Senior BI DeveloperUnityTel Aviv, Israel45 minutes agoApplyThe opportunityAura is looking for an experienced BI Developer with strong analytical and engineering capabilities and a business-oriented mindset to join our team. We seek a candidate who can independently lead end-to-end data processes, understand business challenges, and deliver actionable insights that align with organizational goals. As a key member of our team, you’ll need the ability to partner with cross-functional teams, communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, and think strategically to address evolving business needs.We are searching for a curious and initiative-taking individual who can delve deep into business problems, perform in-depth analyses on datasets containing millions of records per day, and extract impactful insights to support data-driven decisions. This is a unique opportunity for someone with 2–3 years of BI development and analytical experience to play an essential role in scaling operations within a rapidly growing, dynamic environment.If you’re passionate about turning data into actionable strategies and thrive on solving complex business problems, Aura is the place for you to grow and make a difference.What you'll be doingAnalyze complex datasets and extract meaningful insights. Identify trends, patterns, and correlations within the data to inform strategic decision-making.Design, manage and maintain analytics products and BI solutions for the entire group.Create clear and visually compelling reports and dashboards to present analytical findings to key stakeholders. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop customized reporting solutions that address specific business needs.Work closely with multiple teams (R&D, Product, Monetization and more) to understand business objectives and provide analytical support for strategic initiatives. Translate business requirements into actionable analytical tasks and deliverables. Proactively identify opportunities for process improvement and optimization based on data-driven insights.What we're looking for4 + years experience working as a BI Developer or as a Data analyst.Experience in writing complex SQL queries.High-level analytical and problem-solving skills, analyzing and transforming data into impactful visual insights.Experience in building end-to-end ETL processes.Experience in working with visualization tools such as Looker/ Tableau.Excellent communication and presentation skills.Independent, fast learner, and able to prioritize well while working in a fast-paced environment and collaborating with many different interfaces.Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, statistics, economics, or other numerate/analytical degree equivalent or army unit equivalent.You might also haveExperience with Airflow.Experience working with big data in a high scale environment.Additional informationRelocation support is not available for this position.Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this positionLife at UnityUnity [NYSE: U] is the leading platform to create and grow games and interactive experiences. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, infrastructure experts, filmmakers, and more, use Unity to bring their imaginations to life across multiple platforms, from mobile, PC, and console, to spatial computing.As of the third quarter of 2024, more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games were made with Unity, and in 2024, Made with Unity applications had an average of 3.7 billion downloads per month. For more information, please visit Unity.Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators. If there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form to let us know.This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Unity does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Unity will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Unity.Your privacy is important to us. Please take a moment to review our Prospect Privacy Policy and Applicant Privacy Policy. Should you have any concerns about your privacy, please contact us at DPO@unity.com.#SEN #LI-SC1 Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

As so-called "killer whales" have made news over the past few years for violent boat attacks in European waters, marine biologists have noticed a far sweeter behavior in Iceland's frigid waves: the adoption of a baby whale from an entirely different species.In interviews with Scientific American, scientists described their shock at observing a pilot whale calf that traveled with an Icelandic pod of orcas over a period of years.One of those researchers, Chérine Baumgartner, said she and her colleagues at the Icelandic Orca Project initially couldn't believe their eyes."At first, we were like, 'Oh my god, this killer whale calf has a problem,'" the researcher said of the bulbous-headed baby she and her team first spotted back in 2022. It looked at first glance like a malformed orca — until they realized it was no killer whale at all.The next day, when Baumgartner and her colleagues were witnessing the same pod again, the baby pilot whale was absent. Eventually, however, they started seeing baby pilot whales with orca pods throughout 2022 and 2023, and began to develop theories about what was happening.In a new paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, Baumgartner and her team from a consortium of Nordic research institutions have posited three theories about the fascinating matchup: that the orcas are hunting the babies, playing with them, or perhaps even nurturing them.As SciAm notes, each sighting involved a pilot whale calf that could be no more than a few weeks old that swam alongside an adult orca female in what marine biologists call "echelon position," with the baby beside and