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October 11, 20255 min readThe Math That Predicted the New PopeA decades-old technique from network science saw something in the papal conclave that AI missedBy Jack Murtagh edited by Jeanna BrynerCardinals attend the Holy Mass, which is the prelude to the papal conclave, in St. Peter’s Basilica, on May 7, 2025 in Vatican City. Vatican Media/Vatican Pool – Corbis/Corbis via Getty ImagesWhen Pope Francis died in April on Easter Monday, the news triggered not only an outpouring of mourners but also a centuries-old tradition shrouded in secrecy: the papal conclave. Two weeks later 133 cardinal electors shuttered themselves inside Vatican…

Scientists have developed a nanoparticle-based treatment that successfully reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, the team co-led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, Spain (IBEC), and West China Hospital, Sichuan University, developed bioactive “supramolecular drugs” that can proactively repair the blood-brain barrier. The barrier plays an important role in the health of the brain, defending it from harmful substances and other pathogens. Alzheimer’s has been linked to a weakening of the barrier’s integrity, allowing for impairing toxins to make it through. More specifically, the disease…

You’ve sat through those strategy presentations. The ones with the slick slides, the ambitious objectives, the carefully crafted mission statements. Leaders nod, teams take notes, and everyone leaves feeling…something. Inspired? Maybe. Perhaps, overwhelmed is a better description. Possibly confused. Then, Monday happens. Someone asks, “So what does this actually mean for how I do my job?” And the room goes quiet. The problem is strategy documents are essentially wish lists without behavioral translation. The strategy-execution chasm Leadership teams invest months crafting strategic objectives. They debate every word, metric, and timeline. The final document is a masterpiece of corporate aspiration. However, they stop short of…

Casinos have become staple businesses in many towns and cities worldwide, with places like Sin City attracting tourists based on these gambling institutions. While the traditional approach has long worked, the need to adapt to changing interests is creeping up quickly. Especially as the younger generation, Gen Z, will soon represent a larger share of global spending power. Like with every generation, the interests, new trends, and the economy all influence how people spend their time and money. While casinos have previously relied on the perceived glitz and glamor that has been shown off in countless films and TV shows,…

Artificial IntelligenceNvidia Researchers Boost LLM Reasoning Skills by Getting Them to ‘Think’ During Pre-trainingBen Dickson | VentureBeat”This approach encourages the model to ‘think for itself before predicting what comes next, thus teaching an independent thinking behavior earlier in the pretraining,’ the researchers state in their paper. [Models trained like this] show significant improvements in learning complex reasoning tasks downstream, hinting at a future of more capable and adaptable AI for real-world tasks.”BiotechnologyScientists Just Reversed Alzheimer’s in Mice. Could They Do It in Humans?Gayoung Lee | Gizmodo”[In their a paper the researchers] describe how, by harnessing the brain’s garbage disposal system,…

It seems to be the end of the road for Apple’s Clips app. The company said on a support page that it has stopped updating the video-editing app, and new users can no longer download it from the App Store. Existing users on iOS and iPadOS will continue to have access for the time being, but the company hasn’t said how long that will last. “If you previously downloaded the Clips app, you can still redownload it from your Apple account in the App Store,” the support page notes. Clips was introduced in 2017 and offers a host of editing tools…

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.The rapid buildout of fast-charging stations for electric vehicles is testing the limits of today’s power grid. With individual chargers drawing 350 to 500 kilowatts (or more), which makes charging times for EVs now functionally equivalent to the fill-up time for a gasoline or diesel vehicle, full charging sites can reach megawatt-scale demand. That’s enough to strain medium-voltage distribution networks—the segment of the grid that links high-voltage transmission lines with the low-voltage lines that serve end users in homes and businesses.DC fast charging stations tend…

“[The clutch] is like 1950s technology—it’s really boring,” Westerman said (“boring,” for grid operators, is the highest form of praise). ​“The marginal cost of putting this in is like nothing compared to the cost of the plant.”A company called SSS has built these clutches for decades. One is nearly operational in the state of Queensland at the Townsville gas-fired plant, which Siemens Energy is converting into what it calls a ​“hybrid rotating grid stabilizer.” Siemens says this project is the world’s first such conversion of a gas turbine of this size.That particular retrofit took about 18 months and involved some relocating of auxiliary…

AI tools are revolutionizing software development by automating repetitive tasks, refactoring bloated code, and identifying bugs in real-time. Developers can now generate well-structured code from plain language prompts, saving hours of manual effort. These tools learn from vast codebases, offering context-aware recommendations that enhance productivity and reduce errors. Rather than starting from scratch, engineers can prototype quickly, iterate faster and focus on solving increasingly complex problems.As code generation tools grow in popularity, they raise questions about the future size and structure of engineering teams. Earlier this year, Garry Tan, CEO of startup accelerator Y Combinator, noted that about one-quarter of…

OpenVPN released Access Server 3.0, a major update to its self-hosted business VPN solution that delivers foundational improvements to performance, flexibility, and system integration. While the most visible change is a modernized Admin Web UI, Access Server 3.0 represents far more than just a refreshed interface. This release incorporates customer-requested enhancements that streamline workflows, bring formerly command line-only features into the web console, and expand support for developers through integrated REST API documentation and testing tools. “With Access Server 3.0, we’re not just redesigning the experience—we’re laying the groundwork for the future,” said Kyryl Tumanov, Director of Product Management for…