinath, PhD, professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering and physics at CU Boulder and a study co-author. “Being able to demonstrate a state-of-the-art instrument for both read-out and photo-stimulation of neurons is amazing.” The research team included engineers, physicists and neuroscientists who worked together to solve problems involving miniature lenses, mechanical tolerances, optical alignment and three-dimensional fabrication.

The device weighs approximately five grams, but its small size made construction unusually demanding. Mo Zohrabi, PhD, a senior research scientist at CU Boulder and co-first author, said the team initially thought such an instrument might be impossible to build because of the tight tolerances required by the optics and available 3D-printing technology. Gregory Futia, PhD, a senior research associate at CU Anschutz and co-first author, said that every component had to be designed and accounted for with extreme precision. Even slight misalignment could reduce image quality or prevent the stimulation beam from reaching the intended cells.

The researchers believe the platform could transform experiments designed to distinguish correlation from causation in the brain. Recording a neuron’s activity can show that it is associated with a behavior, but it does not prove that the cell helps produce that behavior. With optogenetic stimulation, scientists can activate a selected population and observe whether movement, decision-making or other actions change. At the same time, the microscope can record how neighboring neurons respond, providing a view of how local circuits coordinate activity.

The current Opto2P-FCM system is a prototype, and the researchers are working on future versions that could be smaller, lighter and faster. They also hope to expand the field of view so that more neurons can be monitored at once. Such improvements could make it possible to track larger networks over longer periods while animals engage in increasingly complex behaviors. By combining cellular-resolution observation with targeted manipulation in a freely moving subject, the technology may help reveal how healthy neural circuits operate and how neurological disease changes the communication between them.

Subject of Research: Miniature two-photon microscopy, optogenetics, neural circuits and brain activity during natural movement

Article Title: New Miniature Microscope Allows Scientists to Watch and Control Brain Cells During Natural Movement

News Publication Date: Aug. 11, 2026

Web References: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; University of Colorado Boulder; Optica study

References: Optica, “New Miniature Microscope Allows Scientists to Watch and Control Brain Cells During Natural Movement,” article publication date: Aug. 7, 2026

Keywords

Miniature microscope, two-photon microscopy, optogenetics, neuroscience, brain imaging, neural circuits, freely moving animals, biomedical engineering, applied physics, neurological disease, brain research

A research team in Japan has won a US$1 million Milestone 2 award in the XPRIZE Healthspan competition for developing engineered “super exosomes,” microscopic biological delivery vehicles designed to target aging and damaged cells. Led by Professor Keisuke Goda of Tohoku University’s SiRIUS Institute of Medical Research and Graduate School of Medicine, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry, the team was selected from more than 600 competitors worldwide.

XPRIZE Healthspan is a seven-year international competition focused on extending the period of life people spend in good health. Participating teams are challenged to develop treatments capable of restoring muscle, cognitive, and immune function in adults between 50 and 90 years old. The competition sets a minimum target of reversing at least 10 years of biological decline, while the most ambitious goal is a 20-year improvement within one year or less of treatment. Goda’s team is now moving forward after receiving recognition for results obtained in aged animal studies.

At the center of the research are exosomes, naturally occurring nanoparticles released by cells. These membrane-bound vesicles normally transport proteins, lipids, messenger RNA, and other molecular signals between cells, functioning as part of the body’s communication network. Because exosomes can carry biological cargo and interact with specific tissues, scientists have been investigating them as potential alternatives to synthetic drug-delivery systems. However, naturally produced exosomes often lack sufficient targeting precision, limiting their ability to reach the cells most relevant to a disease or aging process.

The Tohoku-led group attempted to solve that problem by chemically modifying the surface of exosomes with lanthanide ions. Lanthanides are a family of metallic elements with distinctive electronic and chemical properties. According to the researchers, attaching these ions changes the surface behavior of the exosomes and substantially improves their ability to recognize and bind to senescent cells. The resulting particles have been named “super exosomes,” a term that reflects their enhanced targeting and delivery capabilities rather than a new biological category.

Cellular senescence is one of the major biological processes associated with aging. Senescent cells have generally stopped dividing because of accumulated damage or stress, but they do not necessarily disappear. Instead, some remain metabolically active and release inflammatory molecules, growth regulators, and other signals that can disrupt nearby tissues. This collection of secreted factors, often called the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, can contribute to chronic inflammation, impaired tissue repair, and the deterioration of organs. Precisely influencing these cells has therefore become a major objective in longevity research.