slightly behind the elder.In some instances, the baby pilot whale was nudged along by the adult orcas, and on another occasion, it swam ahead of the pod before the adults caught up to it and lifted it out of the water and onto one of their backs.That kind of playful and protective behavior does not, of course, sound predatory — but because "killer whales" are known for their violence, it can't be completely ruled out, the scientists say.Along with what the orcas are doing with the baby pilot whales, researchers want to know how the two species, which generally do not overlap, came to not only be in the same place but also coexist in such a way."It could be," Baumgartner told SciAm, "[that the orcas] encountered the pilot whale opportunistically, and some individuals played with the whale, and others tried to nurture it."As study co-author Filipa Samarra noted, there's a chance that climate change has led pilot whales, which typically follow schools of warm water-seeking mackerel, into orca territory.Share This Article

Bats are the only mammals that can fly (though some can glide). They have excellent hearing, navigate by echolocation, and they can eat their body weight in insects in a single night. But bats’ most impressive superpower is a remarkable tolerance to viral infections. Bats host many viruses, viruses that would sicken and even kill other mammals, without suffering serious consequences themselves (rabies is an exception). And that superpower may be related to the ability to fly, explains Cara Brook, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of infections that jump from animals to humans, in particular infections that come from wild bats. Long Lifespans Make For Better Viral Protection Flying is metabolically expensive. A bat in flight increases its basal metabolic rate 15-fold compared with its resting rate, Brook says. Organisms that have high metabolic rates tend to be small-bodied and very short-lived. That’s probably because organisms with high metabolic rates accumulate oxidative stress in their cells, and so tissues and organs degrade more quickly, shortening their lifespans. Bats, however, are unusually long-lived for their body size. Brook and other scientists who study bats think that bats evolved molecular pathways that mitigate the oxidative damage caused by the increased metabolism, thus increasing their lifespans. So what does this have to do with viruses?Bat Immune Systems Brook’s theory is that many of these molecular pathways, in addition to extending bats’ lifespans, made bats more tolerant of viruses. But how? The answer, according to Brook, is that the damage to a cell infected with a virus is similar to that caused by metabolic activity, and bats have evolved to dampen that response. The immune response to a virus is highly inflammatory. “What we experience as disease is actually immunopathology,” Brook explains. When you have a fever from the flu, for example, that’s your immune system’s response to the flu virus. But bats don’t develop these intense immune responses to the viruses they harbor. “We think that's really a byproduct of their adaptations for flight,” says Brook. That’s super cool, but it also could be very useful. If researchers can understand how bats handle these infections without becoming sick, they might learn how to make humans more resilient to infections. A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers led by Michael Letko has developed a new set of tools to help researchers do just that.Growing Bat CellsLetko is a molecular virologist at Washington State University. He and his team have recently cultured two new lines of bat cells that can be grown and divided indefinitely in the lab. The work was described in a paper published in PLOS Biology. These cell lines will be useful for learning how bats co-exist with viruses that can kill humans in droves. This could be crucial when the next pandemic arises, of course, but the utility of these cells goes beyond that. “Viruses oftentimes trigger all sorts of pathologies,” says Letko. “If we can understand how to control those pathologies, we can apply them to lots of other scenarios, not just infectious disease.”Some private labs are already culturing these cell lines, but they’re not available for outside researchers. Work funded by the U.S. government, however, must be shared freely. Letko’s research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was a collaborative effort of scientists from the U.S. and Canada. Letko and colleagues have arranged for these cell lines to be available to any researchers who need them for their work. “We have lots of experts who probably would be able to say something about what's going on in these animals if they had the ability to study it, but they don’t,” he says. “So we're hoping that putting this resource out there will let people with a wide range of backgrounds really get into this.” Humans didn’t develop the ability to fly. But we did develop the ability to study animals that do fly. And that’s turning out to be an even more useful skill.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Avery Hurt is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, she writes regularly for a variety of outlets, both print and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She’s the author of Bullet With Your Name on It: What You Will Probably Die From and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, as well as several books for young readers. Avery got her start in journalism while attending university, writing for the school newspaper and editing the student non-fiction magazine. Though she writes about all areas of science, she is particularly interested in neuroscience, the science of consciousness, and AI–interests she developed while earning a degree in philosophy.

