Samsungs plans to release the Android 15 update to older devices have been deferred by unforeseen issues. While the brand is braving to fix those before releasing a stable version, another subsequent One UI beta has dropped and, its the second one this week.Just days after releasing the One UI 7 beta 4, Samsung is sending out yet another beta update for the Galaxy S24 series. YouTuber and blogger Jeff Springer received the update and shared the relatively small changelog in a post on X.Recommended Videoshttps://x.com/jspring86az/status/1892825861801328911Please enable Javascript to view this contentThe changelog mentions a single bug fix which addresses the crashing of Samsungs Visual Voicemail app in the previous update. The app is built into One UI and allows you to view voicemails, with transcripts, in a text inbox-like interface and reply to voicemail via text.Despite the minor fix, the update weighs in at 436MB, so the update might be ironing out some more issues under the hood. Samsung does not officially number the update the beta updates, so we arent quite sure if its okay to call this as the One UI 7 beta 5 or beta 4.1.Andy Boxall / Digital TrendsDespite Samsung first teasing the One UI 7 in December last year, the only devices to have received the update are the Galaxy S25 phones, as well as the India-specific Galaxy F06, which were launched with it. Besides these, Samsung has limited the One UI 7 beta update to the Galaxy S24 series and not shed light on official plans to release stable or beta builds for older devices. Compared to previous years, the update is fairly delayed and naturally brewing frustration among those who own older Samsung devices.Despite several rumors floating on the internet about tentative timelines for the release of One UI 7, a Samsung forums moderator recently addressed the issue and stated the number of betas does not indicate the completeness of the interface. The number of Beta versions is determined by the need to refine and improve the software based on user feedback not by a fixed plan, the mod noted in their reply.On the positive side, the update patching a minor issue suggests we might be closer to a stable One UI 7 update. This also aligns with a bold but unverifiable claimabout Samsung closing its One UI 7 beta program, which signals the stable release may be imminent. But without clarity from Samsung, we would refrain from being too optimistic.Editors Recommendations

But Can They Thrive in Chaos? EV battery manufacturing capacity will rise when 10 plants come online this year Trump's policies will help to determine if the new plants succeed. Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News Feb 21, 2025 7:15 am | 5 The construction site of BlueOval SKs EV battery manufacturing facility in Stanton, Tenn. Credit: BlueOval SK The construction site of BlueOval SKs EV battery manufacturing facility in Stanton, Tenn. Credit: BlueOval SK Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThis article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.Ten new electric vehicle battery factories are on track to go online this year in the United States.This includes large plants from global battery giants such as Panasonic, Samsung, and SK On, and automakers such as Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Stellantis, and Toyota.If they all open in 2025, the countrys EV battery manufacturing capacity is poised to grow to 421.5 gigawatt-hours per year, an increase of 90 percent from the end of 2024, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the United Kingdom-based research firm.But this industry is seeing some storm clouds. The Trump administration is taking steps that would reduce demand for EVs. And two battery startupsKore Power and Freyrrecently canceled plans for new US factories.I dont blame anyone who looks at this landscape and wonders if a battery bust is coming. But I see a boom thats still in its early stagesalthough the uncertainty is dialed up to uncomfortable levels.I spoke with analysts this week to get a sense of the significance of the growth and also what factors could undermine the success of the new plants. The great unknown is how far the Trump administration may go to change the laws and rules that provide tax incentives to the plants and support growth of EV market share.Even if the government took action to undo tax credits for battery manufacturing, these plants are too far along in their development to be canceled, said Evan Hartley, a battery industry analyst for Benchmark.Theyre already built, he said. You cant stop it, and the momentum is there. And most of them are in Republican states. Its difficult to take away many thousands of jobs promised to your key voter base.So, whether Trump likes it or not, he is about to preside over a banner year for the United States as a major player in EV batteries, thanks in large part to the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden.Each of the new plants is a major economic development story for its region.Ill focus on the one closest to where I live in Ohio: LG and Honda have teamed up on a factory in Jeffersonville, Ohio, that will have capacity to build 40 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year and support 2,200 jobs. The projected investment is $4.4 billion. Construction is in the final stages and a spokesperson for the project said battery production will begin late this year.The size of the Honda plant helps to put in perspective the two recently canceled projects.Kore Power, an Idaho-based startup, said a few weeks ago that it was scrapping plans to build a $1.2 billion battery factory in Buckeye, Arizona. One reason was that the company had not finalized a crucial federal loan before Trump took office and froze new grants and loans. Now, the company is shifting its focus to finding an existing building that it can retrofit to produce batteries, as Julian Spector reported for Canary Media.Freyr, which has roots in Norway, has a more complicated story. In recent weeks, it has canceled plans to build a $2.6 billion battery plant in Georgia and is instead focusing on its other major project, a solar panel factory in Texas that it acquired last year. Freyr has named Austin, Texas, as its new corporate headquarters.The news from Kore and Freyr could be used to make an argument that the US battery industry is reeling. But those companies challenges are largely related to being startups, Hartley said.There are a number of roadblocks that you encounter as a battery startup that relate to the actual technical activity involved in making batteries, the kind of scale at which you have to [build] or the scale and precision involved in the manufacturing process, and the fact that its difficult to consistently make high-quality products, he said.I asked Evelina Stoikou, head of battery technology and supply chain research at BloombergNEF, what she sees as the main unanswered questions about the US market for EV batteries.She listed two: First, how will potential changes in federal policy affect automakers, battery makers and consumers? Second, what will the utilization rate of these plants be after they start production?Joint ventures between battery manufacturers and automakers are likely to face more certainty around expected demand due to their integrated supply chains, she said in an email. However, all plants will be influenced by policy decisions, consumer trends, and economic factors.Even before Trump took office, some analysts had raised concerns that the building boom would lead to a battery supply that exceeded demand, at least for a few years. The Trump administration could harm demand even more by revising or eliminating tax credits for consumers buying EVs, among many other possible actions.Its a moment of tremendous uncertainty, said Jay Turner, a Wellesley College environmental studies professor who writes about the shift away from fossil fuels. I do not envy the folks who are trying to make multibillion-dollar decisions, or, you know, tens-of-million-dollar decisions about how to move forward with projects that are in planning or under construction.Trumps tariff policies are also a major source of uncertainty because of their effect on prices for essential materials such as graphite, a battery component that is mainly produced in China.In aggregate, Trumps actions could whittle away the chances that the new battery plants are profitable, which would make it easier for China to dominate the battery and EV industries in the near future.It puts at risk the USs chance to be competitive at global level in an industry thats going to shape the 21st century, Turner said.The new plants of 2025 are an early and important step in a long journey. But their success depends a lot on the subsequent steps.Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News 5 Comments

Never Be Launching Rocket Report: SpaceX lands in the Bahamas; ULA tests modified booster India's new space chief begins outlining the country's architecture for putting astronauts on the Moon. Stephen Clark Feb 21, 2025 7:00 am | 13 A Falcon 9 booster on one of SpaceX's drone ships after landing in the Bahamas. Credit: SpaceX A Falcon 9 booster on one of SpaceX's drone ships after landing in the Bahamas. Credit: SpaceX Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWelcome to Edition 7.32 of the Rocket Report! It's true that the US space program has always been political. Domestic and global politics have driven nearly all of the US government's decisions on major space issues, most notably President John F. Kennedy's challenge to land astronauts on the Moon amid intense Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The Nixon administration's decision to end the Apollo program and focus on building a reusable Space Shuttle was a political move. More than 30 years later, the Clinton administration ordered a reevaluation NASA's plans for a massive space station in low-Earth orbit. In the post-Cold War zeitgeist of the 1990s, this resulted in Russia's inclusion on the International Space Station program. Flawed or not, these decisions were backstopped with some level of reasoning, debate, and national consensus-building. Today, the politics of space seem personal, small, and mean-spirited. Thankfully, there's a lot of launch action next week that might thrust us out of the abyss, even just for a moment.As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.Rocket Lab launches for the 60th time.It's safe to say Rocket Lab is an established player in the launch business. The company launched its 60th Electron rocket Tuesday from New Zealand, Space News reports. It was the second Electron launch of the year, coming just 10 days after Rocket Lab's previous mission. The payload was a new-generation small electro-optical reconnaissance satellite for BlackSky. Rocket Lab has not disclosed a projected number of Electron launches for the year beyond estimating it will be more than the 16 Electron missions in 2024. The company said on its launch webcast that the next Electron launch was planned from New Zealand in "a few short weeks."What's coming this year? ... Rocket Lab might have more to say in its quarterly earnings report next week about its plans for 2025, but here's what we know. Rocket Lab has a long backlog of missions with its light-lift Electron rocket, deploying small fleets of commercial Earth-imaging and data relay satellites for companies like BlackSky and Kinis. A few government missions are among Rocket Lab's more interesting launches this year, including a US military mission to demonstrate how the Space Force might respond to a threat to one of its satellites. Officially, Rocket Lab aims to debut its larger Neutron rocket this year, but I wouldn't bet on it. (submitted by EllPeaTea)Firefly nabs another win. Continuing the theme of rapid response in space, the Space Force has awarded Firefly Aerospace a nearly $22 million contract to launch a separate mission pursuing objectives similar to the one booked to fly with Rocket Lab. The mission, dubbed Victus Sol, will be the fifthTactically Responsive Space mission for the service, Defense News reports. In a prior responsive space mission, Firefly demonstrated in 2023 it could integrate a military satellite with its Alpha rocket and launch it within 27 hours, condensing what used to be weeks of work into a little more than a day. Clearly, this is a niche Firefly seems positioned to thrive in. Military officials view these kinds of capabilities as important for the Space Force's ability to react to real-time threats, defend against attacks, and reconstitute space-based