The proposed super-exosome platform is designed to deliver regenerative molecular cargo directly to aging tissues after attaching to senescent cells. Potential cargoes include growth factors, messenger RNA, and other genetic materials capable of altering cellular behavior. Rather than distributing such molecules broadly throughout the body, a targeted exosome could concentrate them near damaged or dysfunctional tissue. In theory, this approach could promote repair while reducing unwanted effects in healthy cells, although the degree of targeting and the durability of the response will need to be confirmed in human studies.

In preclinical experiments involving several groups of aged mice, the researchers reported statistically significant improvements in frailty, physical performance, and multiple functional measures associated with aging. They also described the treatment’s safety profile as excellent in the studies conducted so far. The team says the overall benefit corresponds to more than 15 additional healthy human years when estimated using cross-species lifespan scaling. Such calculations can help compare biological effects between species, but they are not evidence that a mouse treatment will extend human life by a specific number of years. Human biology, dosing, immune responses, and long-term risks could differ substantially.

The award will support the next stage of development: clinical studies planned in collaboration with Tohoku University Hospital and the Tohoku University Healthspan Research Center. These studies will need to establish how the particles behave in humans, how efficiently they reach senescent cells, what cargoes are most effective, and whether the treatment produces measurable improvements in strength, cognition, immunity, or other healthspan indicators. Researchers will also have to monitor possible immune reactions, unintended effects on healthy tissues, changes in tumor risk, and the persistence of engineered exosomes in the body. These questions are essential before claims of age reversal can move beyond the laboratory.

The platform could eventually be investigated for conditions involving muscle decline, cognitive impairment, immune dysfunction, hair loss, skin aging, and reproductive health. The team plans to commercialize the technology through NanoTitan, with the aim of developing scalable manufacturing and international distribution for exosome-based therapeutics produced in Japan. “Advancing to the XPRIZE Healthspan finals is an important milestone, but our ultimate goal is to translate this technology into therapies that allow people to lead healthy, independent, and active lives longer,” Goda said. The research now enters its most demanding phase: determining whether an impressive result in aged mice can become a safe, reproducible, and clinically meaningful treatment for people.

Subject of Research: Engineered “super exosomes” designed to target senescent cells and deliver regenerative molecular cargo for healthy aging.

Article Title: Japanese Research Team Wins US$1 Million XPRIZE Award for “Super Exosome” Aging Technology

Web References: https://mediasvc.eurekalert.org/Api/v1/Multimedia/673c8fb3-268a-4a90-93b4-a0d531624a52/Rendition/low-res/Content/Public

Image Credits: Goda Lab

Keywords: Super exosomes, exosomes, cellular senescence, healthy aging, longevity research, XPRIZE Healthspan, regenerative medicine, Tohoku University, lanthanide ions, aged mice, healthspan, nanomedicine

PHILADELPHIA — Public resistance to new data centers has risen sharply across the United States, even as Americans’ overall views of artificial intelligence remain largely unchanged, according to a nationally representative survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings reveal a growing divide between public attitudes toward AI as a technology and attitudes toward the physical infrastructure required to operate it. While many people continue to see potential benefits from AI, particularly in medical research, opposition increases substantially when the technology is associated with a large industrial facility being built near their homes.

The survey found that 61% of U.S. adults somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of new data centers in their communities. That figure is 12 percentage points higher than the 49% recorded in an earlier APPC survey conducted in February and March. Support fell during the same period, from 21% to 14%. The change comes as communities across the country debate the environmental, economic, and social consequences of rapidly expanding computing infrastructure used to train and operate advanced AI systems.

Data centers are specialized facilities filled with servers, networking equipment, cooling systems, backup power supplies, and security infrastructure. AI applications can require enormous amounts of computational power because they process vast datasets and perform calculations across billions of model parameters. Training a large AI model may require thousands of processors operating simultaneously, while everyday use also depends on data centers to generate responses, analyze images, translate languages, and carry out other tasks. These facilities can consume substantial amounts of electricity and water, making their construction a highly visible local issue even when the software they support is used remotely.