Sludge Vohaul! Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play? Get ready for some nostalgia. Nate Anderson – May 17, 2025 7:00 am | 14 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia. Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King's Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with "Quest" in their titles, seeking rarer fare like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel's Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight? Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact! The scene in question came from King's Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, "Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree." Easy! And clear! Except it wasn't either one because the game rather notoriously won't always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the "get acorns" command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King's Quest III hint book solely because of this "puzzle." (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should "move around" the particular oak tree in question because "you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.") This wasn't quite the "fun" I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly began to recall similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge had been my first Sierra title, and after my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to get stuck and die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra's 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number in his life. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. But after listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called. Much like with the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game's rather exacting and sometimes obscure standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we "put gem in mouth" to use its light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempts to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness. Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson's cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were "the only way to make 2–3 hours of 'game' last for months." This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood? So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past. Big mistake. We're not on Endor anymore, Dorothy. Play it again, Sam In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming. As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much "clever" as "infuriating," "obvious," or (more often) "rather obscure." Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to "call" a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better. The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn't stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for "an obvious lack of common sense." It then calls you a "wing nut" with an "inability to sustain life." Game over. The game's third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over. If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it's comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room's completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over. Do NOT touch any part of this root monster. Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more. I used the word "insta-death" above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she "kisses" you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien's baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over. This is why the official hint book suggests that you "save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you're entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don't have to retrace your steps much." Presumably, this was once considered entertaining. When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to "say the word," you have to say "the word.") Sometimes it is condescending. ("You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.") Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one's trousers all make appearances.) My total gameplay time: a few hours. "By Grabthar's hammer!" I thought. "Lee was right!" When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. "According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in 'fast' mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up," he said. Yikes. What a fiendish plot! And yet The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the "let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter" arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game's various screens. (Seriously, "walking around" took a ridiculous amount of the game's playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.) Let's get off this rock. Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun. All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games' humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. ("An army of life insurance salesmen?" I thought at the time. "Hilarious and brilliant!") If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self's love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than "unfair" design. Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can't go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us. Literal bathroom humor. Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There's even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 14 Comments

Your job can have a big impact on your overall life satisfactionJacky Chapman/Janine Wiedel Photolibrary/Alamy Scientists have uncovered the most satisfying jobs, after analysing 59,000 people and 263 occupations. Kätlin Anni at the University of Tartu in Estonia and her colleagues dived into data from the Estonian Biobank, doing what they say is probably the most comprehensive and rigorous study yet on satisfaction differences between jobs. While donating blood for the biobank project, all the participants completed a survey that asked about…

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.

