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  • Musicians v the climate crisis: ‘We’re trying to put on the greenest show in Australia’ | Australian music

    Musicians v the climate crisis: ‘We’re trying to put on the greenest show in Australia’ | Australian music

    In 2023 the Australian indie-pop band Lime Cordiale tested a pair of electric tour vans, driving from Sydney to a festival in the Hunter Valley via gigs in Wollongong and Canberra. With gear stacked high and a map dotted with charging stations, the band got a promising, if imperfect, glimpse of their touring future. “At each gig, we’d have to convince someone to let us plug the cars in,” recalls the band’s guitarist and vocalist, Oliver Leimbach. As it transpired, they ran out of charge en route to the festival and had to call for a lift.

    Lime Cordiale are part of a growing number of Australian musicians who are recognising the climate cost of touring and finding ways to lessen their impact. While no definitive emissions audit exists for Australia’s music sector, a 2010 study found the UK music industry produced about 540,000 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions annually. It’s estimated that a typical two-week, 15-stop tour in Australia produces about 28 tonnes of carbon emissions – the equivalent of an average household’s yearly output.

    In 2015 the musician and Green Music Australia co-founder Tim Hollo summed it up succinctly: “We’re an industry full of forward-thinking, caring people and yet we have festivals strewn with rubbish, energy-guzzling studios and venues, and massive transport emissions.”

    As musicians’ incomes continue to be decimated by the rise of streaming, touring is essential – but it’s also one of the most environmentally damaging aspects of the industry (and is, in turn, affected by the climate crisis). Overseas, Coldplay and Billie Eilish have taken steps to reduce the impact of their world tours, while Massive Attack’s battery-powered show in Bristol set a record for low-carbon emissions. In Australia artists including Angie McMahon, Barkaa, Jack River and Montaigne have joined Lime Cordiale in taking up the environmental mantle once worn by Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, John Butler and Missy Higgins.

    Oliver and Louis Leimbach, the sibling duo behind Lime Cordiale, grew up with hippy parents on Scotland Island, a community accessible only by boat in Sydney’s Pittwater. As surfers with an innate respect for the natural world, they played some of their earliest shows for the conservation organisations Sea Shepherd and Living Ocean.

    After the black summer bushfires, the brothers bought a cattle farm on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, next to a family friend’s property they’d visited often as kids. Grounded by the pandemic, they spent nearly two years learning about regenerative farming and are now collaborating with the agri-tech startup Number 8 Bio to trial methods for reducing methane emissions. “People aren’t going to stop eating meat,” Oliver says. “So what can we do to change the process?”

    But as travel restrictions eased, the band faced a dilemma: “Suddenly we were doing all this touring to make up for lost time, and we felt guilty. We’d just been calling ourselves environmentalists – you know, skipping out on the tractor for a day so we don’t use diesel – and then we’re just flying around the world.” Rather than simply stop touring, Oliver says the siblings committed to “tackle every single aspect we could to lessen our footprint”.

    Since 2022 Lime Cordiale have donated $1 from each ticket sold on their Australian tours to environmental causes through Solar Slice, a ticket surcharge initiative created by Cloud Control’s frontwoman, Heidi Lenffer, as part of her Feat (Future Energy Artists) platform. So far, Lime Cordiale has raised more than $50,000.

    The band travels by biodiesel bus in Europe and convinced their regular US bus driver to install a new generator and filtration system to cut emissions. Closer to home, they’ve found creative ways to engage fans in their mission, including having a mate in a whale costume crowd surf at shows to raise awareness for Surfers for Climate. Alongside producing a documentary about their climate journey, Leimbach says the band’s next aspiration is to stage a 5,000-capacity festival powered entirely by green energy: “We’re trying to put on the greenest show Australia has seen.”