Opposition to local data centers crosses political boundaries. Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents said they opposed new facilities in their areas, although the proportions differed: 69% of Democrats, 54% of Republicans, and 53% of independents expressed opposition. Resistance was strongest among adults younger than 30, reaching 70%, and declined to 57% among people 65 and older. The pattern is notable because younger adults are often assumed to be more comfortable with emerging technologies and are more likely to use AI-powered services in education, work, entertainment, and communication.

Despite the shift in views about local infrastructure, broader opinions about AI have remained stable. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they expected AI’s impact on the United States over the next decade to be somewhat or very negative, compared with 18% who expected a positive impact. The result was statistically unchanged from the spring survey. In addition, 68% said the federal government has done “too little” to regulate AI, a view shared by majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The results suggest that concerns about AI regulation have become persistent rather than being driven solely by short-term news events.

Respondents distinguished sharply between areas where AI might produce public benefits and areas where it could create risks. Among 13 sectors examined, medical research and scientific discovery was the only category receiving a net-positive assessment, with anticipated benefits exceeding expected harms by 41 percentage points. AI systems are increasingly being used to identify patterns in biological data, predict molecular structures, assist with medical imaging, and help researchers screen potential treatments. These applications may accelerate work that would otherwise require years of laboratory experiments, although they still depend on human validation and carefully controlled clinical studies.

The most negative assessments involved personal privacy and data security, which registered a net score of minus 63 points. Children’s online safety followed at minus 50 points, while employment and jobs reached minus 46 points. These concerns reflect the technical and social consequences of deploying AI at scale. Models may be trained on or exposed to sensitive information, automated systems can make decisions that are difficult to explain, and workplace applications may alter or eliminate certain tasks. The survey does not measure whether these risks will materialize in specific industries, but it indicates that many Americans view them as more immediate than AI’s possible benefits outside medicine.

Personal experience with AI was associated with more favorable opinions about its national impact. Among respondents who said they had never used AI during the previous month, 54% expected its effect on the country to be negative. That proportion fell to 40% among light users and to 29% among those who used AI many times or almost every day. However, frequent use did not make people more supportive of data centers. Opposition to building new facilities near respondents’ homes remained essentially flat across different levels of AI use. This distinction suggests that familiarity may influence perceptions of digital tools, while concerns about electricity demand, water consumption, noise, traffic, land use, and local utility costs may remain regardless of personal experience with AI software.

“The people who use AI the most are the most optimistic about what it will do for the country, and that has been consistent across our surveys,” said Matt Levendusky, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor and the Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at APPC. He said that optimism had clear limits, particularly when questions involved privacy, employment, or the construction of a data center nearby. The survey was conducted by SSRS for APPC’s Institutions of Democracy division among 1,320 U.S. adult citizens from June 16 through July 19, 2026. Respondents were surveyed primarily online, with a small telephone sample, and weighted to match population benchmarks. The margin of error for the full sample was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, with larger margins for subgroups. Together, the findings indicate that the next phase of the AI debate may be shaped less by abstract promises about intelligent software than by negotiations over the highly physical systems that make it possible.

Subject of Research: People

Article Title: Opposition to Local Data Centers Rises Sharply as Views on AI Hold Steady

Web References: Annenberg Public Policy Center news release; Reuters; The New York Times; Associated Press

References: Annenberg Public Policy Center Institutions of Democracy national survey, June 16–July 19, 2026; APPC AI topline survey data; APPC survey methodology

Image Credits: Annenberg Public Policy Center

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, data centers, public opinion, AI regulation, medical research, privacy, data security, employment, social surveys, political science

Pick up your phone. Open the settings. Find the small blue rectangle with the pointy angular symbol inside it, the one you have been ignoring since the first mobile device you ever owned. That specific little glyph, on the accumulated historical evidence of the past thirty years of wireless technology, is the personal monogram of a Danish king who ruled from approximately 958 to 986 AD, died in the year Halley’s Comet last returned to Earth before 1066, and has been buried in Roskilde Cathedral for the better part of a thousand years.

His name was Harald Gormsson. His nickname, according to the surviving Old Norse records, was Blåtand. Which translates directly into modern English as Bluetooth.

The whole story of how his personal monogram ended up on every wireless device on the planet is one of the more genuinely accidental facts of the modern technology industry.

