Were it not for his experience in North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt said he never would have become president of the United States. After his first wife and mother died on the same day in 1884, the eventual 26th president retreated to modern-day North Dakota to mourn and reflect.  Next July, more than a century after Roosevelt’s death, a presidential library in his honor is slated to open in the state that held so much significance in his life. And the visionaries behind the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library hope a visit to the Medora, North Dakota-based library will prove as restorative to people in the modern era as this area once was for Roosevelt.  That may seem an ambitious goal, but this project offers an opportunity to expand the definition of what a presidential library can be, says Edward O’Keefe, chief executive officer of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. It was only fitting to take a land-first approach when celebrating a man who is synonymous with conservation and the national park system, he says. [Rendering: Snøhetta] “We wanted to build a place where you can learn about, and from, Theodore Roosevelt, where you can connect with friends and family and nature so you can decide what change you want to see in the world,” O’Keefe tells Fast Company. He wrote the book, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, which was released earlier this month. ‘SOMETHING DYNAMICALLY DIFFERENT’ Though there was talk of building a Roosevelt library for years, the idea started to take shape in March 2020 when the foundation launched a design competition. That COVID-era timing proved serendipitous, O’Keefe says, because it made the power of creating a place that would serve as a convening point all the more relevant. Later that year, Snøhetta, an Oslo-based architectural firm, was unanimously selected as design architect.  “This is not a museum with only artifacts under glass. It is meant to be an experience,” O’Keefe says. “There’s no point in building a presidential library to a president who has been gone for over 100 years unless you’re going to do something dynamically different and for the future.”  [Rendering: Snøhetta] Among the design elements that make this library different from others is its roof, featuring dozens of native plant species that will help the building blend seamlessly into the prairie landscape. The coming weeks will mark a milestone in the construction process—that’s when more than 28,000 plant plugs will be planted on the roof, which spans about three football fields in length, currently planned for June 6. The library’s architecture was inspired by a leaf atop two pebbles and is almost identical to the initial design, says Craig Dykers, lead architect for the project and co-founder of Snøhetta. Once completed, people can ascend to the top of the roof for a view of the surrounding Badlands, the nearby Theodore Roosevelt National Park, nighttime stargazing and, eventually, events. “I can tell you, it’s such a dramatic experience,” Dykers tells Fast Company, adding that it was important to foster a direct connection with nature that Roosevelt enjoyed. “It sort of purifies your soul and allows you to see things in a unique way.” Beyond the roof, the butte where the library is situated is being restored to how it might have looked when Roosevelt came west, with native grasses that are more resilient in what can be a harsh and windy environment. Local ranchers have also been consulted as part of the design process and will experiment with grazing cattle and bison on the 93-acre site. [Rendering: Snøhetta] A LIVING BUILDING The library is pursuing full certification from the International Living Future Institute as part of its Living Building Challenge, the most advanced measure of sustainability. The project will serve as a model of self-sufficiency, featuring zero energy, zero emissions, zero water, and zero waste sustainability aspects. Inside the library are walls made from rammed earth, or soil that’s been compressed. It’s the first time in modern times this ancient technique has been used in North Dakota, and a team based out of nearby Dickinson came together to learn how to make these walls, Dykers says. From the walls to the roof and beyond, the living building is intentionally tactile so that visitors feel a connection with nature that’s pervasive. In such ways, the design draws as much inspiration from the uniqueness of the land as it does the uniqueness of the man.  SLOWING DOWN In addition to pouring through a wealth of biographies, academic research, and Roosevelt’s speeches and writings, Dykers sought to better understand how that time in North Dakota helped break the president’s spell of mourning. So the architect embarked on a nearly two-week solo hike during COVID-era lockdowns in the national park and surrounding area.  “To be in that place was so powerful to me, and that’s exactly what happened to Teddy Roosevelt,” Dykers says.  [Rendering: Snøhetta] Even if many people aren’t inclined to do the same, a kidney-shaped cultural loop that surrounds the library will ensure visitors can appreciate the land from different perspectives, Dykers notes. That’s because the design is unusual in that it’s essentially flat, even though the land is not, which allows people to experience the rolling landscape in a unique way, he adds.  “We’re trying to slow people down, so they look down at their feet for a moment or look across the horizon for a moment, to get a different sense of time,” Dykers says. “North Dakota has an exceptional horizon.” INSPIRING VISITORS For O’Keefe, who grew up in North Dakota, leading the foundation after a 20-year stint as a media executive has been a coming home of sorts. The future library and surrounding land will be an opportunity to introduce more people to his beloved home state. Just as Mount Rushmore has become a landmark destination in South Dakota, O’Keefe envisions the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library someday becoming the same for North Dakota. And drawing people together in a place that held almost-spiritual significance for Roosevelt may have the same effect for those who embrace it, O’Keefe says.  “The design is evocative of this purpose in bringing people together and exposing them to nature and trying to inspire them to live more purposeful lives,” O’Keefe says. “The journey is the destination.”