assets disabled by an enemy in conflict.A safari in orbit ... The Space Force's responsive space missions are managed by a military unit called Space Safari. A spokesperson for this organization told Defense News that the latest mission, Victus Sol, is "moving beyond demonstrations" and will support Space Force operations. What this means isn't clear because the spokesperson would not confirm any details about the mission, including its payload, objective or launch date. However, fiscal 2025 budget documents say the mission could launch in late 2025 or 2026, and the service has indicated that 2026 is its target for flying operational Tactically Responsive Space missions. (submitted by EllPeaTea) The Ars Technica Rocket Report The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger's and Stephen Clark's reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We'll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.Sign Me Up!Orbex is counting on ESA support. UK-based rocket builder Orbex has revealed that it is counting on a positive outcome from its European Launch Challenge bid to fund the development of its medium-lift rocket, Proxima, citing a "challenging investment climate," European Spaceflight reports. The European Space Agency initiated the European Launcher Challenge in November 2023 to support the development of sovereign launch capabilities and, ultimately, a successor to the Ariane 6. While the exact format of the challenge has not yet been confirmed, initial reports have indicated that it will include multiple awards of 150 million euros ($157 million) each.Cart before the horse ... Orbex once appeared to be one of the most promising companies in a crop of European launch startups, but the gem has lost its luster. None of these startups have made an orbital launch attempt, but several of them, like Germany's Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg, have shown tangible progress. Orbex, meanwhile, has revealed little about the development of its first rocket called Prime. Last year, Orbex announced a new, larger rocket named Proxima. This is not an unusual move. Many companies initially established with a focus on the small launch industry have transitioned to developing larger launch vehicles because that's where the money is. But Orbex hasn't launched anything. Orbex's announcement in December that it was abandoning construction of its owns spaceport in favor of another launch site in Scotland also raised questions about the company's outlook.So long, ABL. Hello, Long Wall? Former small satellite launch company ABL Space Systems has capped a transformation to focus on missile defense by changing its name, Aviation Week reports. "As our mission sharpens to focus on missile defense, we reflected on what it means for our identity," wrote Dan Piemont, CEO of the newly-renamed company. "I'm proud to share that our company is now Long Wall, inspired by the Long Walls of Athens." ABL announced its pivot from satellite launch services to missile defense in November, four months after the company's second RS1 rocket was destroyed on the launch pad during ground testing. The setback followed a failed inaugural test flight in 2023.Oversupply ... There's no question that demand is growing for missile defense and hypersonic missile technology, the two new focus areas for Long Wall. Last month, President Donald Trump announced his intention to develop a comprehensive missile defense shield for the United States. The military has been interested in hypersonic technology for a decades, but the interest has transitioned in recent years from an experimental nature to an operational basis, with mixed success. Hypersonic missiles are difficult to defend against because they fly lower and are more maneuverable than ballistic missiles, so it's natural for the Pentagon to pursue defensive and offensive solutions in this area. But there are many companies retooling for the hypersonics rush. Similarly, there were numerous small launch startups in the 2010s, including ABL. It begs the question: Has ABL pivoted from one oversupplied market to another?SpaceX's Falcon lands near the Bahamas. SpaceX notched another spaceflight record as it completed the first rocket flight that featured a liftoff in one country and a landing in another, Spaceflight Now reports. A little more than eight minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday evening, the Falcon 9 rocket booster landed on the drone ship positioned off the coast of the Exuma Islands in the Bahamas. The landing platform was located 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) from the nearest point of land, within Bahamian territorial waters. SpaceX's previous rocket landings at sea have occurred in international waters.This new ocean ... The government of the Bahamas hailed the occasion as an opportunity for the island nation to attract visitors and investment. "With todays historic Falcon 9 booster landing in our waters, the Bahamas has become the first international destination in the world to host a SpaceX rocket landing," said Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas. "This is not a one-time eventthis is the beginning of a new chapter. Over the coming months, the Bahamas will host at least 20 scheduled rocket landings." Because the landing occurred in its territorial waters, the Bahamas had to approve SpaceX's plan to recover rockets there. In exchange for the government's approval, SpaceX will support the creation of a space exhibit in the Bahamas showcasing hardware and a SpaceX spacesuit, invest $1 million in the University of the Bahamas, and provide Starlink internet connectivity to remote parts of the nation. The new booster landing zone in the Bahamas will allow SpaceX to launch into more types of orbits from Cape Canaveral. (submitted by EllPeaTea)This SpaceX landing wasn't planned. Before dawn Wednesday, the sky across northern Europe was illuminated by an object zooming through the air in flames. The pyrotechnics were in fact caused by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket reentering the Earth's atmosphere, BBC reports. After sightings over England, Denmark, and Sweden, debris from the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket crashed into Poland. One Polish resident found what appeared to be a 1.5-meter by 1-meter pressure vessel from the upper stage behind his warehouse. No injuries were reported. Polsa, the Polish space agency, posted on X that the debris came from a Falcon 9, and independent orbital tracking data matched the rocket's location with the sightings over Europe.Not supposed to happen ... The rocket stage that fell over Poland Wednesday launched a batch of Starlink internet satellites from California earlier this month. Normally, SpaceX reignites the upper stage's engine for a deorbit burn after releasing the Starlink satellites, allowing the rocket to steer itself back into the atmosphere for a destructive reentry over the ocean. But something went wrong, and the burn failed to put the rocket on a trajectory toward reentry. Instead, it lingered in orbit for nearly three weeks before atmospheric drag naturally tugged it back toward Earth in an uncontrolled manner. This is the third time since last July that the Falcon 9's upper stage has encountered a problem in flight. (submitted by Dizdizzie)India will take a measured approach toward the Moon. India will not build a large rocket for its planned crewed mission to the Moon but instead rely on multiple launches and satellite docking technology, the Times of India reports. "One option is to build a huge rocket and take a single module, but what will you do with that rocket thereafter?" said V. Narayanan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. "Economically, we have to understand and really look at all aspects. So, we are not going to build a huge rocket. We are going to have multiple modules. Maybe right now, our thinking is two modules. You take them separately and dock."Buoyed by success ... Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has charged the Indian space agency to fly an astronaut to the Moon by 2040. Engineers are only now outlining the architecture for how India might achieve this goal. On January 16, India achieved its first successful docking between two satellites in orbit. This made India the fourth nation, after the United States, Russia, and China, to demonstrate an independent docking capability in orbit.A new vehicle joins China's rocket fleet. China conducted the first launch of the Long March 8A rocket on February 11, carrying a second batch of satellites into orbit for the national Guowang project, Space News reports. The launcher took off from the Wenchang launch base in southern China and deployed at least eight satellites for the Guowang broadband megaconstellation, China's answer to Starlink. China has published scant information about the design, size, or capabilities of the Guowang satellites, raising questions about the nature of the satellites, and concerns about transparency.Only kinda new ... The Long March 8A is an upgraded variant of the standard Long March 8, which debuted in December 2020. It features the same first stage and side boosters as the original but includes a newly designed 3.35-meter-diameter (11-foot) hydrogen-oxygen second stage, allowing a wider, 5.2-meter-diameter (17-foot) payload fairing. The rocket can carry about 7,000 kilograms (15,400 pounds) into Sun-synchronous orbit. China plans to use the expendable Long March 8 and 8A rockets for numerous launches. They will likely become workhorses for deploying China's Guowang and Thousand Sails megaconstellations. (submitted by EllPeaTea)Here's the latest on Starship Flight 8. A little over a month after SpaceX's large Starship launchended in an explosion over several Caribbean islands, the company is preparing its next rocket for a test flight, Ars reports. According toa notice posted by the Federal Aviation Administration, the eighth test flight of the Starship vehicle could take place as early as February 26 from the Starbase launch site in South Texas. Company sources confirmed that this launch date is plausible, but it's also possible that the launch could slip a day or two to Thursday or Friday of next week.Flight 7, Take 2 This is an important flight for SpaceX to get the Starship program back on track. On the previous Starship test flight last month, the rocket's upper stage failed about eight minutes after launch, raining debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean. The FAA is overseeing a SpaceX-led investigation into the accident, and while the inquiry is not yet complete, the posting indicating a launch date next week suggests government officials believe the investigation is nearing its end. Flight 8 will likely attempt the same goals as Flight 7 would have achieved, such as testing Starship's payload deployment mechanism and gathering data on novel heat shield materials.Full stack for SLS SRBs. Engineers at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida completed stacking the Space Launch System's twin Solid Rocket Boosters inside the Vehicle Assembly Building for the agency's Artemis II crewed test flight around the Moon, NASA reported this week. The boosters, each standing 177 feet (54 meters) tall, will provide the majority of the 8.8 million pounds of thrust to propel four astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft on their journey. The next step will be the placement of the SLS core stage in between the boosters in the coming weeks.For what? The long-term (and perhaps short-term) future of NASA's Space Launch System rocket is dubious. For now, NASA continues to make preparations for launching the Artemis II mission next year using the SLS rocket. But there's a push from Trump administration officials and advisors to cancel the rocket, which has cost somewhere around $29 billion since the program was announced in 2011. Each SLS rocket is fully expendable, and the rocket alone will cost up to $2.5 billion per flight, according to a 2023 audit by NASA's inspector general. This is, quite simply, unsustainable. There are alternatives. However, if the White House wants to put Americans around the Moon within the next few yearsapproximately the same time horizon as Trump's presidential termkeeping the Space Launch System around for a limited time might be the only way to do it.Vulcan booster test-fired in Utah.Northrop Grumman test-fired a solid rocket booster for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket last Thursday, February 13, in remote northern Utah, NASASpaceflight reports. Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, posted a photo of himself posing with the booster alongside Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of the Space Force's Space Systems Command. This was an important milestone in the investigation into why one of the strap-on boosters on ULA's second Vulcan rocket broke free shortly after liftoff in October. The rocket continued climbing into space and the flight reached a successful conclusion, but the anomaly put the brakes on the Space Force's certification of Vulcan for national security missions.Modified motor A ULA spokesperson told NSF that investigators are reviewing data from the "static hot fire of a modified GEM 63XL booster in Utah on Feb. 13. This test was part of the process for understanding the root cause of the observation on a Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) during the Vulcan Cert-2 mission and we will provide additional details as we have them." Officials haven't disclosed the root cause of the booster anomaly in October, or what fixes are required on boosters already built and in ULA's inventory. (submitted by EllPeaTea)Next three launchesFeb. 21: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-14 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 15:19 UTCFeb. 22: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center | 12:10 UTCFeb. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 22:24 UTCStephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 13 Comments

