Artificial intelligence could hold the key to turning back the rising tide of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), according to researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Researchers from MIT have used generative AI (genAI) algorithms to design novel antibiotics that can treat two 'superbugs' – drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) – in both petri dishes and animal models.
While they will still need years of additional development and clinical testing before they could be ready to be prescribed to patients, the scientists behind the project think their approach could accelerate the rollout of new antimicrobials that work in a completely new way to existing drugs.
They point out that only a few dozen new antibiotics have been approved by the FDA in the last 45 years, generally concentrated into a few drug classes, and overuse has resulted in a big rise in antibiotic resistance. Globally, it is estimated that AMR infections cause nearly 5 million deaths per year.
While AI has been applied to the design of new antibiotics from existing libraries of compounds, including by this MIT team led by professor of medical engineering and science Jim Collins, the new project expands the search into molecules that can't be found in any chemical libraries.
The first stage of the approach was to direct genAI algorithms to design molecules based on a chemical fragment that showed antimicrobial activity. They then gave them free rein to come up with drug molecules, without that specific fragment, and they discarded anything that resembled an existing antibiotic.
From an initial database of around 36 million computationally-designed molecules, they discarded those likely to cause toxicity or be hard to synthesise, eventually drilling down to a pair of candidates for gonorrhoea and six for MRSA.
Lab and animal testing revealed a candidate called NG1 with activity against gonorrhoea that seems to work by interacting with a protein called LptA involved in the synthesis of the bacterial outer membrane.
The MRSA project yielded one candidate dubbed DN1 that also seemed to interfere with membrane synthesis, but had a broader effect that was not limited to interaction with one specific protein.
"Our work shows the power of AI from a drug design standpoint, and enables us to exploit much larger chemical spaces that were previously inaccessible," said Collins. "We're excited about the new possibilities that this project opens up for antibiotics development."
Now, the MIT team has partnered with non-profit organisation Phare Bio – co-founded by Collins – to work on modifications to NG1 and DN1 that could make them suitable for human testing, a process that is expected to take one to two years.
"We are exploring analogues, as well as working on advancing the best candidates preclinically, through medicinal chemistry work," said Collins.
"We are also excited about applying the platforms […] toward other bacterial pathogens of interest, notably Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa."
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/ai-could-lead-golden-age-antibiotics
In another sign of increased regulatory scrutiny of vaccines in the US, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has brought back a long-defunct task force that focused on the safety of childhood immunisations.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, which was set up in the mid-1980s but dissolved in 1998, was tasked with making recommendations on vaccine use and safety monitoring.
Its reinstatement had been sought by Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group formerly led by Kennedy, which sued the HHS Secretary for failing to do so on the grounds that he was violating US laws on vaccine monitoring.
The task force will be led by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and will also include recently appointed CDC director Susan Monarez and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. It will deliver its first report to Congress within two years, according to HHS, and its role will be to "improve the safety, quality, and oversight of vaccines administered to American children."
Tasks will include assisting the "development, promotion, and refinement" of childhood vaccines that have fewer serious side effects than those already on the market, and will also draft new guidance on "vaccine development, production, distribution, and adverse reaction reporting," said HHS.
It will work closely with the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines on recommendations, a group that reviews issues relating to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Programme (VICP). In July, Kennedy said he intended to make changes to the programme, claiming it "hobbles claimants" and "has devolved into a morass of inefficiency, favouritism, and outright corruption."
Under Kennedy, the HHS has cut federal funding for mRNA vaccines, removed COVID-19 shots from the CDC's routine immunisation recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women, and fired the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), subsequently stacking it with members who are more closely aligned with his thinking on vaccines.
There have also been cuts to funding for immunisation programmes, the launch of an inquiry into the idea that vaccines can cause autism, and a recommendation to ban the vaccine preservative thimerosal.
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/rfk-jr-revives-childhood-vaccine-task-force
Roblox, the $27 billion online gaming platform pitched as a safe creative playground for kids, is now facing serious legal firepower from Louisiana’s top law enforcement officer. On Thursday, Attorney General Liz Murrill sued Roblox Corp. in state court, accusing the California-based company of enabling predators to target children and “facilitate the distribution of child sexual abuse material” on its platform.
