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  • Years-Old Groundwater Dominates Spring Mountain Streams

    Years-Old Groundwater Dominates Spring Mountain Streams

    As winter gives way to spring, seasonal snowpack in the American West begins to melt.

    Though some of that melt flows over and through shallow alpine soil, new research shows that much of it sinks into bedrock where it percolates for years before resurfacing. Fresh snowmelt makes up less than half of the water in the region’s gushing spring streams, according to the study.

    The new finding could improve water resources forecasts. Hydrologic models, which inform the forecasts, largely overlook groundwater contributions and assume the spring’s heavy flows come directly from seasonal snowmelt.

    The authors of the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, used a radioactive isotope of hydrogen known as tritium to measure when the water in 42 western U.S. catchments fell as precipitation.

    They found that during late winter, when rain and snowmelt were scarce and streams were fed primarily by groundwater, the water fell as precipitation an average of 10.4 years ago. Even during spring, when the same streams were overflowing with fresh runoff, their chilly waters had an average age of 5.7 years, still indicating significant contributions from groundwater.

    A Subterranean Bucket

    Hydrologic models typically simulate mountains as impermeable masses covered with a thin sponge of alpine soil, said the study’s first author, Paul Brooks, a hydrologist at the University of Utah. The sponge can absorb some water, but anything extra will quickly drain away.

    “Snowmelt is being recharged into groundwater and is mobilizing groundwater that has been stored over much longer [periods].”

    However, over the past few decades, scientists have uncovered a steady stream of hints that mountains may store huge volumes of water outside their spongy outer layer. Many high-elevation creeks carry dissolved minerals similar to those found in groundwater, suggesting a subterranean origin. Scientists studying healthy alpine ecosystems in arid conditions have wondered whether plants were tapping into a hidden reservoir of water.

    Though snowmelt and rainfall immediately increase streamflow, the relationship is not intuitive. “What appears to be happening is that snowmelt is being recharged into groundwater and is mobilizing groundwater that has been stored over much longer [periods],” said James Kirchner, a hydrologist at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich who was not involved in the research.

    In areas where the mountains were made of porous sandstone, waters monitored in the new study were much older. In one such stream, the average age of water in winter was 14 years.

    Mountains are “more like a bucket with a sponge on top.”

    The authors were able to convincingly demonstrate the age of the flows because they used tritium, Kirchner said. Though scientists have previously used tritium to date water from individual streams and large bodies such as oceans and lakes, this study is the first to use tritium to date alpine groundwater and snowmelt across multiple catchments, Brooks said.

    On the basis of historic flows, annual precipitation, and the ages of the stream water, the mountains could store an order of magnitude more water than accounted for in current models, Brooks said. As opposed to the impermeable masses in traditional models, he explained, mountains are “more like a bucket with a sponge on top.”

    This finding could change how scientists think about the alpine water cycle. “If precipitation takes, on average, years to exit as streamflow, that means that streamflow in any one year is a function of years of climate and weather,” Brooks said. That means forecasters should consider more than just the most recent snowpack when estimating spring flows and potential flooding.

    But further research is needed to unearth the role mountains play in water storage. The current study is limited because it covers only snowmelt-driven streams in the arid western United States, Kirchner said. Things might work differently in wetter places, he added.

    —Mark DeGraff (@markr4nger.bsky.social), Science Writer

    Citation: DeGraff, M. (2025), Years-old groundwater dominates spring mountain streams, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250238. Published on 3 July 2025.
    Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
    Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

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  • Emerging Immunotherapy Platforms Set to Redefine Melanoma Management Beyond the Frontline

    Emerging Immunotherapy Platforms Set to Redefine Melanoma Management Beyond the Frontline

    Douglas B. Johnson, MD, MSCI

    Despite high response rates and durable outcomes with existing frontline immunotherapy regimens for metastatic melanoma, significant unmet needs remain—namely, improving frontline combinations, identifying predictive biomarkers to better individualize therapy and extend the benefit of current regimens, and developing more effective second-line strategies, according to Douglas B. Johnson, MD, MSCI.