The king in question

According to the official history maintained by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the industry consortium that owns the technology standard and runs its trademark, Harald Bluetooth was a considerably more interesting historical figure than the somewhat comic nickname suggests. Between roughly 958 and 986, he unified the previously fragmented tribes of what is now Denmark into a single kingdom, brought Norway into the same political sphere, and was responsible for the formal Christianisation of the Danes, an achievement he commemorated by carving one of the earliest known references to the country of Denmark on a runestone that still stands today in the small town of Jelling.

The nickname itself, on the surviving linguistic record, appears to have come from a physical peculiarity. He had, according to the accounts that reached the medieval Icelandic chroniclers, a prominent dead tooth that had darkened to a shade closer to grey-blue than to healthy white. In an era before dentistry, this was the kind of visible personal feature that stuck. The great unifier of Scandinavia became, in the mouths of his contemporaries and their descendants, the man with the blue tooth.

His initials, in the runic alphabet of his time, were ᚼ for the H sound in Harald and ᛒ for the B in Blåtand. In the Younger Futhark script used in tenth-century Scandinavia, those two characters look nothing like the modern Latin letters H and B. What they look like, when combined into a single glyph in what scholars call a bind rune, is the exact symbol currently sitting on every Bluetooth-enabled device in the world.

On a related note, I came across a video that dives into the effect our phones are quietly having on us. You’ve probably felt it before, but this video will put a name to the feeling:

The Toronto bar

The story of how the king’s monogram ended up on modern electronics has been recounted in detail by the person primarily responsible, an Intel engineer named Jim Kardach. According to Kardach’s own 2008 account, published in EE Times under the title “Tech History: How Bluetooth got its name”, the origin of the whole naming decision took place in a Toronto bar in late 1997.

Kardach was at the time working on short-range wireless radio at Intel. Three separate industry efforts were running in parallel. Intel had a project called Biz-RF. Ericsson had one called MC-Link. Nokia had a third called Low Power RF. All three companies were trying to build essentially the same thing, which was a small, low-power wireless standard that would let phones, computers, and peripheral devices talk to each other without cables. In late 1997, after a joint industry meeting in Toronto that Kardach later described as having gone badly, he and Ericsson engineer Sven Mattisson went out drinking together and, being history enthusiasts, started swapping stories about the medieval Scandinavian kings Mattisson had been reading about in Frans G. Bengtsson’s Viking-era novel The Long Ships.

One of the kings in the book was Harald Bluetooth. Kardach, on his own subsequent account, went home from the trip and read further, ordering Gwyn Jones’s A History of the Vikings, and found a photograph of the runestone Harald had commissioned. Harald had united the fragmented tribes of Scandinavia into a single political unit. The three technology companies, if they could ever agree on a single standard, would be uniting the previously fragmented world of consumer electronics into a single wireless protocol. The parallel was, on Kardach’s telling, too neat to ignore. He proposed the name Bluetooth as a temporary internal code name for the project.

The bind rune of Harald’s initials became the working logo. Kardach later created a PowerPoint slide showing Harald holding a mobile phone in one hand and a notebook in the other.

How it stayed

The name was not, on any of the surviving contemporary correspondence, meant to be permanent. According to both the Bluetooth SIG’s own account and Kardach’s, the intention was for the marketing departments of the participating companies to come up with a more polished official name in due course, and for Bluetooth to be quietly retired once something better arrived.

Two names were shortlisted as replacements. One was RadioWire, which was Intel’s preferred candidate. The other was PAN, which stood for Personal Area Networking. The launch of the industry consortium was scheduled for early 1998. The trademark clearance process for RadioWire dragged past the deadline. A search for PAN turned up so many unrelated uses of the acronym on the newly emerging commercial internet that its usefulness as a brand collapsed. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group was formed in February 1998, under Kardach’s temporary code name, on the understanding that the name would be replaced later.

The first Bluetooth-enabled products shipped in 1999. By then, according to a National Geographic feature on the technology’s Viking origins, the name had already acquired sufficient market recognition that rebranding would have cost more than continuing to use it. The tech press was writing about Bluetooth. Trade shows had Bluetooth banners. Product packaging was going to press. Nobody wanted to spend the money to change everything. The temporary code name became the permanent one, and the bind rune of a tenth-century Danish king’s initials became the visual identity of a wireless standard that would, over the following quarter century, be installed on more than five billion devices per year.