"Today I’m suing Roblox — the #1 gaming site for children and teens – and a breeding ground for sex predators," Murrill said in a statement announcing the suit. "Due to Roblox’s lack of safety protocols, it endangers the safety of the children of Louisiana. Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety. Every parent should be aware of the clear and present danger poised to their children by Roblox so they can prevent the unthinkable from ever happening in their own home."
The lawsuit alleges Roblox “knowingly and intentionally fails to implement basic safety controls to protect child users from predators” and fails to adequately warn parents about the dangers on its platform. It cites years of alleged failures, pointing to games that have appeared on Roblox such as Escape to Epstein Island, Diddy Party, and Public Bathroom Simulator Vibe, which the AG’s office says have included simulated sexual activity, including “child gang rape.”
One example described in the filing involves a July 2025 incident in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, where police executing a search warrant on a suspect in possession of child sexual abuse material found the individual actively using Roblox. The person was allegedly employing voice-altering technology to mimic the voice of a young female “for the purpose of luring and sexually exploiting minor users of the platform.”
The AG’s office notes that until late 2024, Roblox’s default settings allowed adults to directly message children under 13 with little restriction. While recent changes now block direct messages from adults to under-13 users outside of “experiences,” the lawsuit says predators can still send friend requests, chat, and even use voice features within those in-game experiences. “As such, despite these recent changes, Roblox continues to make children highly vulnerable to predators,” the filing states.
Thursday’s lawsuit comes less than a year after high-profile short seller Hindenburg Research published a sweeping investigation into Roblox, alleging the platform is not only a haven for sexual predators but also misleads investors about the size and engagement of its user base.
Hindenburg claimed its research uncovered “digital strip clubs, red light districts, sex parties and child predators lurking on Roblox” despite years of scandals and public promises to clean up the platform. Their team was able to register accounts under the names of convicted pedophiles — including Jeffrey Epstein — and find them already in use by apparent fan accounts, some openly proclaiming “I groom minors” in their usernames.
According to Hindenburg, Roblox’s open search system allowed a self-identified under-13 account to join groups like “Adult Studios,” which had thousands of members allegedly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.
From there, the group’s members could be traced to dozens of other public Roblox communities openly sharing illicit material. The report also described finding over 600 “Diddy” games — some of which allowed players to simulate explicit sex acts — and noted that games like Escape to Epstein Island were still accessible to child accounts.
Beyond child safety concerns, Hindenburg accused Roblox of inflating its most important growth metrics, alleging the company conflates “people” with daily active users in a way that overstates real users by 25–42% or more, in part by failing to weed out alternate accounts and bots. Engagement hours, another Wall Street-friendly statistic, were allegedly padded with “AFK” or “zombie” accounts that stayed logged in for 24 hours a day, skewing the average far above what real users actually play.
Interviews with former employees suggested Roblox maintained two sets of user data — one “de-alted” for internal decision-making, and another inflated figure for financial reporting.
Hindenburg also alleged that Roblox cut trust and safety spending by 2% year-over-year in 2024 despite these ongoing risks, and that moderation work was often outsourced to overseas contractors making $12 a day, limiting the company’s ability to permanently ban repeat offenders. “If you’re limiting users’ engagement, it’s hurting your metrics… in a lot of cases, the leadership doesn’t want that,” one former senior product designer told the firm.
In its latest quarterly report, Roblox said it had 111.8 million average daily active users, a 41% increase from the previous year, with nearly half of its players under the age of 13. The Louisiana AG’s office warns that without robust age verification, predators can pose as children and minors can bypass restrictions simply by lying about their birthdate when signing up.
Asked about the lawsuit, Roblox said it “can’t comment on pending litigation” but defended its safeguards: “We dedicate substantial resources, including advanced technology and 24/7 human moderation, to help detect and prevent inappropriate content and behavior… While no system is perfect, Roblox has implemented rigorous technology and enforcement safeguards.” The company points to recent features like video-selfie-based age estimation, parental monitoring tools, and a teen-only “Trusted Connections” chat system as examples of ongoing safety improvements.