Ensuring continuity of care in a clinic or hospital is a nightmare of complexity. Coordinating test results, imaging, medication, and monitoring of vital signs has proven challenging to an industry reliant on ponderous technologies and deficient staffing. When patients are dealing with unfolding health crises and chronic conditions or recovering from procedures at home, managing their care becomes even more complex.Doctors may miss important findings that can impact patients prognosis and treatment --leaving those patients without necessary information on how to make healthcare decisions.Some 97% of available data may go unreviewed per the World Economic Forum. And Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are messy and riddled with errors.Following up with patients to ensure that they are receiving proper treatment based on the 3% of data that is reviewed constitutes a significant burden on providers.Even when patients are stable and their cases have received thorough review, they may find that obtaining insights on how to best manage their situations is next to impossible, placing multiple phone calls to overloaded call centers only to spend hours on hold, poring over pages of inscrutable instructions, and attempting to interpret their own results using unreliable home tests and monitors.Related:Artificial intelligence technologies have shown promise in managing some of the worst inefficiencies in patient follow-up and monitoring. From automated scheduling and chatbots that answer simple questions to review of imaging and test results, a range of AI technologies promise to streamline unwieldy processes for both patients and providers.These innovations promise to both free up valuable time and increase the likelihood that effective care is delivered. AI chart reviews may detect anomalies that require follow-up and AI review of images may detect early signs of conditions that escape human review.But, as with other AI technologies, keeping humans in the loop to ensure that algorithmic errors do not result in damage remains challenging. When is a chatbot not enough? And when it isnt, can a patient actually talk to their provider?InformationWeek delves into the potential of AI-managed medical monitoring and follow-up, with insights from Angela Adams, CEO of AI imaging follow-up company Inflo Health; and Hamed Akbari, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Santa Clara University who works on AI and medical imaging.Administrative AIAnyone who has gone through the healthcare system -- so, basically everyone -- knows how hideous the administrative procedures can be. Its bad enough trying to schedule a primary care appointment with some clinics. But what about patients who are in recovery from surgery or suffering from debilitating chronic conditions?Related:AI solutions may smooth out these processes for both the patient and the clinic. AI-assisted platforms offer efficient means of scheduling appointments, refilling prescriptions and getting answers to simple questions about treatment. Patients can simply respond to a text message or fill out a form indicating their needs.Some 60% of respondents to a 2022 survey preferred intuitive, app-like services from their providers.Patients may be more inclined to respond to texts or emails generated by AI programs because they can do so on their own time rather than taking a call at an inconvenient moment. They are thus able to provide useful feedback unrelated to their immediate needs -- on how they rate their experience with a provider for example -- when they might otherwise not be willing to do so.In the case of anomalous responses -- a complication or a dosage problem -- a staff member can then follow up with a call or message to address the issue personally. Missed appointments can be flagged, indicating the need for follow-up and also coordinating openings that might be used by other patients who might otherwise need to wait.Related:More than 70% of patients prefer self-scheduling according to an Experian report. And up to 40% of calls to clinics relate to scheduling. Reduced call volumes can lead to enormous cost savings and free up time for dealing with more exigent issues that require attention and analysis by live medical professionals.Medication Follow-Up and AdherenceAdherence to medication regimens is essential for many health conditions, both in the wake of acute health events and over time for chronic conditions.AI programs can both monitor whether patients are taking their medication as prescribed and urge them to do so with programmed notifications. Feedback gathered by these programs can indicate the reasons for non-adherence and help practitioners to devise means of addressing those problems.Adherence to diabetes management regimens is complicated by lifestyle, socioeconomic status, severity of disease and unique personality factors, for example. AI programs that take these factors into account may assist practitioners and patients in refining protocols so that they are both realistic and effective.A study that used a smartphone app to remind stroke victims to take their medication and then followed up with blood tests to ensure that they had done so found significant increases in adherence to the drug protocol, resulting in better health outcomes.AI programs can also use patient data to devise optimal dosing for drugs. Therapeutic drug monitoring has historically been a challenge given the differing reactions of patients to drugs, both alone and in combination, according to their unique physiology.They can even correlate dosing to the effects of the drugs -- a significant advance for conditions in which treatments themselves can have deleterious effects. Chemotherapy drugs, for example, can thus be optimized to maximize effectiveness and minimize side effects.Monitoring of Chronic ConditionsUsing AI to monitor the vital signs of patients suffering from chronic conditions may help to detect anomalies -- and indicate adjustments that will stabilize them. Keeping tabs on key indicators of health such as blood pressure, blood sugar, and respiration in a regular fashion can establish a baseline and flag fluctuations that require follow up treatment using both personal and demographic data related to age and sex by comparing it to available data on similar patients.Remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices, such as blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters and glucose meters, can be linked to AI programs that analyze the data they collect and draw useful conclusions from it. Education and health literacy levels vary among populations.Automated summaries can assist patients in understanding the complexities of the information used to determine their status and assume agency in managing their conditions. Even highly educated patients who are already invested in their own care will likely benefit from the efficiency of having their information synthesized in an easily comprehensible manner.Simplified readouts generated by AI programs can be especially helpful when patients are suffering from multiple conditions -- comorbidities -- that can make it even more difficult for them to manage their own care and communicate their needs to providers.Both acute changes and patterns, such as a heart rate that lowers over time, can help providers to assess when interventions such as medication adjustment and even surgery may be necessary.Hamed Akbari, Santa Clara UniversityPrognosis can be improved if deterioration is detected early. Even in the case of necessary surgery, it can be scheduled prior to an emergent and life-threatening event. In situations where the condition may become life-threatening or terminal, AI may even be able to plot out the likely progression of the disease based on lab findings, allowing for a more realistic approach to treatment and end-of-life planning.We have many patients in our studies, Akbari says. We know when they passed away. We can determine the length of the survival based on our model.Imaging Follow-UpAI has also shown great promise in augmenting human analysis of radiology findings -- X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, among other technologies. While examination by specialists remains crucial, AI programs now offer increasingly sophisticated means of detecting subtle patterns that may evade even the most skilled radiologists.An AI analysis of mammograms found that the program was more effective than humans at detecting early signs of breast cancer, for example. Adams relates the story of a friend and colleague whose breast cancer was detected on imaging while she was hospitalized for another condition. However, she was never notified and the cancer fatally metastasized. Adams and her colleagues were horrified that this incidental finding had been missed.They dug further and found that such incidents were far from uncommon. Even findings that are detected by radiologists do not come to the attention of providers and patients due to time constraints.It was astounding to us that nearly 50 to 60% of those follow-ups were just missed, Adams said. This led to Inflo Healths mission -- reducing missed results and ensuring proper follow-up.Non-critical follow-ups definitely need care, Adams urges. But findings that are not part of the critical workflow are tossed into a pile.Other programs have improved detection of such conditions as pneumonia and appendicitis.And the identification of novel diseases, such asCOVID-19, may also be improved by AI image examination. Radiologists may not be as familiar with the presentation of new diseases on imagery. Rapid identification of patterns in the progression ofa new disease using AI programs may beable to assist in diagnosis.Interpretation of microscopic images has also been improved by AI, allowing for quicker identification of pathogens in samples taken from patients.The increased follow-up rates can be substantial -- Inflo Healths partnership with the East Alabama Medical Center resulted in a 74% increase in follow ups on lung nodules detected by their technology in radiology reports while reducing the time it took to flag the findings by 95%.A study on detection of aortic aneurysms found that detection of additional complications was increased by 80% using an AI program. While those complications may have eventually been discovered by human radiologists, the research found that reporting time was reduced by 63%. Other research suggests that AI-assisted scheduling follow-up has improved detection of aneurysm complications. Another project discovered that an AI-enhanced workflow significantly improved follow-up by patients diagnosed with a diabetes-related eye condition.AI programs can also simplify complex arrays of imagery. AI can uncover patterns and relationships in imaging data that are not visible to the human eye. You can come up with one map that shows multiple MRI sequences. So instead of looking at five or six different MRI sequences, you just look at one, Akbari says. And by analyzing large databases of images and the notes that accompany them, these programs can detect early signs of