Luca Parmitano to pilot all-male crew of four paving way for planned first human landing of Artemis IV in 2028
Jared Isaacman, the Nasa administrator, hailed the creation of “Earth’s first starfleet” on Tuesday as he revealed the Artemis III crew and details of the next stages of the space agency’s project to return humans to the moon.
An Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA), will be the pilot of the planned two-week mission to lower Earth orbit next year that will test lunar landers from private companies Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Russia's Pantsir family of air defense systems continues to rank among the most widely deployed short-range anti-aircraft platforms in the world. According to the state corporation Rostec, the system maintains strong demand due to its operational experience and adaptability in modern combat conditions.
Combat Experience and System Development
Rostec reports that the Pantsir systems have accumulated extensive battlefield experience, which has contributed to their continued refinement and international interest. The systems are produced by the High-Precision Systems holding, which operates under Rostec.
The company will present an upgraded version of the system, the Pantsir-SMD-E, at the international naval exhibition "Fleet-2026,” scheduled to take place in Kronstadt.
Russia's Rassvet satellite constellation, developed as a potential domestic alternative to SpaceX's Starlink system, has reportedly lost one of its 16 serial satellites. Monitoring data from satellite tracking platforms indicates the disappearance of one spacecraft shortly after launch.
The Russian company Bureau 1440 currently operates a growing network of satellites in low Earth orbit. According to company statements, the constellation includes 21 spacecraft in total: six experimental satellites from the Rassvet-1 and Rassvet-2 series, along with 15 satellites from the first batch launch.
On March 23, 2026, Russia launched the first 16 serial satellites of the Rassvet system. The spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle on the target transfer orbit and came under the control of the company's Mission Control Center. Engineers then began system checks and prepared the satellites for transfer to their operational orbit.
It started by chance – but it should have come as no surprise that two ospreys would pick a hi-tech research facility to make their home.
James Cook University’s 47-metre tall crane towers over the far-north Queensland rainforest canopy, making it the perfect nesting place for the seabird.
The FDA recently approved the cellular rejuvenation therapy ER-100 for human clinical trials. While vision is the first target, it could have applications for a variety of age-related disease.
Russian Sukhoi Su-34 frontline bombers operated by the Aerospace Forces (VKS) have received an unusual "hump” that may be an element of a satellite communications system. The new feature was highlighted by the Military Chronicle Telegram channel.
The publication drew attention to footage released by Russia's Ministry of Defense showing Su-34 combat operations during the special military operation. A protruding structure can be seen behind the aircraft's cockpit. According to the channel, the element may be intended for satellite communications.
New Feature Appears Behind the Cockpit
"There is no precise information regarding the provider of the service. According to assessments from foreign sources, the supplier could be the Russian aerospace company Bureau-1440,” the report said.
It starts with a simple search term in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. “Blue eyes.” Hundreds of results. Jeffrey Epstein’s international trafficking agents send him pictures and descriptions of blue-eyed young girls: potential victims to be dispatched to his various homes. “I spotted two skinny blond blue eyes 21 years old ladies in Monaco last weekend and asked them for CVs,” one agent, whose name has been redacted, wrote. “Trying her best to move from her small town to Moscow; English isn't great. Could be fun for Paris, blue eyes,” wrote another. “Can't understand if her breast is real. Otherwise very pretty and sweet…Very blue eyes as we like.”
One of Epstein’s victims wrote of being chosen for her eye color in a journal entry later shared with federal prosecutors. "Superior gene pool?!? Why me?" she wrote, describing Epstein's worldview as "Nazi like." "It makes no sense. Why my hair color and eye color?"
Epstein — himself blue-eyed — seemed to prefer both his victims, and the people he bankrolled, to have blue eyes. “All of my fundees have blue eyes,” he boasted in one email. In the entryway of his Manhattan townhouse, he displayed dozens of prosthetic eyeballs in a frame. Epstein made notes and sent article links to his contacts asking if having blue eyes meant you were more intelligent or a “genius”. He even had a list of scientists and tech leaders with blue eyes — including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Google’s Ray Kurzweil. “Total — 70 people Blue eyes — 41 Unclear (might be blue, but not 100% sure)” the list says. Appearing in the files — whether on this list or elsewhere in Epstein's records — does not connote legal wrongdoing.