Its website says, “Our platform is designed with safety in mind, and we continually evolve our practices to address emerging challenges.”
“It’s funny they call [intel] a ‘community.’ That sounds so benign and beneficial. Everybody likes communities.”
- Doug Casey
And so, now, in Alaska, Mr. Trump sits down with Vlad Putin to attempt a settling of Ukraine’s hash. This war has been a three-year bloody grind, millions killed, mostly Ukrainians, provoked underhandedly by US State Dept / CIA neocons, Britain’s MI6 apparatus, and the girl-bosses of the EU, for no good reason, namely, to weaken and possibly break-up Russia so as to get at its vast mineral and energy resources. This has been tried before in history, always to the grief of the triers.
From our country’s point of view, the dynamics in play at this moment are delicate to an extreme.
In the background of the Trump-Putin meet-up, amid an eerie silence in the DOJ and FBI, an epic, sweeping prosecution of the RussiaGate hoaxers creeps forward. RussiaGate, of course, was born in the false charge (by America’s highest officials, derived from nonsense cooked up by Hillary Clinton) that Donald Trump was a Russian agent. It was preposterous and continually disproven, but the many-footed creatures of America’s deep state, which controlled so many levers of power, dragged it out for years. Altogether, that endeavor amounted to a campaign of sedition and arguably treason.
The delicacy comes in as President Trump must now avoid at all costs any appearance of giving-in to Mr. Putin, of appearing to be any sort of a vassal — “Putin’s puppet,” as charged in RussiaGate. The raw truth is that Russia has likely already “won” the war in Ukraine, in the sense that it has finally gained control of the battlespace and worn out its opponent. It is fait accompli. What remains is the disposition of Ukraine’s future which, in another raw truth, is mostly Russia’s to determine.
Yet another raw truth is that this would probably be the best outcome for all concerned:
a neutralized, disarmed Ukraine returned to its prior condition as a mostly agricultural sovereign backwater of Europe within Russia’s sphere-of-influence, resuming its longstanding status as not being a problem for anyone.
Still, yet another raw truth is that the USA would benefit hugely from normalized relations with Russia:
no more sanctions, fair trade, a rebalance of the drift toward China, lessening the chance of nuclear war — and this would even benefit the knuckleheads of Europe whose economies are imploding due to a lack of affordable energy (and also because of, let’s face it, the EU’s terrifically stupid “green” policies).
All of which means there will necessarily be a lot of “pretend” played in Anchorage for show.
Mr. Trump must pretend to be tough on Putin, and Mr. Putin must pretend, a little bit, to give-in to Mr. Trump’ proposals. That is, it will be something of a kabuki, a kafabe. Surely, many of the stickiest points have been pre-negotiated by Mr. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, who quietly visited Moscow a week ago.
Mr. Trump must appear strong with Russia because his appointees are commencing to go medieval on the folks who called him “Putin’s Puppet” nine years ago — and subjected him to a series of epic torments including the subversion of his whole first term in office, nonstop obloquy from the media, impeachment (X 2), home invasion, and a grotesque set of malicious, nitwit prosecutions that have either failed completely (Fani Willis, Jack Smith) or will be subject to humiliating reversals in the higher courts. Not to mention two attempted assassinations.
You should assume that Mr. Putin well understands all this and intends to play along. He will appear to make some generous concessions to Ukraine, starting with the promise that it can go forward as a sovereign, self-governing nation. The big enchilada might be to grant that Ukraine can retain possession of Odessa, the port city on the Black Sea which is Ukraine’s depot for export to the world of its chief commodity, grains. In any case, both Russia and the USA intend to relieve Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his duties — notice he is conspicuously not invited to the Alaska meeting.
Mr. Trump well understands that one way or another, Russia is going to prevail in this conflict on-the-ground.
He abhors all the killing.
He has already expressed a disinclination to keep backing the war with money and weapons. He must be disgusted at how the Bidens (and the Deep State) used Ukraine as a money-laundry, as a site for bioweapons labs, and how it served as a nexus for human trafficking.