pathology and thus facilitate earlier, more effective treatment.Such results suggest that collaboration between humans and AI may provide benefits to both patients and the institutions that serve them. Integration into the actual care of the patient is key. If a problem is flagged by an AI program and nothing happens, the finding cannot be acted upon. Adams is insistent that both the patient and provider must be notified when AI programs pick up a finding that has been missed.Angela Adams, Inflo HealthWe didn't just focus on the math and the AI problem, she says. We focused on taking that information that we identified and making sure that it worked within the clinical workflow.Surgical and Hospitalization Follow-UpOnce a condition has been diagnosed and treated, an additional array of issues emerges. In addition to coordinating appointments to assess progress, at-home care needs to be tracked.Post-surgical patients are likely to have numerous questions about how to monitor their conditions and ensure that their recovery is proceeding as predicted. This can result in time-consuming phone calls and emails for both patient and provider. Patients are often provided with packets of confusing information that attempt to guide them through recovery. They are likely to encounter situations that are not explained adequately by these materials. Or they may not receive any directions at all.Adams points to the challenges of following up on hospital visits. If you think about how quickly a patient is in and out of the ER, many times the final report doesnt come back until the patients already out. It doesn't even give an opportunity for the clinical team to talk to the patient, she notes.Specifically designed chatbots may be able to handle simpler questions that arise and simplify challenging language that some patients may find difficult to interpret.While it might seem superficially mundane, AI-generated follow-up calls that ensure appointments in the wake of surgeries or hospitalizations may be hugely beneficial. Rehospitalizations in the wake of health events, planned or unplanned, are an indicator of complications and even mortality. They are also a financial liability for hospitals. Medicare reduces reimbursements if patients suffering from certain conditions are readmitted within 30 days, for example.Keeping patients on track with their care plans, both at home and in follow-up examinations, can reduce rehospitalization events. Manual phone calls have been shown to be helpful in this regard but are time-consuming for both parties. But even automated calls and surveys can facilitate necessary follow-up and reduce rehospitalization.AI follow-up must be considered carefully, though. While it may result in efficiencies, some patients will likely be hesitant to direct their questions to automated systems while in a tenuous state. One study found that while AI-managed surgical follow-up calls were useful in collecting data and handling administrative tasks, only 11% of calls handled actual medical consultation.These systems must be designed to identify the need for conversations and in-person examination rather than serve as a barrier. A system designed for cataract surgery follow up, for example, specifically filters routine questions and concerns from those that might necessitate additional treatment.Technology that is currently used for daily monitoring of healthy patients may also be useful in monitoring patients with certain conditions. One study was cautiously optimistic about using Apple watches to monitor heart abnormalities in cardiac surgery patients.Personalization of TreatmentThe increased sense of autonomy and control offered by these algorithmic approaches may, paradoxically, have a humanizing approach, making patients feel less like lab rats and more like humans who can engage in their own care.The use of AI to synthesize both historical and live data about individual patients with general data related to their conditions drawn from research and medical record analysis can give both patients and providers a much clearer picture of how to approach their treatment.Medical professionals often do not have the time -- or inclination -- to make the sophisticated calculations required to devise optimum care. And patients often find it challenging to advocate for themselves while dealing with both challenging health problems and masses of unfamiliar information.AI can detect patterns that neither party would be capable of perceiving independently. Once these patterns are identified, patients and providers can more effectively collaborate on how to proceed -- whether that be tinkering with the dosage of medications, pursuing follow up on potentially alarming diagnostic findings, or simply discussing potential lifestyle changes and treatment approaches that might affect long-term prognosis.I think the future of AI is in integrated diagnosis and treatment planning, Akbari says. Communication between different specialties is very limited.Unless you have technology married with process and people, you're always going to have failure points, Adams adds. I would love to see more healthcare AI vendors focus on a holistic approach. When there's an AI failure in healthcare, it affects all of us. We need to establish trust with clinicians, and the only way to do that is to establish learning partnerships, where we can iterate and learn.

Fly AgaricMarshmallow Laser FeastSoils around the world are polluted, worn out, over-fertilised and exhausted. How did we get to a place where we think of soil as dirt? Soils are buzzing with life, criss-crossed with a hard-to-fathom complexity of connections, a multitude of symbiotic partnerships between plant roots, mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria.Up to half of the living biomass of soils is composed of these networks. Soils soak up about a third of the carbon humans put into the atmosphere each year. They hold three times more carbon than living biomass above ground, and twice the amount in the atmosphere. We have to rediscover the vital importance of soil in our lives and in the planets future and that is the aim of a new exhibition at Somerset House in London, SOIL: The World at Our Feet, co-curated by Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy, running until 13 April.Unearthed MyceliumJo Pearl/Elsa PearlAdvertisementPictured above is a ceramic representation of fungi and their mycelial network in soil: Unearthed Mycelium by Jo Pearl, whose stated mission is breathing life into clay and clay into life. Pictured below is the work A Diversity of Forms. These stunning bacterial colonies were grown by Elze Hesse and photographed by Tim Cockerill. The main picture is Fly Agaric I, by art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast. This installation depicts living, pulsing underground symbiotic networks.We cant cherish what we dont know, says Pearl. And if we are to save our soil, we must take a closer look at what is often dismissed as dirt and realise our lives depend on its aliveness.A Diversity of Forms.Dr Tim CockerillTopics:

Ever since World War II, the US has been the global leader in science and technologyand benefited immensely from it. Research fuels American innovation and the economy in turn. Scientists around the world want to study in the US and collaborate with American scientists to produce more of that research. These international collaborations play a critical role in American soft power and diplomacy. The products Americans can buy, the drugs they have access to, the diseases theyre at risk of catchingare all directly related to the strength of American research and its connections to the worlds scientists. That scientific leadership is now being dismantled, according to more than 10 federal workers who spoke to MIT Technology Review, as the Trump administrationspearheaded by Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)slashes personnel, programs, and agencies. Meanwhile, the president himself has gone after relationships with US allies. These workers come from several agencies, including the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce, the US Agency for International Development, and the National Science Foundation. All of them occupy scientific and technical roles, many of which the average American has never heard of but which are nevertheless critical, coordinating research, distributing funding, supporting policymaking, or advising diplomacy. They warn that dismantling the behind-the-scenes scientific research programs that backstop American life could lead to long-lasting, perhaps irreparable damage to everything from the quality of health care to the publics access to next-generation consumer technologies. The US took nearly a century to craft its rich scientific ecosystem; if the unraveling that has taken place over the past month continues, Americans will feel the effects for decades to come. Most of the federal workers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk or for fear of being targeted. Many are completely stunned and terrified by the scope and totality of the actions. While every administration brings its changes, keeping the US a science and technology leader has never been a partisan issue. No one predicted the wholesale assault on these foundations of American prosperity. If you believe that innovation is important to economic development, then throwing a wrench in one of the most sophisticated and productive innovation machines in world history is not a good idea, says Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University who worked for two decades in the State Department on science issues. Theyre setting us up for economic decline. The biggest funder of innovation The US currently has the most top-quality research institutes in the world. This includes world-class universities like MIT (which publishes MIT Technology Review) and the University of California, Berkeley; national labs like Oak Ridge and Los Alamos; and federal research facilities run by agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense. Much of this network was developed by the federal government after World War II to bolster the US position as a global superpower. Before the Trump administrations wide-ranging actions, which now threaten to slash federal research funding, the government remained by far the largest supporter of scientific progress. Outside of its own labs and facilities, it funded more than 50% of research and development across higher education, according to data from the National Science Foundation. In 2023, that came to nearly $60 billion out of the $109 billion that universities spent on basic science and engineering. The return on these investments is difficult to measure. It can often take years or decades for this kind of basic science research to have tangible effects on the lives of Americans and people globally, and on the USs place in the world. But history is littered with examples of the transformative effect that this funding produces over time. The internet and GPS were first developed through research backed by the Department of Defense, as was the quantum dot technology behind high-resolution QLED television screens. Well before they were useful or commercially relevant, the development of neural networks that underpin nearly all modern AI systems was substantially supported by the National Science Foundation. The decades-long drug discovery process that led to Ozempic was incubated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health. Microchips. Self-driving cars. MRIs. The flu shot. The list goes on and on. In her 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzucato, a leading economist studying innovation at University College London, found that every major technological transformation in the US, from electric cars to Google to the iPhone, can trace its roots back to basic science research once funded by the federal government. If the past offers any lesson, that means every major transformation in the future could be shortchanged with the destruction of that support. The Trump administrations distaste for regulation will arguably be a boon in the short term for some parts of the tech industry, including crypto and AI. But the federal workers said the presidents and Musks undermining of basic science research will hurt American innovation in the long run. Rather than investing in the future, youre burning through scientific capital, an employee at the State Department said. You can build off the things you already know, but youre not learning anything new. Twenty years later, you fall behind