    Heidi Lenffer from Cloud Control at Feat’s first solar farm in Brigalow, Queensland. Feat aims to power more than 11,000 homes for the next 30 years. Photograph: Ulrich Lenffer

    Heidi Lenffer founded Feat in 2019 to unite the Australian music industry around a shared climate mission. Speaking to Guardian Australia from her home in the Blue Mountains, she recalls an epiphany sparked by listening to Radiohead’s Weird Fishes/Arpeggi on a long-haul flight while touring Cloud Control’s 2013 album, Dream Cave. “The song came on, and I remember thinking I needed to draw a line in the sand to address the cognitive dissonance of choosing a high-impact, high-emissions career amid a worsening climate crisis.”

    After consulting the sustainability researcher Dr Christopher Dey, Lenffer learned about the carbon cost of touring – an insight that sparked Feat’s first major initiative: raising $7m, in partnership with Future Super and direct contributions from artists, to build the Brigalow solar farm in rural Queensland. With the goal of powering more than 11,000 homes for the next 30 years, Lenffer says Brigalow represents “a hardcore clean energy legacy we can stand beside and be proud of”.

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    Six years in, Lenffer says Feat now carries a “dual mandate” of “regenerating and protecting nature alongside decarbonising and cutting the emissions of our industry”. This includes Solar Slice’s contributions to Indigenous-led rewilding efforts in the Furneaux Islands in the Bass Strait. “I’ve never seen the government as a prime mover,” Lenffer says. “It’s a responder and the people have always been the wheel.”

    This year Cloud Control reunited for a 15th anniversary tour of their debut album, Bliss Release, dedicating $1 from every ticket sold to a regeneration project on Lungtalanana/Clarke Island. The band also provided venues with a “green rider”, requesting measures including eliminating single-use plastics; and made small changes to reduce waste, including doing their own food shopping at each stop. (“We’re a pretty low-fuss band,” Lenffer says. “There’s no mixed seafood platter.”)

    Metalcore band In Hearts Wake: ‘We just do the best we can without being so militant that it’s not fun for anyone.’ Photograph: Unified Music Group

    As part of Feat’s broader mission, Lenffer has shared a detailed green rider template with Laneway festival, including recommendations for eco-friendly suppliers and asking audiences to use public transport. “We’re hoping to influence artists at the highest level internationally,” she says.

    In 2022 the Byron Bay-based metalcore band In Hearts Wake released a documentary, Green Is the New Black, chronicling their efforts to produce a carbon-neutral album and significantly reduce their touring footprint. Speaking to Guardian Australia straight from weeding on his northern rivers property, their frontman, Jake Taylor, says a respect for nature is “embedded in the themes of our work” and bemoans “the ashtray mentality” threatening local spots including Killen Falls.

    The documentary, available for free online, follows the band as they dissect every part of their process, including ditching plastic pool toys from their shows and replacing non-biodegradable confetti with “leaf-fetti” made from hedge clippings and dried leaves. (While novel, Taylor admits the latter was “not sustainable in terms of people’s allergies”.)

    Sydney’s Enmore Theatre. It’s estimated that NSW live music venues could save $1.53m a year and cut emissions by 70,000 tonnes if they implement climate-friendly recommendations. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

    “When it came out, there was virtually no one having these discussions,” he says of the film. “There was so much innocence around the exploration of it all, and less eye-rolling from people who weren’t on the same page.” In 2025 their ethos is simple: “We just do the best we can without being so militant that it’s not fun for anyone.”

    In a report released by Green Music Australia in July, it was estimated that live music venues in NSW could save $1.53m annually and cut emissions by more than 70,000 tonnes if they implemented climate-friendly recommendations. “Anything that reduces your energy consumption is going to have a positive financial benefit and, in equal terms, reduce your emissions,” says Green Music Australia’s chief executive, Berish Bilander.

    The report’s recommendations include buying renewable energy from government-accredited sources; building meaningful relationships with First Nations artists, staff and local elders and including them in discussions about sustainability; offering audiences incentives for using low-emissions travel; and supplying shared equipment, such as drum kits and amplifiers, to reduce transport emissions.

    Green Music Australia has also piloted a “green venue” certification – the first of its kind in the country – which it hopes to roll out nationwide, enabling artists to map more sustainable tours through accredited venues.

    All of the artists say perfection shouldn’t be the goal of climate action. “If you start boasting about something online, the first thing someone’s going to say is, ‘Well, how did you get over to Europe?’” Leimbach says. “Admitting you’re a hypocrite” is the best defence.