Going deeper into the files, Epstein and his network of contacts discussed beliefs about how physical characteristics and race might denote intelligence. They exchanged emails about population control. They spoke of engineering women’s sex drives, building designer babies, and living in a world full of superintelligent humans that could merge with robots. They spoke of getting rid of the elderly, the infirm, and the poor.
The files offer a glimpse into a world where ideas about eugenics and race science have never gone away. On the contrary, they run through our elite universities, through the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley, and through the tech industry itself. Epstein’s was an exclusive club that counted among its members people who harbor dreams of re-engineering human minds and bodies, seizing control of our collective future, and building technology that, they hope, will one day merge with — or even replace — all of us.
Jeffrey Epstein, 27. Jeffrey Epstein's mansion El Brillo Way in Palm Beach. U.S. Virgin Islands, Department of Justice, Sexual Offender Registry Photograph.
In 2002, two decades before the launch of ChatGPT, Epstein hosted an Artificial Intelligence summit on his Caribbean island. In the years that followed, he cultivated close, regular contact with a network of (predominantly male) scientists, researchers, academics and tech leaders working at the vanguard of AI, biotech, genetics and cognitive science, meeting them at universities like Harvard and at his various homes.
In August 2018, a year before Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, he was in email correspondence with software consultant and bitcoin investor Bryan Bishop about funding a project to create “designer babies” — children with genes cherrypicked for their looks, health, strength, immune systems, sleep needs and even, in Bishop’s imaginings, abilities to live on a different planet.
“Attached is the doc you requested, it's the "use of funds" spreadsheet for the designer baby and human cloning company,” Bishop wrote to Epstein. “This gets us out of our self-funded ‘garage biology’ phase to the first live birth of a human designer baby, and possibly a human clone, within 5 years. Once we reach the first birth, everything changes and the world will never be the same again.”
Bishop went on to discuss how his ultimate ambition was to make “practically unlimited modifications to the cells before generating an embryo.”
In response to a request for comment, Bishop sent Coda a publicly available set of answers to frequently asked questions about designer babies.
“The reason people have an aversion to eugenics, and rightfully so, is because countries used genocide and sterilization to prevent reproduction by populations that they didn’t like. We have no intention of doing anything of the sort,” Bishop writes in the public FAQ. “‘Designer baby’ simply describes a child whose genome has been intentionally altered or chosen by their parents, rather than left entirely to the genetic lottery of natural conception.”
“It’s such a great subject,” Epstein responded after he read Bishop’s proposal. “We need to get a read on legal. Can’t do anything where US rules apply to US citizens regardless of where [they are].”
Building a super-race of humans, and parachuting humanity into a different evolutionary era — or even obsoleting the human race as we know it — is a running theme in the Epstein files, and an increasingly prominent ambition for tech evangelists today.
“It’s eugenics all the way down,” said Jacob Metcalf, a founding partner at Ethical Resolve, a consulting firm working with tech companies to develop their ethics protocols. A common fantasy in tech circles, he said, is “to essentially control human destiny. And a lot of the times that human destiny is for humans to be replaced. That's the really bleak thing here. What could be more eugenic than getting rid of humans.”
In 2008, Epstein began conversations with the computer scientist Ben Goertzel. Over the years, Epstein would send Goertzel more than $360,000 to fund the researcher’s plans to build towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a term Goertzel himself popularized.
“I remain eager to move forward on working together to accelerate progress toward a human-obsoleting thinking machine,” Goertzel wrote to Epstein in May 2008. Eighteen years on, and the idea of obsoleting humans with artificial intelligence is widely discussed in the tech world.