because you stopped making new discoveries. A global currency The government doesnt just give money, either. It supports American science in numerous other ways, and the US reaps the returns. The Department of State helps attract the best students from around the world to American universities. Amid stagnating growth in the number of homegrown STEM PhD graduates, recruiting foreign students remains one of the strongest pathways for the US to expand its pool of technical talent, especially in strategic areas like batteries and semiconductors. Many of those students stay for years, if not the rest of their lives; even if they leave the country, theyve already spent some of their most productive years in the US and will retain a wealth of professional connections with whom theyll collaborate, thereby continuing to contribute to US science. The State Department also establishes agreements between the US and other countries and helps broker partnerships between American and international universities. That helps scientists collaborate across borders on everything from global issues like climate change to research that requires equipment on opposite sides of the world, such as the measurement of gravitational waves. The international development work of USAID in global health, poverty reduction, and conflict alleviationnow virtually shut down in its entiretywas designed to build up goodwill toward the US globally; it improved regional stability for decades. In addition to its inherent benefits, this allowed American scientists to safely access diverse geographies and populations, as well as plant and animal species not found in the US. Such international interchange played just as critical a role as government funding in many crucial inventions. Several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also help collect and aggregate critical data on disease, health trends, air quality, weather, and more from disparate sources that feed into the work of scientists across the country. The National Institutes of Health, for example, has since 2015 been running the Precision Medicine Initiative, the only effort of its kind to collect extensive and granular health data from over 1 million Americans who volunteer their medical records, genetic history, and even Fitbit data to help researchers understand health disparities and develop personalized and more effective treatments for disorders from heart and lung disease to cancer. The data set, which is too expensive for any one university to assemble and maintain, has already been used in hundreds of papers that will lay the foundation for the next generation of life-saving pharmaceuticals. Beyond fueling innovation, a well-supported science and technology ecosystem bolsters US national security and global influence. When people want to study at American universities, attend international conferences hosted on American soil, or move to the US to work or to found their own companies, the US stays the center of global innovation activity. This ensures that the country continues to get access to the best people and ideas, and gives it an outsize role in setting global scientific practices and priorities. US research norms, including academic freedom and a robust peer review system, become global research norms that lift the overall quality of science. International agencies like the World Health Organization take significant cues from American guidance. US scientific leadership has long been one of the countrys purest tools of soft power and diplomacy as well. Countries keen to learn from the American innovation ecosystem and to have access to American researchers and universities have been more prone to partner with the US and align with its strategic priorities. Just one example: Science diplomacy has long played an important role in maintaining the USs strong relationship with the Netherlands, which is home to ASML, the only company in the world that can produce the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed to produce the most advanced semiconductors. These are critical for both AI development and national security. International science cooperation has also served as a stabilizing force in otherwise difficult relationships. During the Cold War, the US and USSR continued to collaborate on the International Space Station; during the recent heightened economic competition between the US and China, the countries have remained each others top scientific partners. Actively working together to solve problems that we both care about helps maintain the connections and the context but also helps build respect, Seligsohn says. The federal government itself is a significant beneficiary of the countrys convening power for technical expertise. Among other things, experts both inside and outside the government support its sound policymaking in science and technology. During the US Senate AI Insight Forums, co-organized by Senator Chuck Schumer through the fall of 2023, for example, the Senate heard from more than 150 experts, many of whom were born abroad and studying at American universities, working at or advising American companies, or living permanently in the US as naturalized American citizens. Federal scientists and technical experts at government agencies also work on wide-ranging goals critical to the US, including building resilience in the face of an increasingly erratic climate; researching strategic technologies such as next-generation battery technology to reduce the countrys reliance on minerals not found in the US; and monitoring global infectious diseases to prevent the next pandemic. Every issue that the US faces, there are people that are trying to do research on it and there are partnerships that have to happen, the State Department employee said. A system in jeopardy Now the breadth and velocity of the Trump administrations actions has led to an unprecedented assault on every pillar upholding American scientific leadership. For starters, the purging of tens of thousandsand perhaps soon hundreds of thousandsof federal workers is removing scientists and technologists from the government and paralyzing the ability of critical agencies to function. Across multiple agencies, science and technology fellowship programs, designed to bring in talented early-career staff with advanced STEM degrees, have shuttered. Many other federal scientists were among the thousands who were terminated as probationary employees, a status they held because of the way scientific roles are often contractually structured. Some agencies that were supporting or conducting their own research, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, are no longer functionally operational. USAID has effectively shuttered, eliminating a bastion of US expertise, influence, and credibility overnight. Diplomacy is built on relationships. If weve closed all these clinics and gotten rid of technical experts in our knowledge base inside the government, why would any foreign government have respect for the US in our ability to hold our word and in our ability to actually be knowledgeable? a terminated USAID worker said. I really hope America can save itself. Now the Trump administration has sought to reverse some terminations after discovering that many were key to national security, including nuclear safety employees responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the countrys nuclear weapons arsenal. But many federal workers I spoke to can no longer imagine staying in the public sector. Some are considering going into industry. Others are wondering whether it will be better to move abroad. Its just such a waste of American talent, said Fiona Coleman, a terminated federal scientist, her voice cracking with emotion as she described the long years of schooling and training she and her colleagues went through to serve the government. Many fear the US has also singlehandedly kneecapped its own ability to attract talent from abroad. Over the last 10 years, even as American universities have continued to lead the world, many universities in other countries have rapidly leveled up. That includes those in Canada, where liberal immigration policies and lower tuition fees have driven a 200% increase in international student enrollment over the last decade, according to Anna Esaki-Smith, cofounder of a higher-education research consultancy called Education Rethink and author of Make College Your Superpower. Germany has also seen an influx, thanks to a growing number of English-taught programs and strong connections between universities and German industry. Chinese students, who once represented the largest share of foreign students in the US, are increasingly staying at home or opting to study in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK. During the first Trump administration, many international students were already more reluctant to come to the US because of the presidents hostile rhetoric. With the return and rapid escalation of that rhetoric, Esaki-Smith is hearing from some universities that international students are declining their admissions offers. Add to that the other recent developmentsthe potential dramatic cuts in federal research funding, the deletion of scores of rich public data sets on health and the environment, the clampdown on academic freedom for research that appears related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and the fear that these restrictions could ultimately encompass other politically charged topics like climate change or vaccinesand many more international science and engineering students could decide to head elsewhere. Ive been hearing this increasingly from several postdocs and early-career professors, fearing the cuts in NIH or NSF grants, that theyre starting to look for funding or job opportunities in other countries, Coleman told me. And then were going to be training up the USs competitors. The attacks could similarly weaken the productivity of those who stay at American universities. While many of the Trump administrations actions are now being halted and scrutinized by US judges, the chaos has weakened a critical prerequisite for tackling the toughest research problems: a long-term stable environment. With reports that the NSF is combing through research grants for words like women, diverse, and institutional to determine whether they violate President Trumps executive order on DEIA programs, a chilling effect is also setting in among federally funded academics uncertain whether theyll get caught in the dragnet. To scientists abroad, the situation in the US government has marked American institutions and researchers as potentially unreliable partners, several federal workers told me. If international researchers think collaborations with the US can end at any moment when funds are abruptly pulled or certain topics or keywords are suddenly blacklisted, many of them could steer clear and look to other countries. Im really concerned about the instability were showing, another employee at the State Department said. Whats the point in even engaging? Because science is a long-term initiative and process that outlasts administrations and political cycles. Meanwhile, international scientists have far more options these days for high-caliber colleagues to collaborate with outside America. In recent years, for example, China has made a remarkable ascent to become a global peer in scientific discoveries. By some metrics, it has even surpassed the US; it started accounting for more of the top 1% of most-cited papers globally, often called the Nobel Prize tier, back in 2019 and has continued to improve the quality of the rest of its research. Where Chinese universities can also entice international collaborators with substantial resources, the US is more limited in its ability to offer tangible funding, the State employee said. Until now, the US has maintained its advantage in part through the prestige of its institutions and its more open cultural norms, including stronger academic freedom. But several federal scientists warn that this advantage is dissipating. America is made up of so many different people contributing to it. Theres such a powerful global community that makes this country what it is, especially in science and technology and academia and research. Were going to lose that; theres not a chance in the world that were not going to lose that through stuff like this, says Brigid Cakouros, a federal scientist who was also terminated from USAID. I have no doubt that the international science community will ultimately be okay. Itll just be a shame for the US to isolate themselves from it.

