This week, I covered a fascinating effort to preserve organs outside the body. There’s a huge shortage of donor organs, and one of the main reasons is time—they survive only a matter of hours outside the body, even when they’re kept on ice. Doctors dream of organ banks—stores of human organs that...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Supercooled kidneys have been transplanted into pigs in a “landmark achievement” When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has ...
When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has been carefully removed from a donor’s body, it starts to deteriorate. Surgeons have a matter of hours to get it into a recipient. Leave it too long and the organ will become unusable. In most cases, organs will be kept…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags During a heat wave on July 3, New York State’s grid imported enough electricity from Canada...
Designing and developing a new medicine is an expensive, failure-prone scientific challenge. A new drug can take many years to develop, at the cost of a significant investment. And even then, most possible candidates never reach the patient. For biologic medicines, therapies made from engineered ...
On July 3, as a heat wave swept the region, New York State’s grid imported 52 gigawatt-hours of electricity from Canada—enough to meet about 9% of its total electricity demand that day. Some of that power shuttled in on a 339-mile power line stretching from Quebec to Queens called the Champlain H...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Shape-shifting mirrors on NASA’s new space telescope could unveil Jupiters like our own When NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, as early as the...
When NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, as early as the end of next month, it will attempt one of astronomy’s most precise disappearing acts to date. The telescope will carry the first space-bound “active” coronagraph, an instrument that effectively erases most of the light from a...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself Last weekend, several current and former advisers to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed in...
The conversation about AI often centers on algorithms, computing power, or huge investments in new semiconductor fabrication plants and hyperscale data centers. But beneath each of these advances is another layer of innovation that makes them possible: advanced materials. Every new generation of ...
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed insults at the country’s leading AI companies. David Sack...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI is more likely than humans to form biases when hiring The next time you apply for a job, AI may screen your résumé before any human sees it. But there’s…
The next time you apply for a job, AI may screen your résumé before any human sees it. But there’s good reason to question whether AI will judge you fairly. Researchers already know that LLMs pick up human biases from their training data. New research suggests that LLMs can also develop their own...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. There’s a lot of hype around perimenopause. Don’t buy it. Perimenopause used to be considered taboo, but not anymore. Thanks at least in part to TV doctors and...
Perimenopause has entered the chat. Perimenopause—and its better-known relative, menopause—used to be considered taboo. Not anymore, thanks at least in part to TV doctors and social media influencers. Perhaps it’s my age, but these days, both my algorithm and my conversations with friends increas...
Every morning, airline dispatchers, grid operators, and farmers around the world make decisions based on the same thing: a weather forecast. While these forecasts are something that most people glance at for two seconds, weather predictions influence major strategic decisions in many industries, ...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet GPT-Red: an LLM super-hacker OpenAI built to make its models safer OpenAI has built an LLM super-hacker called GPT-Red that it uses as a sparring partner ...
It feels as if it should be illegal to even think about heating appliances during the height of summer—seriously, these heat waves in New York have been brutal—but we need to talk about heat pumps. The appliances use electricity for heating, they’re incredibly efficient, and they’re on the rise. ...
OpenAI has built an LLM super-hacker called GPT-Red that it uses as a sparring partner to help its other models boost their defenses against cyberattacks. Last week the company released the latest version of its flagship LLM, GPT-5.6. OpenAI says that training it against GPT-Red made the model it...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. PsiQuantum has a plan to make a massive quantum computer out of light The machine that could change the world will be housed in a room that looks like a data…