When asked to comment on his exchange with Epstein, Goertzel told Coda: “I do think we will create forms of transhuman intelligence going beyond the scope of humanity as we know it, but I also very much hope and envision a strong role for humans even after this happens.”
Goertzel went on to describe a future where the world reaches the “Singularity” — a Silicon Valley buzzword signifying a tipping point where AI surpasses human intelligence. “I do think AI will eventually gain its own superhuman autonomy, but I think this can happen in a way that respects and nourishes human life rather than being harmful to it,” he said. “Epstein and I discussed this face to face a few times and indeed I was a bigger fan of the human species than he was, and more optimistic about its flourishing post-Singularity.”
In an email to Epstein, Goertzel laid out a scenario where AI systems would start running their own economic activity. He envisioned this Artificial Intelligence economy acting as a “parasite to overcome the regular human economy” that would eventually “gain its own superhuman autonomy.” The ideas Epstein and Goertzel exchanged mirror a broader conversation unfolding in the tech world that imagines a future where ultimately, human labour could be rendered superfluous, and ultimately be replaced by artificial intelligence and robots.
Together, Goertzel and Epstein also discussed modifying human brains — a concept popular in Silicon Valley today, where numerous brain-computer projects are researching ways to cognitively enhance the human brain, and alter human personality, memory, and mental capabilities.
In 2008, when Epstein told Goertzel he was “off to jail” for a year, after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution, Goertzel suggested the solution to his problems might one day be solved if human brains could be re-programmed.
Ben Goertzel with Desdemona the robot, at a tech event in Portugal in November. Sam Barnes/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images.
“According to my understanding, the girls you were involved with were old enough to know what they were doing, so society really has no ‘moral right’ to lock you up,” Goertzel wrote to Epstein. “This is a fucked-up society we live in. But past ones have really been no better -- the fault is really w/ the human brain architecture, which is precisely what I'm aiming to supercede in my AGI work.”
When asked to comment on these remarks — and in particular the implication that Epstein’s problems might be solved if his accusers' brains were one day re-engineered — Goertzel told Coda: “This was a general observation that the messed-up nature of our society generally is rooted in the way our brains have evolved... and that advanced tech will let us modify our brains to make ourselves and thus our society better. There was no implication intended (nor stated) that women’s brains are any more or less messed up or in need of improvement than men’s.”
Goertzel reflected that his comments on Epstein’s victims being “old enough” were “regrettable and unfortunate in hindsight,” adding that his impression was that Epstein had been involved with adult women, not “disgustingly curating high school students for sexual purposes. I should have paid more attention.”
In 2013, three and a half years after Epstein was released from jail, Goertzel approached Epstein for funding to build a “toddler robot”. Given Epstein’s criminal history of abusing minors, this has inevitably attracted attention online. “When we were discussing measuring the IQ of robot toddlers, the topic was never sexualized in any way,” Goertzel told Coda when asked about the project. “While I had nothing to do with Epstein's perverse sexual tastes or abuse of women, what I have read about his awful doings in the newspapers relates to his interest in teenage girls not toddlers.”
Epstein was particularly interested in funding projects that built — like Goertzel’s –- on transhumanist theories. Transhumanism is a worldview that captivates many of the most prominent tech leaders in Silicon Valley today. It believes in a future when the human body can be endlessly altered, genetically engineered, and ultimately fused with artificial intelligence.
“Transhumanism is a much more radical concept than eugenics,” explained Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and researcher who has written extensively about eugenicist ideas within artificial intelligence. “In eugenics, you're trying to create a more superior human by breeding humans through generations. In transhumanism, you're trying to get rid of humans altogether.”
For transhumanists, she added, “their idea is to get rid of any undesirable properties they see with humans."
Perhaps the most well-known proponent of transhumanism in the Epstein files is Peter Thiel.
“I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?” New York Times journalist Ross Douthat asked Thiel last year. “Uh—,” Thiel said. “This is a long hesitation!” Douthat said. “Should the human race survive?” “Yes, but I would like us to radically solve these problems,” Thiel said. “We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body.”