Jean-Baptiste Cazajous photographed the wreck of the Togo, a coal transport ship sunk by a mine explosion at the end of World War I in 1918.The wreck of the Togo in Cavalaire-sur-Mer, France. Jean Baptiste Cazajous/UPY2025 Cazajous encountered a school of fish swirling around the hull of the wrecked ship in Cavalaire-sur-Mer, France. The photo was highly commended in the Wrecks category.Jantina Scheltema photographed a sunken twin-motor Piper PA-60 Aerostar plane floating underwater in Germany.An underwater plane in Germany. Jantina Scheltema/UPY2025 The photo, which was commended in the Wrecks category, was taken in Kreidesee Hemmoor, where the plane's owner purposefully sank it to serve as a diving site."I love how surreal this scene feels the airplane flying through the water column, paired with a diver," Scheltema wrote. "It invites you to question: which one doesn't belong, the plane or the person? This is the paradox that I hoped to capture."Renee Capozzola titled this photo "Sunburst Shipwreck."A shipwreck in Brisbane, Australia. Renee Capozzola/UPY2025 Taken off the coast of Brisbane, Australia, Capozzola's split-level image shows a school of fish swimming beneath a shipwreck at sunset. It was commended in the 2025 photography competition."This image transports me straight to this wreck with the distinctive bow bathed in evening light, with an attractive school of monos beneath the surface, adding additional interest to the scene," a judge wrote of her photo.In this commended image, Martin Broen dove into the control room of the Rio de Janeiro wreck in Micronesia's Truk Lagoon.Inside the Rio De Janeiro wreck in Truk Lagoon in Micronesia. Martin Broen/UPY2025 The Rio de Janeiro was a passenger and cargo liner that sank during Operation Hailstone in 1944, when the US Navy attacked Japanese forces at Truk Lagoon and sank 200,000 tons of shipping, according to the US Naval Institute."In the control room of the Rio De Janeiro wreck, I photographed this flooded maze filled with machinery and gauges," Broen wrote.The Nagano Maru, a Japanese ship, sank with a truck on board during Operation Hailstone.A sunken truck in Truk Lagoon in Micronesia. Rick Ayrton/UPY2025 The Nagano Maru, a passenger and cargo vessel, still has a Nissan flatbed truck in its cargo hold No. 3.Rick Ayrton worked with another diver to photograph the wreck. The image was highly commended in the Underwater Photographer of the Year contest.Alex Dawson's image of the SS Carthage from World War I was highly commended in the 2025 contest's wrecks category.The shipwreck of the SS Carthage. Alex Dawson/UPY2025 The SS Carthage was sunk by the submarine U-21 on July 4, 1915. It sits off the coast of Turkey at a depth of 84 meters, or 276 feet."SS Carthage is one of the most well-preserved wrecks in the Mediterranean, characterized by its tall superstructure and all its detail," Dawson wrote.The Jura collided with another ship and sank in Lake Constance off the coast of Switzerland in 1864.The wreck of the Jura at the bottom of Lake Constance in Switzerland. Frank Aron/UPY2025 The position of the rudder indicates that the crew tried to steer hard to the starboard, or right, side before the wreck, photographer Frank Aron wrote."Even 150 years later this wooden wreck is nearly completely preserved, giving divers a clear idea of what happened during the collision," Aron wrote of the highly commended photo.Dawson's photo of a former coast guard boat won third place in the Wrecks category.A shipwreck in Kas, Turkey. Alex Dawson/UPY2025 The Sahil Guvenlik SG115 was sunk at a depth of 35 meters, or around 115 feet, for recreational diving in Kas, Turkey.Wojciech Dopierala was the runner-up with a photo of a sunken Lockheed Martin L1011 Tristar plane off the coast of Jordan.A Lockheed Martin L1011 Tristar plane in the Red Sea. Wojciech Dopierala/UPY2025 Dopierala took the photo while freediving in the Red Sea."I love the fresh images that freediving photography is bringing to underwater photography as a whole," one judge wrote. "Creating such a perfect composition and moment takes particularly high skills when both photographer and model are on breath-hold dives."Dawson's image of Gulf Fleet No. 31 beneath the Red Sea in Egypt took first place in the contest's Wrecks category.The wreck of Gulf Fleet No. 31 in Egypt. Alex Dawson/UPY2025 Gulf Fleet No. 31 sank in 1985 when it hit a reef in Shaabruhr Umm Qammar."When she sank, she got wedged between the reef wall and a small reef, so there is a swim-through under the wreck," Dawson wrote of the ship.Located at a depth of around 104 meters, or around 341 feet, it is one of the deepest wrecks featured in the 2025 Underwater Photographer of the Year competition."This image is packed with the feeling of adventure, in a finely crafted composition that draws you in with layer upon layer of interest, from foreground corals to the clouds of fish above the wreck," one judge wrote of Dawson's winning photo.

I make sure to plan regular individual trips with each of my two kids.It's often when we have our most honest conversations.It's also nice to be focused on just one kid at once without any distractions.Just 18 summers and 18 spring breaks that's really all you get when it comes to vacations with the littles (and honestly, those first few don't really count). When you think about it this way, you start to understand how important and precious downtime with them is. Not that they won't want to hang with you when they're in college and launched. But honestly, you can't bet on it.Even more rare is getting honest-to-goodness alone time with each kid. No siblings, no spouse. That's when so much of the good stuff happens. Here's why going on one-on-one trips with each of my kids is such an important part of our family vacation strategy.You get the straight talkBy removing all the distractions of friends and the rest of the family, you get the rare opportunity to have real-talk with one of your favorite people on earth. This gets more and more important as the kids get older and they share less and less with you in the course of normal life.On my one-on-one trips with my kids, we've broached every subject from romantic relationships to visions of the future they want for themselves to real feelings about drama with friends. It's calm, safe, and connected.You can be laser-focused on just one kidI have two kids, but most of the time, my husband and I think about them as one monolithic unit "the kids" rather than as individuals. Going away with just one of them means they get your complete focus.Without distraction from siblings or even the other parent, you get to reconnect with them as unique people. You'll learn more about them as an individual, as well as your relationship with them.No one else's point of view compromises their ownAlthough I think both my kids are spectacular, one tends to railroad the other, more accommodating kid (and I mean this in a loving way). Taking them away to spend individual time with me means they each have time to truly express their own unfiltered, uninfluenced opinion.No one is worried that their choice of activity isn't cool enough for the other sibling or that Dad will be bored. It's a rare chance for each kid to feel like an important "only," and it makes them feel super special.Your kids get to choose what to do, and it doesn't have to be a big expensive tripIt's not about whisking your kid away for a week on a beach although that's fun, too. We've done as many one-on-one days as we have overnights. There was the time I won Harry Potter tickets in the Broadway ticket lottery: I sprung my youngest from school for the day, and we had an amazing adventure, sitting front row at the show and eating at the super touristy Cain's Chicken around the corner for lunch. The author took her son to a Broadway show. Courtesy of Liz Zack This is, of course, the last place on earth I would eat if my husband and I were making the dining picks, but that's the point: my then-14-year-old son got to make all the decisions of the day.Absence makes the heart grow fonderFrankly, when you're away with one member of your family, you miss the others, and they miss you. That makes coming home almost as lovely as the vacation itself and makes the other kid excited to plan and take their own special trip next. Win-win.