We currently have a career opportunity for an AWS Senior Solutions Architect with Pre-Sales experience. This is a 100% remote role working CT and ET zones.At Perficient you'll deliver mission-critical technology and business solutions to Fortune 500 companies and some of the most recognized brands on the planet. And you'll do it with cutting-edge technologies, thanks to our close partnerships with the world's biggest vendors. Our network of offices across North America, as well as locations in India and China, will give you the opportunity to spread your wings, too. We're proud to be publicly recognized as a "Top Workplace" year after year. This is due, in no small part, to our entrepreneurial attitude and collaborative spirit that sets us apart and keeps our colleagues impassioned, driven, and fulfilled.Perficient is always looking for the best and brightest talent and we need you! We're a quickly-growing, global digital consulting leader, and we're transforming the world's largest enterprises and biggest brands. You'll work with the latest technologies, expand your skills, and become a part of our global community of talented, diverse, and knowledgeable colleagues.Job Overview:As an AWS pre-sales solution architect you will be the primary subject matter expert on everything AWS and assist our sales teams with client's pursuits and drive revenue growth. With your expertise in cloud computing, you will architect and build cloud-native systems, wrangle cloud systems' complexity, and ensure that best practices are followed when utilizing a wide variety of cloud service offerings.You will provide best-fit architectural solutions for one or more projects; you will assist in defining scope and sizing of work; and anchor Proof of Concept developments. You will provide solution architecture for the business problem, platform integration with third party services, designing and developing complex features for clients' business needs. You will collaborate with some of the best talent in the industry to create and implement innovative high quality solutions, participate in Sales and various pursuits focused on our clients' business needs.You will also contribute in a variety of roles in thought leadership, mentorship, systems analysis, architecture, design, configuration, testing, debugging, and documentation. You will challenge your leading edge solutions, consultative and business skills through the diversity of work in multiple industry domains. Perficient is always looking for the best and brightest talent and we need you! We're a quickly-growing, global digital consulting leader, and we're transforming the world's largest enterprises and biggest brands. You'll work with the latest technologies, expand your skills, and become a part of our global community of talented, diverse, and knowledgeable colleagues.RESPONSIBILITIESYou are expected to be a subject matter expert on AWS services, tools and best practices. You will answer questions on various cloud-native technologies and AWS services, and you will provide recommendations on what service to use and when. As such, you should have extensive hands-on experience with a variety of AWS services, their limitations and alternate (non-AWS) solutions that might serve better in particular situations. You will be participating in pre-sales activities, helping with RFPs and you will be heavy client facing.Engage with clients to gather requirements and understand their visionRecommend solutions around AWS technologiesCreate roadmaps and estimatesLead technical discussions during sales callCreate new service offerings based on innovative solutionsOwn and aggressively drive forward specific areas of technology architecture. Provide architectural solutions/designs to project execution teams for implementation.Provide architectural assessments, strategies, and roadmaps for one or more technology domains.Lead projects within architecture. Work with Product Owner/Business Analysts to understand functional requirements and interact with other cross-functional teams to architect, design, develop, test, and release features.Mentor and provide architectural guidance to multiple teams building innovative applications.Drive common vision, practices and capabilities across teams.Engage with business stakeholders to understand required capabilities, integrating business knowledge with technical solutionsEngage with Technical Architects and technical staff to determine the most appropriate technical strategy and designs to meet business needsDemonstrate broad solutions technical leadership, impacting significant technical direction, exerting influence outside of the immediate team and driving changeQUALIFICATIONSIn this role, we are looking for someone with:Proven track record of leadership roles delivering solutions within defined timeframes - required.Demonstrated success in performing work and managing complex and/or large consulting projects - required.Fluent and current on architecture trends with an eye on market/technical conditions and future direction - required.Deep Cloud-Native Services Experience - required.End-to-end solution expertise across various tiers of enterprise architecture - required.Deep experience of AWS services related to compute, networking, storage, security and database - required.Demonstrated experience working with the C-level/Senior leadership at medium or large enterprises - required.Extensive experience with writing scripts-terraform/cloudformation - required.Developing applications utilizing programming