World News
Find out what’s happening in Science & Society around the world. Discover changes to science policy and law, new scientific study results, Supreme Court rulings, debates about nature versus nurture, and news about the sharing of genetic information.
Wed, Sep 04
FDA Approves Brain Cancer Drug with Duke Ties Giving Patients Hope
Patients with low-grade gliomas now have a new treatment option for the first time in decades.
The FDA approved vorasidenib earlier this month for adult and pediatric patients 12 and older with Grade2 astrocytoma or oligodendroglioma.
It’s the culmination of 16 years of research and clinical trials involving Duke researchers.
“I have been working on malignant brain tumors for 50-60 years and it is extremely gratifying to finally have a breakthrough we know is going to help a significant number of patients,” said Dr. Darell Bigner with The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke.
Back in 2008, Bigner, in collaboration with a team at Johns Hopkins, discovered a mutated gene IDH was frequently found in brain cancers, like gliomas.
“This IDH mutant protein, it produces essentially a chemical that causes tumor cells to grow,” Dr. Katy Peters explained. “What the drug does is it actually inhibits that mutant protein.”
Peters, also with The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, led the largest clinical trial for the drug through Duke.
Fri, Aug 23
US Warns of Iranian Hackers Escalating Influence Operations
The U.S. government is warning of increased efforts from Iran to influence upcoming elections through cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns and the American public.
In a joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. says that Iran carried out cyberattacks in an attempt to gain access to sensitive information related to U.S. elections.
The advisory underlines Iran’s intention to sow doubts about the integrity of democratic institutions in the U.S. and conduct aggressive cyber activity on multiple levels to collect intelligence.
Fri, Aug 16
How To Make AI Both Responsible And Ethical
Are Tesla investors getting tired of the way CEO Elon Musk is running the company? It certainly looks as if that is the case. In quarterly earnings reported last week, the electric car maker had its fourth consecutive quarter of slumping profit growth. Overall profit was down 45%. Its automotive revenues were down 7% year-over-year, with total production down 14%, and deliveries had dropped by 5%.
Wed, Aug 14
Chinese Companies Use AI To Bring Back Deceased Loved Ones, Raising Ethics Questions
With just one minute of high-quality video, a Chinese company claims it can bring your loved ones back to life – via a very convincing, AI-generated avatar. “I do not treat the avatar as a kind of digital person, I truly regard it as a mother,” Sun Kai tells NPR, in a recent interview. Kai, age 47, works in the port city of Nanjing and says he converses with his mother – who is deceased – at least once a week on his computer. Sun works at Silicon Intelligence in China, and he says that his company can create a basic avatar for as little as $30 USD (199 Yuan). But what’s the real cost of recreating a person who has passed?
Sun, Aug 11
Taking back and giving back on TikTok: Algorithmic mutual aid in the platform economy
This article explores three genres of TikTok content in which creators and users collaborate to re(direct) the value they create on-platform toward specific needs, people, and causes. Drawing from literatures on platform economies, user and creator labor, algorithmic imaginaries and resistance, and mutual aid, we used algorithmic ethnography to identify and define major genres of content, eventually creating a sample of 192 TikTok videos (including comments and metadata) and conducting a thematic analysis. The videos and practices shared the following themes: realizations of on-platform value, tactics oriented against platform logics and monetization programs, shared theories of value, and digital collaboration for a cause. We argue the genres constitute forms of algorithmic mutual aid, a practice unfolding in platform economies that demonstrates people’s increased recognition of the value of their digital labor, and efforts to reorient platform logics of value, visibility, and compensation to care for one another.