He also knows that Russia wants badly to be re-admitted to normal relations with the West, which is in everybody’s interest, except perhaps China’s. You should infer therefore that Russia wants the war to end in a way that does not humiliate the losers and backers — perhaps along the lines of how America managed our victory against our enemies in World War Two, carefully and gracefully.
by Martin Young via CoinTelegraph.com,
Market strategy and research firm Fundstrat said Ether will be the “biggest macro trade” over the next 10 years, as it predicted Ether may rally to as much as $15,000 by the end of 2025.
“ETH is arguably the biggest macro trade for the next 10 to 15 years as AI creates a token economy on the blockchain and as Wall Street financializes on the blockchain,” said Fundstrat Capital chief information officer Thomas Lee on Wednesday.
Head of digital asset research for Fundstrat, Sean Farrell, said ETH could go as high as $12,000 to $15,000 by year-end, “so there is still plenty of upside.”
Lee was echoing his comments in a company research bulletin on Wednesday, where he explained that the Wall Street push will be spurred by the GENIUS Act stablecoin regulations and by the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s “Project Crypto,” which aims to modernize the agency for the digital finance age.
Lee said the majority of stablecoins and Wall Street projects are being built on Ether.
The Ethereum network currently has a commanding 55% market share of the $25 billion real-world asset (RWA) tokenization sector, according to RWA.xyz.
Ethereum has 55% of the entire stablecoin market. Source: RWA.xyz
ETH has skyrocketed 60% over the past 30 days, hitting a four-year high of $4,770, just 2.5% away from its 2021 peak, during early trading on Thursday.
“Ethereum is outperforming Bitcoin YTD, gaining +28% vs +18% for Bitcoin,” Lee pointed out.
The world’s largest Ethereum treasury company, BitMine Immersion Technologies, has targeted a huge $20 billion raise to increase its treasury.
The firm has aggressively accumulated 1.2 million ETH since the beginning of July, and its treasury is now worth almost $5.5 billion.
Meanwhile, company stock (BMNR) has skyrocketed 1,300% over the same period.
In a note seen by Cointelegraph, BTC Markets’ crypto analyst, Rachael Lucas, said these positions are strategic and long-term, “taking substantial liquidity out of the market.”
“When you combine record ETF inflows with corporate and sovereign balance sheet allocations, the result is deep structural demand meeting finite supply,” she said, adding:
“That’s a recipe for sustained upward pressure on prices, and a sign that digital assets are firmly embedded in global capital markets.”
In July, BitMine suggested the implied value of Ether could be as high as $60,000.
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/ethereum-biggest-macro-trade-next-10-15-years-fundstrat
Gallup's latest survey shows that alcohol consumption across the U.S. has dropped to 54%, the lowest level in its 90 years of surveying Americans. The decline comes as more consumers than ever view alcohol consumption as harmful to one's health. This comes as no surprise, given our coverage of this massive behavioral shift (read here & here).
From 1997 to 2023, more than 60% of Americans reported drinking alcohol. That share slipped to 62% in 2023, fell to 58% in 2024, and has now fallen to 54% in 2025. Gallup's data shows the rate has only dipped below 60% fewer than ten times, including 58% in its first survey in 1939 and again in 1958. Peak drinking years came between 1974 and 1981, when 68% to 71% of Americans reported drinking.
Gallup data shows an inflection point among U.S. consumers, with 53%, a majority, now believing that drinking alcohol is bad for one's health.
This behavioral shift can be linked to increased medical research that shows alcohol consumption is not safe.
More trends.
One shocking poll data point is that just 46% of Republicans reported drinking this year. That's down by a third from 2023, while the share of Democrats who drink slipped only 5%.
Patterns of drinking and drug use among some members of the Democratic Party's woke warrior base may be explained by the party's propaganda matrix, which pushes endless streams of misinformation and disinformation, keeps people in a state of anxiety...
So toxic for the mind.
The reasons why Democrats' drinking habits have not significantly declined in recent years are pretty apparent.