languages like Java, Node, Python, etc. - required.AWS native toolsFamiliarity with AWS products including compute, storage, database, analytics, networking, developer tools, management tools, security, and enterprise applications.Tools:EC2, EKS, ECS, FargateRDS, DynamoDB, RedshiftAmazon EMR KafkaAWS Directory ServiceAWS IAM Identity CenterAWS Certificate and Key ManagementAWS NetworkingAdvanced technical skills and experience designing and implementing AWS and hybrid IT network architectures at scale. As a networking specialist, candidate will design a secure, scalable, and highly available network infrastructure on AWS while addressing requirements like network security, hybrid IT connectivity, network integration with other AWS services, routing techniques, and network troubleshooting.Tools:AWS-VPC, Transit Gateway, PrivateLinkRoute 53, CloudFront, ELB/ALBSecurity/ComplianceAWS Securing data + workloadsTools:Alert Logic managed detection and response offeringsSplunk logging and monitoringAWS-CloudTrail, S3, EC2, IAM, AWS-deployed containersAWS foundation componentsAWS Foundation ComponentsAbility to design and develop foundational components on AWS using Terraform and/or CloudformationPreferred Skills and Education:Master's degree in Computer Science or related fieldAWS Certifications The salary range for this position takes into consideration a variety of factors, including but not limited to skill sets, level of experience, applicable office location, training, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. The new hire salary range displays the minimum and maximum salary targets for this position across all US locations, and the range has not been adjusted for any specific state differentials. It is not typical for a candidate to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the unique facts and circumstances regarding each candidate. A reasonable estimate of the current salary range for this position is $92,118 to $202,730. Please note that the salary range posted reflects the base salary only and does not include benefits or any potential equity or variable bonus programs. Information regarding the benefits available for this position are in our benefits overview.WHO WE AREPerficient is a leading global digital consultancy. We imagine, create, engineer, and run digital transformation solutions that help our clients exceed customers' expectations, outpace competition, and grow their business. With unparalleled strategy, creative, and technology capabilities, our colleagues bring big thinking and innovative ideas, along with a practical approach to help our clients - the world's largest enterprises and biggest brands succeed.WHAT WE BELIEVEAt Perficient, we promise to challenge, champion, and celebrate our people. You will experience a unique and collaborative culture that values every voice. Join our team, and you'll become part of something truly special.We believe in developing a workforce that is as diverse and inclusive as the clients we work with. We're committed to actively listening, learning, and acting to further advance our organization, our communities, and our future leaders and we're not done yet.Perficient, Inc. proudly provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a protected veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws. Perficient, Inc . click apply for full job detailsApply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote Full-Stack Programming JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot

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.

Author(s): Adam BEN KHALIFA Originally published on Towards AI. Why are agentic workflows essential for achieving AGI Let me ask you this, what if the path to truly smart and effective AI , the kind we call AGI, isn’t just about building one colossal, all-knowing brain? What if the real breakthrough lies not in making our models only smarter, but in making them also capable of acting, adapting, and evolving? Well, LLMs continue to amaze us day after day, but the road to AGI demands more than raw intellect. It requires agency. Getting Our Terms Straight: AGI, Agency, and Agentic Workflows Before we dive in, let’s define the main concepts here: AGI — Artificial General Intelligence: You can see it as an AI model that can perform any intellectual task a human can. This means not just understanding language or generating images, but adapting, learning, reasoning, and acting across entirely new domains. Agency: The capacity of an entity to act purposefully in its environment to achieve goals. A rock has no agency; a human planning their day has plenty. For an AI, agency means it’s not just passively responding to prompts but actively pursuing objectives. Simply put, it’s the capacity to pursue goals autonomously through planning, acting, and adapting. Agentic Workflows: If agency is the “what”, agentic workflows are the “how”. These are the dynamic processes and systems an AI uses to exercise its agency. Think beyond a simple input-output model. Agentic workflows involve: Autonomous Goal-Setting & Planning: the AI doesn’t just execute a pre-defined plan, it can formulate goals and strategize how to achieve them. Tool Use & Orchestration: like a skilled craftsperson, it can select, combine, and utilize various “tools” (other AI models, databases, APIs, code execution environments) to get the job done. Memory & Learning: it remembers past actions, learns from successes and failures, and adapts its strategies over time. Adaptation in Dynamic