Peter Thiel. Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0) /Gage Skidmore.
Thiel’s name appears in the files more than 2000 times, and Epstein reportedly invested some $40 million into Valar Ventures, a firm co-founded by Thiel. The two spoke of building secret societies and shared an interest in transhumanism and cryogenics — Epstein wanted to freeze his brain and penis when he died, so that one day he could be revived, while Thiel has also stated his body will be frozen after his death.
They also appeared to share an interest in bringing an end to the democratic systems of today, imagining a different system altogether. Epstein, for his part, spent his life puppeteering the most powerful people in the world and undermining democratic systems. Thiel, meanwhile, first expressed his own anti-democratic views in 2009 when he wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” adding that since women were allowed to vote, the notion of a capitalist democracy became impossible. When the Brexit vote came through, Epstein wrote to Thiel: “Brexit, just the beginning.” Thiel asked — “of what”; Epstein said – “Return to tribalism, counter to globalization, amazing new alliances.”
Globalization — and the idea of internationally powerful governing bodies — is a worldview that both Epstein and Thiel seemed to distrust. In March, in a palazzo in Rome, a stone’s throw from the Vatican, Thiel gave one of his infamous lectures in which he espoused his views about an “antichrist” that gets in the way of technological progress. This antichrist, he suggested, could be an internationally powerful body; the product of globalization. I stood outside the palace as attendees — priests, students, researchers — mutely hurried out, refusing to speak to the cluster of reporters waiting for Thiel’s black Mercedes.
“He has a totally irrational side, which lives on fear, of what danger might happen,” one audience member told me of Thiel on condition of anonymity, recalling how, up close, Thiel looked haunted and ill. “His head is full of future scenarios, which is what’s killing him. I think he’s scared.”
Thiel did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Epstein didn’t confine himself to lofty conversations about a future collapse of the global order or re-engineering humanity. He also had ambitions for his own personal eugenics project. In 2019, it emerged that he wanted to seed the world with his DNA — and reportedly have 20 women impregnated at a time at Zorro ranch, his New Mexico property.
Epstein tried to recruit Virginia Giuffre for this very project. He “fantasized about improving the human race by fathering children who carried his superior genes,” she recounted in her memoir, published posthumously late last year. “He’d talk about using his Zorro ranch as a literal breeding ground to propagate babies.” When Giuffre was 18 years old, she recalled, Epstein asked if she would carry his child and hand over all legal rights to it – “like a modern-day handmaid.”
Zorro Ranch, New Mexico. Diary of Epstein's victim.
In a haunting diary entry from another Epstein victim, written between the ages of 16 and 17 and shared with federal prosecutors, a girl describes being told she will be sent to Zorro ranch — possibly to participate in the very same project. “Go to New Mexico? What in the hell? This makes no sense. What about school?” she writes, describing how Epstein chose her for her hair color and eye color, and tried to convince her she would create “perfect offspring.”
The teenager chronicles her pregnancy, pasting a sonogram into the scrapbook, before giving a traumatic account of giving birth with Ghislaine Maxwell beside her. “Ghislaine said to push all the pain away. I don't understand. Blood and water all over the bed.” As the baby was born, she writes, Maxwell covered her eyes. “I saw between her fingers this tiny head and body in the doctors hands.”
The girl describes hearing the baby’s “tiny cries” before “they took her.”
“I’m nothing but your property and incubator,” the teenager writes of Epstein. The diary is a terrifying piece of evidence that appears to link to Epstein’s longstanding fixation with creating genetically bespoke humans. The diary author’s lawyers, Wigdor LLP, declined to comment.
Epstein’s fever-dreams of creating an army of children carrying specific genes reflect a broader trend of “pronatalism” — a movement historically tied to eugenics — that’s thriving in Silicon Valley.