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Getty Images; BIWall Street banks are proving that generative AI is here to stay, and the tech is not just a fad.Business Insider has reported on how some of finance's biggest banks are approaching generative AI.See how giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are weaving the tech into the fabric of their firms.Wall Street bank leaders say generative AI is here to stay, and they're weaving the technology throughout the fabric of their banks to make sure.From trading to payments to marketing, it's hard to find a corner of the banking industry that isn't claiming to use AI.In fact, the technology's impact, made mainstream by OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, is becoming cultural. Generative AI is changing what it takes to be a software developer and how to stand out as a junior banker, especially as banks mull over how to roll out autonomous AI agents. The technology is even changing roles in the c-suite. But it's also presented new challenges — bank leaders say they are struggling to keep up with AI-powered cyberattacks.From supercharging productivity via AI-boosted search engines to figuring out the best way banks can realize a return on their AI investments, here's what we know about how Wall Street banks are embracing AI.JPMorgan ChaseJPMorgan CEO Jamie DimonTom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesJPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a "tremendous" user of the bank's generative AI suite. We have the story of how he and other bank executives use AI.JPMorgan's AI rollout: Jamie Dimon's a 'tremendous' user and it's caused some 'healthy competition' among teamsJPMorgan is making a big bet on AI. Here's how its private bankers are using it.Dimon also laid out his vision for how America's largest bank will win the AI battle against fintechs through data. Meet the leaders of that mission.Jamie Dimon says he's out to win the AI arms race. See who he's put in charge of this critical mission.JPMorgan's Lori Beer just added 2 new tech leaders to her ranks. Meet the team behind the bank's AI future.Mary Erdoes, the boss of JPM's asset- and wealth-management business, used these slides to outline how she wants to get her people ready for the "AI of the future."Here's how JPM boss Mary Erdoes wants to use AI to eliminate "no joy" workIt's not just JPMorgan's in-house tech teams that have been gearing up for an AI future. Cloud partners, like AWS, also play an important role.AWS is helping financial giants like JPMorgan and Bridgewater with their AI ambitionsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs' David SolomonMichael KovacIs Goldman in its AI era? These real-world stories about employees using AI (in some cases daily) make it seem so. Take a look at how AI is being put to the test across the bank and seniority levels, from C-suites to analysts.7 Goldman Sachs insiders explain how the bank's new AI sidekick is helping them crush it at workGoldman is assembling a growing arsenal of AI tools. Here's everything we know about 5.AI is doing 95% of the work on an IPO prospectus, Goldman Sachs CEO saysGoldman's top partners and CEO David Solomon are eager to see AI rev up their businesses. From realizing internal productivity gains to capturing more business as clients look to raise money in anticipation of AI development and acquisitions, here's what the top echelon is expecting.How AI will shake up Goldman Sachs, according to top partners and CEO David SolomonInside Goldman Sachs' plans for AI, from helping non-tech workers do more with software to streamlining how code is documentedThere is no AI without data, and there is no data strategy at Goldman without its chief data officer, Neema Raphael. Raphael gave BI an inside look at how his roughly 500-person team melds with the rest of the bank to get the most out of its data.Meet Neema Raphael, the data whiz key to Goldman's AI ambitions who's overseeing the bank's army of engineers and scientistsAI's impact has ripple effects that go far beyond technology. Goldman's chief information officer, Marco Argenti, predicts that cultural change will be critical to getting the bank to 100% adoption.Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti says Wall Street's 'next big wave' in AI will come down to culture, not just technologyMany dollars are being spent on Wall Street's AI ambitions. But how do you measure the return on the investment? Argenti offers some tips on the calculus that can help firms prioritize where to invest.As AI usage ramps up on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs CIO details how the bank analyzes return on investment for the techMorgan StanleyMorgan Stanley CEO Ted PickJeenah Moon / ReutersMorgan Stanley wants to turn employees' AI ideas into a reality. Here's an exclusive look at that process.Morgan Stanley has 30 AI projects in the pipeline. Here's how the bank sources employees' ideas for inspiration.See how AI is transforming Morgan Stanley's wealth division and the jobs of its 16,000 financial advisors.Morgan Stanley is betting on AI to free up advisors' time to be 'more human.' Nearly 100% of advisor teams use it, and here's how.Thanks to its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Morgan Stanley has ramped up its AI efforts. The exec in charge of tech partnerships and firmwide innovation opened up about how it all started.Morgan Stanley's new innovation head lays out his plan for more OpenAI-type partnershipsA Morgan Stanley exec breaks down how the bank courts tech partners like OpenAICitiCiti's Jane FraserNICHOLAS KAMM/Getty ImagesMeet the new exec in charge of giving an AI facelift to Citi's lagging wealth business.Citi snags AI leader from Morgan Stanley to help turn around its wealth techCiti's top tech executive, Shadman Zafar, outlined the bank's four-phased AI strategy and how it will "change how we work for decades to come."A top Citi tech exec breaks down the 4 phases of the bank's AI strategy that will impact everyone from operations to wealth and productBank of AmericaBank of America's Brian MoynihanJohn Lamparski/Getty ImagesBank of America's chief experience officer, Rob Pascal, details how the bank's internal-facing AI assistant helps bankers collect, record, and review client data. Here are all the ways it's helping employees be more effective and efficient.How Bank of America is using an AI-powered tool to help its bankers prep for client meetings more efficientlyAI hits the investment bankWall Street investment banks prepare for an AI future.Momo Takahashi/BIInvestment bankers are hopeful that corporate America's obsession with AI could kick off a new era of mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs. From execs stepping into recently created roles to accommodate the sector to industry veterans launching their own AI-focused M&A-advisory firm, meet 11 investment bankers poised to lead Wall Street's AI revolution.Wall Street is gearing up for an AI shopping spree. Meet 11 bankers poised to come out on top.We spoke with four of those AI bankers about why 2025 is going to be all about AI pickaxes and shovels rather than pure-play AI deals.The deals 4 tech bankers think the 'AI arms race' could drive in 2025AI could save junior bankers time by automating tedious tasks known all too well by Wall Street's youngest ranks. But it can also make it harder to break into the industry by shifting the skills required for entry.How AI will change the job of the junior banker and raise the bar to entryA former Goldman Sachs managing director built an AI-powered networking tool to spur dealmaking. The budding startup, Louisa AI, already has a few clients, including Goldman Sachs, Insight Partners, and a global exchange.See the pitch deck that helped a former Goldman Sachs exec raise $5 million for an AI-powered networking startup that feeds deal ideas to bankers.Here's how former investment bankers left their Wall Street jobs to build an AI startup to solve junior bankers' woes.See the pitch deck that helped former investment bankers raise a $7 million seed round for their generative 'AI consigliere' to bankers and analystsRead the original article on Business Insider

