Top AI models underperform in languages other than English Those turning to them for health advice are most at risk

Those turning to them for health advice are most at risk

Convicted Spyware Dealer Links Greek Government to Surveillance Scandal The founder of the commercial spyware firm Intellexa, recently convicted in a landmark wiretapping trial, says his company sells its technology exclusively to governments—an admission opposition leade...

There's DRAMA between the Greek government and Intellexa's founder, who was recently sentenced to 126 years in prison

He says his company sells to governments exclusively, hinting that the Greek government was responsible for hacks of its opposition party and not him

www.occrp.org/en/news/conv...

Gene name errors: Lessons not learned Author summary Autocorrection is a feature of modern softwares including messaging apps, word processors and spreadsheets. These are designed to avoid data entry errors but “autocorrect fails” can lea...

This is wild:

Over a third of genetics papers published in top journals in 2014-20 (including Nature, Cell, and PNAS) have errors whereby genes with names like SEPT8, DEC1, or MARCH3, were turned into dates by Excel automatically!

The issue was first noted in 2004.

The oncogenome of the domestic cat Cancer is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in domestic cats. Because the mutational landscape of domestic cat tumors remains uncharacterized, we performed targeted sequencing of 493 feline tu...

The usual suspects
"(...) we performed targeted sequencing of 493 feline tumor–normal tissue pairs fm 13 tumor types, focusing on feline orthologs of ~1000 human cancer genes. TP53 was the most frequently mutated gene & the most recurrent copy # alterations were loss of PTEN or FAS or gain of MYC"

AI help in grant proposals tied to higher funding odds at NIH But funding proposals to US agencies also tend to be more similar to previously funded projects if they are written or edited with the help of a chatbot.

Scientists are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for help drafting the grant proposals that fund their careers.

Preliminary data indicate that these tools are linked with a slightly higher funding rate and might be pulling the focus of research towards safe, less-innovative ideas.

Το άγος των επανειλημμένων "νομιμοποιήσεων".

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Νάξος: Η κατεδάφιση που άργησε δύο δεκαετίες Στο προσκήνιο η προστασία του Αλυκού Νάξου, ενώ απομακρύνεται το «κουφάρι» του ημιτελούς ξενοδοχείου.

Η μοναδική κατεδάφιση αυθαιρέτου φέτος σε Κυκλάδες και Δωδεκάνησα αφορούσε ενα ημιτελές ξενοδοχείο στη Νάξο. Η ιστορία του μετρά περισσότερο από μισό αιώνα και παρουσιαζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον.

Google’s top AI scientist says ‘learning how to learn’ will be next generation’s most needed skill.

#Greece
apnews.com/article/gree...

End of an era

I am so sorry. I know how much this means to my lovely British friends, but here is a black-figure neck amphora from around 500 BCE painted by Plousios, depicting Athenians queuing at a shoe shop and a blacksmith, on either side.

There’s a persistent myth that new solar farms don’t really help tackle climate change because panels are “made with coal” and “never pay back” their carbon debt.

This is simply false.

- UN: solar ~8x cleaner than gas, ~19x than coal per kWh
- panels repay CO2 in 4 months; save 57x over life

A new layer of security for certified Android devices Starting in 2026 and in select countries first, Android apps must be registered to a verified developer in order to be installed.

Google will verify the real-world identities of all Android app developers starting September 2026.

The new rule will apply to all apps, even those distributed outside of the official Play Store.

android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elev...

Beach on a budget: Greeks settle for day trips, priced out of iconic destinations Greece’s booming tourism industry is drawing huge numbers of foreign visitors, but many Greeks are struggling to afford holidays in their own country.

The growing demands of the holiday industry and leisure inflation have reshaped Greek summers.

#Greece
apnews.com/article/gree...

Μπορεί να σωθεί το ελληνικό καλοκαίρι; Η εμπειρία του ελληνικού καλοκαιριού αλλάζει. Μπορεί η προσδοκία του κέρδους να συνδυαστεί με ένα άλλο μοντέλο; Υπάρχει «τρίτος δρόμος» μεταξύ του κορεσμού και της πλήρους απόρριψης;

Ένα εμπεριστατωμένο άρθρο του Στάθη Καλύβα για τα αδιέξοδα της εθνικής τουριστικής "στρατηγικής" και το πώς μπορει η χώρα να διαχειριστεί βιώσιμα τις διαρκώς αυξανόμενες ροές: www.kathimerini.gr/life/5637770...

Phishing Emails Are Now Aimed at Users and AI Defenses Phishing has always been about deceiving people. But in this campaign, I discovered something new. The attackers weren’t only targeting users, they also attempted to manipulate AI-based defences. T…

Is this the first attempted AI prompt injection spotted in the wild?

malwr-analysis.com/2025/08/24/p...

Offering “life-sustaining” treatment without compromising quality of life | Center for Cancer Research When Alison James received her diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma, she was alarmed by the side effects associated with the standard of care. She traveled to the NIH Clinical Center for a CCR clinica...

NCI blog patient story for trial NCT06223568 #neoadjuvant chemo (cisplatin&docetaxel) & #HPV #immunotherapy (PRGN-2009) for newly diagnosed HPV-positive OPSCC (PI Dr Clint Allen): omission of adjuvant radiotherapy per response to neoadj Tx & surg path risk factors.

ccr.cancer.gov/news/article...

Interesting presentation to the intramural NCI by @dinler.bsky.social about the HLA-Arena environment.

Kombucha girl maybe meme. On the left, frowny face: working on an important manuscript On the right, intrigued: spending two hours to create a figure that came to my mind quite randomly

A thoughtful discussion about dose, duration, and frequency of ICBs in the NSCLC context. Are we overtreating?
https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO-24-02347

"Childhood cancer survivors have >2x risk of melanoma compared to the general population and those with an invasive melanoma have>2x risk of death."

https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO-24-01519

Make bold predictions and then test them. This is the true legacy of Karl Popper, who argued that the strength of an idea lies in its ability to make surprising predictions; ones that, if shown to be wrong, would falsify it.

This is totally true for me!

Spatial genomics of AAV vectors reveals mechanism of transcriptional crosstalk that enables targeted delivery of large genetic cargo - Nature Biotechnology Profiling transcriptional crosstalk between promoters and cell-type-specific enhancers allows large gene cargo delivery.

Spatial genomics of AAV vectors reveals mechanism of transcriptional crosstalk that enables targeted delivery of large genetic cargo - @caltech.edu @asapresearch.bsky.social go.nature.com/4kFUnEO

Explainable AI reveals Clever Hans effects in unsupervised learning models
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-025-01000-2

Low rate of regular activity for the Med, esp. Greece. Considering also smoking patterns and a much changed diet, the pop health stats will be very interesting.

A case-control study in twins, from Denmark: "Tattoo ink exposure is associated with lymphoma and skin cancers"

BMC Public Health
bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-...

Trends in Cervical Precancers Identified ... This report describes decreases in cervical precancer incidence among women ages 20-24 years.

"During 2008–2022, cervical precancer incidence decreased 79% and higher-grade precancer incidence decreased 80% among screened women aged 20–24 years, the age group most likely to have been vaccinated."

www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

Griechenland: Müll an den tiefsten Stellen im Mittelmeer gefunden Mit einem speziellen U-Boot sind Forschende zum Calypsotief vor Griechenland getaucht. Bilder zeigen menschliche Spuren in über 5000 Meter Tiefe.

Mit einem speziellen U-Boot sind Forschende zum Calypsotief vor Griechenland getaucht. Bilder zeigen menschliche Spuren in über 5000 Meter Tiefe.

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n