Millions of dollars of funding are currently being poured into projects creating “superbabies,” while billionaire tech oligarchs including Elon Musk — whose name appears more than 1000 times in the files — reportedly want to use surrogates “to reach legion-level before the apocalypse.” Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
In the files, women appear either as victims, as objects, or as vessels for genetic engineering experiments. They are an inconvenient reality, people to be controlled and re-booted. Epstein wrote a 2013 email implying that women “are like shrimp. You throw away the head and keep the body.”
“The obsession with "artificial" life appears tied to a masculine desire to try control the production of life – ultimately ridding themselves of their dependency on women," said Gabriella Razzano, Co-Founder of OpenUp, a social impact tech lab based in Cape Town, who is also a senior advisor at the African AI Observatory. “I think there is important work to be done on tying the narratives that are very revealing in the Epstein files to understand how, and why, technology is being developed as it is.”
The trading of ideas about intelligence — both artificial and human — takes a particularly sinister turn in a 2016 exchange between Epstein and the cognitive scientist and AI researcher Joscha Bach, whose research Epstein funded to the tune of $300,000.
Bach writes to Epstein about a study claiming that “black children outperform white children in motor development, even in very poor and socially disadvantaged households, but they lag behind (and never catch up) in cognitive development even after controlling for family income.”
Epstein responds with racist ideas about his notion of how to “make blacks smarter”, adding — “maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation. The Earth’s forest fire. Potentially a good thing for the species,” before contemplating a world with “too many people,” where “many mass executions of the elderly and infirm make sense.”
Bronze sculpture of a female torso Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan residence.
Epstein then imagines creating a future “Übermensch” — a superior human with cherry-picked attributes. “What I like is the idea that ubermensch could be the melding of humans, put together in one brain,” Epstein writes. This bespoke human, he suggests, would include traits from marginalized groups, who he appears to believe have a stronger awareness of how to navigate power structures because of their historical exclusion. “An increased motor system, an increased awareness, an increased status calculator (Blacks, jews, women). Ubermensch could be the combination of the best of humans, not the best of a specific race or gender. Fun idea.”
Bach told Coda in a statement: “I was summarizing a scientific study in a private email. Studies like this get often abused in ideological discourse to justify discrimination, which I strongly oppose and condemn.”
“I am firmly opposed to any form of racial discrimination, and I reject the use of group-level statistical claims to make judgments about individuals or to justify unequal treatment.”
He continued: “It goes without saying that if global warming were to lead to a reduction in the human population, it would be accompanied by immeasurable suffering. Our civilization would break down, leading to a return to dark ages, in which the elderly and infirm were often killed, because people could not support them, and often did not care about supporting them. Every reasonable person understands that this is horrible and not desirable in any way.”
Epstein “was often callous about human suffering in a way that I found disturbing but worth understanding, as a window into the perspectives of the rich and powerful,” Bach added.
Alongside Epstein’s conversations about mass executions for the old and and the sick, he was also interested in Silicon Valley’s dream concept of living forever — he had numerous email conversations with the longevity guru Peter Attia about prolonging his own lifespan, and funded a Harvard project geared towards “the end of aging.” In an email to Attia, Epstein mused: “I’m not sure why women live past reproductive age at all.” Attia, who published a statement about his relationship to Epstein, did not respond to requests for comment.
This interest in “longevity” — living for as long as possible, even living forever, is popular among the elite precisely because they find themselves in an elite class, says David Robert Grimes, a scientist and disinformation expert who has written about longevity and race science in Silicon Valley. “They're both sides of the same coin — the Silicon Valley eugenics, and also the longevity stuff. They promote an idea that ‘we are exclusive and we are special',” he said. "It helps them to justify deep social inequality."
The tech elite did not inherit this ideology by accident. Stanford University, the intellectual heart of Silicon Valley, was once a major hub for the American eugenics movement, which later helped to inspire Nazi race laws. Stanford’s founding president, David Starr Jordan, was a prominent eugenicist, campaigning for forced sterilization of people with undesirable genetic traits. The university removed his name from its buildings in 2020 — but in Palo Alto, his beliefs did not disappear with the nameplate.