Kardach himself, on his own account of the whole episode, has been surprised at the trajectory ever since. He was inducted into the Bluetooth Hall of Fame for his role in the naming decision. He retired from Intel as chief power architect in 2012. And the symbol he first proposed as a working code, drawn from a book about medieval Scandinavians he happened to be reading during a badly-timed Toronto business trip, has become one of the most reproduced pieces of graphic design in the world.

None of this was meant to happen. Harald Bluetooth did not know his initials would end up in the pocket of every person on the planet. Kardach did not intend the code name to survive marketing review. The Bluetooth SIG did not plan to build a global brand around a Scandinavian pun. What connects all of these accidents is the strange gravitational pull of anything that becomes familiar quickly enough. Once a placeholder gets attached to a project long enough for the trade press to start using it, and long enough for it to appear on the sides of shipping products, the cost of changing it starts to exceed the cost of simply leaving it in place. And so, on the accumulated evidence of thirty years of consumer electronics history, the temporary becomes the permanent, and the initials of a long-dead Viking king continue to appear, every day, on the connection screen of every device you own.

Kiran Athar is not a historian or a technology industry analyst. She writes about history, technology, and the ordinary corners of modern life where the two intersect, drawing on peer-reviewed research and primary-source scholarship.

The post The Bluetooth symbol on your phone is actually a thousand-year-old Viking monogram. It belongs to a Danish king who united warring tribes, and the reason his name ended up on billions of devices was never even meant to be permanent. appeared first on Space Daily.

Also: Google executives jump ship in race for AI dominance

Hello, TechScape readers! Danielle Abril, editor of the Guardian’s Reworked series on AI and the future of work, filling in for Blake Montgomery this week. Major legal battles against Meta over child safety are playing out in courts across the US – and the tech giant is losing. Recent rulings raise big questions about social media companies’ responsibility to their youngest users. Meanwhile, more key executives have jumped ship from Google as it battles OpenAI and Anthropic in the race for AI dominance, and Meta’s smart glasses face a fearsome backlash. Let’s dig in!

‘I’ve definitely lost followers’: influencers face backlash over Meta ‘pervert glasses’ content

This man was secretly snapped by someone with smartglasses. He’s not alone in calling that a violation of privacy

Tell us: do you believe you have been filmed by Meta’s smartglasses without your consent?

Restaurants, pubs and theatres ban Meta’s ‘spy glasses’ over privacy fears

‘I’m not spying’: how Meta’s smartglasses have divided opinion

Bernie Sanders calls on Silicon Valley to ‘pause AI development’ in interest of humanity

Rising number of UK children report seeing explicit deepfakes of themselves

The White House’s plan to vet potentially dangerous AI is cloaked in secrecy

‘This is very real redlining’: outrage in Little Rock as two datacenters loom

Safety fears as scientists make first viruses designed by AI

SpaceX beats revenue expectations in first earnings report after IPO crash

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty Images

Exclusive: Court service says anyone trying to enter buildings with glasses will have them confiscated and returned when they leave

Courts in England and Wales have joined a number of restaurants, theatres and pubs in banning Meta glasses, amid a mounting backlash against what has been described as “spyware”.

Last month courts in New York announced a ban on the controversial glasses, which can record video footage while being worn.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Modelling finds AI-driven productivity gains in coal, oil and gas enable more emissions than applications in renewables avoid

AI-driven productivity gains enable more planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels than they avoid from renewables, a study has found.

Researchers modelled the technical potential for AI to boost clean power generation along with projections for how it can help produce coal, oil and gas. Across 64 scenarios, they found net yearly carbon pollution rose by 0.47-1.8 gigatonnes, or about 1-5% of the energy sector’s annual emissions.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

Modelling finds AI-driven productivity gains in coal, oil and gas enable more emissions than applications in renewables avoid

AI-driven productivity gains enable more planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels than they avoid from renewables, a study has found.