    “Frontline therapy may or may not change all that dramatically [in the next few years]…although hopefully, we’ll get a little bit better at biomarkers,” Johnson said in an interview with OncLive®. “What is likely to change is having some of these [novel treatment approaches] either in an adjuvant setting, [in the case of oncolytic vaccines], or in the second and later lines, [in terms of next-generation] cellular therapies.”

    During the interview, Johnson highlighted the need for improved frontline strategies, more effective second-line options, and greater biomarker precision in melanoma. He also pointed to investigational platforms such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), T-cell receptor (TCR)–based therapies, and neoantigen vaccines as promising modalities that may eventually broaden immunotherapy’s reach within the melanoma treatment paradigm.

    “My prognostication is that some of those therapies will potentially be on the cusp of being tested in the frontline setting, but we’re probably not there quite yet,” Johnson added.

    Johnson, a professor of medicine and leader of the Melanoma Clinical Research Program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, expanded on the importance of Cancer Immunotherapy Awareness Month in a concurrent interview.

    OncLive: What are some of the most critical unmet needs with immuno-oncology today in your field, and where do current agents fail to provide durable benefit?

    Johnson: Melanoma has certainly been at the forefront of immunotherapy advances, so we’ve been very fortunate to have high response rates in the metastatic setting and long-term responses in many cases. Unfortunately, we’re still seeing 10% to 30% response rates in the frontline setting. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go.

    We still don’t have great biomarkers either, so we’re not able to predict which patients are going to respond ahead of time and which are not. Improving our frontline options so that more patients can respond, as well as developing better options in the second-line setting, is really an unmet need.

    There are a number of ways that people are trying to address these challenges. [With] TILs or other cellular therapy options, we’re seeing somewhere between 30% to 50% response rates in patients who have [progressed on] immune checkpoint inhibitors, with either lifileucel [Amtagvi], which is the FDA-approved TIL product, or some newer products. There’s one from a company called Obsidian [called OBX-115], which is sort of the next-generation TIL. [It is] very early, but [the agent appears] very promising, and it doesn’t require high-dose IL-2.

    There’s also something called TCR-T therapy, which is sort of a cousin to tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, but the cells can be harvested from the peripheral blood, so patients don’t have to undergo surgery. If that agent pans out—there’s one from a company called [IMA203]—that so far has shown somewhere around a 50% response rate, although it’s only applicable to patients who have HLA-A*02:01 positive [disease].

    [Despite these advances], we still have a ways to go in melanoma and in many other tumor types. There are still a lot of challenges.

    What are some of the current challenges and considerations with utilizing TIL therapy in clinical practice, and how could these be addressed?

    Lifileucel is an incredible step forward. TILs in general are an incredible step forward. [However,] there are some significant downsides to TILs. High-dose IL-2 is required at the moment for TILs; [to tolerate that therapy] patients have to have excellent performance status, excellent cardiac function, lung function. A lot of patients don’t tolerate that.

    Patients also have to have a tumor that’s accessible for surgery. Patients with brain-only metastases or bone-only disease are not candidates for treatment.

    The patient also has to have time. That is probably the biggest issue at this moment, because in general, it’s going to take several weeks for insurance approval to get done. When centers are just starting out, it could take quite a bit longer. Patients have to have 2 to 3 months for insurance approval, surgery scheduling, and product manufacturing, which takes about 5 weeks. Many patients don’t have the time to wait around for therapy. For some patients, there could be some bridging options—perhaps BRAF/MEK inhibitor therapy, as an example.

    However, that’s the biggest challenge right now. The key needs going forward are reducing IL-2, reducing lymphodepletion chemotherapy, and then [reducing the overall] turnaround time—not just the manufacturing part, but the insurance plus surgery plus manufacturing part.

    What are some of the ongoing clinical trials or emerging treatment approaches that could shift the treatment paradigm for melanoma?

    There’s a lot [of exciting research] going on in melanoma. There were some nice data presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting looking at the triplet combination of ipilimumab [Yervoy], nivolumab, and relatlimab-rmbw [Opdalaug].