"Instead of eugenics we just call it longevity or biohacking," Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower who has spent years investigating Silicon Valley's belief systems, said on a panel with me at a journalism conference last year. "It's the same."
The ideology Epstein bankrolled in private is being built in public. It’s a vision of the future in which a select few get to upgrade and extend their lives, while tightening their grip on the systems that determine which humans are worth investing in — and which are not.
It sounds like a dark sci-fi fantasy, except, as the files show, that fantasy is being funded and pushed into reality. Most of us will never be in the rooms where these ideas are discussed. All of us will live with the results.
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The honorees are preeminent theoretical computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou and internationally renowned economist Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg. Credit: Bodossaki Foundation
The Bodossaki Foundation announced the two distinguished Greek scientists honored with the Bodossaki Excellence Award 2026 for their pioneering, internationally recognized life’s work: preeminent theoretical computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou and internationally renowned economist Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg.
The Bodossaki Excellence Award is awarded biennially to Greeks who have dedicated their lives to science. It is accompanied by a cash prize of €100,000 (around $115,500).
In the field of Social Sciences: The award is presented to Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, William Nordhaus Professor of Economics and Global Affairs at Yale University, USA.
The awards will be presented by the President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Konstantinos An. Tasoulas, at an official ceremony to be held on Thursday, 25 June 2026, at Megaron the Athens Concert Hall.
“The objective of the Bodossaki Excellence Award is twofold: to serve as our country’s most elevated scientific recognition for Greek scientists who have expanded the frontiers of knowledge, and to showcase crucial role models for the generations to come,” notes Athina Dessypri, President of the Board of Trustees of the Bodossaki Foundation.
“It is with great pleasure that we welcome Ms. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg and Mr. Christos Papadimitriou into the prestigious circle of the institution’s laureates.”
About the Bodossaki Foundation laureates’ scientific contributions
Christos Papadimitriou: The Limits of Computation
Christos Papadimitriou has had a decisive influence on theoretical computer science, shaping the language and tools on which modern algorithmic design is based.
Foundations of Complexity: His early research laid the mathematical foundations of computational complexity theory—the study of what computers can and cannot solve efficiently. He pioneered the study of approximation algorithms and computationally intractable problems, such as finding equilibrium points in games.
Interdisciplinary Pioneer: Over the last three decades, he has used computational theory as an interpretive tool for other sciences. He is a founder of algorithmic game theory (crucial to our understanding of the Internet) and has since expanded his research into biology, evolutionary theory, the human brain, and artificial intelligence.
Public Engagement: Beyond academia, he has popularized modern computational theory among students and the broader public through both foundational textbooks and acclaimed novels.
Academic Background: A graduate of the National Technical University of Athens and Princeton, he has taught at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCSD, UC Berkeley, and Columbia University. He is a full member of the Academy of Athens, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering.
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg: Empirical Analysis of Global Trade and Development
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg is a leading researcher in the empirical analysis of global trade policy, focusing on international trade, inequality, and development.
Measuring Globalization: By combining microeconomic data with structural economic models, she has produced critical estimates regarding the impact of globalization on social well-being and the unequal distribution of its benefits both between and within countries.
Nuanced Trade Impacts: Her work has demonstrated that the effects of trade liberalization are not uniform; rather, they depend on market structures, competition, institutional conditions, and domestic policies.
Global Leadership: As Chief Economist of the World Bank (2018–2020), she enhanced research transparency and promoted evidence-based policy design. She has also served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Economic Review and President of the Econometric Society.
Current Focus: Her recent work analyzes shifts in globalization—including the US-China trade war and the resurgence of industrial policy—as well as the role of gender-based distortions in restricting economic growth.
Academic Background: She studied at the University of Freiburg and completed her Ph.D. at Stanford. She has held tenured professorships at Princeton, Columbia, and Yale. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and an International Fellow of the British Academy.