Researchers modelled the technical potential for AI to boost clean power generation along with projections for how it can help produce coal, oil and gas. Across 64 scenarios, they found net yearly carbon pollution rose by 0.47-1.8 gigatonnes, or about 1-5% of the energy sector’s annual emissions.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

© Photograph: KENDALL/Alamy

Whether you’re commuting, training or riding for fun, we asked specialists to break down what to know before you buy – from specs and safety to price

• The best bike locks for every budget

For me, cycling is therapy. It’s calming, meditative and uncomplicated. But there’s a catch. To experience the simple joy of riding a bike, you first have to navigate the maddeningly complex process of buying one.

Make no mistake: this is not a straightforward case of marching into Halfords, saying, “One bike, please!” and leaving with a shiny new steed. But, while complicated, it needn’t be stressful.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Paddy Maddison

© Photograph: Paddy Maddison

© Photograph: Paddy Maddison

AI is likely to become important to future space travel for a fairly unglamorous reason: Earth is too far away to make every decision in time.

A spacecraft near Mars may wait minutes for a radio command. At the outer planets, the delay stretches into hours. A vehicle approaching an asteroid, descending towards unfamiliar ground or responding to a failing component may need to act before a human team can see the problem, discuss it and send an answer back.

That does not mean future spacecraft will be handed to a talking machine captain. On the evidence available today, the practical role is narrower: recognising a local situation, choosing among approved actions and keeping a mission working within limits set by people.

Spacecraft autonomy began before the current AI boom

NASA tested an onboard artificial-intelligence system on Deep Space 1 in 1999. The Remote Agent experiment received high-level goals, produced plans, executed them and responded to four simulated faults inserted by the mission team. It also encountered a software bug during its first run, a useful reminder that autonomy creates new failure modes as well as new capability.

Deep Space 1 separately tested autonomous optical navigation. The spacecraft photographed asteroids against background stars, calculated its position and commanded its ion propulsion without waiting for engineers to perform each navigation calculation on Earth.

These systems were not generative AI. They were purpose-built planning, diagnosis and navigation software, designed around a constrained mission. That distinction remains useful today.

I wrote earlier about how AI already flying in space tends to solve one specific physical problem. Future capability will probably grow by joining many such bounded systems, not by installing a single general intelligence and asking it to improvise.

DART showed why decisions sometimes have to stay onboard

NASA’s DART spacecraft had to strike Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet roughly 150 metres across, while closing at about six kilometres per second. During the final phase, human intervention would have been too slow and the target did not separate clearly from the larger asteroid until late in the approach.

DART’s SMART Nav system used images from its camera to identify the bodies, select Dimorphos, calculate corrections and command manoeuvres. The system guided DART through the last four hours without human control, ending in the intended collision on 26 September 2022.

That is autonomy with a sharply defined objective.

The spacecraft was not deciding whether the mission was wise or inventing a new scientific goal. People had designed, tested and authorised the decision structure. The machine handled the part that had to occur faster than the radio link allowed.

Newer AI can assist with planning before it flies

In December 2025, NASA’s Perseverance team completed the first two drives on another world whose waypoints had been generated by AI. A vision-language model examined orbital imagery and elevation data, identified terrain features and proposed a route.

The AI was on Earth, not steering the rover live. JPL engineers ran its commands through a digital replica of Perseverance and checked more than 500,000 telemetry variables before transmission. The rover then drove 210 metres on 8 December and 246 metres on 10 December, according to JPL’s account of the demonstration.

This suggests a near-term division of labour. AI can examine large image sets, propose waypoints and reduce routine planning work. Engineers can test those proposals against mission rules. Onboard navigation can then handle nearby rocks and other hazards as the vehicle moves.

Each layer has a different job, and each can be checked differently.

Hera will test more autonomy around an asteroid

ESA’s Hera spacecraft is due to reach the Didymos system in November 2026 to examine the aftermath of DART’s impact. ESA describes Hera as having autonomy comparable to a self-driving car, although the comparison refers to sensor fusion and local navigation rather than road-driving software transplanted into space.

Hera will combine camera images, laser-altimeter readings, inertial sensors and star-tracker data to build a working picture of the two asteroids. Its experimental modes are intended to recognise surface features and make navigation decisions near bodies whose weak gravity and irregular shapes are difficult to model perfectly from Earth.

If those tests work, the same broad approach could help later spacecraft rendezvous with small objects, inspect damaged satellites or land in places where detailed maps are incomplete. It would be evidence for particular navigation methods, not proof that a spacecraft can manage an entire mission alone.