    What was interesting is they also combined that with sarilumab [Kevzara], which is the IL-6 blocker, to potentially mitigate some of the toxicities that would be associated with triplet therapy. Interestingly, they saw [an approximately] 60% response rate, which is [typical of] a triplet like that, but only a 12% rate of high-grade toxicities in the first 12 weeks, which is dramatically lower than what we would expect.

    That kind of approach, where we’re treating the patient aggressively with multi-agent checkpoint inhibitors, but then potentially having an agent on top of that to mitigate some of the toxicities, is very interesting.

    Some of these next-generation cellular therapies are quite interesting, and there are a number of trials going there. As I mentioned, [OBX-115] is quite interesting in that it removes the need for high-dose IL-2, allows for lower-dose lymphodepleting therapy, and allows for TIL harvest based on biopsies.

    There is also the TCR-T therapy [IMA203], which recognizes the PRAME antigen expressed in HLA-A*02:01. [For this therapy to be effective, the tumor must] have the PRAME antigen and the right HLA type, which is only about 40% of patients. However, there’s [an approximately] 50% response rate [with this agent] in cutaneous melanoma. [Moreover,] at least among the first 15 patients with uveal melanoma, 10 of those patients responded—[this] is a very challenging subset of melanoma.

    The last [emerging therapy of interest to me] is the Moderna-Merck mRNA vaccine that’s being looked at in the adjuvant setting. There are some interesting randomized phase 2 data that showed the vaccine plus pembrolizumab [Keytruda] was significantly better than pembrolizumab alone in terms of decreasing relapse rates in stage III melanoma. A phase 3 study is ongoing.

    Novel approaches like TILs, TCR-T therapy, and these neoantigen vaccines are proving grounds in melanoma, but could expand across a variety of cancer types.

    How do you expect the melanoma treatment paradigm, and the role of immunotherapy in it, to evolve in the next few years?

    Frontline therapy may or may not be all that different. I could see us potentially using a triplet or some sort of other immunomodulator, but we do have a couple of regimens right now that do cure about half of patients, so I kind of see that probably continuing. Hopefully, we’ll get a little bit better at biomarkers and things like that, but so far, that’s been a little bit frustrating.

    What is likely to really dramatically change is having some of these therapies that I just mentioned, either in an adjuvant setting, like the vaccine, as well as some of these cellular therapies in the second- and later-lines of therapy. There are other agents [that could fill this role], including oncolytic viruses, like the drug RP1, which is under FDA review.

    If some of these cellular therapies show enough activity in the second-line setting, it’s possible they’ll get moved toward the frontline. Thinking about a new patient with newly diagnosed metastatic disease waiting that long to get started—if the data look good enough, that’s certainly possible, and that would be very exciting. However, it’s a high bar in the frontline, especially when you’re dealing with cellular therapies that take weeks and weeks to produce.

    My prognostication would be that some of those therapies will potentially be on the cusp of being tested in the frontline setting, but probably not be there quite yet.

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  • Warming Gulf of Maine Buffers Ocean Acidification—For Now – eos.org

    1. Warming Gulf of Maine Buffers Ocean Acidification—For Now  eos.org
    2. Rising ocean acidification prompts urgent calls for marine protection  Eco-Business
    3. Trevor Hancock: As the cliff edge looms, governments hit the accelerator  Times Colonist
    4. Bad news – the ocean is becoming increasingly acidic and is already threatening marine life and our food security  Unión Rayo
    5. As ocean acidification ramps up, experts call for speedy ocean protection  Mongabay

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  • You Can Now Rent a Flesh Computer Grown in a British Lab : ScienceAlert

    You Can Now Rent a Flesh Computer Grown in a British Lab : ScienceAlert

    The world’s first commercial hybrid of silicon circuitry and human brain cells will soon be available for rent. Marketed for its vast potential in medical research, the biological machine, grown inside a British laboratory, builds on the Pong-playing prototype, DishBrain.

    Each CL1 computer is formed of 800,000 neurons grown across a silicon chip, and their life-support system. While it can’t yet match the mind-blowing capabilities of today’s most powerful computers, the system has one very significant advantage: it only consumes a fraction of the energy of comparable technologies.

    AI centers now consume countries’ worth of energy, whereas a rack of CL1 machines only uses 1,000 watts and is naturally capable of adapting and learning in real time.