Is Australian music at risk of extinction? Here’s what the data tells us
The music that charts in Australia has changed considerably over the past couple of decades – rock is out, country is in and old tracks are new again.
Because of Richard’s brilliant research, advanced Melanoma went from a death sentence to a curable disease. As a result of that breakthrough, in a country with the highest melanoma rates on earth, thousands of Australians are alive today. …
After being diagnosed with brain cancer, Australians got to know Richard as a man of warmth and hope. He faced his disease with optimism, with a smile, and with a deep sense of purpose. Just a few months ago, living with stage four brain cancer, he was still riding his bike through Tasmania, raising money for a cure.
Researchers have developed an AI-designed vaccine that could protect against a broad range of coronaviruses, including future strains that have not yet emerged.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge say the project marks the first time an Artificial Intelligence-designed vaccine antigen has been tested in human volunteers. They believe the technology could eventually help protect against entire families of viruses rather than individual strains.
AI designs a vaccine for multiple coronavirus threats
Most vaccines are built using versions of viruses that are already circulating. As those viruses mutate, vaccines often need updating to remain effective. The new approach aims to overcome that challenge.
Researchers collected genetic information from a wide range of coronaviruses identified through surveillance programs that monitor viruses with pandemic potential. Artificial intelligence then analyzed the data and designed a “super-antigen,” a vaccine component intended to train the immune system to recognize many related coronaviruses at once.
Antigens are the parts of vaccines that teach the immune system what to attack. Researchers say the AI-designed antigen could potentially protect against current coronavirus variants as well as animal viruses that may one day spread to humans.
Professor Jonathan Heeney of the University of Cambridge described the research as a major shift in pandemic preparedness. He said the goal is to develop vaccines that protect against future threats rather than reacting after outbreaks occur.
Early human trials show encouraging results
The first human trial involved 39 volunteers and was designed to evaluate safety. Researchers reported no major safety concerns. A larger study involving about 200 participants is now underway to better understand how effectively the vaccine stimulates immune responses.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge say AI developed a vaccine’s ‘key component’ for the first time
The vaccine was engineered to work on all coronaviruses, but is in its early stages of work pic.twitter.com/YYt5SGDe5v
Results published in the Journal of Infection showed that the vaccine generated a measurable, though modest, immune response. Despite the early-stage findings, researchers and independent experts say the technology shows significant promise.
Professor Saul Faust of the University of Southampton, who helped conduct some of the trials, said the approach has strong potential, particularly for rapidly changing viruses that can spark future pandemics.
Researchers expand the technology to other diseases
Researchers are already applying the technology to other diseases. Animal studies are underway on a universal influenza vaccine that could eliminate the need for yearly updates. Scientists are also developing vaccines targeting H5N1 bird flu and viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola.
Professor Andy Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said the findings add to growing evidence that artificial intelligence could transform vaccine research. He noted that future AI systems may help predict how the immune system will respond to vaccine candidates, potentially accelerating development.
Experts see a new era for vaccine development
Professor Marian Knight, scientific director at the National Institute for Health and Care Research, called the trial an important step toward broader and longer-lasting protection against viral diseases.
UK Science Minister Patrick Vallance said the early results demonstrate how artificial intelligence and scientific research can work together to create new medical tools.
Researchers caution that much larger studies are needed before the vaccine can be widely used. However, they believe the technology could help the world prepare for future pandemics before they begin.
The actual eco-friendliness of ecotourism varies considerably. One research station in the Peruvian Amazon is out to prove it can bring visitors to the area without disrupting the environment.
As the conflict in Iran disrupts the world’s oil supply, airlines are looking for jet fuel alternatives. The answer: energy from used cooking oil and french fry grease.
From San Francisco to Stockholm, a new generation of electric ferries is entering passenger service, marking a tipping point for green maritime technology.
SSRIs, like Prozac and Zoloft, are among the world's most-prescribed psychiatric drugs. These antidepressants help a lot of people. But they don't always work. In fact, some experts suggest they are overprescribed.
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