Future travellers will need systems that know their authority

For robotic probes, autonomy can mean more observations and less time waiting. For crews, it could help monitor equipment, flag anomalies, manage inventories or compare possible responses while Earth is unavailable. Yet a system making suggestions for astronauts is not the same as one controlling life support or propulsion, where an error could be irreversible.

The harder engineering question is therefore not simply how capable the AI becomes. It is how its authority is bounded, how uncertainty is displayed, what happens when sensors disagree and how people regain control.

I recently looked at the much larger physical barrier in the possibility of sending a probe to Alpha Centauri. AI cannot provide the propulsion, shielding or energy such a mission lacks. It could, however, help a small vehicle operate for decades without expecting Earth to supervise every choice.

That is the credible future role: not replacing mission control, but carrying a carefully tested part of mission control aboard the spacecraft when distance makes immediate help impossible.

The post AI will not pilot future spacecraft like a human captain; its practical role is narrower and more important, choosing routes, spotting hazards and keeping missions working when Earth is minutes or hours away appeared first on Space Daily.

WiFi has become an essential part of modern life, as every household nowadays depends on a strong and reliable wireless network to connect to the internet. Much of our daily digital activity, from online banking and remote work to video streaming and online gaming, passes through a home WiFi router.

Most homeowners are concerned about internet speed, coverage, and router performance, and while that is important, WiFi privacy is equally important and should be taken into consideration. A poorly secured WiFi network can put everything at risk, expose personal information, allow unauthorized users to access your internet connections, and even provide malicious actors with opportunities to target connected devices.

For this reason, understanding how WiFi privacy works is important for every household, and below we have discussed some of the important things that every household should know about WiFi Privacy.

Know That Your WiFi Router Is the Gateway to Your Digital Life

Every internet-connected device in your house communicates through your WiFi router and accesses the internet. Your router is the device that manages all incoming and outgoing internet traffic. Because of this central role, your router is one of the most important devices that protects your digital privacy.

If someone manages to gain unauthorized access to your router or network, they may use your internet connection, attempt to access shared devices, interfere with smart home systems, monitor unencrypted network traffic, and change router settings through 192.168.1.1. By keeping the router secure and protected, you can protect every device connected to your network.

Use Strong WiFi Passwords

Having strong WiFi passwords is very important because these are the simplest, yet most effective privacy measures that you can take. WiFi routers are shipped with default passwords that are usually printed on labels attached to the router. Therefore, you should use a strong and secure WiFi password that should be long and unique, include uppercase and lowercase letters, contain numbers and symbols, and avoid common words or personal information.

You should also consider changing your WiFi password often, especially when you share it with guests or visitors, to keep the WiFi network secure.

Change the Default Administrator Credentials

Every WiFi router has an administrator account that can be accessed via 192.168.0.1, and it can be used to control the settings of the router. Many users, after installation, never change the default administrator account username and password, due to which attackers can log into the administrator account using the default login credentials.

If you change the administrator password, you can prevent unauthorized users from modifying WiFi settings, viewing connected devices, disabling security features, and installing malicious configurations. Right after installation, you should use a unique password that differs from your WiFi password to secure your administrator account.

Enable the Latest Wireless Encryption

Using the latest wireless encryption is very important to maintain the privacy of your WiFi network. Modern WiFi routers come with WPA3, which is currently the strongest widely available WiFi encryption standard. If WPA3 is not available, WPA2 should be used instead. Avoid using outdated and aged security protocols because they can lead to your being exploited and taken over by attackers.

By using the latest and modern encryption protocols, you can protect your personal communications, online banking sessions, passwords, file transfers, and smart home communications to improve household privacy significantly. 

Review Connected Devices

Modern routers now allow you to see a list of devices that are currently connected to your network. You should check and review this list of connected devices to identify unknown devices, old devices you no longer use, unauthorised connections, and smart devices that should no longer be online. 

If you notice any unfamiliar devices, you can change your WiFi password to secure the network and investigate further. You can also monitor connected household devices to improve bandwidth availability and disconnect devices not in use.

What about attempts to test their virulence in humans? The approach in the Stanford lab sure sounds like a new form of gain-of-function research to me.