    Lab-grown neurons live on an electrode array. (Cortical Labs)

    “The neuron is self-programming, infinitely flexible, and the result of four billion years of evolution. What digital AI models spend tremendous resources trying to emulate, we begin with,” Australian biotech startup Cortical Labs claims on its website. They teamed up with UK company bit.bio to further develop DishBrain, an experimental platform designed to explore the “wetware” concept.

    Related: Human Brain Cells on a Chip Can Recognize Speech And Do Simple Math

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    When neuroscientist Brett Kagan and colleagues pitted their creation against equivalent levels of machine learning algorithms, the cell culture systems outperformed them.

    Users can send code directly into the synthetically supported system of neurons, which is capable of responding to electrical signals almost instantly. These signals act as bits of information that can be read and acted on by the cells.

    You Can Now Rent a Flesh Computer Grown in a British Lab
    SEM of neural culture grown on a high-density multi-electrode array. The complicated network of cells covering the central electrodes comes from a few neurons growing around the periphery. (Cortical Labs)

    But perhaps the greatest potential for this biological and synthetic hybrid is as an experimental tool for learning more about our own brains and their abilities, from neuroscience to creativity.

    “Epileptic cells can’t learn to play games very well, but if you apply antiepileptics to the cell culture, they can suddenly learn better as well as a range of other previously inaccessible metrics,” Kagan told Shannon Cuthrell at IEEE’s Spectrum, pointing out the system’s ethical drug testing capacity.

    The computing neurons are grown from skin and blood samples provided by adult human donors. While there are still many limitations – for one, the neurons only survive for six months at a time – the energy-saving potential of this technology alone suggests such systems are worth developing further. Especially given the dire state of our own life support system.

    The first CL1 units will reportedly ship soon for US$35,000 each, or remote access can apparently be rented for $300 per week.

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  • EA’s next Battlefield game may be in trouble and over budget

    EA’s next Battlefield game may be in trouble and over budget

    EA’s next Battlefield game is supposedly arriving sometime in spring 2026, but its development is reportedly fraught with issues, leading some of its developers to worry that certain parts of the game won’t be well-received. According to a lengthy Ars Technica piece about the game’s development troubles and problems facing AAA titles’ development as a whole, EA had lofty goals for the next Battlefield (codenamed Glacier) to the point that team members working on the project think they’re near unrealistic.

    The publisher’s executives apparently believed that Glacier could match the popularity of Call of Duty and Fortnite and set a 100 million player target over a certain period of time. An employee told Ars that the franchise has never achieved those numbers before, with Battlefield 2042 getting only up to 22 million players within that same period. The first Battlefield, which was the most successful in the franchise so far, only got to “maybe 30 million plus” within that timeframe.

    One of the reasons why Fortnite has over 100 million active users is because it’s free-to-play. In CoD’s case, well, aside from having free-to-play titles, it’s also the biggest gaming franchise and has a lengthy history, so it’s no surprise that it already has a solid fanbase who would play its latest releases. Players had to pay for previous Battlefield games up front, but executives thought that if EA made Glacier free-to-play like its competitors, it could achieve the same numbers. And that is why the publisher promised a free-to-play Battle Royale mode with a six-hour single player campaign for the upcoming game.

    Ridgeline, the external studio working on the single player mode, however, shuttered in 2024 after working on the project for two years. The studio reportedly found EA’s objectives unachievable, since it was expected to reach milestones in the same rate as more established studios when it didn’t have the same resources. Now, three other EA studios (Criterion, DICE and Motive) are working on the single-player mode. But since they had to start from scratch, single player is the only Glacier game mode remaining that has yet to reach alpha status.

    Due to the wider scope of the next title in the franchise and the issues it has faced, it has become the most expensive Battlefield to date. It had a budget of $400 million back in 2023, but the current projections are now apparently “well north” of that. Whether the next Battlefield launches on time remains to be seen. Ars‘ sources said that if it does ship as intended, they expect some features and content to be cut from the final product.