The growth in developing and deploying large language models (LLMs) is closely tied to architectural innovations, large-scale datasets, and hardware improvements. Models like DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and LLaMA-3 have demonstrated how scaling enhances reasoning and dialogue capabilities. However, as their performance increases, so do computing, memory, and communication bandwidth demands, placing substantial strain on hardware. Without parallel progress in model and infrastructure co-design, these models risk becoming accessible only to organizations with massive resources. This makes optimizing training cost, inference speed, and memory efficiency a critical area of research. A core challenge is the mismatch between model size and hardware capabilities. LLM memory consumption grows over 1000% annually, while high-speed memory bandwidth increases by less than 50%. During inference, caching prior context in Key-Value (KV) stores adds to memory strain and slows processing. Dense models activate all parameters per token, escalating computational costs, particularly for models with hundreds of billions of parameters. This results in billions of floating-point operations per token and high energy demands. Time Per Output Token (TPOT), a key performance metric, also suffers, impacting user experience. These problems call for solutions beyond simply adding more hardware. Techniques like Multi-Query Attention (MQA) and Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) reduce memory usage by sharing attention weights. Windowed KV caching lowers memory use by storing only recent tokens, but can limit long-context understanding. Quantized compression with low-bit formats like 4-bit and 8-bit cuts memory further, though sometimes with trade-offs in accuracy. Precision formats such as BF16 and FP8 improve training speed and efficiency. While useful, these techniques often tackle individual issues rather than a comprehensive solution to scaling challenges. Researchers from DeepSeek-AI introduced a more integrated and efficient strategy with the development of DeepSeek-V3, designed to scale intelligently rather than excessively. Utilizing 2,048 NVIDIA H800 GPUs, the model achieves state-of-the-art performance while focusing on cost-efficiency. Instead of depending on expansive infrastructure, the team engineered the model architecture to work harmoniously with hardware constraints. Central to this effort are innovations such as Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) for memory optimization, a Mixture of Experts (MoE) framework for computational efficiency, and FP8 mixed-precision training to accelerate performance without sacrificing accuracy. A custom Multi-Plane Network Topology was also employed to minimize inter-device communication overhead. Collectively, these components make DeepSeek-V3 a scalable and accessible solution, capable of rivaling much larger systems while operating on significantly leaner resources. The architecture achieves memory efficiency by reducing the KV cache requirement per token to just 70 KB using MLA, compared to 327 KB and 516 KB in Qwen-2.5 and LLaMA-3.1, respectively. This reduction is accomplished by compressing attention heads into a smaller latent vector jointly trained with the model. Computational efficiency is further boosted with the MoE model, which increases total parameters to 671 billion but only activates 37 billion per token. This contrasts sharply with dense models that require full parameter activation. For example, LLaMA-3.1 needs 2,448 GFLOPS per token, while DeepSeek-V3 operates at just 250 GFLOPS. Also, the architecture integrates a Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) module, enabling the generation of multiple tokens in a single step. The system achieves up to 1.8x improvement in generation speed, and real-world measurements show 80-90% token acceptance for speculative decoding. Using a system interconnected by CX7 400 Gbps InfiniBand NICs, DeepSeek-V3 achieves a theoretical TPOT of 14.76 milliseconds, equal to 67 tokens per second. With higher-bandwidth setups like NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 offering 900 GB/s, this number can be reduced to 0.82 milliseconds TPOT, potentially achieving 1,200 tokens per second. The practical throughput is lower due to compute-communication overlap and memory limitations, but the framework lays the foundation for future high-speed implementations. FP8 precision further adds to the speed gains. The training framework applies tile-wise 1×128 and block-wise 128×128 quantization, with less than 0.25% accuracy loss compared to BF16. These results were validated on smaller 16B and 230B parameter versions before integration into the 671B model. Several key takeaways from the research on insights into DeepSeek-V3 include: MLA compression reduces KV cache size per token from 516 KB to 70 KB, significantly lowering memory demands during inference. Only 37 billion of the 671 billion total parameters are activated per token, dramatically reducing compute and memory requirements without compromising model performance. DeepSeek-V3 requires just 250 GFLOPS per token, compared to 2,448 GFLOPS for dense models like LLaMA-3.1, highlighting its computational efficiency. Achieves up to 67 tokens per second (TPS) on a 400 Gbps InfiniBand network, with the potential to scale to 1,200 TPS using advanced interconnects like NVL72. Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) improves generation speed by 1.8×, with a token acceptance rate of 80-90%, enhancing inference throughput. FP8 mixed-precision training enables faster computation with less than 0.25% accuracy degradation, validated through extensive small-scale ablations. Capable of running on a $10,000 server equipped with a consumer-grade GPU, delivering nearly 20 TPS, making high-performance LLMs more accessible. In conclusion, the research presents a well-rounded framework for building powerful and resource-conscious large-scale language models. By directly addressing fundamental constraints, such as memory limitations, high computational costs, and inference latency, the researchers demonstrate that intelligent architecture-hardware co-design can unlock high performance without relying on vast infrastructure. DeepSeek-V3 is a clear example of how efficiency and scalability coexist, enabling broader adoption of cutting-edge AI capabilities across diverse organizations. This approach shifts the narrative from scaling through brute force to scaling through smarter engineering. Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, feel free to follow us on Twitter and don’t forget to join our 90k+ ML SubReddit. Sana HassanSana Hassan, a consulting intern at Marktechpost and dual-degree student at IIT Madras, is passionate about applying technology and AI to address real-world challenges. With a keen interest in solving practical problems, he brings a fresh perspective to the intersection of AI and real-life solutions.Sana Hassanhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sana-hassan/Meet LangGraph Multi-Agent Swarm: A Python Library for Creating Swarm-Style Multi-Agent Systems Using LangGraphSana Hassanhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sana-hassan/ByteDance Introduces Seed1.5-VL: A Vision-Language Foundation Model Designed to Advance General-Purpose Multimodal Understanding and ReasoningSana Hassanhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sana-hassan/Researchers from Tsinghua and ModelBest Release Ultra-FineWeb: A Trillion-Token Dataset Enhancing LLM Accuracy Across BenchmarksSana Hassanhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sana-hassan/Coding Agents See 75% Surge: SimilarWeb’s AI Usage Report Highlights the Sectors Winning and Losing in 2025’s Generative AI Boom