Source

Meta CEO presents utopian vision of AI in 6,000-word essay amid Silicon Valley debate over government regulation

Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy essay on Monday detailing his views on artificial intelligence and announced several plans for how Meta would develop the technology in the future. The CEO’s essay went online the same day as Meta released a new, open-source AI model that seeks to rival Anthropic and OpenAI’s products called Muse Glimmer.

Over the course of more than 6,000 words in a post titled “The Future is for Everyone,” Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics related to AI that included datacenters, government regulation, cybersecurity, the creation of bioweapons, labor market disruption, surveillance powers and more. The essay presented a utopian vision of AI as a personalized “superintelligence” – using the word 60 times.

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© Photograph: Nic Coury/AP

© Photograph: Nic Coury/AP

© Photograph: Nic Coury/AP

New mRNA jabs could change how vaccines chase viruses.

The study's authors mean well. But the technology is unnerving.

Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk (Mastodon, Hacker News, MacRumors, Mac Power Users):

WebKit-based browsers on iOS and macOS can be configured to route all web traffic through proxy servers, which is how Tor browsers on iOS and our own Psylo work. We found three WebKit features — DNS prefetching, WebAuthn Related Origin Requests, and WebTransport — that bypass the configured proxy and send traffic directly from the device, which exposes the user’s real network. The same leaks also affect Apple’s iCloud Private Relay.

[…]

It must be noted that VPNs are not affected, since they tunnel the device’s entire network traffic at the system level.

[…]

We’ve addressed all three leaks in Psylo 1.3.1[…] Passkeys and WebTransport have legitimate uses, so both can be re-enabled at any time through per-silo toggles. This keeps Psylo leak-free out of the box, while users who need one of these features on a given site can opt in explicitly, with a clear understanding of the trade-off.

Psylo:

In an ideal world, we’d report the issues to Apple, they acknowledge the issue, and ship a fix in a timely manner. Unfortunately, our past experience with Apple tells us that reporting this issue would involve months of delays, inconsistent communication, and in some cases, denying the issue’s impact entirely.

We weren’t willing to wait months, or upwards of a year, sitting on bugs that undermine the core privacy guarantees of Psylo and iOS Tor browsers while saying or doing nothing.

[…]

Should we knowingly leave our users exposed while waiting for a system-level fix? We didn’t think that was acceptable or fair to our users. Or should we quietly ship our own mitigations without telling anyone? We didn’t think that was acceptable either. Security fixes deserve transparency, especially when they involve tradeoffs.

Psylo:

Soon after we published the blog, we sent a link to the blog and demo website to Apple in a security report to make them aware of it. Now the report is already in the status “We’re planning to address the issue you reported.” and a fix is planned for Fall 2026 🤯🤯🤯

Mysk:

It used to take months and months to reach this status. We got there in less than 24h

Running to the press always helps…

Previously:

• Hide My Email Vulnerability Exposes Real Address
• No Bounty for Mysk
• Psylo Web Browser 1.0
• iCloud Private Relay White Paper

Update (2026-08-11): Ben Lovejoy (MacRumors):

A class action lawsuit accusing Apple of false advertising, misrepresentation, and fraud has now been filed by Clarkson Law Firm – the same lawyers who previously obtained a $250M settlement over the delayed launch of Siri AI.

Michael Kan:

US satellite internet provider Hughesnet has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after running low on cash and losing subscribers to Starlink.

Hughes Network Systems filed in a US bankruptcy court on Sunday, but the company notes it’ll continue serving its satellite internet customers during the restructuring period.

I used Hughesnet before DSL was available. The company was really annoying to deal with, and the dish was finicky, but the service was much better than using a dial-up modem.

Previously:

• Globalstar Takeover
• Starlink Mini
• US Broadband, OS, and Browser Stats

Progressive US senator urges Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic to ‘stop building machines that humans cannot control’

Senator Bernie Sanders has called on Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic executives to halt their development of artificial intelligence, warning that the US Senate will implement regulation if the companies continue deploying AI at their current pace.

In a new letter addressed to the CEOs of three of the country’s leading AI companies, Sanders said the capabilities of these AI models have reached a critical risk threshold and that the companies are losing control over the technology.

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© Photograph: John Oliva/Caller-Times/USA TODAY Network/Reuters Connect

© Photograph: John Oliva/Caller-Times/USA TODAY Network/Reuters Connect

© Photograph: John Oliva/Caller-Times/USA TODAY Network/Reuters Connect