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  • Israeli quantum startup Qedma just raised $26 million, with IBM joining in

    Israeli quantum startup Qedma just raised $26 million, with IBM joining in

    Qedma’s team (minus remote team members) | Image Credits:Eyal Toueg for Qedma

    Despite their imposing presence, quantum computers are delicate beasts, and their errors are among the main bottlenecks that the quantum computing community is actively working to address. Failing this, promising applications in finance, drug discovery, and materials science may never become real.

    That’s the reason why Google touted the error correction capacities of its latest quantum computing chip, Willow. And IBM is both working on delivering its own “fault-tolerant” quantum computer by 2029 and collaborating with partners like Qedma, an Israeli startup in which it also invested, as TechCrunch learned exclusively.

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    While most efforts focus on hardware, Qedma specializes in error mitigation software. Its main piece of software, QESEM, or quantum error suppression and error mitigation, analyzes noise patterns to suppress some classes of errors while the algorithm is running and mitigate others in post-processing.

    Qedma’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, Professor Dorit Aharonov, once described as a member of “quantum royalty” for her and her father’s contributions to the field, said this enables quantum circuits up to 1,000 times larger to run accurately on today’s hardware, without waiting for further advancements on error correction at the computer level.

    IBM itself does both quantum hardware and software, and some of its partners, like French startup Pasqal, also develop their own hardware. But it sees value as well in partnering with companies more narrowly focusing on the software layer, like Qedma and Tiger Global-backed Finnish startup Algorithmiq, its VP of Quantum, Jay Gambetta, told TechCrunch.

    That’s because IBM thinks driving quantum further requires a community effort. “If we all work together, I do think it’s possible that we will get scientific accepted definitions of quantum advantage in the near future, and I hope that we can then turn them into more applied use cases that will grow the industry,” Gambetta said.

    “Quantum advantage” usually refers to demonstrating the usefulness of quantum over classical computers. “But useful is a very subjective term,” Gambetta said. In all likelihood, it will first apply to an academic problem, not a practical one. In this context, it may take more than one attempt to build consensus that it’s not just another artificial or overly constrained scenario.

    Still, having a quantum computer execute a program that a classical computer can’t simulate with the same accuracy would be an important step for the industry — and Qedma claims it is getting closer. “It’s possible that already within this year, we’ll be able to demonstrate with confidence that the quantum advantage is here,” CEO and co-founder Asif Sinay said.

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  • All-in-One Smart Nanomaterial for Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment, and Immune Response Induction

    All-in-One Smart Nanomaterial for Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment, and Immune Response Induction

    Newswise — The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President Lee Ho Seong) has successfully developed a nanomaterial* capable of simultaneously performing cancer diagnosis, treatment, and immune response induction. Compared to conventional nanomaterials that only perform one function, this new material significantly enhances treatment efficiency and is expected to serve as a next-generation cancer therapy platform utilizing nanotechnology.
    * Nanomaterial: Particles with a diameter between 1 and 100 nanometers (nm, 1 nm = one-billionth of a meter)

    Currently, cancer treatments primarily include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. However, these treatments have significant limitations, as they not only affect cancerous areas but also cause damage to healthy tissues, leading to considerable side effects.

    Cancer treatment using nanomaterials has emerged as a next-generation technology that aims to overcome the limitations of conventional treatments. By utilizing the physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials, it is possible to precisely target and deliver drugs to cancer cells and affected areas. Additionally, personalized treatments based on individual genetic profiles are now possible, offering a therapy that significantly reduces side effects while improving effectiveness compared to traditional methods.

    The KRISS Nanobio Measurement Group has developed a new nanomaterial that not only allows real-time monitoring and treatment of cancerous areas but also activates the immune response system. The nanomaterial developed by the research team is a triple-layer nanodisk (AuFeAuNDs), with iron (Fe) inserted between gold (Au). The design of the nanomaterial, which features iron at the center of a disc-shaped structure, provides superior structural stability compared to traditional spherical materials. Additionally, by applying a magnet near the tumor site, the magnetic properties of the iron allow the nanomaterial to be easily attracted, further enhancing treatment efficiency.