Environments: the real world is messy, an agentic AI can adjust its plan when encountering unexpected obstacles or new information. It’s vital to understand the difference here: An LLM calling a weather API is just tool use. An agentic workflow is when an LLM, tasked with “analyzing market trends for a new product,” autonomously decides to:1) search recent financial news, 2) query a sales database, 3) use a data analysis tool to spot correlations, 4) ask a specialized forecasting model for projections, and then 5) compile a summary report, re-evaluating its approach at each step.It’s like the difference between a single musician playing one note, and a conductor leading an entire orchestra. The Limitation of Isolated Intelligence Let’s consider a human analogy. Imagine a brilliant engineer, a genius in their field. Now, strip away their tools: no computer, no internet for research, no pen and paper for sketching ideas or taking notes, no lab for prototyping, no colleagues to bounce ideas off. Confine them to only their thoughts. How much could they truly achieve? Their raw intellect, however vast, becomes severely handicapped when uncoupled from the ability to interact, experiment, and leverage external resources. This “intelligence in isolation” scenario illustrates a fundamental truth: intelligence doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It thrives on interaction, tool use, and the ability to execute plans in the world. If we want AGI, we can’t just build a disembodied digital brain, we need to build something that can act. Agentic Workflows: AI can act like us, and perhaps even better Humans are masters of adapting their “workflows.” A painter uses different tools and processes than an engineer, who uses different methods than a chef. We intuitively understand context, choose the right approach, and even invent new methods when old ones fail. Agentic workflows aim to achieve similar capabilities: Contextual Flexibility: An Agentic AI could switch between “investigative journalist mode” (querying databases, cross-referencing sources, interviewing) and “creative writer mode” (generating narratives, exploring styles) as needed for a complex task. Learning by Doing (and Re-doing): Human learning is an iterative workflow: observe, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, conclude, refine. Agentic systems can embody this, trying approaches, evaluating outcomes, and improving their strategies. Beyond Monolithic Thought: We don’t store everything in our heads. We use notes, computers, books, and critically, we delegate tasks to others. Agentic AI can similarly leverage external knowledge bases, specialized sub-agents, and computational tools, creating a distributed, more powerful form of intelligence. Thinking About Thinking: Humans possess meta-cognition — the ability to reflect on our own thought processes and adjust them. Agentic workflows, with their capacity for self-monitoring and re-planning, are a foundational step towards AI developing its own form of meta-cognition. Inventing New Ways: Perhaps soon enough, an advanced agentic AI won’t just use existing tools and workflows, but identify the need for entirely new ones and even contribute to their creation. A hallmark of true general intelligence. Not Just Helpful, But Mandatory: Why AGI Needs Agentic Workflows These capabilities aren’t just fancy add-ons. They are arguably essential for anything we’d recognize as AGI: Tackling Complexity: Real-world problems are messy, multifaceted, and rarely solved by a single, linear process. Agentic workflows will allow AI to break down these complex challenges into manageable sub-tasks, orchestrating diverse capabilities. Achieving Scale: Imagine trying to manage global logistics, conduct large-scale scientific research, or personalize education for millions with a single, rigid program. Agentic systems offer the modularity and dynamic coordination needed for such scale. Adaptability and Robustness: What happens when the data changes, a tool fails, or an assumption proves wrong? A static AI might grind to a halt. An agentic AI can adapt, re-plan, find alternative solutions, and continue pursuing its goal. It can handle the unexpected. Resourcefulness: Like our engineer, an AGI needs to be able to identify and use the right “tool” (be it a specific algorithm, dataset, or external service) for the job at hand, rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades with a single block massive model. Surpassing Human Adaptability The first step is for AI to achieve a human-like ability to set goals, plan, use tools, and adapt through agentic workflows. But the true promise of AGI lies in surpassing these capabilities: Speed: Learn and adapt at speeds incomprehensible to us, iterating through problem-solving cycles in milliseconds. Scale: Manage and orchestrate operations of immense complexity, juggling thousands of variables and “tools” simultaneously. Novelty: Devise entirely new, perhaps counter-intuitive, workflows and solutions to problems that humans haven’t even conceived of. Self-Improvement of Workflows: An AGI that doesn’t just use workflows but actively refines, optimizes, and even discovers fundamentally new and more efficient ways to achieve its goals. Deeper Meta-Learning: Learning how to learn, plan, and strategize more effectively over time, becoming increasingly more intelligent and capable. Long-Horizon Reasoning: Successfully breaking down and navigating extremely complex, multi-stage goals that unfold over extended periods, adapting robustly along the way. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Building true AGI presents formidable challenges: How do we design systems that can reliably plan in open-ended environments? How can they discover and integrate new tools seamlessly? How does the system learn which part of a long, complex workflow was responsible for success or failure? These are active areas of research, pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. Thankfully we are witnessing more and more breakthroughs everyday, and RL — Reinforcement Learning based approaches are showing great promise (which make sense actually, but that’s for another article). Conclusion: Agency as the Cornerstone of AGI The quest for AGI is more than a race for larger models or faster processing. It’s a quest for intelligence that is versatile, adaptive, and purposeful. Agentic workflows provide the framework for such intelligence, enabling AI to move beyond mere pattern recognition to become an active participant in the problem-solving process. Just as human collective general intelligence emerged not merely from neurons, but from networks of thought, culture, and action — we must build AGI not as a single-block model, but as an AI capable of learning, adapting, and acting. Agency, in this light, isn’t just a feature; it’s the fundamental engine that will drive us towards true Artificial General Intelligence. If you liked this article, make sure to follow for more.And you can find me on: Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI

The AMOC is a system of ocean currents that circulates water within the Atlantic OceanNASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio The slowdown of a major current in the Atlantic Ocean is boosting the sea level and associated flooding in the Northeast US, on top of the already-rising sea level due to climate change. A total collapse of this Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as the planet warms could raise the sea level even further. “If the AMOC collapsed, this would dramatically increase the flood frequency along the US coast, even in the absence of strong storms,” says Liping Zhang at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in New Jersey. “Even partial weakening [of the current] can already have substantial impacts.” Advertisement Melting ice sheets and warmer water due to human-caused climate change are leading to a rise in average sea level, but the rate of sea-level rise isn’t the same everywhere. For instance, some coastal land is sinking, speeding the relative rate of sea-level rise in those areas. Local sea level is also shaped by how heat, water and salt circulate in the ocean, with warmer and fresher water taking up more space than colder, saltier water. On the US north-east coast, the sea level is rising three to four times faster than the global average over recent decades. A slowdown in the AMOC – which transports warm water from lower latitudes to the North Atlantic, where it cools, gets saltier and sinks – has long been proposed as a possible driver for this. When this overturning circulation weakens, deep water along the path of the current is expected to warm and expand, sloshing more water onto the shallow continental shelf. The AMOC naturally varies in strength on different timescales, and climate change has contributed to a slowdown in recent decades as melting ice freshens the North Atlantic and its waters warm. But it wasn’t clear whether this slowdown was making a big difference to sea level. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter Zhang and her colleagues used tide gauge measurements along the New England coast to reconstruct the local sea level stretching back more than a century. On top of a steady rise due to climate change, they found a marked pattern of fluctuation between low and high sea levels every few decades. Years with a high sea level aligned closely with years when the AMOC was weak, and these years also had more frequent coastal flooding. The researchers then used two different ocean models to quantify how much fluctuations in the AMOC’s strength influenced the local sea level. While the main driver of changes was the steady rise due to climate change, they found the weakening AMOC substantially boosted the sea level and associated flooding. In different parts of the coast, they found that a slowdown in the AMOC was behind 20 to 50 per cent of flooding since 2005. Because the natural cycles in the AMOC’s strength are largely predictable, the findings could enable researchers to forecast which years will see lots of flooding up to three years in advance, says Zhang. This could help make long-term decisions about infrastructure and emergency preparedness. “It demonstrates that the AMOC really does matter to [sea level rise],” says Chris Hughes at the University of Liverpool, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s not just there in models or theory, it’s actually there in the real world.” It isn’t clear how much of the recent weakening of the AMOC is due to climate change and how much is due to natural variations. However, the findings add support for projections that much of the US East Coast could see a surge in the sea level if the AMOC were to completely collapse in response to climate change – which, though unlikely, is possible. A near-total collapse of the current could raise the sea level by around 24 centimetres, says Hughes. “It doesn’t sound very huge, but it doesn’t have to go up very much to have a big effect.” Topics: