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Amazon offered a bit more insight into how it sees its AI platform competing in the real world at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Namely, Amazon plans to leverage the extensive footprint its devices already have in the home as well as consumers’ existing familiarity with its Alexa brand. “Ninety-seven percent of devices we ever shipped can support Alexa+,” noted Amazon Alexa and Echo VP Daniel Rausch in an interview at CES. He said the latest figures Amazon has on hand indicate the company has sold more than 600 million devices, and the “vast majority” will…

New research suggests that amino acids, the fundamental components of life, may have arrived on Earth carried by interstellar dust grains, possibly contributing to the origins of life as we know it. In a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Stephen Thompson, I11’s principal beamline scientist, and Sarah Day, an […]Science,Amino Acid,Astrobiology,Astrochemistry,Comet,Diamond Light Source#Clues #Suggest #Lifes #Building #Blocks #Sorted #Space #Reaching #Earth1768282345

Ever since Ronald Reagan was president, the Environmental Protection Agency has assigned a value to human life. If you think too long about it, it’s a bit crass, but the upshot was to provide some cost-benefit analysis of pollution controls. Lowering pollution can prolong human life, so if the health benefits of reducing pollution outweighed the costs, then there was an economic argument to be made in favor of those reductions.  Every administration since has assigned some value to human life when determining how to regulate air pollution. The Trump administration is planning to throw decades of accepted practice out…

Iron Age cargoes from Dor reveal how ancient Mediterranean trade evolved alongside shifting empires and political power. New findings from researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Haifa are changing how scholars understand ancient seaborne trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Recently published in Antiquity, the study reports the first documented […]Science,Archaeology,History,Radiocarbon Dating,UCSD#Lost #Iron #Age #Ship #Cargoes #Discovered #Ancient #Israeli #Port #Rewrite #Mediterranean #Trade #History1768278689

When Justin Kim, co-founder and CEO of Hupo, first launched his company about four years ago, it wasn’t selling AI-powered sales coaching to banks, finance services, or insurance companies. The company originally began as Ami, a mental wellness platform focused on how people manage pressure, form habits, and change behavior over time. “I’ve always been a big sports fan – basketball, football, Formula One, MMA – and what draws me to all of them is performance. In my free time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what actually drives human performance. People are very different, but across sports,…

In early tests with a review unit of Bee, we found the device itself was easy to use. It’s just a press of a button to turn recording on or off. In the app, you can configure whether a double press bookmarks a section of the conversation, processes the current conversation, or both, and you can set whether a press and hold gesture lets you leave a voice note or chat with the AI assistant. (Bee’s companion app currently reminds you to enable voice notes, so we did.) Like many other AI products and services, such as Plaud, Granola, Fathom,…

With AI igniting an investor frenzy, every month, more startups obtain unicorn status.  Using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the VC-backed startups that became unicorns in 2025. While most are AI-related, a surprising number are focused in other industries like satellite space companies Loft Orbital and blockchain-based trading site Kalshi.    This list will be updated throughout the year, so check back and see the latest powerhouse startups that are now worth over $1 billion.  December    Heven Aerotech —$1 billion: This startup, founded in 2019, is creating hydrogen-powered drones. It last raised a $100 million Series B, and has raised $115.2…

As self-driving car services from Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox, and Tesla have slowly, quietly expanded across the US, one big, important state has mostly stayed mum: New York.The union’s fourth most populous state has some of the tightest laws governing autonomous vehicles, requiring companies approved to test in the state to only do so with a driver behind the wheel. There’s no current path for companies to operate the sort of commercial robotaxi services like the sort seen in San Francisco or Las Vegas.But that could be about to change. On Tuesday, as part of her annual State of State…

OpenAI announced it has acquired a tiny startup called Torch for an undisclosed sum. An unnamed source told The Information that OpenAI paid $100 million worth of equity for the startup. Torch’s four-person team is joining OpenAI, both companies said. Torch was working on an app that combined all of a person’s medical information for AI use from a range of sources such as doctor visits, lab tests, wearables, and other portals, including consumer wellness tests and the like. The Torch team called their tech “a medical memory for AI, unifying scattered records into a context engine.” The Torch team…

In testimony last month in federal court in Minnesota, FBI special agent Bernardo Medellin appeared to directly contradict a claim that ICE agent Jonathan Ross made under oath about whether a man they were trying to detain had asked to speak to his attorney.Medellin’s testimony, which details federal training for interactions with drivers, also calls into question whether Ross followed his training during the interaction that led to the shooting and killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, last week. Ross has been identified by multiple media outlets as the shooter; while the Trump administration has declined to confirm…

Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, is doing things differently with his reboot of the Pebble smartwatch brand and an AI ring. The team is small, inventory isn’t being manufactured before it’s sold, and there’s no outside funding. Most importantly, he says, the new company, Core Devices, is “not a startup.” “We’ve structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully, long-running enterprise, but not a startup,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Image Credits:Pebble “Startups are good for the world,” he clarified. “You need to have money in order…

Ultra-processed foods may be steering young adults toward diabetes years before warning signs appear. In the United States, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) now account for more than half of the calories people eat each day. These products include fast food and packaged snacks that are typically high in salt, added sugars and unhealthy fats. Previous research […]Health,Diabetes,Diet,Food Science,Keck School of Medicine of USC,Metabolism,Nutrition#Young #Adults #Face #Hidden #Metabolic #Damage #UltraProcessed #Diets1768260383

The State of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul on Monday filed a sweeping federal lawsuit to halt what they call an unprecedented and unlawful surge of US federal agents in the Twin Cities, arguing that the deployment amounts to a constitutional violation and a direct threat to public safety.The 80-page complaint, filed in US district court in Minnesota, targets the US Department of Homeland Security and senior federal officials, including DHS secretary Kristi Noem. It asks a judge to immediately block what the federal government calls “Operation Metro Surge,” a large-scale immigration operation that plaintiffs say…

Smart rings, smart screens, smart TVs, smart pins, smart … ice cube makers? Sure, why not! AI was everywhere at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where companies large and small were showing off how they’re bringing AI to more devices. For Amazon, CES was a time to show off its newest acquisition in the space: Bee, an AI device that can be worn as a clip-on pin or a bracelet. Amazon already has an entry in the AI consumer devices space with Alexa, whose upgraded AI-powered version, Alexa+, can run on 97% of the hardware devices Amazon…

Weight loss drugs have shown impressive short-term results, but new research suggests their benefits may be difficult to sustain once treatment ends. Stopping treatment with weight loss medications is associated with gradual weight gain and a loss of earlier improvements in heart and metabolic health, according to new research published by The BMJ. The study […]Health,BMJ,Metabolism,Obesity,Public Health,Semaglutide,Weight Loss#Stopping #GLP1 #Weight #Loss #Drugs #Leads #Fast #Rebound #Weight #Heart #Risks #Study #Warns1768256633

On Monday, billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $45 million to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that serves LGBTQ+ youth. The large gift comes just months after the Trump administration shut down counseling services for queer youth through the federally funded 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, for which the The Trevor Project administered services.In a blog post Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, called the donation “transformational,” describing Scott’s gift as the biggest single donation the charitable organization has ever received in its 27 years of operating. Scott previously donated $6 million to the nonprofit during the first Trump administration.Scott,…