    The nanodisk developed by the research team is equipped with photoacoustic (PA) imaging capabilities, allowing for real-time observation of both the tumor’s location and the drug delivery process. PA is a technique that visualizes the vibrations (ultrasound) generated by heat when light (laser) is directed at the nanodisk. By using this feature, treatment can be performed at the optimal time when the nanomaterial reaches the tumor site, maximizing its effectiveness. In fact, in animal experiments, the research team successfully tracked the accumulation of nanoparticles at the tumor site over time using PA imaging, identifying that the most effective time for treatment is 6 hours after the material is administered.

    Furthermore, this nanodisk can perform three different therapeutic mechanisms in an integrated manner, which is expected to treat various types of cancer cells, unlike materials that are limited to single therapies. While conventional nanomaterials used only photothermal therapy (PTT), which involves heating gold particles to eliminate cancer cells, the nanodisk developed by the research team can also perform chemical dynamic therapy (CDT) by utilizing the properties of iron to induce oxidation within the tumor, as well as ferroptosis therapy.

    After treatment, the nanodisk also induces immune response substances. The developed nanodisk prompts cancer cells to release danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) when they die, which helps the body recognize the same cancer cells and attack them if they recur. In animal experiments, the research team confirmed that the generation of warning signals through the nanodisk led to an increase in immune cell count by up to three times.

    Dr. Lee Eun Sook stated, “Unlike conventional nanomaterials, which are composed of a single element and perform only one function, the material developed in this study utilizes the combined properties of gold and iron to perform multiple functions.”

    This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT’s ‘Next-Generation Advanced Nanomaterials Measurement Standard System Establishment Research Project’ and was published in February in Chemical Engineering Journal (Impact Factor: 13.4).


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  • Scientists May Have Found the Blueprint of the Human Body at the Bottom of the Ocean

    Scientists May Have Found the Blueprint of the Human Body at the Bottom of the Ocean

    Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

    • One major division of the kingdom Animalia is Cnidarians (animals built around a central point) and bilaterians (animals with bilateral symmetry), which includes us humans.

    • A new study found that the sea anemone, a member of the Cnidarian phylum, uses bilaterian-like techniques to form its body.

    • This suggests that these techniques likely evolved before these two phyla separated evolutionarily some 600 to 700 million years ago, though it can’t be ruled out that these techniques evolved independently.

    Make a list of complex animals as distantly related to humans as possible, and sea anemones would likely be near the top of the list. Of course, one lives in the water and the other doesn’t, but the differences are more biologically fundamental than that—sea anemones don’t even have brains.

    So it’s surprising that this species in the phylum Cnidarians (along with jellyfish, corals, and other sea creatures) contains an ancient blueprint for bilaterians, of which Homo sapiens are a card-carrying member. A new study by a team of scientists at the University of Vienne discovered that sea anemones, whose Cnidarian status means they grow radially around a central point (after all, what is the “face” of a jellyfish), use a technique commonly associated with bilaterians, known as bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) shuttling, to build their bodies. This complicates the picture of exactly when this technique evolved or if it possibly evolved independently of bilaterians. The results of the study were published last month in the journal Science Advances.

    “Not all Bilateria use Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling, for example, frogs do, but fish don’t, however, shuttling seems to pop up over and over again in very distantly related animals making it a good candidate for an ancestral patterning mechanism,” University of Vienna’s David Mörsdorf, a lead author of the study, said in a press statement. “The fact that not only bilaterians but also sea anemones use shuttling to shape their body axes, tells us that this mechanism is incredibly ancient.”

    To put it simply, BMPs are a kind of molecular messenger that signals to embryonic cells where they are in the body and what kind of tissue they should form. Local inhibition from an inhibitor named Chordin (which can also act as a shuttle) along with BMP shuttling creates gradients of BMP in the body. When these levels are their lowest, for example, the body knows to form the central nervous system. Moderate levels signal kidney development, and maximum levels signal the formation of the skin of the belly. This is how bilaterians form the body’s layout from back to body.

    Mörsdorf and his colleagues found that Chordin also acts as a BMP shuttle—just as displayed in bilaterians like flies and frogs. Thi signals that this particular evolutionary trait likely developed before Cnidarians and bilaterians diverged. Seeing as these two phylums of the animal kingdom have vastly different biological structures, that divergence occurred long ago, likely 600 to 700 million years ago.

    “We might never be able to exclude the possibility that bilaterians and bilaterally symmetric cnidarians evolved their bilateral body plans independently,” University of Vienna’s Grigory Genikhovich, a senior author of the study, said in a press statement. “However, if the last common ancestor of Cnidaria and Bilateria was a bilaterally symmetric animal, chances are that it used Chordin to shuttle BMPs to make its back-to-belly axis.”

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  • Adding calendar events with a screenshot is AI at its finest

    Adding calendar events with a screenshot is AI at its finest

    Apple’s AI capabilities have been less than impressive to date, but there’s one new feature coming with iOS 26 that’s actually really handy: adding stuff to your calendar with a screenshot.

    I’ve been testing this feature out for the past few weeks in the developer beta, and I’m pleased to report that it works, easily making it my favorite Apple Intelligence feature so far. That’s admittedly a low bar to clear — and it’s not quite as capable as Android’s version — but it’s a nice change of pace to use an AI feature that feels like it’s actually saving me time.

    Maybe adding things to your calendar doesn’t sound all that exciting, but I am a person who is Bad At Calendars. I will confidently add events to the wrong day, put them on the wrong calendar, or forget to add them at all. It’s not my finest quality.

    The iOS version of “use AI to add things to your calendar” taps into Visual Intelligence. The ability to create calendar events based on photos was included in iOS 18, and now iOS 26 is extending that to anything on your screen. You just take a screenshot and a prompt will appear with the words “Add to calendar.” Tap it, and you’ll see a preview of the event to be added with the top-level details. You can tap to edit the event or just create it if everything looks good and you’re ready to move on with your life.

    None of this would be useful if it didn’t work consistently; thankfully, it does. I’ve yet to see it hallucinate the wrong day, time, or location for an event — though it didn’t account for a time zone difference in one case. For the most part, though, everything goes on my calendar as it should, and I rejoice a little bit every time it saves me a trip to the calendar app. The only limitation I’ve come across is that it can’t create multiple events from a screenshot. It kind of just lands on the first one it sees and suggests an event based on that. So if you want that kind of functionality from your AI, you’ll need an Android phone.

    Gemini Assistant has been able to add events based on what’s on your screen since August 2024, and it added support for Samsung Calendar last January. To access it, you can summon Google Assistant and tap an icon that says “Ask about screen.” Gemini creates a screenshot that it references, and then you just type or speak your prompt to have it add the event to your calendar. This has failed to work for me as recently as a couple of months ago, but it’s miles better now.

    I gave Gemini Assistant on the Pixel 9 Pro the task of adding a bunch of preschool events, which were all listed at the end of an email, to my calendar, and it created an event for each one on the correct day. In a separate case, it also noticed that the events I was adding were listed in Eastern Time and accounted for that difference. In some instances, it even filled in a description for the event based on text on the screen. I also used Gemini in Google Calendar on my laptop, because Gemini is always lurking around the corner when you use literally any Google product, and it turned a list of school closure dates into calendar events.

    This is great and all, but is this just an AI rebranding of some existing feature? As far as I can tell, not exactly. Versions of this feature already existed on both platforms, but in a much more basic form. On my Apple Intelligence-less iPhone 13 Mini, you can tap on a date in an email for the option to add it to your calendar. But it uses the email subject line as the event title, which is a decent starting point, but adding five events to my calendar with the heading “Preschool July Newsletter” isn’t ideal. Android will also prompt you to add an event to your calendar from a screenshot, but it frequently gets dates and times wrong. AI does seem to be better suited for this particular task, and I’m ready to embrace it.

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  • The Israel-Iran war has not yet transformed the Middle East

    The Israel-Iran war has not yet transformed the Middle East

    A SINGLE strike took on singular importance. When America attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities last month, both supporters and opponents thought it would have outsize consequences. Critics feared it would plunge the Middle East into a wider war. That doomsday scenario has not come to pass, at least for now: Iran made only symbolic retaliation against America; soon after, a ceasefire ended the fighting between Iran and Israel.

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