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Unpatched systems are a ticking time bomb. Fifty-seven percent of cyberattack victims acknowledge that available patches would have prevented breaches, yet nearly one-third admit failing to act, compounding the risk. Ponemon research shows organizations now take an alarming average of 43 days to detect cyberattacks, even after a patch is released, up from 36 days the previous year. According to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, attackers’ ability to exploit vulnerabilities surged by 180% from 2023 to 2024. Chronic firefighting makes manual or partially automated patching overly burdensome, further pushing patching down teams’ priority lists. Relying on manual or partially automated patching systems is considered too time-consuming, further reducing patching to the bottom of a team’s action item list. This is consistent with an Ivanti study that found that the majority (71%) of IT and security professionals think patching is overly complex, cumbersome and time-consuming. When it comes to patching, complacency kills Attackers aggressively exploit legacy Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), often ten or more years old. A sure sign of how effective attackers’ tradecraft is becoming at targeting legacy CVEs is their success with vulnerabilities in some cases, 10-plus years old. A sure sign that attackers are finding new ways to weaponize old vulnerabilities is reflected in the startling stat that 76% of vulnerabilities leveraged by ransomware were reported between 2010 and 2019. The misalignment between IT and security teams compounds delays, with 27% lacking cohesive patch strategies and nearly a quarter disagreeing on patch schedules. One of the unexpected benefits of automating patch management is breaking the impasse between IT and security when it comes to managing the patch workload.    “Typically, on average, an enterprise may patch 90% of desktops within two to four weeks, 80% of Windows servers within six weeks and only 25% of Oracle Databases within six months from patch release date”, writes Gartner in their recent report, “We’re not patching our way out of vulnerability exposure.” The report states that “the cold, hard reality is that no one is out patching threat actors at scale in any size organization, geography or industry vertical.” Ring deployment: proactive defense at scale Every unpatched endpoint or threat surface invites attackers to exploit it. Enterprises are losing the patching race, which motivates attackers even more. In the meantime, patching has become exponentially more challenging for security and IT teams to manage manually. Approximately a decade ago, ring deployment began to rely on Microsoft-dominated networks. Since then, ring deployments have proliferated across on-premise and cloud-based patch and risk management systems. Ring deployment provides a phased, automated strategy, shrinking attacker windows and breach risks. Ring deployment rolls out patches incrementally through carefully controlled stages or “rings:” Test Ring (1%): Core IT teams quickly validate patch stability. Early Adopter Ring (5–10%): A broader internal group confirms real-world compatibility. Production Ring (80–90%): Enterprise-wide rollout after stability is conclusively proven. Ivanti’s recent release of ring deployment is designed to give security teams greater control over when patches will be deployed, to which systems and how each sequence of updates will be managed. By addressing patching issues early, the goal is to minimize risks and reduce and eliminate disruptions. Gartner’s ring deployment strategy escalates patches from internal IT outward, providing continuous validation and dramatically reducing deployment risk. Source: Gartner, “Modernize Windows and Third-Party Application Patching,” p. 6. Ring deployment crushes MTTP, ends reactive patching chaos Relying on outdated vulnerability ratings to lead patch management strategies only increases the risk of a breach as enterprises race to keep up with growing patch backlogs. That’s often when patching becomes cybersecurity’s endless nightmare, with attackers looking to capitalize on the many legacy CVEs that remain unprotected. Gartner’s take in their recent report “Modernize windows and third-party application patching” makes the point brutally clear, showing how traditional patching methods routinely fail to keep pace. In contrast, enterprises embracing ring deployment are getting measurable results. Their research finds ring deployment achieves a “99% patch success within 24 hours for up to 100,000 PCs,” leaving traditional methods far behind. During an interview with VentureBeat, Tony Miller, Ivanti’s VP of enterprise services, emphasized that “Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management and implementing Ring Deployment is an important part of our Customer Zero journey.” He said the company uses many of its own products, which allows for a quick feedback loop and gives developers insight into customers’ pain points. Miller added: “We’ve tested out Ring Deployment internally with a limited group, and we are in the process of rolling it out organization-wide. In our test group, we have benefited from deploying patches based on real-world risk, and ensuring that updates don’t interrupt employee productivity–a significant challenge for any IT organization.” VentureBeat also spoke with Jesse Miller, SVP and director of IT at Southstar Bank, about leveraging Ivanti’s dynamic Vulnerability Risk Rating (VRR), an AI-driven system continuously recalibrated with real-time threat intelligence, live exploit activity, and current attack data. Miller stated clearly: “This is an important change for us and the entire industry. Judging a patch based on its CVSS now is like working in a vacuum. When judging how impactful something can be, you have to take everything from current events, your industry, your environment and more into the equation. Ultimately, we are just making wiser decisions as we are not disregarding CVSS scoring; we are simply adding to it.” Miller also highlighted his team’s prioritization strategy: “We have been able to focus on prioritizing Zero-Day and Priority patches to get out first, as well as anything being exploited live in the wild. Using patch prioritization helps us eliminate our biggest risk first so that we can reduce our attack surface as quickly as possible.” By combining ring deployment and dynamic VRR technology, Ivanti Neurons provides enterprises with structured visual orchestration of incremental patch rollouts. This approach sharply reduces Mean-Time-to-Patch (MTTP), accelerating patches from targeted testing through full deployment and significantly decreasing the exposure windows that attackers exploit. Caption: The Ivanti Neurons interface visually manages deployment rings, success thresholds, patching progress and streamlining operational clarity. Source: Ivanti Neurons Comparing Ivanti Neurons, Microsoft Autopatch, Tanium and ServiceNow: Key strengths and gaps When selecting enterprise patch management solutions, apparent differences emerge among leading providers, including Microsoft Autopatch, Tanium, ServiceNow and Ivanti Neurons. Microsoft Autopatch relies on ring deployment but is restricted to Windows environments, including Microsoft 365 applications. Ivanti Neurons expands on this concept by covering a broader spectrum, including Windows, macOS, Linux and various third-party applications. This enables enterprise-wide patch management for organizations with large-scale, diverse infrastructure. Tanium stands out for its robust endpoint visibility and detailed reporting features, but its infrastructure requirements typically align better with resource-intensive enterprises. Meanwhile, ServiceNow’s strength lies in workflow automation and IT service management integrations. Executing actual patches often demands significant additional customization or third-party integrations. Ivanti Neurons aims to differentiate by integrating dynamic risk assessments, phased ring deployments and automated workflows within a single platform. It directly addresses common enterprise challenges in patch management, including visibility gaps, operational complexity and uncertainty about vulnerability prioritization with real-time risk assessments and intuitive visual dashboards. Caption: Ivanti Neurons provides real-time patch status, vulnerability assessments, and risk exposure metrics, ensuring continuous visibility. Source: Ivanti Neurons Transforming patch management into a strategic advantage Patching alone cannot eliminate vulnerability exposure. Gartner’s analysts continue to stress the necessity of integrating compensating controls, including endpoint protection platforms (EPP), multifactor authentication, and network segmentation to reinforce security beyond basic patching. Combining ring deployment with integrated compensating controls that are part of a broader zero-trust framework ensures security, allows IT teams to shrink exposure windows, and better manage cyber risks. Ivanti’s approach to ring deployment incorporates real-time risk assessments, automated remediation workflows, and built-in threat management, directly aligning patch management with broader business resilience strategies. The design decision to make it part of Neurons for Patch Management delivers the scale enterprises need to improve risk management’s real-time visibility.   Bottom line: Integrating ring deployment with compensating controls and prioritization tools transforms patch management from a reactive burden to a strategic advantage. Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Colorful Grid Painting by Piet Mondrian Fetches $47.6 Million at Auction While it went for well below the auction house’s estimate, “Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue” is now the Dutch artist’s third highest-selling work Lillian Ali - Staff Contributor May 16, 2025 2:23 p.m. Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, Piet Mondrian, 1922 Christie's A 1922 painting by Piet Mondrian fetched $47.6 million at auction, becoming the Dutch artist’s third highest-selling work. Titled Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, the artwork features Mondrian’s signature grid-like patterns and bright colors, including a large red square. Experts at Christie’s had expected it to sell for around $50 million. “Red always helps, simple as it is, because it’s a color people like,” Alex Rotter, Christie’s president, tells the Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Crow. If it had sparked a bidding war, it could have broken the artist’s auction record of $51 million, set by Composition No. II Composition No. II, Piet Mondrian, 1930 Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images However, the May 12 auction attracted only one bidder, who purchased the piece for $41 million (or $47.6 million with fees). “It’s a fantastic picture,” Hugo Nathan of the art advisory Beaumont Nathan tells Artnet’s Katya Kazakina. “But the market at those very high levels is quite tricky.” Born in the Netherlands in 1872, Mondrian began his artistic career by painting landscapes and Cubist works. However, he’s famous for the style he developed in the 1920s, when he was in his 40s and 50s. His best-known pieces feature clean lines, eye-popping colors and abstract canvases filled with geometric shapes. “While prevailing artistic trends in post-war Europe favored a return to figuration and classical ideals, Mondrian pursued his own unique form of pure abstraction—a groundbreaking and thoroughly modern approach to painting in service of the creation of a universal visual language,” Vanessa Fusco, head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, says in a statement. Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue had belonged to Louise Riggio, the wife of Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio. Christie’s secured the collection by offering the Riggio estate an undisclosed guarantee, promising a minimum price regardless of the auction’s success. To offset its own risk, Christie’s arranged for outside buyers to place pre-sale bids on certain lots. For that reason, many lots didn’t have “a bounce,” or more bidding following a first bid, Rotter tells Artnet. “We had to manage our risk portfolio,” Rotter says. “This is the art market in the real world.” One of those one-bid lots was the Mondrian composition, which appears to have been purchased by its guarantor. In total, the Riggio collection made $272 million, including fees. Without fees, though, the sale fell short of Christie’s $252 million estimate, according to the New York Times’ Zachary Small and Tim F. Schneider. Many of the guarantees placed lots below their estimated values. For example, Pablo Picasso’s Mère et Enfant (1922) sold for $6 million, though it was expected to fetch at least $9 million. Speaking to Artnet, art adviser Ralph DeLuca describes these “low-margin” third-party guarantees as “blood sport.” However, some experts think the Mondrian’s price tag was inflated to begin with. “Overpricing at the start was a deterrent with many collectors, despite the quality and rarity of the work,” art dealer Brett Gorvy tells the Times. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Sergey Nivens - Stock.Adobe.com News The Security Interviews: David Faugno, 1Password David Faugno, co-CEO of 1Password, discusses how his background led to him joining the company and why maintaining profitability is a key factor in overcoming the challenges of switching markets. By Peter Ray Allison Published: 16 May 2025 12:15 Although companies may embrace emerging technologies to remain competitive, they can be risk averse, especially when it comes to changing their customer base. However, this shift in focus is what 1Password did when it moved from being consumer focused to providing enterprise grade security solutions. In 2006, the company 1Password developed a password manager of the same name for the Windows, Android, iOS and Linux platforms. Since then, it has earned a reputation for being a secure method for protecting sensitive user information. Software licenses and other sensitive information can also be securely stored in a virtual vault on their servers, which is locked with a password-based key derivation function (PBKDF2) guarded master password (a password storage algorithm that is designed for deterring brute force attacks by making them computationally expensive). David Faugno had previously been enjoying a semi-retirement, working as a board member and adviser for various companies, including 1Password. As his interest in the company grew, he soon became increasingly impressed with its collaborative approach and transparency. He was invited to join the company as its president and chief operating officer in September 2023, before becoming co-CEO just over a year later. Faugno had previously spent more than 10 years with security and storage provider Barracuda Networks as its chief finance officer. Faugno’s experience with Barracuda Networks gave him a broad understanding of the security landscape, as well as a unique perspective for solving security problems facing organisations of all sizes. When Faugno joined 1Password, the world was emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid transformed the way companies operate by accelerating remote working technologies and encouraging people to work from home and, since then, hybrid working has become the norm in many sectors. “The world was fundamentally changing. The way people worked and the tools that businesses had provided to their employees to stay safe and secure, and create a secure perimeter, no longer really existed,” says Faugno. “This got accelerated pretty dramatically during the pandemic, which is right at the point in the time when we first invested and got involved.” As a consequence of the proliferation of remote working, the security perimeter for an organisation also expanded. Previously, the security perimeter had been at the endpoints of the corporate network, but now it has extended into homes of employees. Most cyber security incidents are due to compromised credentials, such as stolen, weak or reused passwords. Consequently, employees who use weak identification systems at home may inadvertently expose corporate networks to attack. It is therefore essential for maintaining security of a corporate network security that the cyber security of devices in the employees’ home is also protected. One method for achieving this is to provide each employee with a free family license for a cyber security package. Balancing security and data privacy against accessibility and usability can be challenging as these aspects can often be at odds with each other. Faugno acknowledges that uncompromised security may cause friction with setup and account recovery, however, 1Password took a decision early in the product development cycle to focus on ensuring that the most secure way was also the easiest. This led to a rapid uptake of its password manager, which resulted in it being adopted into thousands of businesses. Faugno soon noted that although 1Password was primarily a consumer-focused product at the time, it was becoming increasingly used in the enterprise sector. “When the work environment started to change and people started to get access to resources that were not being necessarily centrally controlled through their SSO, or through the tools that the company had put behind the firewall, these security-centric folks in business thought, ‘Oh, I can use 1Password for this’,” says Faugno. “We got pulled into thousands of business environments by these people. That’s when our awakening happened – the battlefield had moved from the building walls to where the end user was, wherever they were, with whatever tools they were using.” One of the first things Faugno did when he joined 1Password was to hire a finance leader. By having a sales team engage with enterprise clients to understand their needs, such as administrative controls or additional reporting functionality, 1Password was able to develop its existing platform and market an enterprise service to the business community. “When we first made the investment in 1Password in 2019, the company had zero salespeople and pretty much zero accountants,” says Faugno. “It was nothing but developers, building a great product, and support people. Those use cases would organically come, but what we weren’t doing is interfacing with the chief information security officers at large enterprises to share how our platform fits into their overall security architecture.” 1Password started building infrastructure around enterprise level support and billing capabilities, as well as sales and post-sales implementation capabilities, to allow it to engage with the business sector. Any change to a company carries with it a certain level of risk and expense, especially when it involves adapting to a changing market. It has taken four years, but 1Password’s core business model has created solid foundation for the company to build on. Despite the absence of salespeople and accountants, 1Password’s cash flow had remained profitable. This strong position allowed 1Password the opportunity for forward investment (investing in a company to improve a return on investment) without sacrificing profitability. Although maintaining durability of growth is essential for financial sustainability, it can be challenging. Unless an organisation has a financially stable core product, significant resources can be spent promoting a product that causes a sudden growth curve, but the growth will stop as soon as the money is used up if it was not sustainable. 1Password had the opportunity to invest in itself while remaining profitable in the different sectors, ensuring a durable growth. Instead of optimising for profitability, 1Password is forward investing across several areas without the need to pay off debt from a private equity transaction. “Over 75% of our sales are to companies, but so many people think of us as a consumer business, because either they know us personally or they’ve seen the legacy of us over the 20 years,” says Faugno.  The cyber security sector is a constantly evolving market, with an ongoing war of attrition between hackers and security teams: what is cutting edge now could be obsolete in six months’ time. Not only must security companies have a solid product, but they must also constantly update it in response to emerging threats. Soon, one of the key challenges that cyber security teams will need robust solutions for is protecting their communications in a post-quantum world. Quantum computers can process vast amounts of information in a fraction of the time that classical computers would take, including today’s supercomputers. This will have massive implications for cyber security as quantum computers will be able quickly break current encryption systems. There are various technologies already being developed that are described as quantum resistant, but testing of these is still ongoing. Rather than focusing on a specific technology, 1Password has teams researching emerging challenges. The future security challenge presented by quantum computing necessitate a multifaceted security strategy – 2FA/MFA, passkeys and federation (authentication across networked systems). “We have teams that are engaged deeply in thinking about what’s not only the next step, but two steps ahead,” says Faugno. “The world is changing across a number of dimensions, and quantum computing represents one. Passkeys are going to help, but the pathway to passwordlesss is a journey that’s going to take decades.   “Our view is that you have to start with the visibility of everything that exists and move everything on the continuum to passwordlesss. Today, that is having strong and unique passwords and encrypted vaults, adding multi-factor authentication, using passkeys where they’re available, and ultimately moving to federation.” Reputation is essential, especially in security. If a tool has proven itself to be viable and effective protection against attacks in the wild, then that will over carry into the business sector and naturally generate interest from organisations. “If you can build that level of endearment to the end user at the individual level, then what you can do for the business user is very similar,” concludes Faugno. “You can satisfy the most robust and hard-to-crack use case for making someone feel like this tool is helping them be secure and productive.”  Read more from the Security Interviews Series Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov talks about how his military service and intelligence work opened the door into the world of cyber security entrepreneurship. Okta regional chief security officer for EMEA sits down with Dan Raywood to talk about how Okta is pivoting to a secure-by-design champion. Threat intel expert and author Martin Lee, EMEA technical lead for security research at Cisco Talos, joins Computer Weekly to mark the 35th anniversary of the first ever ransomware attack. In The Current Issue: UK MoJ crime prediction algorithms raise serious concerns Interview: Markus Schümmelfeder, CIO, Boehringer Ingelheim Download Current Issue GraphQL as an ‘essential protocol’ for AI-API orchestration – CW Developer Network Mind the insight-to-impact gap, Qlik captures analytics ‘in the moment’ – CW Developer Network View All Blogs

May 16, 20257 min readWhat RFK, Jr. Got Wrong about Autism, according to ScientistsA coalition of autism scientists has formed to counter RFK, Jr.’s misrepresentations of science and of autism spectrum disorderBy Allison Parshall Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Services on April 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesScientific research over the past 30 years has revealed a patchwork of potential causes of autism. Most of them are genetic—the condition is between 60 and 90 percent heritable—and some involve nongenetic risk factors that might impact development during pregnancy.“We’ve found a great deal of the underlying [causes],” says Helen Tager-Flusberg, an autism researcher and a professor emerita at Boston University. But how these different risk factors come together as the brain develops remains a challenge to piece together. “Autism is not a simple disorder,” she says. “There are no simple answers. There are no so-called smoking guns.”Even so, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services, talks about autism in a way that suggests he thinks there are simple and direct causes. He often refers to the steady rise in autism prevalence (which is likely due to improved screening and diagnosis) as an indicator that we’re in the middle of an “autism epidemic” driven by “environmental toxins.” He has also refused to disavow the long-debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. This month, as part of Kennedy’s effort to find “the root causes of autism,” the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that they will create a “data platform” to study the condition. In April NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya had described plans for “national disease registries, including a new one for autism." The plan involved collecting “comprehensive” private health data on autism that would represent “broad coverage” of the U.S. population, leading autism advocacy organizations, civil rights groups and research scientists to warn of medical privacy concerns. (Shortly after outlets reported on Bhattacharya’s statements in April, HHS denied that it planned to create an “autism registry.”)On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.In a budget hearing on Wednesday, Kennedy called for an end to genetic research into autism. “I don’t think we should be funding that genetic work anymore,” he said. “What we really need to do now is to identify the environmental toxins.”In response to this dismissal of well-established science, Tager-Flusberg has organized a coalition of scientists to push back. The Coalition of Autism Scientists now has 258 members and is still growing.Scientific American spoke with Tager-Flusberg about Kennedy’s statements this week and how the autism community is responding.