    Lenffer frames the challenge in gentler terms. “We participate in a structure that is still weighted in favour of fossil fuel power,” she says. “You’re doomed before you start if you go in with a perfectionist mindset.

    “You need to go in with a something-is-better-than-nothing mindset and then scaffold impact, step by step, from that starting point.”

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  • Mediterranean Diet Offsets Genetic Risk of Alzheimer’s

    Mediterranean Diet Offsets Genetic Risk of Alzheimer’s

    The new findings add to those from prior research showing that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, beans, and fish can boost brain health.

    “Our study shows that genetics are not destiny, and lifestyle choices like following a Mediterranean diet can still make a big difference,” says lead author Yuxi Liu, PhD, a research fellow in the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

    How Genes Can Raise Dementia Risk

    Late-onset Alzheimer’s, which occurs in people 65 and older, is the most common form of Alzheimer’s, making up an estimated 90 to 95 percent of cases.

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  • A&O Shearman guides lenders on USD2.2 billion financing for record-breaking Brazilian pulp mill

    Once operational, this facility is expected to be the world’s largest single-phase pulp manufacturing plant, marking Arauco’s first major investment in Brazil and boasting an anticipated annual output of 3.5 million tons of short-fiber pulp sourced from sustainably managed eucalyptus plantations.

    Construction of the state-of-the-art mill commenced in 2025, with operations slated for late 2027. Upon completion, the project will not only bolster regional economic development through job creation and infrastructure improvements but will also contribute to Brazil’s renewable energy capabilities. 

    Expected to create approximately 14,000 temporary jobs during construction and 6,000 permanent jobs during operations, the facility will also boast reduced water consumption, low emissions technology, and a biomass-fueled lime kiln, enabling the plant to generate more than 400 MW of renewable power, of which up to half will be supplied to the national electric grid. Moreover, the socio-environmental plan will channel resources into health, education, housing, and conservation, ensuring lasting prosperity and a higher quality of life for the region.

    The sophisticated financing package comprises a USD970 million loan provided by J.P. Morgan SE, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (CACIB), The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC), and Banco Santander, S.A. (Santander), guaranteed by Finnvera plc, the Finnish export credit agency, and a USD1.225bn A/B loan arranged by IDB Invest and IFC, with participation from B Lenders including JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Bank of China, HSBC, Santander, BBVA, Bank of America, CACIB, and China Construction Bank, with JPMorgan Chase Bank acting as Global Coordinator. 

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  • OrthoLite Launches SloMo Memory Foam

    Ortholite, the manufacturer of open-cell foam insoles for performance footwear, has announced the launch of OrthoLite SloMo, a slow-recovery, breathable memory foam technology.

    OrthoLite stated in a media release that this expansion in its “memory foam portfolio is a precisely engineered formulation that delivers enhanced fit, adaptive pressure relief and optimized airflow for next-level step-in comfort.”

    Building on the success of OrthoLite Eco-Impressions and OrthoLite Lazy, the new SloMo formulation is designed “to meet growing consumer demand for premium, customized comfort in footwear,” said OrthoLite. This latest innovation “elevates the functional and sensory performance of memory foam, offering brand partners an innovative new option to differentiate their product offerings across lifestyle, fashion and performance footwear categories.”

    Powered by OrthoLite’s proprietary open-cell PU technology, “SloMo delivers exceptional breathability, slow-recovery comfort, and consistent energy return.” This new formulation is “engineered with a defined Asker-C rating, optimized recovery times and tailored tactile profiles enabling brands to finely tune the underfoot experience across a wide range of footwear applications.”

    Available in die-cut and molded constructions, OrthoLite SloMo can be used as a single- or dual-layer solution. It provides “a supportive, foot-cradling feel underfoot and is also ideal for use in linings, tongues, and other shoe components, delivering a 360-degree, custom-fit experience that breathes and elevates comfort across the entire shoe.”

    “This expanded memory foam offering gives our partners greater freedom to design comfort with intention,” said Glenn Barrett, founder and CEO of OrthoLite. “With SloMo, we’re pushing the boundaries of what memory foam can deliver, empowering footwear brands to meet evolving expectations with precision and innovation.”

    OrthoLite will showcase SloMo at the upcoming Materials Show in Portland, OR and Boston, MA, as well as at Lineapelle in Milan, Italy this September.

    Image courtesy Ortholite

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  • Silver Fox APT Abuses Windows Driver in Active Campaign

    Silver Fox APT Abuses Windows Driver in Active Campaign

    Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks
    ,
    Fraud Management & Cybercrime

    Gap in Microsoft Blocklist Exploited, ValleyRAT Runs Undetected

    Pooja Tikekar (@PoojaTikekar) •
    September 2, 2025    

    Image: Jim Cumming/Shutterstock

    A Chinese nation-state cyber group is exploiting a Microsoft-signed driver to shut down Windows security protections.

    See Also: OnDemand | North Korea’s Secret IT Army and How to Combat It

    Researchers at Check Point said the threat actor tracked as Silver Fox is abusing amsdk.sys, a WatchDog anti-malware driver, to terminate protected processes on Windows 10 and 11. The driver, version 1.0.600, is not on Microsoft’s official Vulnerable Driver Blocklist and was not catalogued by community trackers such as LOLDrivers, a volunteer effort to catalog vulnerable, malicious and known malicious Windows drivers. That blind spot allowed the group to exploit it without raising alerts.

    The attackers deployed the driver through a custom loader that also contained a vulnerable driver for Zemana antrivirus software and a ValleyRAT downloader. The researchers said the loader runs checks for virtual machines and sandboxes before execution. If those checks pass, the loader installs the WatchDog driver and disables Windows protections such as protected process light, or PPL.

    PPL is a Windows security feature introduced in Windows 8.1 and is meant to keep critical processes, such as antivirus, endpoint protection and system services, from being terminated or tampered with by untrusted code.

    Researchers said the method allows Silver Fox to maintain persistence while evading detection by endpoint defenses. Windows automatically trusts Microsoft-signed code even when vulnerable, allowing adversaries to exploit that trust to escalate privileges and evade monitoring.

    ValleyRAT is part of Silver Fox’s wider toolkit. ValleyRAT provides attackers remote control over infected systems and supports long-term espionage and intrusion campaigns. In earlier operations, Silver Fox was linked to the use of Gh0st RAT, another remote access Trojan with overlapping infrastructure and targeting.

    Following disclosure, Microsoft issued a patched driver named wamsdk.sys, version 1.1.100. “Although we promptly reported that the patch did not fully mitigate the arbitrary process termination issue, the attackers quickly adapted and incorporated a modified version of the patched driver into the ongoing campaign,” researchers said.

    The core weakness that Silver Fox relied on remained exploitable even after patch. “The attackers altered a single byte in the unauthenticated timestamp field of the driver’s Microsoft Authenticode signature,” the researchers said. This change was enough to bypass defenses that rely on hash-based blocklists. The altered file no longer matched known signatures, but still appeared legitimate to Windows.

    The researchers urged stronger validation of driver behavior and improvements to blocklists to prevent vulnerable signed drivers from being exploited.


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  • Dozens of mysterious blobs discovered inside Mars may be the remnants of ‘failed planets’

    Dozens of mysterious blobs discovered inside Mars may be the remnants of ‘failed planets’

    Giant impact structures, including the potential remains of ancient “protoplanets,” may be lurking deep beneath the surface of Mars, new research hints. The mysterious lumps, which have been perfectly preserved within the Red Planet’s immobile innards for billions of years, may date back to the beginning of the solar system.

    In a new study, published Aug. 28 in the journal Science, researchers analyzed “Marsquake” data collected by NASA’s InSight lander, which monitored tremors beneath the Martian surface from 2018 until 2022, when it met an untimely demise from dust blocking its solar panels. By looking at how these Marsquakes vibrated through the Red Planet’s unmoving mantle, the team discovered several never-before-seen blobs that were much denser than the surrounding material.

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  • Alphabet’s stock is rising after Google antitrust ruling avoids the worst-case scenario

    Alphabet’s stock is rising after Google antitrust ruling avoids the worst-case scenario

    By Christine Ji

    Google can keep its Chrome browser, but must end exclusive contracts in search and some other businesses

    Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google would not have to divest its Chrome browser.

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google dodged a worst-case scenario Tuesday after a federal judge rejected the Justice Department’s demand that it sell the Chrome browser.

    U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta released his remedies for Google’s (GOOGL) (GOOG) previously established violations of federal antitrust law, and investors had been waiting to hear the remedies that would come as an aftermath to his original decision. While Mehta’s latest ruling prohibited Google from having exclusive contracts for its Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and Gemini products, it did not require the divestiture of Google Chrome – which a Baird analyst recently estimated to be worth $100 billion.

    Alphabet’s stock rose 8% in after-hours trading following the announcement.

    Prior to the decision, Wall Street analysts weren’t sure what the scale of the remedies would be, but they had largely ruled out a major breakup of Google.

    BMO Capital Markets analyst Brian Pitz wrote in a note that he was expecting “significant, but not draconian changes to Google’s business” – with the most likely outcome being a “comprehensive behavioral consent decree” involving a ban on paying to be the default search engine, as well as new rules to give users more choice. He anticipated that Google’s stock could fluctuate 10% in either direction following the decision.

    Michael Sansoterra, chief investment officer at Silvant Capital Management, told MarketWatch that a full divestiture would be “too extreme,” and would harm consumers who prefer to use Chrome by disrupting the browser’s integration across other Google products.

    However, Pitz believes there could be more challenges down the road. Another antitrust case found Google guilty of manipulating advertising auctions to favor its own products, and the ruling allows the DOJ to pursue remedies such as breaking up parts of Google’s ad-tech business.

    Sansoterra and Pitz both expect Google to appeal the ruling.

    -Christine Ji

    This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. 

    
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  • CoreWeave’s stock slides as insider selling sparks investor concerns

    CoreWeave’s stock slides as insider selling sparks investor concerns

    By Christine Ji

    Shares of the cloud-computing company fall sharply as top executives, including the CEO and its largest shareholder, Magnetar Financial, sell millions in stock following a lockup expiration

    Some of CoreWeave’s top executives and shareholders, including CEO Michael Intrator, are selling off parts of their holdings.

    There’s been a flurry of insider selling after CoreWeave Inc.’s lockup period expired in August, and it sent the cloud-computing company’s stock tumbling on Tuesday.

    Last week, CoreWeave (CRWV) executives including Chief Executive Michael Intrator and Chief Financial Officer Agrawal Nitin, as well as the company’s biggest shareholder, Magnetar Financial, sold shares in the company. For much of CoreWeave’s time as a public company, during which the stock saw significant gains, those insiders had been restricted from selling shares.

    According to SEC filings, Magnetar Financial and its subsidiaries sold $94.4 million, or 915,339 shares, of CoreWeave on Aug. 28. The hedge fund also opened a collar options position on the stock, purchasing put options with a strike price of $70 and writing covered call options with a strike price of $175. By doing so, Magnetar locked in a minimum sale price of $70 and a maximum sale price of $175, hedging its exposure to large price fluctuations until the options expiry date of March 20, 2026.

    Previously, the hedge fund also trimmed its CoreWeave position on Aug. 18 and 20, selling a total of 1,465,064 shares on those dates.

    Last week, Intrator sold around $7.8 million, or 82,455 shares, of CoreWeave stock. Nitin sold roughly $335,164, or 3,512 shares. And Kristen McVeety, CoreWeave’s corporate secretary, exited her entire direct stake in the company of 311,796 shares for roughly $30 million, though she still owns 95,000 shares indirectly through a trust.

    The stock closed at $93.54 on Tuesday, down 9%.

    Also read: CoreWeave’s lockup is about to expire. What that could mean for the stock.

    Analysts were anticipating price volatility as CoreWeave’s lockup period expired, as the company’s IPO prospectus showed that 84% of shares were held by insiders. Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes was one of them, though he said in August that he thought the long-term outlook for the stock was positive.

    Separately, some investors have been wondering if CoreWeave’s stock, which hit an all-time high of $187 back in June, is worth the hype. The latest selloff carries the stock further off its highs, as shares have roughly halved since peaking in June, and they’ve dropped around 38% since the company’s second-quarter earnings report on Aug. 12, when management announced a steeper loss than analysts were expecting.

    The stock’s downward trend also has implications for CoreWeave’s planned all-stock acquisition of digital infrastructure provider Core Scientific Inc. (CORZ). The terms of the agreement stipulate that current holders of Core Scientific stock will receive 0.1235 newly issued CoreWeave shares for every Core Scientific share, valuing the deal at roughly $9 billion when it was announced in July.

    At the time, CoreWeave’s stock was trading at $159.70, meaning Core Scientific shareholders would have received $19.72 per share if that price held. At the current trading price, Core Scientific shareholders would only receive $11.53 per share.

    Read on: CoreWeave’s stock has slumped. Here’s how the company can prove the bears wrong.

    -Christine Ji

    This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. 

    
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  • Lower-Dose Leuprolide Agent Earns FDA Nod for Advanced PC – Medscape

    1. Lower-Dose Leuprolide Agent Earns FDA Nod for Advanced PC  Medscape
    2. FDA OKs Leuprolide Mesylate 3-Month Formulation in Advanced Prostate Cancer  CancerNetwork
    3. FDA Approved Camcevi ETM New Drug Application for Prostate Cancer  Curetoday
    4. Foresee Pharmaceuticals Announces FDA Approval of CAMCEVI ETM for the Treatment of Advanced Prostate Cancer  Yahoo Finance
    5. FDA Approves 3-Month Leuprolide Mesylate 21 mg Formulation for Advanced Prostate Cancer  Pharmacy Times

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  • New gift expands mental illness studies at Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research | MIT News

    New gift expands mental illness studies at Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research | MIT News

    One in every eight people — 970 million globally — live with mental illness, according to the World Health Organization, with depression and anxiety being the most common mental health conditions worldwide. Existing therapies for complex psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia have limitations, and federal funding to address these shortcomings is growing increasingly uncertain.

    Patricia and James Poitras ’63 have committed $8 million to the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research to launch pioneering research initiatives aimed at uncovering the brain basis of major mental illness and accelerating the development of novel treatments.

    “Federal funding rarely supports the kind of bold, early-stage research that has the potential to transform our understanding of psychiatric illness. Pat and I want to help fill that gap — giving researchers the freedom to follow their most promising leads, even when the path forward isn’t guaranteed,” says James Poitras, who is chair of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research board.

    Their latest gift builds upon their legacy of philanthropic support for psychiatric disorders research at MIT, which now exceeds $46 million.

    “With deep gratitude for Jim and Pat’s visionary support, we are eager to launch a bold set of studies aimed at unraveling the neural and cognitive underpinnings of major mental illnesses,” says Professor Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute, home to the Poitras Center. “Together, these projects represent a powerful step toward transforming how we understand and treat mental illness.”

    A legacy of support

    Soon after joining the McGovern Institute Leadership Board in 2006, the Poitrases made a $20 million commitment to establish the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research at MIT. The center’s goal, to improve human health by addressing the root causes of complex psychiatric disorders, is deeply personal to them both.

    “We had decided many years ago that our philanthropic efforts would be directed towards psychiatric research. We could not have imagined then that this perfect synergy between research at MIT’s McGovern Institute and our own philanthropic goals would develop,” recalls Patricia. 

    The center supports research at the McGovern Institute and collaborative projects with institutions such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, McLean Hospital, Mass General Brigham, and other clinical research centers. Since its establishment in 2007, the center has enabled advances in psychiatric research including the development of a machine learning “risk calculator” for bipolar disorder, the use of brain imaging to predict treatment outcomes for anxiety, and studies demonstrating that mindfulness can improve mental health in adolescents.

    For the past decade, the Poitrases have also fueled breakthroughs in the lab of McGovern investigator and MIT Professor Feng Zhang, backing the invention of powerful CRISPR systems and other molecular tools that are transforming biology and medicine. Their support has enabled the Zhang team to engineer new delivery vehicles for gene therapy, including vehicles capable of carrying genetic payloads that were once out of reach. The lab has also advanced innovative RNA-guided gene engineering tools such as NovaIscB, published in Nature Biotechnology in May 2025. These revolutionary genome editing and delivery technologies hold promise for the next generation of therapies needed for serious psychiatric illness.

    In addition to fueling research in the center, the Poitras family has gifted two endowed professorships — the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, currently held by Feng Zhang, and the James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, held by Guoping Feng — and an annual postdoctoral fellowship at the McGovern Institute.

    New initiatives at the Poitras Center

    The Poitras family’s latest commitment to the Poitras Center will launch an ambitious set of new projects that bring together neuroscientists, clinicians, and computational experts to probe underpinnings of complex psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression. These efforts reflect the center’s core mission: to speed scientific discovery and therapeutic innovation in the field of psychiatric brain disorders research.

    McGovern cognitive neuroscientists Evelina Fedorenko PhD ’07, an associate professor, and Nancy Kanwisher ’80, PhD ’86, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience — in collaboration with psychiatrist Ann Shinn of McLean Hospital — will explore how altered inner speech and reasoning contribute to the symptoms of schizophrenia. They will collect functional MRI data from individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and matched controls as they perform reasoning tasks. The goal is to identify the brain activity patterns that underlie impaired reasoning in schizophrenia, a core cognitive disruption in the disorder.

    A complementary line of investigation will focus on the role of inner speech — the “voice in our head” that shapes thought and self-awareness. The team will conduct a large-scale online behavioral study of neurotypical individuals to analyze how inner speech characteristics correlate with schizophrenia-spectrum traits. This will be followed by neuroimaging work comparing brain architecture among individuals with strong or weak inner voices and people with schizophrenia, with the aim of discovering neural markers linked to self-talk and disrupted cognition.

    A different project led by McGovern neuroscientist and MIT Associate Professor Mark Harnett and 2024–2026 Poitras Center Postdoctoral Fellow Cynthia Rais focuses on how ketamine — an increasingly used antidepressant — alters brain circuits to produce rapid and sustained improvements in mood. Despite its clinical success, ketamine’s mechanisms of action remain poorly understood. The Harnett lab is using sophisticated tools to track how ketamine affects synaptic communication and large-scale brain network dynamics, particularly in models of treatment-resistant depression. By mapping these changes at both the cellular and systems levels, the team hopes to reveal how ketamine lifts mood so quickly — and inform the development of safer, longer-lasting antidepressants.

    Guoping Feng is leveraging a new animal model of depression to uncover the brain circuits that drive major depressive disorder. The new animal model provides a powerful system for studying the intricacies of mood regulation. Feng’s team is using state-of-the-art molecular tools to identify the specific genes and cell types involved in this circuit, with the goal of developing targeted treatments that can fine-tune these emotional pathways.

    “This is one of the most promising models we have for understanding depression at a mechanistic level,” says Feng, who is also associate director of the McGovern Institute. “It gives us a clear target for future therapies.”

    Another novel approach to treating mood disorders comes from the lab of James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, who is exploring the brain’s visual-emotional interface as a therapeutic tool for anxiety. The amygdala, a key emotional center in the brain, is heavily influenced by visual input. DiCarlo’s lab is using advanced computational models to design visual scenes that may subtly shift emotional processing in the brain — essentially using sight to regulate mood. Unlike traditional therapies, this strategy could offer a noninvasive, drug-free option for individuals suffering from anxiety.

    Together, these projects exemplify the kind of interdisciplinary, high-impact research that the Poitras Center was established to support.

    “Mental illness affects not just individuals, but entire families who often struggle in silence and uncertainty,” adds Patricia Poitras. “Our hope is that Poitras Center scientists will continue to make important advancements and spark novel treatments for complex mental health disorders and, most of all, give families living with these conditions a renewed sense of hope for the future.”

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