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NIH To Suspend Funds For Research Abroad As It Overhauls Policy, Report Says

1 week 2 days ago
Nature: A forthcoming policy from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will target - and at least temporarily stop -- funding to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States, threatening thousands of global-health projects and international collaborations on topics such as emerging infectious diseases and cancer. The NIH, the world's largest funder of biomedical research, plans to release the policy in the next week. Some agency staff members have already been instructed to hold funds for foreign institutions that are part of both new research grants and grants coming up for renewal, according to multiple agency employees who spoke to Nature under the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

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How Amazon red-teamed Alexa+ to keep your kids from ordering 50 pizzas

1 week 2 days ago
Will the personal assistant shop for groceries? Or get hijacked by a teen?

RSAC  If Amazon's Alexa+ works as intended, it could show how an AI assistant helps with everyday tasks like making dinner reservations or arranging an oven repair. Or things could go terribly wrong: it might turn on the oven and turn dinner plans into a house fire.…

Jessica Lyons

AI Steady, Cloud Accelerating Gives Microsoft A Big Datacenter Boost

1 week 2 days ago

Wall Street has been looking for some good news, and Microsoft came through with its financial results for the third quarter of its fiscal 2025 as its cloud business – and to be specific, its non-AI cloud business – grew much more strongly than expected. …

AI Steady, Cloud Accelerating Gives Microsoft A Big Datacenter Boost was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Timothy Prickett Morgan

China Advances Abandoned US Nuclear Technology

1 week 2 days ago
Chinese scientists have achieved a significant nuclear breakthrough by successfully refueling a thorium-based reactor while it remains operational, according to reports from Chinese state media. The experimental 2-megawatt thermal reactor, which came online in June 2024, represents the revival of technology originally developed and abandoned by the United States in the mid-20th century. The milestone was revealed during a closed meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where project leaders shared results demonstrating the reactor's ability to be refueled without shutdown -- a capability conventional uranium reactors lack. Though small compared to MIT's 6-megawatt research reactor, this achievement shows China's accelerating nuclear ambitions. The country has surpassed France in nuclear generation and recently approved 10 new reactors worth over $27 billion in investment. This thorium reactor joins other revived nuclear concepts, including molten-salt cooling systems and high-temperature gas reactors, as developers look to the past for solutions to advance nuclear energy's future.

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