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]In a Congressional budget hearing Wednesday afternoon, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said: “Autism is an epidemic, and the genes do not cause epidemics. They can contribute a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin. It’s like cigarettes and smoking.” What was your reaction to that? There is no reason that we need to refer to the increased prevalence rates, which have been rising steadily for many years now, as an epidemic. This is not the definition of an epidemic, so I take issue with highlighting that.Second of all, genetics are the primary contributing factor to autism. We know specific genes and variants confer increased risk, even in cases where there aren’t any clear environmental contributions. If anything, it’s the other way around—it’s the environmental factors that add to or interact with the genetic risk for autism.Take one of the very well-regulated nongenetic factors: parental age, particularly paternal age. What we think is going on is that, as parents age, their germ cells [which develop into eggs or sperm] are changing, and so this is leading to alterations in the DNA that then confer risk for autism.Are there other nongenetic factors that might be playing a role?[Studies have shown] that [pregnant] mothers who take an antiseizure medication, particularly valproic acid, can have an increased risk of having a child with autism. But here, again, we have to think about this in a more complex way. [In such cases], the mother herself has a seizure disorder, and seizure disorders are a very common co-occurrence with autism. So then [the parent and the child] well may have some shared genetic risk factors that are interacting with the effects of the medication itself.When RFK, Jr., said “environmental toxins” are causing autism, do you think he was talking about vaccines?Well, I listened very carefully to his testimony [on Wednesday]. And he will not rule out adverse effects of vaccines. And so, yes, I think he is probably still keeping that on his agenda. And you have the NIH director [Jay Bhattacharya] saying that we should look at everything because we want to gain the trust of people. To me, that’s not the way of gaining people’s trust. You don’t gain trust by saying that we can just toss out all the research that we’ve done so far and start again.Why did you decide to form a coalition of autism scientists?Colleagues of mine were becoming increasingly concerned, and we were thinking about what we could do as scientists. It came to a head for me when I saw all the advocacy groups—self-advocates, the parent advocacy groups, nonprofit organizations—come together and issue a very strongly worded and clear statement of concern about what they were hearing from the administration. And I felt that it was really important for the voice of scientists to be heard, too.So I just contacted a small group of my colleagues and said, “I think we need to issue a press release.” I set up the Zoom call that afternoon, at five o'clock on a Friday. And it took off so rapidly. Clearly, there was a need for the voices of scientists to be heard. We have something very important to contribute because that's where we have devoted our careers.What has concerned you and your colleagues the most?I would say there are probably four things. One is dismissing all the prior science that has been accomplished and everything that we do know. That, I think, is very disturbing.A second [concern] is that, at no point over the past several months of this administration, has the secretary of health and human services or, [since he took office on April 1], the NIH director reached out to anyone we know in the external autism science community. They have not reached out to us at all, and I think that is very disturbing.A third thing is that the one person that was named early on [by the administration to lead research into autism] was David Geier, who is not a trained scientist. [Editor’s Note: Geier is a long-time vaccine skeptic. He is not a physician and was sanctioned in 2011 for practicing medicine without a license.]The fourth thing is that now, we heard last week, the administration plans to use Medicare and Medicaid data as the foundation of the research plan to uncover the “roots” of autism. These are not databases that are suited to that kind of research because they capture only a subset of children diagnosed with autism. And there are serious concerns about whether this administration would put into place and commit to the kind of ethical privacy and confidentiality attempts that are needed to conduct this.Many autistic people push back on this focus on finding the “roots” of autism or a “cure.” How does that pushback fit in here?Autism is an enormously heterogenous disorder. People who, while needing some support, still can function and flourish individually represent one end of the spectrum. They can speak for themselves, and for at least some of them, autism is part of their identity. And understandably, they are not interested in a cure—and parenthetically, it’s unlikely that one could even identify a potential cure.But autism also involves the other end of the spectrum. A quarter to a third [of people with the diagnosis] are far more severely impaired. They may have limited daily living skills; they cannot be left alone; they have extremely limited communication abilities. This is the end of the [spectrum] that we now call profound autism. It is such a challenge for them and their families, especially some of them who engage in self-injury or very aggressive behavior. Yes, I think there is hope that we might find maybe not a complete cure but something that would significantly change their developmental course. I think we should be able to hold both ideas in our head at the same time because this is the reality of what autism is.Kennedy’s approach seems to step right on that fissure in the autism community. Is there a way to prevent this rift from developing further?I don't think I have the answer to that. It’s a big question in the community because people are looking at the agendas in very different ways. But I will say one thing. I have been really impressed, over the past couple of weeks, since beginning this coalition, with how [autistic] folks who are self-advocates have joined the coalition. I think the one thing that unifies us is a belief in the importance of scientific research. Maybe we define the scope of that science in different ways, but that’s always true. That’s something that we all hold to.And I think we all, at this moment, believe that the direction that’s been described so far by the administration is not the way we should go. We should not be opening up the question of vaccines again. We should be very cautious about using “registries” and make sure the research that’s done is ethical and maintains the confidentiality of individuals in those databases. We all agree about that.We also all agree that, so far, we’re not hearing from the administration that they have a very deep understanding of autism. They have failed to engage most of us, whether scientists or advocates or nonprofit organizations. None of us have been involved in these discussions. So I think we actually have a moment in time where there is some agreement, and I think it behooves the administration to think about why that is and whether they need to change their course.

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focused on the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine Voice of America, a US-funded news network that brings information to people around the world — including people living under repressive regimes.What’s the latest? The administration fired about 600 contractors Thursday who work for the network, more than a third of the organization’s staff.What about the rest of the staff? In March, the administration put almost the entire staff on leave, but they successfully sued to block those de facto firings, at least temporarily. Litigation is ongoing over whether the administration has the authority to cut the agency, which is funded by Congress. What else are they doing? The organization’s domestic website has not been updated since mid-March. The administration is proposing to replace some of Voice of America’s content with programming from the One America News Network, a far-right outlet closely aligned with the administration.Why is the administration doing this? Voice of America is, by law, editorially independent, meaning the Trump administration cannot control the network’s content. That means it sometimes publishes news that reflects poorly on the president or his policies — something this administration cannot abide.What’s the big picture? Like any outlet, Voice of America has its shortcomings, and there are legitimate disagreements over how it covers the news. But for millions of people whose governments block access to the news, Voice of America and its affiliates are their best chance of learning about what’s happening in the world around them — including what their own governments are up to. Now, Trump is trying to take that away.And with that, it’s time to log off…Here’s an award-winning Voice of America story about what happens to accountability here in the US when local news organizations are driven out of business. It’s a great piece, but if you want to save it for a non-Friday afternoon, there’s always the glorious livestream of a bald eagles’ nest. Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you back here Monday.You’ve 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:

May 16, 20253 min readIn World First, Baby Receives Personalized CRISPR Gene-Editing TreatmentA CRISPR treatment seems to have been effective for a baby’s devastating disease, but it is not clear whether such bespoke therapies can be widely appliedBy Heidi Ledford & Nature magazine KJ Muldoon, a baby born with a genetic disease that affected his ability to metabolize proteins, has become the first person to receive a bespoke CRISPR treatment. Children's Hospital of PhiladelphiaA baby boy with a devastating genetic disease is thriving after becoming the first known person to receive a bespoke, CRISPR therapy-for-one, designed to correct his specific disease-causing mutation.Little KJ Muldoon, now nearly ten months old, is doing well after receiving three doses of a gene-editing treatment to mend a mutation that impaired his body’s ability to process protein, his parents told reporters this week. But it is too soon to use the word “cure”, says Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and one of Muldoon’s physicians. “This is still really early days,” she says. “We know we have more to learn from him.”To reach this point, an international team of clinicians and researchers in industry and academia, with support from US government funders and regulatory agencies, raced to develop Muldoon’s therapy in a mere six months. Yet, the drug that it developed, described in the New England Journal of MedicineOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.It’s an ambitious approach that researchers hope will inspire others to harness CRISPR to treat ultra-rare genetic diseases. “This truly is the future for all of these gene and cell therapies,” says Arkasubhra Ghosh, who studies gene therapy at Narayana Nethralaya Eye Hospital in Bengaluru, India, and who was not involved in the study. “It’s really exciting.”Early illnessDozens of people have received CRISPR-based therapies for genetic conditions such as sickle-cell anaemia, but those treatments were designed to be used in many people with the same disorder, regardless of the underlying mutations that caused it. By contrast, researchers tailored Muldoon’s therapy to correct a specific genetic sequence in his genome.Muldoon had inherited two mutations, one from each parent, that meant that he did not produce the normal form of a crucial enzyme called carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS-1). This compromised his ability to process the nitrogen-containing compounds produced when the body breaks down protein. As a result, his blood had high levels of ammonia, a compound that is particularly toxic to the brain.The best treatment for CPS-1 deficiency is a liver transplant, but it would be months before Muldoon became eligible. Meanwhile, each day brought added risk of brain damage or death: only about half of babies with severe CPS-1 deficiency survive long enough to receive a transplant.Ahrens-Nicklas decided to offer the family another option. She and her colleagues had been working with a CRISPR-based technique called base editing, which can make targeted, single-letter changes to DNA sequences. The team was developing ways to quickly and safely tailor a base-editing therapy to correct an individual’s particular mutations. Perhaps now it was time to try the approach in humans, she thought.With the approval of Muldoon’s parents, the researchers enlisted a lengthy roster of collaborators. The team quickly screened for the best base-editing approach and tested it in mice and monkeys. Companies donated proprietary expertise and components. The US Food and Drug Administration fast-tracked its evaluation of the treatment.Rapid deploymentIn just six months, Muldoon received his first dose — a “remarkable” achievement, says Waseem Qasim, a pediatrician at the University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, who has used base editing to engineer immune cells to fight cancer.After that initial dose, Muldoon could safely eat the amount of protein recommended for his age, but still needed medications to keep his ammonia levels in check. With a second round of the therapy, the researchers were able to reduce the amount of medicines needed, but could not eliminate his need to take them.Muldoon has since received a third and final dose. His clinicians are carefully reducing his medication dosage, little by little, says Ahrens-Niklas.It’s unclear how this approach could be expanded to treat others with ultra-rare diseases: even when designed to treat hundreds of people, gene therapies and gene-editing therapies are notoriously expensive. “There’s no great answer to this,” says Qasim.For now, each milestone that Muldoon reaches is a tiny miracle to his parents. Earlier this week, his mother, Nicole, walked into his hospital room to find him sitting up by himself in his crib. “We never thought this was going to happen,” she says.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 15, 2025.