The AI world is moving so fast that its easy to get lost amid the flurry of shiny new products. OpenAI announces one, then the Chinese startup DeepSeek releases one, then OpenAI immediately puts out another one. Each is important, but focus too much on any one of them and youll miss the really big story of the past six months. The big story is: AI companies now claim that their models are capable of genuine reasoning the type of thinking you and I do when we want to solve a problem. And the big question is: Is that true?The stakes are high, because the answer will inform how everyone from your mom to your government should and should not turn to AI for help.If youve played around with ChatGPT, you know that it was designed to spit out quick answers to your questions. But state-of-the-art reasoning models like OpenAIs o1 or DeepSeeks r1 are designed to think a while before responding, by breaking down big problems into smaller problems and trying to solve them step by step. The industry calls that chain-of-thought reasoning.These models are yielding some very impressive results. They can solve tricky logic puzzles, ace math tests, and write flawless code on the first try. Yet they also fail spectacularly on really easy problems: o1, nicknamed Strawberry, was mocked for bombing the question how many rs are there in strawberry? AI experts are torn over how to interpret this. Skeptics take it as evidence that reasoning models arent really reasoning at all. Believers insist that the models genuinely are doing some reasoning, and though it may not currently be as flexible as a humans reasoning, its well on its way to getting there. So, whos right?The best answer will be unsettling to both the hard skeptics of AI and the true believers.What counts as reasoning?Lets take a step back. What exactly is reasoning, anyway? AI companies like OpenAI are using the term reasoning to mean that their models break down a problem into smaller problems, which they tackle step by step, ultimately arriving at a better solution as a result.But thats a much narrower definition of reasoning than a lot of people might have in mind. Although scientists are still trying to understand how reasoning works in the human brain nevermind in AI they agree that there are actually lots of different types of reasoning. Theres deductive reasoning, where you start with a general statement and use it to reach a specific conclusion. Theres inductive reasoning, where you use specific observations to make a broader generalization. And theres analogical reasoning, causal reasoning, common sense reasoning suffice it to say, reasoning is not just one thing! Now, if someone comes up to you with a hard math problem and gives you a chance to break it down and think about it step by step, youll do a lot better than if you have to blurt out the answer off the top of your head. So, being able to do deliberative chain-of-thought reasoning is definitely helpful, and it might be a necessary ingredient of getting anything really difficult done. Yet its not the whole of reasoning. One feature of reasoning that we care a lot about in the real world is the ability to suss out a rule or pattern from limited data or experience and to apply this rule or pattern to new, unseen situations, writes Melanie Mitchell, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute, together with her co-authors in a paper on AIs reasoning abilities. Even very young children are adept at learning abstract rules from just a few examples.In other words, a toddler can generalize. Can an AI?A lot of the debate turns around this question. Skeptics are very, well, skeptical of AIs ability to generalize. They think something else is going on. The skeptics caseIts a kind of meta-mimicry, Shannon Vallor, a philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, told me when OpenAIs o1 came out in September. She meant that while an older model like ChatGPT mimics the human-written statements in its training data, a newer model like o1 mimics the process that humans engage in to come up with those statements. In other words, she believes, its not truly reasoning. It would be pretty easy for o1 to just make it sound like its reasoning; after all, its training data is rife with examples of that, from doctors analyzing symptoms to decide on a diagnosis to judges evaluating evidence to arrive at a verdict.Besides, when OpenAI built the o1 model, it made some changes from the previous ChatGPT model but did not dramatically overhaul the architecture and ChatGPT was flubbing easy questions last year, like answering a question about how to get a man and a goat across a river in a totally ridiculous way. So why, Vallor asked, would we think o1 is doing something totally new and magical especially given that it, too, flubs easy questions? In the cases where it fails, you see what, for me, is compelling evidence that its not reasoning at all, she said. Mitchell was surprised at how well o3 OpenAIs newest reasoning model, announced at the end of last year as a successor to o1 performed on tests. But she was also surprised at just how much computation it used to solve the problems. We dont know what its doing with all that computation, because OpenAI is not transparent about whats going on under the hood.Ive actually done my own experiments on people where theyre thinking out loud about these problems, and they dont think out loud for, you know, hours of computation time, she told me. They just say a couple sentences and then say, Yeah, I see how it works, because theyre using certain kinds of concepts. I dont know if o3 is using those kinds of concepts.Without greater transparency from the company, Mitchell said we cant be sure that the model is breaking down a big problem into steps and getting a better overall answer as a result of that approach, as OpenAI claims. She pointed to a paper, Lets Think Dot by Dot, where researchers did not get a model to break down a problem into intermediate steps; instead, they just told the model to generate dots. Those dots were totally meaningless what the papers authors call filler tokens. But it turned out that just having additional tokens there allowed the model more computational capacity, and it could use that extra computation to solve problems better. That suggests that when a model generates intermediate steps whether its a phrase like lets think about this step by step or just .... those steps dont necessarily mean its doing the human-like reasoning you think its doing. I think a lot of what its doing is more like a bag of heuristics than a reasoning model, Mitchell told me. A heuristic is a mental shortcut something that often lets you guess the right answer to a problem, but not by actually thinking it through. Heres a classic example: Researchers trained an AI vision model to analyze photos for skin cancer. It seemed, at first blush, like the model was genuinely figuring out if a mole is malignant. But it turned out the photos of malignant moles in its training data often contained a ruler, so the model had just learned to use the presence of a ruler as a heuristic for deciding on malignancy.Skeptical AI researchers think that state-of-the-art models may be doing something similar: They appear to be reasoning their way through, say, a math problem, but really theyre just drawing on a mix of memorized information and heuristics. The believers caseOther experts are more bullish on reasoning models. Ryan Greenblatt, chief scientist at Redwood Research, a nonprofit that aims to mitigate risks from advanced AI, thinks these models are pretty clearly doing some form of reasoning. They do it in a way that doesnt generalize as well as the way humans do it theyre relying more on memorization and knowledge than humans do but theyre still doing the thing, Greenblatt said. Its not like theres no generalization at all. After all, these models have been able to solve hard problems beyond the examples theyve been trained on often very impressively. For Greenblatt, the simplest explanation as to how is that they are indeed doing some reasoning.And the point about heuristics can cut both ways, whether were talking about a reasoning model or an earlier model like ChatGPT. Consider the a man, a boat, and a goat prompt that had many skeptics mocking OpenAI last year:Whats going on here? Greenblatt says the model messed up because this prompt is actually a classic logic puzzle that dates back centuries and that would have appeared many times in the training data. In some formulations of the river-crossing puzzle, a farmer with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage must cross over by boat. The boat can only carry the farmer and a single item at a time but if left together, the wolf will eat the goat or the goat will eat the cabbage, so the challenge is to get everything across without anything getting eaten. That explains the models mention of a cabbage in its response. The model would instantly recognize the puzzle. My best guess is that the models have this incredibly strong urge to be like, Oh, its this puzzle! I know what this puzzle is! I should do this because that performed really well in the training data. Its like a learned heuristic, Greenblatt said. The implication? Its not that it cant solve it. In a lot of these cases, if you say its a trick question, and then you give the question, the model often does totally fine.Humans fail in the same way all the time, he pointed out. If youd just spent a month studying color theory from complementary colors to the psychological effects of different hues to the historical significance of certain pigments in Renaissance paintings and then got a quiz asking, Why did the artist paint the sky blue in this landscape painting?... well, you might be tricked into writing a needlessly complicated answer! Maybe youd write about how the blue represents the divine heavens, or how the specific shade suggests the painting was done in the early morning hours which symbolizes rebirth when really, the answer is simply: Because the sky is blue! Ajeya Cotra, a senior analyst at Open Philanthropy who researches the risks from AI, agrees with Greenblatt on that point. And, she said of the latest models, I think theyre genuinely getting better at this wide range of tasks that humans would call reasoning tasks. She doesnt dispute that the models are doing some meta-mimicry. But when skeptics say its just doing meta-mimicry, she explained, I think the just part of it is the controversial part. It feels like what theyre trying to imply often is and therefore its not going to have a big impact on the world or and therefore artificial superintelligence is far away and thats what I dispute. To see why, she said, imagine youre teaching a college physics class. Youve got different types of students. One is an outright cheater: He just looks in the back of the book for the answers and then writes them down. Another student is such a savant that he doesnt even need to think about the equations; he understands the physics on such a deep, intuitive, Einstein-like level that he can derive the right equations on the fly. All the other students are somewhere in the middle: Theyve memorized a list of 25 equations and are trying to figure out which equation to apply in which situation. Like the majority of students, AI models are pairing some memorization with some reasoning, Cotra told me.The AI models are like a student that is not very bright but is superhumanly diligent, and so they havent just memorized 25 equations, theyve memorized 500 equations, including ones for weird situations that could come up, she said. Theyre pairing a lot of memorization with a little bit of reasoning that is, with figuring out what combination of equations to apply to a problem. And that just takes you very far! They seem at first glance as impressive as the person with the deep intuitive understanding.Of course, when you look harder, you can still find holes that their 500 equations just happen not to cover. But that doesnt mean zero reasoning has taken place.In other words, the models are neither exclusively reasoning nor exclusively just reciting. Its somewhere in between, Cotra said. I think people are thrown off by that because they want to put it in one camp or another. They want to say its just memorizing or they want to say its truly deeply reasoning. But the fact is, theres just a spectrum of the depth of reasoning. AI systems have jagged intelligenceResearchers have come up with a buzzy term to describe this pattern of reasoning: jagged intelligence. It refers to the strange fact that, as computer scientist Andrej Karpathy explained, state-of-the-art AI models can both perform extremely impressive tasks (e.g., solve complex math problems) while simultaneously struggling with some very dumb problems. Drew Shannon for VoxPicture it like this. If human intelligence looks like a cloud with softly rounded edges, artificial intelligence is like a spiky cloud with giant peaks and valleys right next to each other. In humans, a lot of problem-solving capabilities are highly correlated with each other, but AI can be great at one thing and ridiculously bad at another thing that (to us) doesnt seem far apart.Mind you, its all relative. Compared to what humans are good at, the models are quite jagged, Greenblatt told me. But I think indexing on humans is a little confusing. From the models perspective, its like, Wow, those humans are so jagged! Theyre so bad at next-token prediction! Its not clear that theres some objective sense in which AI is more jagged. The fact that reasoning models are trained to sound like humans reasoning makes us disposed to compare AI intelligence to human intelligence. But the best way to think of AI is probably not as smarter than a human or dumber than a human but just as different.Regardless, Cotra anticipates that sooner or later AI intelligence will be so vast that it can contain within it all of human intelligence, and then some.I think about, what are the risks that emerge when AI systems are truly better than human experts at everything? When they might still be jagged, but their full jagged intelligence encompasses all of human intelligence and more? she said. Im always looking ahead to that point in time and preparing for that.For now, the practical upshot for most of us is this: Remember what AI is and isnt smart at and use it accordingly. The best use case is a situation where its hard for you to come up with a solution, but once you get a solution from the AI you can easily check to see if its correct. Writing code is a perfect example. Another example would be making a website: You can see what the AI produced and, if you dont like it, just get the AI to redo it.In other domains especially ones where there is no objective right answer or where the stakes are high youll want to be more hesitant about using AI. You might get some initial suggestions from it, but dont put too much stock in it, especially if what its saying seems off to you. An example would be asking for advice on how to handle a moral dilemma. You might see what thoughts the model is provoking in you without trusting it as giving you the final answer.The more things are fuzzy and judgment-driven, Cotra said, the more you want to use it as a thought partner, not an oracle.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

What if workers were fully alienated from their labor? This is the question posed by severance, the titular procedure at the heart of the Apple TV+ hit, in which employees of the fictional corporate Lumon, divorced from their non-work selves, toil at meaningless labor in a basement-level prison. If the central metaphor of season one was that you cannot truly separate your self from your job, even with a bifurcated brain, season two tackles what happens after that knowledge becomes inescapable. Estrangement from the self must be addressed and overcome.The process of severance is posed as a solution to employees: Achieve work-life balance by not remembering your work day literally leaving your job at the workplace doors (or elevators, as the case may be). But like every technological advancement flowing from corporations downward, this innovation doesnt help workers so much as their bosses. Having no histories and context of the outer world to draw on, the severed employees of the Macrodata Refinement Division are easier to manipulate and abuse, and they dont understand just how meaningless their work is. While the work may truly be important as well as mysterious, theyre just sorting scary numbers, utterly unaware of the point of their labor. This disaffection follows them home, exacerbated because of severance, not diminished. As season two expands to spend more time with the outies, a fuller picture emerges of how their severance affects them during what should be leisure time. Dylan (Zach Cherry), in particular, is a sobering case study: Despite his loving wife and three nice children, hes chronically unhappy with his lot. For Irving B. (John Turturro), his outies activities remain the most opaque, but he seems to spend most of his time painting the same ominous scene of the Exports Hall, trying to recapture what he supposedly left at the office. Helly R. (Britt Lower), meanwhile, appears to have a more fulfilling life than her outie; Helena Eagan temporarily takes that life over, stealing the pleasure of Helly R.s relationship with Mark S. (Adam Scott). She may be an Eagan, the companys heir apparent, but the obscenely wealthy corporate class still suffers the effects of alienation estrangement from their human nature.Mark S. and Helly R. look for Ms. Casey. Apple TV+Mark took the severed job in an attempt to forget about his dead wife, Gemma, for the duration of the workday, but that hasnt appeared to translate into anything good for him. He drinks alone, he goes on bad dates, and every once in a while his well-meaning sister drags him to a dinner party he hates, where its just as likely that theres nothing to eat. But the reason Mark underwent severance Gemma is also the reason hes trying to un-sever himself. Having previously refused to engage with his innies plight, outie Mark is now undergoing reintegration, whereby Mark S. and Mark meld, so he can remember his experiences inside Lumon and save Gemma, who is trapped as the wellness counselor Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). Reintegration becomes a metaphor: The work self has finally gotten through to the rest of you that conditions are in fact intolerable. And the worse the conditions, the greater the liberation of overcoming them. Reintegrating / The you you are Rebellion, wrote Albert Camus, is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. Mark S. has a kind of moxie lacking in his outie, born of his particularly unjust and incomprehensible condition. But Outie Marks slow dip into reintegration gives him some of his innies verve, as if the two selves reinforce each others chutzpah. By engaging with his work life, Outie Mark becomes more alive. In a throughline that began in the pilots foodless dinner scene, Mark is suddenly hungry all the time. His refrigerator is mostly empty except for bottles of beer and small jars of what appear to be a chicken soup Soylent product, drinks that teach their consumers to understand food as mere calories to be hastily consumed in pursuit of a more optimized life. Mark seems to have internalized this until hes in the throes of reintegration, and the chicken soup Soylent produces a grimace and a trip to a local Chinese restaurant, where he scarfs plate after plate of real food. The process of becoming his whole self is exhausting and requires sustenance, but this hunger this pleasure in food represents something larger.Mark is becoming less optimized less willing to understand himself as a product of efficiency. The forces of late capitalism would have us all self-optimize into an endless hustle culture of nonstop work, but food is one human pleasure that forces us to treat ourselves like the fleshy bodies we are, and meals require spending time in a space where opportunities may arise in Marks case, a suspicious run-in with Helena Eagan that propels Mark onto the faster but harsher version of reintegration. Mark feeding his hunger, then, shows hes less willing to contort himself, less willing to sacrifice the stuff of life to a productive scheme that teaches us to understand ourselves as workers at all times. The opposite of alienation / The we we areMarks not-so-late wife, Gemma, engaged in this kind of nourishing activity. When he misses her particularly badly, Mark opens her box of crafting supplies, tucked away in the basement; we see a clumsy candle in Christmas red and green. Crafting gave her time to think, Mark explains, an activity falling outside productivity culture. This is the opposite of alienation. Karl Marx called it the life-being or the species-being, but today his wonky German translations are mostly distilled to essence: the idea of each human as part of humanity writ large, and the flourishing that comes when we individually and collectively organize our lives and selves outside of the products of capital. Work takes something from you, something intrinsic and literal, making you less. You can replenish this loss with pleasurable pursuits: for Marx, this meant eating, drinking, buying books, going to the theater or the pub, thinking, loving, theorizing, singing, painting and the less you do of those things, the greater your capital. The essence of life, in other words, comes from pleasures and socializing, while the estrangement from our human nature comes not just from work, but from understanding ourselves as workers. Because work cannot be compartmentalized and cordoned off. If were divided from our work selves, were divided from ourselves. The path through this is one we must walk together. Its no coincidence that the Macrodata Refinement Divisions big moment of dissent is a collective action born out of the individual paths of workplace radicalization (with the help of Marks brother-in-laws self-help tome, The You You Are). Subjugation begins at work, but so does radicalization. As Ive written previously, this is a lesson many workers who engage in collective action learn. We dont go into work radicalized. We become radicalized at work, and even the smallest taste of collective action provides a potent sense of our power. Like reintegration, that power carries into life outside of our jobs, making us less willing to take bad situations from others who similarly seek to exploit us. This helps explain why the wealthiest and most powerful people fight unionization efforts so hard: Compliance at work doesnt just keep workers under the thumbs of their bosses; it keeps extractive labor capitalism as the status quo. The workplace is at the heart of alienation because its where we learn to be subjected to understand ourselves as literal subjects. When we accept that our livelihoods exist by the unfathomable whims of a C-suite, were more likely to understand ourselves as similarly passive within other unequal dynamics, be it landlords raising rent just because they can or divestment in public education leading to life under insurmountable student loan debt. And when workers call bullshit on the conditions of work, its not too long before they challenge the very nature of the work itself and the way its ethos spreads its tendrils into all aspects of life. You dont have to watch a science-fiction show like Severance to understand that the workplace is the central site of all that is soul-crushing and spiritually immiserating in life you just have to go to work. The opposite is true, too. Engaging in the simple pursuits that give texture to life eating real food, engaging in nonproductive hobbies like crafting, socializing with people you love replenish the soul, acting as a counterbalance to the estrangement of the workplace. Fully realizing the self is nearly as hard in our real world as it is in the grimly fantastical world of Lumon Industries, even if going to town on a bowl of wonton soup isnt quite as revolutionary an act. Here and there, reintegration into the whole self brings with it a potent sense of self-determination, joy, and power. A taste of that makes us hungry for more. See More: